Morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. I would like to extend a warm welcome to you, and I hereby open this year's annual general meeting of Deutsche Telekom AG and assume the chair in accordance with the company's articles of association. On behalf of the supervisory board and the management board, I would like to warmly welcome you, the shareholders and shareholder representatives, as well as the members of the press and our other guests here in Bonn. If in German, I use the masculine form of address here and in the course of this meeting, this is done solely for the sake of linguistic simplicity.
The masculine form of address, of course, includes all genders. We are very pleased to welcome you once again physically here at the World Conference Center, Bonn this year. With the exception of Ms. Schöttke, the supervisory board is attending this year's annual general meeting in full. Ms. Schöttke is unfortunately unable to attend for personal reasons. The management board is present in full.
On my left, I would like to welcome Dr. Markus Buschbaum, Notary Public, who is in charge of recording this annual general meeting. First, a few remarks regarding the venue. The main venue for today's meeting is this New York Hall, including the gallery accessible to you from outside. I see it is filling up, great. You may also follow the proceedings via audio and video in the Nairobi One room. The attendance area includes all rooms accessible to you after passing through the so-called accreditation area.
In addition to the rooms already mentioned, this also includes the outdoor area accessible from inside the building, as well as all other adjacent rooms and areas accessible to you, including the lobby, up to the exit and accreditation counters. The registration desk is located here in the main room on my right at the far end of this hall. We also have set up an information desk for you again. It is located in the lobby on the entrance level. The shareholders and shareholder representatives present will be included in the list of attendees. This list is maintained electronically and is available with ongoing updates. It can be viewed at the terminals. You will find these here in the main room at the back on the right and left, as well as in the Nairobi One room.
The notice convening the annual general meeting together with a complete agenda and the management's proposed resolutions on the announced agenda items was published in due form and time in the Federal Gazette on February 27th, 2026, and was also published throughout Europe on the same day. A printout of the notices is available to the notary and can also be viewed at the registration desk. The notary will attach a copy of the minutes as an appendix. At the registration desk, you may also review the documents related to today's annual general meeting, in addition to the invitation and agenda that have been available on the company's website since the notice of the meeting was published. The countermotions and nominations to be made available have been published on our company's website, along with all necessary details.
Copies of these are available at the registration desk, as well as at the information desk in the lobby on the entrance level. The company has not received any motions to amend the agenda pursuant to Section 122 of the German Stock Corporation Act. Today's annual general meeting will be broadcast live in full on the Internet and recorded for documentary purposes. This opening statement, as well as Mr. Höttges' speech and any further remarks by Mr. Höttges, will be available online later. For the sake of good order, I would like to point out that the management board is assisted by back office staff in recording the questions and preparing the answers. To ensure that the questions are recorded correctly, an audio recording will be made, which will subsequently be deleted.
Please understand that it is not permitted to make your own video or audio recordings of the meeting. You have received an AGM card at the registration desks today. You will need your AGM card to exercise the rights that you have as a shareholder at today's meeting. In particular, your voting rights. In addition, the AGM card contains all important information regarding leaving the meeting early, as well as granting proxies and giving instructions. I hereby refer to this information. The AGM card must be presented at the exit checkpoint if you leave the annual general meeting early. We will conduct the discussion on the agenda items in the form of a general debate. Each speaker may address all items on the agenda and ask questions regarding them.
I would like to ask those shareholders who wish to exercise their right to speak or ask questions to please sign up at the registration desk over there by presenting their AGM card. There, you will receive sign-up forms, which you should please fill out and hand to a staff member at the registration desk. I would like to ask those shareholders who intend to speak to submit their requests for the floor as early as possible from now on. I will explain the voting procedure in detail immediately prior to voting. However, as a precaution, I would like to point out now that for the upcoming votes may only be cast here in the main room. We will again be using a gong as an acoustic signal to indicate the start and end of the votes. I will now sound it once for demonstration purposes.
After these organizational remarks, we will now proceed to the agenda. Agenda item 1 is documents to be submitted to the annual general meeting pursuant to Section 176, one sentence clause one of the German Stock Corporation Act. Under this agenda item, the following documents in particular will be presented the annual financial statements, the consolidated financial statements, the combined management report and group management report, and the report of the supervisory board. These and other documents related to today's annual general meeting are available on the company's website. You may also view them at the information desk. In the lobby, you will also find terminals where you can view the online version of the annual report as well as the notice of today's annual general meeting, including the agenda in PDF format.
Ladies and gentlemen, I will now give the floor to Mr. Höttges for his report on behalf of the Management Board.
[Presentation]
A very good morning to you, dear shareholders. Do you like building things with LEGO? I love LEGO, and that's why I would like to, you know, build some LEGO with you today. As you just saw, we have built a gigantic AI factory that makes Germany more sovereign, and that'll make it possible for us to use more AI applications here in Germany. That also will represent a new field of business for Deutsche Telekom. We've built this AI factory. We announced it in good time. What is this AI factory all about? How is the government, how are the big corporations handling all this sensitive data here in Germany in the future? Well, this factory is a story in itself. A 50% increase of the GPU. That's the graphics processors here in Germany. We have six floors, you know, underground.
There we built a data center to manage all this data. How does that work specifically? This is what I would like to talk about today. We have all the data. Our companies have a lot of highly sensitive patent-related data, scientific data, scientific know-how, et cetera. This know-how needs to be transferred to the cloud. How does that work? Via good networks. Who builds the best networks in Germany? Well, I'll leave it up to you to make a guess. Connectivity is the prerequisite for gathering the data and for making this data available to companies later on. Telekom knows how to do that, because connectivity is our core business. 4 x 400 Gbps. These are the lines we're using to pump data into the data center and to extract that data again.
Now lots of data is coming in from various companies, not coordinated, unstructured, et cetera. A lot of highly sensitive data too. The next thing we need to do is to make sure that none of this data is getting lost. That's why we need top security in line with the regulatory requirements here in Europe, but also to protect the companies themselves in the network and also outside of the network. T-Sec is one of our business divisions that generates more than EUR 300 million in revenue, and it guarantees this security. It builds this security into our infrastructure to make sure that all this data can be transferred in a safe manner. This has also been implemented in our AI factory.
Now we've got all the data in the factory, but the big question is: What are we gonna do with all this unstructured data? This is where T Cloud comes into play. What do we do with T Cloud? T Cloud gathers the data, structures the data, then files it redundantly, organizes it, and at the same time, the cloud makes sure that new data can be scaled as soon as AI helps us to gain new findings. Think of it, you know, as a wardrobe where you can, you know, save all your clothes, and we just do the same with data. T Cloud wasn't just developed last year. Deutsche Telekom has been working on this cloud for the past 10 years.
We also refer to it as the sovereign cloud because it is only operated here in Germany and only run by Telekom in-house staff in a sovereign fashion and highly reliable. Now we've organized all this data. The wardrobe is full. That doesn't mean that, you know, that makes the clothes any cleaner or that we have organized things perfectly. In order to do that, we bring in the infamous GPUs, the processors. You will remember the term CPUs. These are, you know, the processors that are working step by step. Now we have the so-called GPUs, the graphic processing units, and they look like this. You are using the same thing in your PCs. This comes from my PC. This is the graphic card that my son is using for gaming. We don't want them to game all the time, right?
Which is why I just, you know, removed this thing from his PC. Basically, this box here is nothing different from the graphic card from my PC, but it is much more efficient, much more powerful. By the way, this is what we need to make AI a reality. This box has eight GPUs. It's an installation from NVIDIA. How much does it cost? EUR 350,000. In our data center in Munich, we have 10,000 of these boxes installed. You can probably imagine the computing power that is emerging there. These processes come from the best in this world. I'm guessing you also hold shares in NVIDIA. After all, this is the global market leader with the most efficient GPUs and processors in the world.
Probably you still have a hard time figuring out how things actually work in a data center. That's why we established a live connection to our underground section in the Tucherpark in Munich. Marta, why don't you explain to us what you're doing there?
Hello, Tim. Dear shareholders, I'm in Munich right now. I'm four floors underground in our AI computing center, our data center. This is a pod where you have several CPUs interconnected. Let's go inside. Here's a warning. We're talking 115 decibels, so it's deafening. It's as if, you know, a plane was about to take off next to me. Tim already showed you a single GPU. Here we have around 500 of these GPUs. That's why it's so loud in here, because we have hundreds of ventilators here. Tim, I hope that it won't be quite so deafening on the stage on your side, unless it's because people are just giving you such a big hand here.
Right. Well, thank you so much, Marta. We have countless highly efficient computers there from the company NVIDIA. NVIDIA basically now processes all this data using very efficient devices. Then there are all sorts of different requirements for the systems that we are using. This is where the so-called orchestration comes into play, and that's software. We figured we don't want to be dependent, you know, on foreign software, maybe from the U.S. We want to use German or European software instead.
Ladies and gentlemen, we do that by way of the so-called Business Transformation Platform, BTP. I know these are terrible terms here. After all, we are playing Lego, right?
We are using BTP from the company SAP. What do we do with this BTP? Well, this platform can exchange data across different applications. It orchestrates the data as part of different industrial applications and then connects the application to the data center to achieve the targets that we have set for ourselves. How do we do that? What sort of applications are we talking about that we are running in this data center in Germany today? The first thing that springs to mind is certainly Siemens. Siemens is one of the big users of our data center in Munich. What do they do? Siemens, they are organizing industrial manufacturing processes. You see, companies are building major industrial systems. They need to be properly planned, set up, structured, optimized so that we can achieve the highest level of product productivity. In the past, this was mostly done physically.
You would build a production line and then test if it works. Today, this is optimized in virtual ways. We are using so-called digital twins, and this means that all the factories have a digital twin, and then you can optimize them in the system. Production lanes visualized. You know, human intervention is visualized. Ultimately, you can simulate everything on a computer first, which gives you far more time, and it is much more cost efficient to do all these things in a digital twin instead of having to do it all physically. There's another application, and that's from Quantum Systems, another company. It's a company that used to build drones for civil purposes. Now they're also very active in Ukraine for reconnaissance purposes, and they are used for military purposes as well. Drones are flying autonomously.
The missions they have need to be simulated in order for the drone to orientate itself. The drone is sort of trained in our data center. We're talking about large volumes of data that need to be trained and the GPUs from NVIDIA make this possible highly efficiently in parallel mode. You know, I could spend hours talking about this. I could tell you something about another company called Wandelbots that is using robots in our AI data center. I could also tell you that all that is completely carbon free, not just because the electricity comes from green energy, but also because we are using the Eisbach for cooling and we are using it, you know, for cooling and also for heating. By the way, the fact that the wave didn't work, that wasn't because of us.
That was far up in the north, not where our data center was set up in the south. Ladies and gentlemen, Deutsche Telekom's data center in Munich is a clear commitment to Germany. Made for Germany, made in Germany. The factory processes data only in accordance with German law and is only run by German staff. Only the hardware, only the chipset currently does not come from Germany or Europe. Why not? Because unfortunately, we no longer offer this technology on our continent. If that was different, we would also, you know, use a European solution here. But NVIDIA has been our partner for a long time. We've worked with them for many years, and that's why we know that we can rely on them. Because for me, sovereignty doesn't mean that we are trying to shut ourselves off. Sovereignty, ladies and gentlemen, means self-determination.
With our AI factory, starting from Deutsche Telekom's connectivity through security of Telekom, Deutsche Telekom's cloud and the software of SAP, all that means that we can give a sovereign answer to European companies when it comes to the question of how do we organize AI in Germany and Europe. Made in Germany, made for Germany. Thank you very much.
[Presentation]
My dear shareholders. I am T – count on me. Everyone at Deutsche Telekom knows this sentence, and they put it in practice. 2025 was yet another record year. Despite the world becoming more unpredictable, more confusing, you might even say more out of control. There is so much we can no longer rely on, which is why dependability genuinely makes all the difference in these difficult times. 198,079 Deutsche Telekom employees work hard to keep connections secure even in times of crisis. To bring modern technology to everyone. To develop artificial intelligence, and that includes here in Europe. I thank all Telekom staff members. Thank you. Thank you for me being able to rely on you, all of you out there.
Shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, dependability is no empty promise for us. We prove it daily. Four things you can count on at Deutsche Telekom. First of all, we continue to grow. That's been promised and delivered for 48 quarters in a row. Telekom has grown. In 2025, revenue was up 4.2%, more than EUR 119 billion. Earnings up 4.7%, more than EUR 44.2 billion. Free cash flow up 2%, EUR 19.5 billion. Earnings per share up 5.2%, EUR 2 per share.
Ladies and gentlemen, y ou can see it. You can see that our strategy works. It has not changed in years. It is dependable. We call it the flywheel, but o ur strategy isn't complicated. It fits on a beer mat. Take this beer mat back with you. So, we're back with you. When you get together with your friends, talk about this with them. Every colleague here in this auditorium can tell you about our strategy. Even I can.
First of all, we invest more than the competition. EUR 16.9 billion last year. That helps us gain new customers. 10 million last year. If we gain more customers than our competition, we can utilize our network better. We are more efficient, and that allows us to earn more money. Because we earn more money, because we have better utilization, we can invest more.
The flywheel keeps on turning, and it's even gaining momentum more than our competition. Partly powered by data and artificial intelligence, we want to be faster and better. We have leverage, and we leverage economies of scale that our competitors do not have. We draw strength from two continents, Europe and the United States, to accelerate this development. That is no accident of geography. It's always been our strategic calculation and advantage. We unite stability and dynamism like no other telco globally, and we are growing on both sides of the Atlantic.
Just look at the stats. Earnings in Germany up 1.7%. In the United States, up 5.3%. Especially strong in Europe, up 5.4%. How did the Chairman of our Supervisory Board call it yesterday? Our rising star, T-Systems, up 14.4%. We're also reliable when it comes to our dividend. Our proposal is up 11%, EUR 1 per share. We have never paid more than that. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you'll agree to that. I hope I can rely on you. I hope you'll approve our proposal. My dear shareholders, dependability is not only about today's dividend, it's also about how we invest in the future.
This brings me to my second point. We are building the best network, and we always build the best network. The whole world is talking about AI, but without our infrastructure, AI would not have a voice. Without us, there would be no powerful AI economy in Europe or in the USA. That is how we make the digital future possible. We actively shape the transformation, not for just the private economy, but for industry as well. How do we do this? AI needs data centers, and we build them.
AI needs networks because that's where what the data flows through. The question of who has the best network, there's actually just one answer to that, isn't there? Last year, we once again won all of the big tests. This morning, a Connect test, just another one. 12.6 million homes passed in Germany. That's 2.5 million households more than at the end of 2024. Our goal is 25 million homes by 2030 in Germany. What goes for Germany goes for Europe. Let's look at Europe, where we've built fiber to 11.3 million homes. That's an additional 1.3 million. Fiber is also in the United States, what we have opted, what we're pushing, where we have acquired two providers, Lumos and Metronet, for an investment of EUR 4.8 billion.
Our mobile business is also progressing. 5G, for example. 36,450 cell towers are transmitting across Germany from Flensburg to Fischen in the Allgäu region in the south. They cover more than 99% of the population with 5G. In Europe, we achieve around 92%. That's a jump of 15 percentage points. We lead in the United States too, with the best 5G network covering around 98% of the population there. Ladies and gentlemen, Deutsche Telekom has the best network, and that always makes the difference. We weren't the worst or the cheapest. We were a premium provider. We were perceived in Germany as having the best network, and that's what really makes the difference in all of our networks throughout the world, and you can rely on that going forward. We will continue to build out our network.
We won't stop, and we will fight for every tower. This brings me to my favorite topic. My favorite topic, my hometown of Solingen, Highway 74. I know it from recycling on it, but it runs through a nature reserve. It's a protected habitat for crested newts and brook lampreys. They have a say there. They say, "And that means no tower by my pond." For years, we've been searching for a solution there, and finally, we have found one. Now, a 25 m tower is transmitting there on the side of a wastewater treatment plant. What worked in Solingen, though, unfortunately won't work everywhere. Some locations remain inaccessible, even for us. Too boggy, too rocky, too densely forested. That is why we will be enhancing our mobile network with satellite tech connectivity from 2027 on.
This will bring coverage to everybody, even where we say good night to crested newts and brook lampreys. Ladies and gentlemen, I love nature. Germany doesn't need an either/or , it needs as well as flora, fauna, and forward progress. I call them the three Fs, and that's what we need here. There cannot be prosperity without progress. For that, we need the right underlying framework in place here in Germany. The good news is change is afoot. Permits for mobile and fiber are now going faster than ever before. The federal government has finally changed the rules at long last. Thank you. Just when you think it can't get any worse, another law comes around the corner. First example. Our competitors are demanding we switch off our copper network.
Once they have laid fiber to a locality where we have copper, then they're saying that Deutsche Telekom's copper network has to be switched off. There's even more. We're supposed to switch our network off, but Vodafone, which offers a cable network, doesn't have to. It's also copper. I've built out a network, and if you look at it, that's nothing other than copper. This cable network, this is from the competition here. Why should Deutsche Telekom's copper network be switched off when Vodafone's copper network can continue to be used? That's what they're using. I don't get it. Sometimes I wonder, what is going on in Germany? We have been pushing for competition in the infrastructure since 1995. Infrastructural competition. Now, now we want to have new fiber optic monopolies. That doesn't make any sense.
It would be better for everybody to build out fiber and then leave it up to the customers to decide which provider they wanna have. Then we would have competition and also customers would have the option to switch from copper to fiber. Here's a second example. Already at present, hundreds of authorities watch over Europe's digital industrial sector. Yet Brussels wants more regulation. The digital network that is being built is leading to more red tape for us. I'm confident that the politicians in Europe and policymakers want the right thing. Europe will not achieve independence without scale. That's why we must not micro-regulate. That's why we have to allow consolidation here in Europe so that we can compete with the heavyweights from America or China or other markets, so we can keep pace with them.
OAnother thing we need, we need fair competition. A text message is a text message or am I wrong? Whether it's an SMS or a WhatsApp, it's actually the same, isn't it? Or with cell service if I use a satellite or the mobile network, I'm just phoning. It's the same service. But why is only the telecom industry regulated, but satellites or over-the-top internet giants are not? I'm of the opinion that in this new modern world, with so many applications and technologies, there has to be one rule and one rule only. The same services, the same rules. That's what I'm pushing for right now in Berlin and in Brussels, because we have to prepare for the new technologies coming our way. My dear shareholders, the future cannot be an away game.
It has to be a home game, and we're attending to this, and you can take that to the bank. That brings me to my third point. We bring artificial intelligence to people and business. AI, ladies and gentlemen. Artificial intelligence is the greatest gift for our economy. Yes, I said greatest gift. We can pick up the pace with AI. It can accelerate many tasks that are slow right now. AI can safeguard quality and reduce mistakes. AI could also help where specialists are in short supply. That goes especially for Germany as a whole. It also applies to Deutsche Telekom, which is why we are turning abstract possibilities into concrete reality. AI accelerates. It safeguards quality, and it helps to compensate for the shortage of specialist skills. We use AI in all our areas of the company.
AI finds faults in the network and repairs them. It provides summaries. It analyzes markets. It codes, it analyzes markets, it provides legal advice. Ladies and gentlemen, you'll be able to answer the question I'm about to ask. It's transcribing the questions you raised today. Telecom developed this in the guise of Ask T and provides you an answer. We will finish early today. Ladies and gentlemen. Artificial intelligence will never take control for us. Decisions will remain in the hands of people. My dear shareholders, what we do for ourselves, we also do for our customers. The tools we use, we also make available to you, our customers. That's a huge opportunity for further growth. Let me take another example of consumers. The next level of dependability is the network thinks. A proactively thinking network.
We are reinventing the phone call. Because this year we're building a so-called AI assistant in our network. When you're telephoning, you need support from AI, you just have to say, just like in your car when you're driving along, "Hey, Magenta, what will the weather be like on the weekends? Can I go for a walk? What's the best restaurant near me? Hey Magenta, can we make an appointment?" AI will look into your time schedule to see when there's a good date for an appointment. The network translates conversations if it's another language, and it does that in real time. That's the future, and it's on any device too. That means the network is getting smarter and will be able to perform more.
What's really great about this is that it works in the fixed network exactly the same way as it does in the mobile network on any device. Doesn't matter how old the device are, it's independent of that. Whether it's a Nokia 3310, even with its old cell phone, AI works. That's what I call innovation through artificial intelligence. Don't worry, security and data privacy have top priority for us. The assistant only responds when it's called upon, and it doesn't store any data, any of your data. Data security is ensured in any situation. Let me give you a second example. Our business customers. You know we have almost EUR 15 billion in revenue with business customers. We want to get better here too, and that creates extra potential when we use AI here.
I showed you the AI factory just a few minutes ago. Every company can use the factory. There's no excuse anymore to say, "I don't want to have my computer on a foreign infrastructure." Anybody who wants to work with AI can do it here in Germany. They have complete control over the data, the application, and the technology. That is independence made in Germany. AI is only at the beginning. We will continue to expand it further. I invite every company in Germany and Europe to use this to seize the opportunities offered by AI. It is making Germany and Europe competitive once again. You have a dependable partner at your side in Deutsche Telekom, contributing a lot of the components to the system right now. T-Systems is the reliable partner in this build-out. Ladies and gentlemen, Deutsche Telekom keeps its promises.
Nobody is credible if they claim they never make mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. We do too. I do. That's why my fourth point is we keep on learning. I'm going to tell you what I mean with three examples. First, broadband in Germany. We underestimated the fiber build-out and how long it would take. It is dragging on, but we are winning customers everywhere. Lost some in our home market of all places, 50,000 in total. From 50 million. Perhaps not too many, but every customer we lose, that hurts. That's a pain point. We are solving this by investing even more and by building more fiber, especially in rural areas. Because we see that demand, especially in rural areas, is greater than in cities.
In buildings with multiple dwellings, we often have the problem that customers don't want us to drill in the walls. We developed a new technology. Adhesive cables. This fiber optic cable can simply be stuck along the floor or at the top of the wall. There's no more drilling through ceilings, no more drilling in the wall. Sticking is the new drilling. Second, B2B business. Competition in this area in Germany is extremely intense. I'll admit, we were arrogant, too arrogant. We rested on our laurels for too long, relying on old products and also old structures. That's changing. We're changing it. We don't just sell the best network, but also everything on top. We want to offer the full package as tech partner: storage space in our data centers, security for your data, security developed from the network itself, and applications for AI.
That's what we want to roll out for our business customers and also, at the same time, develop new potential to generate revenue. Third example. Only 24.2% of our managers globally are women. That's not enough. We can be better here, and we need to be better here. Actually, we do a great deal. We have a performance culture, irrespective of gender. Of course, we pay equal salaries for men and women. We offer career networks, especially for women. We have strong role models like Dominique Leroy, who heads our Europe business, or Birgit Bohle, our CHRO. Also our CEOs in Czechia and Croatia, Melinda Szabó and Nataša Rapaić, they're women. But we will only solve this problem, truly solve this problem, when we ourselves change. When I say we, I mean we men in management.
My dear shareholders, every day, we get a little bit better. We've been successful and more successful than any other tech telecom company for years now, and that's come to feel normal, but it's not. If you look behind the Magenta curtain, you'll see that things are getting more difficult for us, too. Costs are rising faster than our prices. Because of the intense competition, we can't just pass on costs, even though costs are rising from our suppliers. We have to permanently safeguard supply chains, where in the past, it was taken for granted that they were secure. For example, we had the crisis with memory chips worldwide, and we need to improve our productivity continuously.
That means reduce our costs, produce at lower costs, and we have to continually look to see where T as a brand can set itself apart and differentiate itself from the competition. We are the number one, and everybody is shooting for number one, and that means at us. Also, new technologies, Starlink and new satellite providers could become a threat to our industry if their plans are realized. So dependability is not a given. We have to redouble our efforts to defend this leadership, and it takes hard work. We are rolling up our shirt sleeves, and we'll continue to grow this year. This brings me to the forecast. This year, we expect earnings to be up 6% and to achieve EUR 47.4 billion.
With free cash flow, we're planning to grow 3% to EUR 19.8 billion in free cash flow this year. With earnings per share, we're also planning an increase in 10% to EUR 2.20. That's good news. That's good news for you, ladies and gentlemen, because you know 40%-60% of the result we want to pay out to you. There is good news from the German economy as well. With all the criticism, why don't they try to reproduce our results? Why are we successful? It's because of our corporate culture. We call it T-style. Our corporate culture describes the way we wanna be and the way we wanna work. T-style.
First of all, we want to resolutely cut back the red tape in our company. You know, we map society at Telekom, and all this red tape in Germany doesn't help anybody. You have to start at your own company and reduce red tape there. Often we are not in traffic, we are the traffic, and that's where we need to get better and improve things. Second, radical collaboration, developing ideas together in this factory here without mistrust across all areas, across all the countries, because together our company can't be beat, and the group is always stronger than the individual. Third, performance. If everyone in their area wants to be number one, that's what will make us a leading digital telco in the world. It may sound abstract to you, but that's day in, day out here, and it has a real impact.
At the start of this year, a blackout hit Berlin. The lights went out because of sabotage on the power grid, and that meant no mobile service either. 29 Deutsche Telekom sites were affected, but our network was back up and running faster than any of our competitors' networks. Why? Because our people were immediately there. They were immediately on site getting on with the job of fixing things. We gave unlimited data to all of the customers who were affected as a gift, so they could make the necessary arrangements. That's what I think T-style should be all about because it's not about the networks. It's not only about networks, it's not only about data centers and AI, it's about we as Telekom being dependable.
That's the proposition because dependability, ladies and gentlemen, that is earned when words align with actions. Dependability comes about when people take responsibility. Dependability comes about when we are there, when we are needed. Especially in a world where everything has become more uncertain, this dependability, this T, that makes all the difference. Our strong corporate culture has brought us far, but we're not satisfied there. We are more than the telco with the most valuable brand at present. We are a trusted technology partner. We have growth ideas. We digitalize the world with the best networks. For me and for everyone at this company, I am T – count on me. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you very much for your remarks, Mr. Höttges. Ladies and gentlemen, this is now a wonderful opportunity to thank the board of management and all employees of Deutsche Telekom for their excellent work in the past fiscal year. I'm doing this, I believe, also on behalf of you, the shareholders. You applauded Mr. Höttges, so I would like to thank you, Mr. Höttges, the board of management, and all the employees of the company. Ladies and gentlemen, I now give the floor to Dr. Illek to briefly explain the 2025 and 2026 share buyback programs. Mr. Illek?
Yes, thank you very much. Dear shareholders. In accordance with the requirements of Section 713, sentence one of the German Stock Corporation Act, I would like to briefly inform you about the share buyback programs.
In the year 2025, the share buyback program started on 5th of January 2025 and ended on 11th of December . As part of this share buyback program, a total of 65,412,156 own shares of the company were repurchased. It accounts for a proportionate amount of the share capital of EUR 167,455,119.36 , which is approximately 1.3% of the existing share capital. The average purchase price per share was EUR 30.58. The total amount of the share buybacks under the 2025 share buyback program amounted to EUR 1,999,999,212.
Most of the Deutsche Telekom shares acquired as part of the 2025 share buyback program will be redeemed, and this will take place at the end of the year, and it is intended to mitigate the dilutive effect. The money will be used to service executive compensation programs and employee share purchase plans. In November of this year, we announced that we would continue to conduct a share buyback program in 2026. The first program has a volume of up to EUR 2 billion. The first tranche began on the 5th of January until the 26th of March, and we acquired 15,598,603 shares. It accounts for a proportionate amount of the share capital, and it corresponds to 0.32% of the existing share capital.
The average purchase price per share in the first quarter was EUR 30.22. The total amount of the buybacks of the first tranche amounted to EUR 471,302,675.54. Most of the shares in the buyback program will be redeemed in the coming year, and we want to mitigate the dilution effect of the 2021 capital increase, but it's also in line with the capital allocation strategy communicated at the Capital Markets Day 2024. A small proportion of the acquired shares will be used for executives and employee profit-sharing programs. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Mr. Illek, for your explanations. Dear shareholders, this brings me to the Supervisory Board report, which we will find in our annual report starting on page 8.
I would like to give you a brief oral report. I already mentioned that the full report will be found in the annual report. The Supervisory Board continued to closely monitor the management of business by the Board of Management. Last year, we had 36 meetings, six plenary sessions, one off-site, and 29 committee meetings. The participation rate was 97%, and the only people missing were because of sickness. The cooperation with the Board was and is very good and based on trust. Due to the high frequency of meetings, we are in close contact with the Board of Management, and we have a regular exchange. The written and oral reports of the Board of Management served as an essential basis for the fulfillment of our statutory monitoring tasks. The Supervisory Board has regularly discussed the current situation of the company at its meetings.
The Board of Management has complied with its duty to provide information comprehensively and promptly. The content and scope of the reports met the specified requirements. Between the meetings, the Board also reported on individual questions in writing or in discussions. In addition, I exchanged ideas with the Board of Management and especially the Chairman of the Board of Management, Mr. Höttges. On the basis of its audits and the auditor's report, the Supervisory Board has come to the conclusion that there are no reasons to doubt the appropriateness and effectiveness of the internal control systems established by the Board of Management and the risk and opportunity management system. We discussed and examined in detail the transactions and measures that the Board of Management submitted to us for approval in the 2025 financial year, and we have approved the measures presented in each case.
The auditors audited the annual financial statements, 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 auditors explained the financial statements in detail to the Audit and Finance Committee, as well as to the full Supervisory Board. The Supervisory Board approved the annual financial statements and the consolidated financial statements after its own review at its meeting on February 25th. The annual financial statements are thus adopted. Let me briefly mention the main focus points of the work of the Supervisory Board, and it will not be a surprise because it's always our focus. Annual and consolidated financial statements, implementation of the Group's strategy, and the development of the segments, and this is what we mainly do in the Strategy, ESG, and Innovation Committee. Dividend policy and share buybacks.
The market and competitive situation, of course, has kept us busy last year because of many changes among our competitors. The financial and debt situation. ESG, environmental, social, and corporate governance issues. Of course, we took a look at this, and we saw, as Mr. Höttges mentioned this, how important carbon emissions are, or the reduction of carbon emissions are for the group. Budget and an annual financing plan for 2026 and midterm planning until 2029. Personnel matters, and I will go into the details in a moment. The adjustment of supervisory board remuneration. I will also discuss this in more detail in a moment, and we will also have a resolution on this topic today. Let me now talk about the situation of the company.
The year 2025 was again a strong and successful year for Deutsche Telekom, as Mr. Höttges explained, despite strategic and structural challenges in a volatile macroeconomic environment characterized by geopolitical tensions. Revenue, and I would like to repeat this, rose by 4.2% to EUR 119.1 billion. The adjusted EBITDA AL grows strongly by 4.7% to EUR 44.2 billion. The adjusted net income rose by 3.97% to EUR 9.7 billion. Mr. Höttges already explained all these figures in detail. Yesterday, we also said goodbye to two supervisory board members who came to the supervisory board in 2012 and 2013, Mrs. Kollmann and Mr. Streibich. We compared the figures between 2012 when you joined and today, and the figures at least doubled, the share price even quadrupled in this time, and this goes to show the big progress that the company has made.
The group is on a growth trajectory and is the industry leader. The business developed well in all areas. With its strategy to be the leading digital telecommunications company, Deutsche Telekom is well prepared for the opportunities and challenges of the future. The company has thus laid a very good foundation for further success. The good business result confirms the excellent work of the Board of Management, and I would like to thank Mr. Höttges and his team, but of course, also all the employees for their success. On the basis of the results achieved in 2025, the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board are proposing a dividend of EUR 1 per share in line with the dividend policy. Now it is important to consistently pursue Deutsche Telekom's strategy, which Mr. Höttges has clearly explained.
I am confident that the board of management and the employees will continue to demonstrate the strength of Deutsche Telekom. Ladies and gentlemen, I now come to the personnel matters in the board of management and the supervisory board. As already reported in the last annual general meeting, the supervisory board made a number of personnel decisions in January 2025. Mr. Höttges was reappointed until the end of 2028, and we are very happy about this. Mr. Gopalan's board mandate has ended. He used to be the Chief Operating Officer at T-Mobile U.S. and is now the CEO of T-Mobile U.S. since November 1st. We are very happy that he is leading this business.
As Mr. Gopalan's successor, Mr. Diehl became a board member of the Board of Management for the German segment, and he's here for the second time because we already did this in the beginning of last year. Yes, this is worth an applause. This is not in my script, but we are extremely happy with what Mr. Diehl has done for Deutsche Telekom in the past month, although it was a very challenging year. In May of last year, we agreed to the resignation of Mrs. Nemat from the board of management at the end of September. Mrs. Nemat had previously stated that she did not want to renew her contract after 14 years on the board. She used to be a member of the board of management responsible for technology and innovation. I would like to thank her very much for the outstanding work over 14 years.
I wish her great success. She has really shaped the company for a very long time, and I would like to thank her very much indeed. As a successor to Mrs. Nemat, we appointed Dr. Mudesir as of 1st October 2025. You probably ask where is he? He is not here today because last week he said that he wanted to terminate the mandate with immediate effect, and this is why he is not here today. Dr. Mudesir is leaving the company to take on new professional role abroad. I would like to thank Dr. Mudesir for his commitment in the past 8 years and wish him all the best for his future career. Until a successor is found for him, Dr. Illek has taken over the duties of Dr. Mudesir on an interim basis, in addition to his usual function.
I think that as a natural scientist, Mr. Illek also has a very good background in order to successfully lead this segment. We thus also have continuity in the key area for the group, and Deutsche Telekom's strategic orientation remains unchanged. The implementation of the priorities in the management board area of product and technology will continue seamlessly. This brings me to the Supervisory Board. There were no personnel changes among employee representatives in the last fiscal year. Among the shareholder representatives, there were the following changes: Mrs. Empey, Mrs. Knight, and Mr. Ramsauer were elected to the Supervisory Board by the last AGM.
At the end of this AGM, Mrs. Kollmann and Mr. Streibich will leave the Supervisory Board. At this point, I would like to say very clearly that we are very grateful to Mrs. Kollmann and Mr. Streibich for their excellent work over the past years. Mrs. Kollmann has chaired the Audit and Finance Committee for a long time, and I also took part in the meetings. She did a wonderful job with great clarity, and she also supported the CFO. I would like to thank Mrs. Kollmann very much for the work she has done.
Mr. Streibich, based on his experience in the IT industry of Software AG, has helped us make the company what it is today, and also the strategy was influenced by him. He helped us quite a lot, and you see that we've gotten two new candidates today coming from the area IT technology, AI, and we found good replacements for Mr. Streibich. Nevertheless, I would like to thank you for the excellent work you have done for the company.
Thank you very much for the successful work in the past. Of course, I also would like to thank all the other Supervisory Board members for the excellent work. It was always great to work with you. At the end of today's Annual General Meeting, the terms of office of Mr. Wintels and myself will end, and this is why we will propose to the Annual General Meeting that both Mr. Wintels and I will be reelected. We both love these activities, and we would be very grateful if you showed your trust in our work. Furthermore, Dr. Dohmke and Dr. Herzig are proposed for election to the Supervisory Board. Dr. Dohmke is an experienced technology CEO and entrepreneur in the field of software development. He used to chair GitHub, leading global developer platform owned by Microsoft, and has extensive leadership experience in a global digital company.
He has in-depth know-how in software development and product strategy. As an engineer with a doctorate in mechanical engineering and in computer engineering, he combines technological excellence with practical industry experience. He has broad international experience from Europe and USA, and he will introduce himself.
Thank you very much and good morning. I'm pleased to be here with you in Bonn today and to present myself. I don't come from Bonn. I grew up in Berlin-Marzahn, and while I was still in school, I worked for Telekom for 3 weeks in order to equip the installers with what they needed for the work. I studied at the Technical University of Berlin, and I had the first flat with ISDN, and this was really very good for me because I could use the technology. I went to Mercedes-Benz and DaimlerChrysler in Stuttgart-Sindelfingen.
I moved from Berlin to Stuttgart. I met my wife, and in 2007, I really loved the iPhone. I bought an iPhone in Stuttgart. After my activities in Mercedes and Bosch, I started my own business for mobile applications and developer platforms. In 2014, Microsoft from Redmond in the United States bought my company, the second German company that was ever bought by Microsoft. With my wife and my two children, babies at the time, I moved from Stuttgart to Seattle, where I still live today. Over the past 10 years, I continued the career at Microsoft, and now I became CEO of GitHub. You can imagine that this is like the DIY store for software developers. You can buy great equipment there, great material. This is what you get from GitHub, open source software.
You also find a lot of other nerds that you can talk to, and this is exactly what is important for GitHub, not only the software, but the worldwide collaboration. Last summer, I decided to leave Microsoft and GitHub after more than 10 years in order to have my own business again, and I'm now building up an entire startup to develop more software. When I look back to the past 30 years, starting with the Commodore 64, which I started with, to today, where we have the strongest computer always on us with the smartphone, then I still remember the time before the technology. I know a world without the Internet, and now suddenly we can solve all the problems. I remember the time without a smartphone at the university where we could really work concentratedly with the professors.
I remember a time before the cloud and after the cloud, and Mr. Höttges already reported about artificial intelligence a lot. At Microsoft, I was involved in the development of Copilot together with my colleagues, and now AI is really a firm part of our world. I really look forward, and I hope that I can support the Supervisory Board with my perspective from the United States right next to the Microsoft headquarters in Bellevue in Washington. I look forward to supporting the Supervisory Board with energy, with power, with passion, and also with my perspective as a software developer. Now I would like to thank you very much for your attention, and I hope that you will elect me to become a member of the Supervisory Board.
Mr. Dohmke, we are very much looking forward to the cooperation. I'm firmly convinced that the AGM will agree to your election, and we would be very happy about it. You just presented yourself, and you showed very clearly why we in the Supervisory Board would be very happy to have you as a member. You will give us a lot of expertise, but you'll also rejuvenate the board. This is also true for the second candidate, Dr. Herzig, who is the member of the extended board of SAP. As a Chief AI Officer, he implemented the SAP strategy, and it's also part of our AI factory. He has strong qualifications in AI and cloud transformation. With his degrees in business informatics and computer science, he combines technological depth and business understanding. He will now introduce himself via video message.
Dear shareholders. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to present myself today as a candidate for being a member of the supervisory board. My name is Philipp Herzig, and I would like to tell you what is especially important for me. What can technology do today, and in the future, how can we gain a lot of good for everybody in the industry and the society? Technology will ensure our wealth and our progress. At SAP, I was allowed to have a responsibility for technology, and this has opened my view on technology and helped me how we can tackle our challenges in more depth. As the Chief Technology Officer, I'm now responsible for the entire AI strategy of SAP, and I also try to bring various perspectives together.
As a member of the DFKI, as a member of the Research Center for AI, and as a member of the working group for leading systems. I live in Potsdam, close to Berlin, and I love to travel with my wife and my three children. I also love music. Acoustics and my electric guitar is not only a hobby, but shows how purposes, creativity, and technology can best be combined. Because at the end of the day, it's always important to use technology as human beings. I would like to bring technology and human beings together in the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom. Telekom is the backbone of our economy and is playing a key part in Germany and Europe and beyond. This is a huge opportunity to use data-driven sovereignty in order to create long-term value for Deutsche Telekom, the employees and owners.
It would be a great honor and responsibility to support Deutsche Telekom in the Supervisory Board on its path, its successful path in the future. I would be extremely happy if you entrusted me with this job, and I wish you a good AGM.
Well, now, what I said regarding Mr. Dohmke is also true for Dr. Herzig. We are very happy to propose him today. He is even younger than Mr. Dohmke, and this will definitely help us on our path. He brings exactly the qualifications that we lost with Mr. Streibich and Mr. Hinrichs last year. Only he is younger, and this will definitely also help us a lot. I would be extremely pleased if the four proposals could find your approval today. At this point, I can also tell you that we already won two women last year, so this year we were free. We did not have to meet any women's quotas, and we looked around in order to find highly qualified people with a lot of experience in the United States, as Mr. Dohmke is showing. The CVs of the candidates can be found in the invitation.
Now, I can only tell you that the supervisory board thinks that the candidates are excellent and they also, of course, are in line with the competency and qualification profiles. This brings me to corporate governance. As you can see from the annual report, Deutsche Telekom complied with the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code in 2025, with the exception of one deviation last year. This was about the early reappointment of Mr. Höttges, for which we felt that there were special circumstances. In fiscal year 2026, Deutsche Telekom will fully comply with the code's recommendations. Finally, I would like to briefly talk about the Supervisory Board compensation. Under Agenda Item 9, we propose that the remuneration of the supervisory board be adjusted.
We reviewed the appropriateness and customary nature of the current remuneration, and the audit has shown that the current structure of the compensation is customary and sensible. The structure will therefore remain unchanged. A comparison with other DAX companies, however, has shown that Deutsche Telekom supervisory board compensation is too low in relation to its size and importance. Against this background, the supervisory board considers an increase necessary. The individual proposed adjustments can be found in the invitation under agenda item 9. For example, the basic remuneration is to increase from EUR 100,000- EUR 115,000. Ladies and gentlemen, let me summarize. The financial year 2025 was successful. The supervisory board closely monitors the work of the board of management on the basis of a legally compliant and effective corporate governance.
Deutsche Telekom is strategically well-aligned, operationally clearly on course for growth and in a good financial position due to a solid balance sheet and a strong free cash flow. The Board of Management has laid good foundation for mastering future challenges. Dear shareholders, thank you very much for your attention and the Supervisory Board report.
I will now call the agenda items 2 through 11. Please refer to the invitation to the annual general meeting published in the Federal Gazette for the wording of these agenda items and the corresponding proposed resolution from the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board. With regard to agenda item 2, I would like to add the following. As part of share matching plans, treasury shares, that is, shares of the company, were transferred to plan participants during the current financial year. In addition, the company repurchased treasury shares, as you've heard before. As a result, the total number of shares entitled to dividends has decreased compared to the figures stated in the invitation. The Management Board and Supervisory Board have therefore adjusted their proposed resolution for agenda item 2, as announced in the invitation to the AGM for this scenario.
Management board and supervisory board accordingly propose the following resolution. The net income of EUR 27,950,505,361 generated in the 2025 financial year shall be appropriated as follows. Distribution of a dividend of EUR 1 per dividend bearing share, totaling EUR 4,822,437,582, and carryover of the remaining amount to new account amounting to EUR 23,128,067,779.03. The proposed resolution on the appropriation of profits as amended is available for review on the company's website and at the information desk. I will now announce the current attendance numbers of shareholders present.
Attendance at the AGM of Deutsche Telekom, 3,432,520,800 shares, which corresponds to EUR 8,787,247,000. That's 12 billion share capital. Also, mail-in votes of 29,859,000 shares were received. 3,452,377,805 individual shares are present or represented by a mail-in vote, which corresponds to 70.38% of the share capital. This brings me to the general debate. I have a few organizational remarks. As the chair of the meeting, I am guided by the German Corporate Governance Code, which stipulates that an AGM should conclude after no more than 4-6 hours. With this in mind, I will ensure that today's annual general meeting proceeds efficiently.
To ensure that we serve the interests of all shareholders present, and in light of the requests for the floor, which are already over 20, I am limiting speaking and question time from the outset to 10 minutes per speaker. Please, stick to this time allotment. Experience here and at other AGMs has shown that 10 minutes should be sufficient to adequately address even complex issues. You will be informed about the progress of your speaking and question time via the display attached to the lectern. If the progress of the meeting makes it necessary, I will further limit the speaking and question time. The management board will answer questions after a small number of speakers have asked their questions. I will personally answer questions that are directed to the supervisory board.
The management board has stated that to the extent it does not disagree with my answers, it will endorse them. Questions having identical content and those on closely related topics from different shareholders will be answered only once in a summary form in the interest of all shareholders and to maintain the focus of the meeting. I would like to ask shareholders who have a personal concern as customers of this company not to raise this during the general discussion, but to contact customer service representatives instead. Please visit the customer service desk in the lobby on the entrance level. In the interest of all shareholders, we will not answer questions that are not relevant to the agenda during the general discussion.
This brings me to the first block of questions. Ingo Speich is first, Hendrik Schmidt, and Mr. Kunze. Mr. Speich, the floor is yours.
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ingo Speich. I represent Deka Investment, one of the big funds in Germany and subsidiary of DekaBank. It's great to be here at the lectern in Bonn. Just looking around here, it's not just myself who is pleased about this physical meeting, but also the many shareholders who have come to this meeting. Only in this way can we have a real dialogue, which is indispensable for shareholder culture in Germany. The past 12 months for us shareholders have been nerve-wracking. The fluctuations of the share price were immense. If you look at the share price development, we're slightly below the level of last year's AGM, including the dividend. The STOXX 600 index in this time actually is 20% higher than German Telekom's share price.
A s a long-term investor, after the strong increase of the previous years, we can live with this. Telekom has proven that it has a growth DNA. Mr. Höttges, you made this impressively clear today. Our core question is. Where is the high growth supposed to come from in the next few years? For the future viability of German Telekom, we see four key issues. First, expansion and competitiveness of T-Mobile in the United States. Secondly, the future of your German business.
Third, sustainability. And fourth, succession planning and the future Supervisory Board and Management Board. On T-Mobile U.S., the systematic positioning and growth in the U.S. fulfill our growth ideas. T-Mobile has grown from an underdog to one of the most modern and most successful mobile networks, is a major success. More than 2/3 of Deutsche Telekom's cash flow come from the U.S.
Dependency is enormous, and there are some clouds gathering on the U.S. market. There is more uncertainty, and this high level of dependency are an explosive mix. Now, T-Mobile is basically top dog in the U.S. market, but more investments have to be made into fiber and the mobile network and also fixed wireless. There have been some important incentives from this part of the business, but there can be limits to the growth in the next 5 years if there are new players like Starlink, for example. Other tech companies will have a growing interest in resources and satellite-based communication. What specific spectrum strategy are you pursuing in order to safeguard your leadership position, especially against the backdrop of new competitors, also satellite competitors?
How can you make sure that profitable growth will continue, not just in the case of T-Mobile U.S.? Let's look at Germany. Deutsche Telekom has established a very strong brand which is associated in many customers' minds with reliability and dependence. And many customers are willing to pay a premium price for this. However, the environment is more complicated and DSL rates, for example, are very much affected by this. Can you show how the Net Promoter Score has developed in Germany over the past few years, and what targets you have set yourself in the context of recent price increases? When have you reached the end of this strategy? In terms of fiber build-out, we see German Telekom as a real pioneer in Germany.
For us investors, what's most important to us is not to have fiber installed, but really connected to the home. Also upselling into higher rates is an important growth driver, but also a foundation for better efficiency. Here we support your target to abandon the old copper cables. What's your roadmap for the shutting off of copper in Germany in terms of timeline, also in terms of regulatory requirements? What will be the cost effects for the new fiber networks? Another hotly debated issue at the capital market is capital allocation of Deutsche Telekom, especially the ratio of investment and share buybacks. In the past, you did an impressive striking balancing act, massive investment into networks and on the other hand, reliable payouts and your share buyback program.
Against the backdrop of high investment in 5G, fiber, and IT platforms, for long-term investors like ourselves, the question is, how do you prioritize your means? Growth investment, continued dividends, and further share buybacks, how are you going to balance this, and what are your KPIs for this? Also, the leverage ratio is relevant against the backdrop of your high investment. Now, will your growth remain robust? What happens if T-Mobile gets into stormy waters? Then you will face the question of whether to do without the cash flow generated in the U.S. or to reduce your equity investment. Now, Deutsche Telekom is a leading international telco and also highlights digitalization and use of AI. You've pointed out many use cases of AI, both in internal and external processes.
For Deutsche Telekom, these technology examples have to make a clear contribution also to the bottom line. What is the specific contribution that all of this can make to your bottom line and to further efficiency, and how do you measure these contributions internally? Ladies and gentlemen, let's move on to sustainability. You're all following developments in the U.S., I'm sure. Withdrawal from international climate agreements and an abandonment of climate protection policies. Now, we are wondering today how the these changes initiated by the U.S. government impacts Deutsche Telekom, especially in terms of climate and diversity. Have you made any adjustments in the past 12 months regarding this? If yes, which? Are you still committed to your diversity policy? We welcome the voluntary reporting in the past financial year according to the new standards.
Now, are you going to put diversity and climate on the agenda of next year's AGM then? This would highlight your climate strategy. You would send a strong message to the public and also to us as investors and other stakeholders. Ladies and gentlemen, let's move on to management succession and governance. Good governance means to have a timely succession planning, to have it transparent and international. Mr. Diehl, the new head of German business, this is a first beginning, but succession in other positions remains a key issue. Mr. Höttges, you have left an imprint on Telekom, very successful l imprint, and have shaped the company. You have to do some careful planning to find a successor for you. This will be an important part of your responsibilities, also of the supervisory board.
My question to the Supervisory Board is, how detailed is your succession planning for a successor to Mr. Höttges and other leadership positions? How can you make sure that Telekom's successful path will be continued in the future? Finally, on our voting behavior, as in the past year, we will vote against ratification of the actions of the Management Board. Also, we didn't consider the audit committee to be independent against the backdrop of the very complex balance sheet structure. The audit committee plays a special role, so we are not going to ratify the actions of the Supervisory Board. We welcome the new candidates to the Supervisory Board because this will strengthen our, or your U.S. expertise, meeting some of our conditions. Also, you're rejuvenating the Supervisory Board.
We agree with you, Dr. Appel, when you said that to reappoint you to the chair of the Supervisory Board. You have two other mandates. Mr. Wintels also has one mandate too many. With regard to other agenda items, we agree with the proposed resolutions of the Management Board. We from Deka Investment wish all of you at Deutsche Telekom the best of success in your decisions and hope to see you again next year here in Bonn.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speich, for your comments and your questions. Hendrik Schmidt from DWS Investments is next. Mr. Speich, I forgot to mention that we've known each other for a long time. Mr. Schmidt now from DWS.
Dr. Appel, you just introduced me. Mr. Höttges, other members of the board, dear shareholders. In your comments, you made clear that we had another record year, or you had another record year, organic growth, you continued that and also for 2026, the company expects further growth.
Now, here, Deutsche Telekom from the perspective of portfolio management is a cash flow compounder, a company that boosts its earnings by reinvesting these earnings into its own business. This is exactly what you have visualized through this beer mat and the flywheel. I submitted my questions beforehand, but I'd like to read them out anyway. I hope I can stay within my time allotment. Brand value is remarkable. For the fourth time, Deutsche Telekom is the most valuable German brand, has defended this position. Congratulations on this. Of course, you've raised the bar very high.
The dividend of EUR 1 per share is another record. Along with the share buyback program, this is a clear message really for the long-term profitability of the company. All of this is only possible due to your commitment in the supervisory board and the management board, but also, of course, to the commitment of the 200,000 employees. Many of you have thanked your employees already, but let me repeat this again and let me emphasize this and please pass on this to the employees. Now, in terms of strategy, I think you should keep pursuing cybersecurity and governance, but also cash flow generation and capital allocation, and also the monetization of your fiber build-out in Germany, including your price-setting power.
My first questions are related to this. How are you planning to use the surplus cash flow, and what are your priorities here? Like, compared to competitors in the industry, your capital spend is relatively high. There's high investment requirement. What are your priorities for your investment plans? Do you think that the ratio that you have right now will be continued? Monetization of the fiber build-out, we're interested in the drivers of service growth. What parameters determine your strategy for 2026? How do you evaluate price elasticity of consumers, and how can you accelerate the NDU access and also improve services for users? You showed us the adhesive fiber or adhesive cables. What other ideas do you have?
What are the three biggest bottlenecks in terms of NDU penetration? Cybersecurity governance, hacker attacks have been the issue at several other AGMs. The E.U. has imposed strict regulations on companies in terms of cybersecurity and is now really committed to this security. Now, in the case of Deutsche Telekom, who bears overall responsibility for cybersecurity? How do you measure this performance, and how do you escalate this to the supervisory board? How do you prepare for the NIS2 update of this regulation in terms of your internal processes?
And my second question is the Digital Networks Act that you already mentioned and its impact on your scaling strategy. Which elements are most relevant for Deutsche Telekom? Single passport authorization or the reduced administrative effort? What time horizon are you planning with? And will DNA extend or have an impact on your consolidation in Europe?
The Gigabit Infrastructure Act, third, which has been in force since October last year, simplified enabled simplified procedures. What measurable effects do you expect for the fiber build-out in Germany? What are your targets, and where do you see, despite immediate practicability, where do you see friction? Mr. Höttges, you spent some time on this in your talk. Now, there are some antitrust proceedings that are going on, a total of seven, which I mentioned in the management report. Six of these proceedings you already re-reported on. The cable channel facilities, I would like to get an update from you on that.
What is new is an action, a class action suit, against Deutsche Telekom in the U.S. and T-Mobile U.S . And member of the supervisory board of T-Mobile in the U.S. and which is linked to the share buyback program and the remuneration program of the company of T-Mobile. Can you give us an update on the current proceedings and the dispute's value and how you're going to share the cost between Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile, and the board of directors of T-Mobile in the U.S.? How long do you think these proceedings will take place?
Let's talk about corporate governance. Dr. Appel, you've established a dialogue for that. One thing was already mentioned, and you addressed it yourself. As per yesterday, a gap emerged on the board of management because Dr. Mudesir left the board, who had only taken on responsibility for products and technology in October. From our point of view, this is one of the central posts on the board of management of Deutsche Telekom. Dr. Illek, thank you very much for taking over responsibility for this important field on an interim basis, but this is of central importance and certainly therefore, not a long-term solution. My question to the board is, the general committee that is responsible for appointing the members to the board, wouldn't it have been possible for the general committee, you know, to foresee what would happen?
Did the general committee fail to assess Dr. Mudesir's commitment to the company in the right way? I mean, what is the company that Dr. Mudesir is working for now? Is it possibly a competitor of Deutsche Telekom? So has the supervisory board, the general committee looked into that? And why is it that the CFO is now responsible for Dr. Mudesir's previous field of responsibility on an interim basis? I'm going to skip a couple of things for reasons of time. I would just like to reiterate what Mr. Speich said with regards to the independence of the audit committee. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Mrs. Kollmann and Mr. Streibich for the many years of work for the audit committee, even though we sometimes disagreed on things.
We would like to know, you know, who will be the new members on the Audit Committee from now on. Yeah, Mr. Wintels, we voted for you in 2020, but we'll no longer be able to do it because of the current setup of mandates. Mr. Dohmke's re-election is something we approve. Thank you for the personal introduction. It would be nice if Mr. Herzig had done the same. Now that we gather here, that would've been a good opportunity. Dr. Appel, we will also vote for your re-election. I would like to state, though, that, you know, the Supervisory Board is losing a female member, and it doesn't look as if that post will be refilled with another woman. I would also like to know more about the absence of some of the members.
Mr. Empey, Mr. Ploss, Mr. Windfuhr, Mr. Schöttke, Mrs. Sedlmayr, and Mrs. Marx. They weren't able to attend some of the meetings. We would like to know what meetings did they not attend, what were the resolutions taken there, and what were the reasons these gentlemen weren't able to attend. You know, what we need is a varied reporting, and I have three final questions. First of all, on the subject of capital increase, are there any specific plans regarding, you know, the appropriation of this capital? What are the plans of the Management Board? Is Deutsche Telekom planning to acquire a company or a stake in a company or various companies that would justify this capital increase?
That doesn't seem to be the case from our point of view, but we will abstain in this vote, as we did previously. On the remuneration of the Board of Management. You explained how the benchmarking works. In terms of the amounts involved, it is more or less acceptable. We believe that maybe it would have been good to introduce a rule that would have more or less forced shareholder representatives to acquire shares. Has this been discussed? If so, what is the result? That brings me to the end of my talk. We are going to approve all items on the agenda, with the exception of the election of Mr. Wintels and the granting discharge to the Supervisory Board.
I would like to thank you for listening, ladies and gentlemen, and I would like to wish the board of management and the supervisory board every success for their future work. Thank you.
Thank you very much. That brings us to Henrik Pontzen from Union Investment, after which time we will answer the first questions. Then followed by Frederik Beckendorf.
Ladies and gentlemen. My name is Henrik Pontzen. In Union Investment's portfolio management, I'm responsible for sustainability and active shareholders. We represent Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken, one of the big Telekom shareholders, and we represent the interests of our 6 million investors. First of all, let me say that it feels good to be in Bonn here today. This, the face-to-face AGMs of Deutsche Telekom are a very positive signal for the shareholder democracy in Germany.
In fact, this is an anniversary, because it is the 30th year of the T share. Telekom has come a long way from a previous state enterprise to a global champion. Last year, we already celebrated a sensational outperformance with Telekom. You know, it was developing much better than the DAX and the stock market overall. Over the past 12 months, you know, we have gone through a rough patch as Telekom shareholders. I must say that we're kind of spoiled. While the telecoms sector grew by 20%, the T share came out at a negative return. The reasons for this trend are quite clear from our point of view. First of all, a massive insecurity in the U.S. because of a new competitive dynamics in the context of Verizon.
Secondly, a major price battle which goes at the expense of margins, not just in the U.S., but also in the German mobile communications business. Thirdly, not enough new customers in the broadband business. Mr. Höttges, you are the conductor based in Bonn, but most of the music is actually played in the U.S. T-Mobile U.S. accounts for more than 50% of Deutsche Telekom's earnings, which makes it the central growth engine. You kept your cool in a tough market environment. You're under pressure, and even though this pressure might have been the reason for, you know, the negative impact on our share price, I still appreciate how you handled this pressure. Thank you. Long-term success, however, requires not just to keep your cool, but also to be long-sighted.
Competitors in the U.S. Bank on convergence of fixed and mobile networks. The question is, what is the reach of your optical fiber footprint in the U.S.? Is it enough to keep up with AT&T and Verizon in the long run? Don't you think you have to be much bolder in order to safeguard your position as a quality leader? In this context, we can see that there's a new dynamic, broadband access through satellites. That's why we would like to ask, what growth are you hoping to achieve as a result of your cooperation with the Starlink T-Satellite in the U.S.? What other possibilities you see to expand this cooperation beyond filling white spots?
Now, the fiber rollout is supposed to be completed by 2030 in Germany, by which time copper lines become history, which means the processes become more efficient and waiting times are cut short. Our question is, if you want to achieve this network rollout goal, what will this mean operationally speaking? Is this going to be a highly efficient new cash flow machine? If you want to retain your customers, you need to remain quality leader, and we share your pain, Mr. Höttges, about every and any customer you're losing. That's why it's important to focus on that. Now, as we are competing for customers, reliability plays a major role. Do you think that the current media content strategy will suffice to reduce customer churn even further? Or do you think that you should maybe invest more in content?
We generally support companies that are reliable in how they are pursuing goals and know how to handle transformation. Deutsche Telekom can do that, and Deutsche Telekom plays a key role for the digital sovereignty of Europe. In this context, we are interested in three things. First of all, the protection of critical infrastructure. By setting up European data centers, Deutsche Telekom pursues the important goal of achieving digital sovereignty in Europe. This makes the company also more vulnerable to cyberattacks. Mr. Höttges, how are you further developing your cybersecurity strategy? How are you using AI to meet the increasing threats in the cyberspace? What specific measures are you taking to protect your infrastructure against any such attacks? I heard that customers affected by such attacks were given unlimited data immediately. I have a lot of respect for that. I really liked it.
The question is, how can we, you know, prevent that sort of thing from happening in the first place? Secondly, as for your data centers and the carbon footprint, now, you said that, compared to 2017, you've improved your carbon footprint by 94% and 97% respectively. That wasn't easy, but you achieved it anyway. Congratulations. Number two in our DAX climate study. That's where you came in, and that's a great result. AI eats up a lot of resources. How do you make sure that all the energy needed by your data centers can actually be found? And how can this be brought in line with your climate goals? And getting back to the Eisbach in Munich, are you making any investments in water management? Because it's not just electricity. Cooling also represents a challenge here. Thirdly, social matters.
In the U.S., we see that diversity goals are becoming less important, which is extremely worrying. At the same time, you know, you have a limited number of women managers. We've talked about this before, and you once said that, you know, us men need to change things in particular to change the situation overall, also for women. My question to you is, what have you changed? We accept and we understand that you had to take measures to minimize legal risks, but we don't really understand the background to your decision. Did the U.S. administration put you under pressure to reduce your environmental goals in order to, you know, for other concessions? If so, how did you handle it? Did you even go beyond it? How do you look at initiatives to attract new staff in the face of demographic change?
We believe it's good to manage risks with a view to the future, but at the same time, we should not exert too much pressure. You should not, you know, let up when you are facing headwind for the first time. We need to stick to our guns, so to speak, you know, show the right attitude even when under pressure. Now, let's return to the agenda. We grant this charge to the board of management and the supervisory board, and with two exceptions, we will approve all items as proposed by the management. Seven B and eight are the items that we do not support.
That is the election of Mr. Mr. Wintels, because he holds too many mandates and we will vote against the creation of the approved capital in the proposed amount because we believe that this amount is too high. Mr. Höttges, you have paved the way for the company in a good way in a difficult environment. Now, it was a difficult year, but you did a good job, and that's why I'm not being too critical in my speech here today.
Now we need to harvest. We believe that the best times are still ahead for Deutsche Telekom if the fiber rollout in Germany becomes a success and T-Mobile U.S. remains the growth engine it currently is. Make sure that you make the most of it. Finally, we would like to thank all staff for their commitment, and we wish you the best of luck. Now, you can count on me.
This is something that we really need to put into practice, and it actually already feels as if this is the case. I would like to thank you all for listening and I wish us all an interesting and insightful AGM. Thank you.
Now that brings us to the first round of answers. We used to have five speakers in a row, but this time we're gonna do it differently, which is why Mr. Höttges, Mr. Illek and myself will now answer a couple of questions directly rather than wait for the back office to answer all the questions. Frederik Beckendorf will be the speaker afterwards. Then there'll be two more speakers after this round of answers. Alexandra Muhr and Mr. Abramovich. I need to take a look at my notes here. Just let me start with a question raised by Mr. Speich.
You asked me the following question: Dr. Frank Appel, our question to the Supervisory Board is, what does your specific succession planning look like for the Board of Management? How do you make sure that Deutsche Telekom's specific culture will be maintained for the next management generation? Well, first of all, the Supervisory Board's most important task is to, you know, select the right staff and members. That holds true for my role in particular, which is why we are investing a lot of time in that. We define the relevant criteria that, you know, describe the skills that the relevant management members need to bring. Then we discuss things with Mr. Timotheus Höttges, and we draw up a shortlist of names. Then I hold talks with some of these people myself.
I regularly, you know, arrange meetings with the managers from the second management level, even if they are not candidates, and this is the basis for our decision. Number four, we regularly, you know, examine the external market to see if there are any possible candidates for vacant positions. In our succession planning, we look at in-house candidates and possible external candidates that we would only address of course, you know, if it becomes more tangible. That's the process. With Mr. Hassan, Mr. Diehl, and Mr. Mudesir, you know, are three examples of in-house candidates. All three candidates have also held talks with me before.
That's what the process looks like and will continue along these lines. Of course, Mr. Höttges is facing a particular challenge here, but you might want to trust that the supervisory board has enough experience to handle this. I'm very confident, and I think that's all we can say about any such staff matters in public. That was Mr. Speich's question to me. Can I ask Mr. Höttges to answer another question from Mr. Speich? I'm also slightly digital, so I can maybe assist a little bit here.
Yeah. Everything's new and digital here and really going AI. You asked about future growth. First of all, the core business of telecom in the future will remain fiber optic and mobile. In Germany, we're expecting growing revenue both in mobile and fixed network, and we're continuing to build out the fixed network to cover 99% of the population, and we're building 5 million connections a year fiber. Of course, that's a growth engine for the company as well. Also it provides long-term revenue. We're talking about a cycle of 20+ years this infrastructure will be used. Organic growth of the group, we want, on the basis of our infrastructure, to generate 4% growth globally with adjusted EBIT, 4% growth. The target for free cash flow up to 2027 is EUR 21 billion.
We wanna expand it to that level. The core business is clear, but above and beyond this, we noted that we see additional growth opportunities through investment in technology. We have cloud and of course, the digital business, especially B2B, where we see certain value growth possibilities. Let's take the cloud and digital solutions first of all. There we're developing in the company, but for other companies and also in T-Systems for our B2B customers, the public cloud solutions and digital solutions for so-called classifieds. These are companies that want, need very highly secure data protection, but also the public health insurance schemes and the public and the government authorities. Also, we're offering data centers and see a lot of additional growth potential there. In the U.S., we have a takeover strategy where we're looking for fiber optic companies.
We've already taken over a couple of them, Metronet and Lumos. We'll continue to take over others if we see an opportunity not only to grow organically in the U.S., we'll also grow through takeovers. We've bought U.S. Cellular and have integrated it. That offers new growth potential in that segment as well, in a market segment where we weren't before. Other companies are Bliss and Vista. They do digital media business there, and the advertising market is digitizing in the U.S. as well. The networking of these digital assets in America will be supported by us as well.
In America, a very clear goal is to build out the fiber optic joint venture to provide substitute products in 5G network. We're going to seek conversion there. Also another takeover for EUR 2 million, DT Capital Partners provide capital technology and we wanna invest in that. This helps us to expand capacities and acquire the know-how that's lacking in the company by buying external partners or cooperating with them. This helps us become more productive, but also to offer customers new business like cybersecurity products or networked devices, IoT devices, including drones. Drones is another topic that's interesting for us. We want to increasingly become a digital enabler, a digital partner in the B2B sector and especially in the B2B sector of T-Systems, but also for Germany and Europe.
We see growth potential there as well, and that accounts for the 4% figure I've mentioned. You asked about the spectrum strategy in the U.S. and the question was how can we grow profitably in the U.S. and really secure this? We have a 600 MHz spectrum in the U.S. That's quite a bit. We have additional spectrum in the middle frequencies, including the frequencies awarded in 2024. There we're building out the network in a targeted way. For the non-experts there, the communication spectrum is what we base our mobile architecture on, and you need properties to do that. The more properties you have, the more you can build. So we're building a lot of spectrum there wherever we want to offer mobile communication so that we can offer this to customers there.
On top of this, in the U.S. we have additional spectrum in so-called low band area in the U.S., which we've acquired. The future investment and expansion of spectrum depends, of course, on what spectrum will be up for sale. In 2027, there will be a major acquisition coming up, C-band it's called, and we're working on the 2.7 GHz band when it's offered in the U.S. We'll take part in both of the auctions in 2027 and 2028 to expand our market position there. For us, the leading spectrum position is one of the strategic features that differentiate us from the competition, especially in the U.S. Also, a question about the satellite competition, how we're dealing with that and tech competition. Satellite solutions are an addition to our mobile and fixed network offering.
In the U.S., we've already, in 2024, entered into a partnership with Starlink. Given this, on this basis in the U.S., we have a certain service. 30% of the territory in the U.S. isn't covered at all by mobile communications. These devices, mobile end devices, have a direct-to-cell integration feature with the aid of satellites. We entered into this partnership, and we expanded it this year to Europe. Starlink will also we'll be offering it in Europe as well. In the next generation, it'll probably be 2028. Satellite features will be integrated in mobile devices. Our strategy for the satellite operators is to send a signal from the S-band and Q-band of satellites.
If somebody doesn't have any spectrum, we can think about either leasing them spectrum because we'll then they'll be able to have spectrum that they can use with Starlink. We did that in the U.S., the first generation, but now Starlink has its own spectrum, so that probably won't be necessary in the U.S. going forward. I would end my answer to that question here, and Christian can take over.
Yeah. Mr. Speich asked about the capital allocation for stock buybacks and continuity and what's happening in the interest environment. Let me start with the capital allocation and talk about the structure we use in the capital market. In the medium-term planning, we've assumed a growth of 4%-6%, and the forecast for this year is at the upper end for this year, 6%.
We have a very clearly communicated shareholders remuneration of 2.5 and net debt of 2.5. At the end of the year, we're at 2.62. In the hierarchy, we said the most important thing is to maintain the competitiveness of the situation, of the company. That's why we said 21% of service revenue will be reinvested in the business to acquire spectrum, for example. Our dividend policy is 40%-60% of adjusted EBIT per share. Last year, it was 50%, so we've always been kind of in the middle over the last few years, hovering around 50%. There's the topic of do we do stock buybacks on the DT side, or do we do it on the T-Mobile U.S . side?
We have never set long-term priorities because it depends on a lot of factors. First of all, the share price in the U.S. and how it develops, when it's really attractive, then we want to do some buybacks in the U.S. Then also, in terms of the hierarchy, investment in our own business, then dividends and then share buybacks in the U.S. That's. We're somewhat exposed to interest hikes. I don't know if you have been following developments in America. We have about $10 billion buffer in our planning for that in the U.S., even though we haven't spent this money yet, so I would say our interest planning contingencies are conservative. I don't see any major risks right now. We can always then adjust other things like share buybacks and dividends.
Then a question was from Mr. Schmidt, going in the same direction, focal points of investment. 21% was CapEx to service revenue ratio. That's and EUR 17 billion investment, EUR 5.9 billion alone in Germany. You see the magnitude of our activities and investments in the German market. Mr. Schmidt asked what we would do with a surplus cash on hand. We have an ongoing dividend policy of 40%-60% of adjusted EBIT per share, and we'll use a surplus for share buybacks on the U.S. side or on the DT side. Of course, we'll discuss this when it becomes relevant, but when you have an attractive target for an acquisition, then we'll make a move.
At the heart of it all is a focus on increasing value for our shareholders. We talked about fiber being a long-term investment, but we want to produce a ROSI that's above the capital cost every year. The next question: What are we planning with regard to capital measures? If we have any M&As? No, we have just an omnibus resolution on the agenda, and our policy is that we don't talk about M&A too early, only when we've signed a deal, and we don't announce it either. But you don't need to expect any major acquisitions right now. You asked about the Net Promoter Score and price hikes. First of all, the development with promoter scores, this is a metric which measures customer satisfaction for all products, for all situations at the company.
There's not just one Net Promoter Score. There's a whole bunch of metrics that are part of this. Net Promoter Score. We've been measuring that throughout the group since 2021, and we know that and you know that customer satisfaction is a main target for us. The management is paid according to this metric, so it's important to the company. It's a central steering instrument, and there we measure loyalty of customers as well and willingness to invest in our products or services. These are derived from this metric. To just mention a few of these metrics, we don't look at the competition. We're better than the competition in every category. We're oriented towards the internet companies like Apple because they have very high customer satisfaction rates. We're talking about 50. That's the goal we have.
The Net Promoter Score, I don't wanna go into detail here. Of course, we could do a deep dive on that. We look at quality aspects like how customers, how satisfied they are with customer-friendly digital services, and that's the standard for our internal metric. It's been rising continuously over the last few years, including in target systems. There we have very high standards, very high targets for the coming years. In addition, we analyze the prices of the competition and their, yeah, promotional offers and how customers react to these. Of course, this depends heavily on the features in the market and the competition, as well as the communication of their price change that they carry out. There's a certain mix there.
Our claim is to be number one and also to be better than the telcos, the other telcos, but also be at the level of the Internet groups. The next question you asked was about a roadmap for the switching off of copper in Germany, and CO2 cost effects that we expect from that through the migration to purely fiber optic networks. At present, there's not any regional or national switch-off date for the copper network. Section 34 of the Telecommunications Act stipulates that there is to be a smooth transition from copper to fiber optic, and we are opposed to a mandatory shutdown of the copper network for various reasons. We can only do that, of course, after we have a fiber optic infrastructure.
There's customers that like the old infrastructure and prefer it, and that's why mandatory switch-off switching we think that would create unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape. No, switching. I'm talking about these gray cabinets you have in a district. You have to switch all these over to fiber optic everywhere because before we can switch off the copper network. Because of the high amount of usage we have of our copper network right now, we haven't completely switched over these switching stations yet. We, of course, want to migrate in many areas to fiber optics by 2030, and we will be switching off several of these switching stations, but I can't give you an exact date for that. It's important that all our customers in Germany are supplied with our network the entire time.
We expect over the long term for this migration to take place, and we're also expecting savings in maintenance and energy consumption over the long term because we'll be able to switch off some of these networks, which will allow us to reduce costs significantly. This will also lead to a decline in CO2 emissions. That will help us achieve our goal of net zero emissions from Scope 1 to Scope 3 by 2030. Right now, we're working on setting up the fiber optic infrastructure and making sure that parallel to this, we still have the copper infrastructure. Before it's switched off, we don't have any reductions. We haven't taken into account any cost reductions.
Another question was the contribution we expect from digitization and AI to productivity and reduction in cost and service quality in the next 3-5 ye ars, and how we measure these contributions. That's of course one of the most important questions we're facing in the company right now. I'd like to really stress, AI is not there only to reduce costs and boost productivity. With AI, we can serve our customers better, more effectively, and our services can be improved. We're able to put our products faster on the market, and we can enhance productivity in our market. Productivity and costs are only one side of AI. By 2027, we expect EUR 800 million in cost effects in Germany and Europe by 2028 through fewer calls, telephone calls, fewer processing times in call centers.
Automation will lead to productivity gains in network planning, in field service, in the field service and IT, and the production of software will realize savings as well. Also, specifically concrete efficiency gains in day-to-day business that can already be measured today. I can give you an example of this. In the tech process, there's this so-called inline technology, and there we've been able to reduce processing time by the use of agents from 225 seconds per connection to nine seconds. Just to give you a feeling for this. Another example is customer questions and service. 480 was the average. With the support of AI, it's been reduced to 300.
Through the use of our internal AI assistant, FT, the assistants or call center agents, the time they need to make an offer to customers has been reduced from 2 minutes to 21 seconds to 18 seconds. This means a huge improvement for us in the customer service area, and we're expecting similar gains and impact in other areas. In the U.S., T-Mobile expects AI through the digitization initiative up through 2027 to save EUR 2.7 billion, or rather contribute EUR 2.7 billion to adjusted EBIT, and that should reduce the churn rate and allow predictive analysis of networks as well. They're expecting through digitalization, also an effect of 3-5 percentage points in the ratio between service and cost, so an increase in productivity of 3%-5%.
I could talk about all these areas and keep going. The effect will be significant for Deutsche Telekom in all of its business fields.
Okay, this leads me to Mr. Schmidt's questions, and I would like to start with a question regarding Mr. Mudesir. Could the executive committee have recognized earlier on what the situation of Mr. Mudesir was? Didn't you question his commitment to the management board? You asked about the timelines, and you also asked about the competitive situation. In February, I had a feedback discussion with Mr. Mudesir. This is what I usually do, and he didn't say anything on this topic, quite on the contrary. Then he went to the Mobile World Congress, and he was enthusiastic about all the new products. For us as the committee, it was not visible. In the first half of the year then he addressed us and then the process was very quick, and you can see that he's no longer here today. We regret this very much.
We don't really know who could be a successor. We don't know whom he wants to go to because there is competition done. I think he really surprised everybody. I'm also disappointed by this, but we have to handle this. You also. Well, perhaps you asked why we took Mr. Illek. Yes, we could also have chosen anybody else on the board of management. We've got strong competencies. It's always a question of competence and motivation and time. Mr. Illek has worked for the company for a very long time. He's a natural scientist by profession. He has good management skills, so I don't have any doubts that he's perfect for this task.
Availability. If you get another task, it's always difficult. I know that the finance level is extremely well-positioned with good managers, so that if Mr. Illek doesn't have too much time for his managers, there will not be a major problem. We are well geared for that. Motivation, well, when I informed Mr. Illek about it, he just smiled in his typical way and he said, "Well, this is interesting idea." I think with Mr. Illek, we've got a good person to fill this position, and we now have time for succession planning.
We already started to long list and short list external and internal candidates, and we want to find the right candidate and not just fill the position very quickly. Our management team is very good. We've got excellent people in the technological area, so I think we've got enough possibilities to respond. This also shows that we've got a good management board.
Of course, we were not happy about it because we were disappointed, but we just have to accept it. So much on Mr. Mudesir. I think this covers this topic. Well, you asked about the motivation, succession planning. I already mentioned this, and this leads me to the question of the audit committee. Yes, the audit committee will have two new members. This hasn't happened yet. The constituting meeting will happen after the AGM, and I can only tell you what is intended, and the supervisory board has to agree to this. Ms. Knight and Mr. Kruger are planned for the audit committee, and Mrs. Empey, who has been there for a year, should be the chairperson. With Mrs. Empey, I think we'll have an excellent successor in the chairmanship of this committee, should the supervisory board adopt this resolution.
We've got one question concerning the self-commitment. Mr. Schmidt, we didn't discuss it, but it's a good point. Yes, we should think about it. It's a good idea. Had you come to me early on, we might have implemented this already. We didn't discuss it. We didn't deny this, so we will actively take up this topic. When we come to you with further changes, we will take this into account. We'll then also make include this. Thank you very much for your hints. Now concerning the absences from the supervisory board meetings, you asked what was decided in the individual meetings. Mrs. Empey missed one meeting, an audit committee meeting.
I assume that this was a collision of dates. If you are new in a body, then it's always difficult. Then I think it was in parallel with another AGM, and we decided about the new auditor.
Mr. Ploss missed one meeting. We didn't take any resolutions. Mr. Windfuhr missed a meeting in the plenary session of the Supervisory Board, and it's not said here what resolutions were taken. Mr. Schöttke missed several meetings. One, we didn't have any resolution, another meeting where we had a meeting on the budget. Mrs. Sedlmayr, Warnecke missed one, and Mrs. Marx as well, and there were no decisions taken during these meetings. Should there be annual resolutions planned, we talk to the missing people beforehand and ask for their written votes. I think this answers this question, and I think these were all your questions. Mr. Schmidt, I think I fully answered your set of questions on Mr. Mudesir. Okay, then over to Mr. Höttges.
Yes, I come back to Mr. Schmidt's questions regarding value over volume strategy for 2026.
If we talk about value over volume, we are focusing on the value per customer in order to increase service revenues instead of just focusing on small volumes. This is done by price increases and optimization of the rate mix. The rate increase of the mix cards, and we've got an increase of prices by EUR 5, starting with the second mix card. For broadband, we increased our prices by EUR 1 for new customers in October and EUR 2 for old contracts starting in 2026. You should not forget, the only industry which did not succeed in passing on increased costs to the customers is the telecommunications industry in Germany, which is a huge problem, also increased the pressure on our margins in Germany.
This is why these price increases were now necessary, and I think they are tolerable in my view. We do not see any major influence on our customer satisfaction or churn rate or loss of customers. The goal is that we improve the rate mix and the quality of our revenue so that we have more service revenue that we can use in order to invest into the future value generation of our company and into further expansion of our mobile communications. You ask about cybersecurity, and you ask, who is responsible to steer this, to escalate the cyber risks at group level? First of all, the operational responsibility for this topic, cybersecurity, is in the security department, and this is under the responsibility of the Board segment Product and Technology. We've got a huge security organization there that is also developing the risk situation.
The measurement of cyber risks for our performance in this area is happening across the entire company. We've got a report about the risks. The risk situation is then also feeding into the results, the free cash flow and investments should they be necessary. Third level is the escalation to the Supervisory Board, especially the Audit and Finance Committee, which is informed about the internal control system and the risk and opportunity system in all the meetings. The Supervisory Board is convinced of the efficiency and effectiveness. Cyber risks are always part of our reporting. Should anything major happen, then we would also go to the Supervisory Board and inform it orally or in writing if there are major incidents. You asked about which elements of the Digital Networks Act has the highest influence and what timeline we are expecting.
The European Commission with the DNA suggested to have only one regulation on all the telecommunications access for all the 27 countries network access. We think that this is very bureaucratic, not ambitious enough. It is not reaching the suggestions made by Letta and Draghi, who used to be the Prime Minister of Italy, and it also misses the overall objectives in to get more investments into this telecommunications sector in Europe. These ambitions will not be implemented by this draft bill. What was meant to simplify the work, did not reach the goals. For us, the reform and harmonization of frequency allocations is the best element in this Digital Networks Act. Here, it's about no longer having an auction on spectrums, but, giving this spectrum to the telecommunications companies for a longer period of time.
I think this is a good idea. We would receive spectrum, let's say, for 40 years, and we would know that we would not have to spend billions on this, and we could spend these billions for the expansion of the network, so to the benefit of the customer. This is much better. Unfortunately, I don't believe that the member states of the European Union will do without the additional income from their budget. We will have to wait and see what will happen and what will be covered by the DNA. We expect that at least 1.5 years will still be needed in order to discuss this. The entry into force is to be expected for the year 2027 at the earliest.
I really have to say that I do not think that the Digital Networks Act will have very positive effects for our business. The Digital Networks Act again. You asked about the national and cross-border consolidation and what partnerships and other models can enjoy. First of all, the Digital Networks Act does not change anything about consolidation. This is antitrust issues that we have to take into account here. Irrespective of the DNA, we see larger scaling effects as necessary. China has three large telecommunications companies for a market of 1.5 billion. America has Verizon, AT&T, and Deutsche Telekom for a market of 330 million. Europe, with 450 million inhabitants, has three to four competitors in each country.
Multiplied by 27, this means that we've got more than 100 vendors, suppliers in the European telecommunications market, and I don't have to talk about the consequences. The revenues are half of what you have in other markets, and half of the suppliers cannot earn their capital costs. You've got an enormous price competition because everybody is just trying to get some money for investments. What we really need is European consolidation. We urgently need a big European player that is on par with the U.S. and Chinese telecommunications companies. We need economies of scale. Otherwise, we would have a fragmented market which will make us a victim of large global companies. Fiber in multi-family homes. How can we improve this? The legal framework conditions to improve the access to multi-family buildings is necessary, which is also driven by Mr. Wildberger.
We are asking for better access to multi-dwelling units, because otherwise FTTH cannot be successful. If you go to a house and the landlord doesn't give us access to the staircase, we cannot connect the individual apartments. If you connect one apartment, we have to be allowed to also connect the other apartments, even if they have not booked this yet. This. It's free of charge to the customers, but we do not have to do the building several times. This is why we ask for clear legal regulation for multi-dwelling units, so make sure that we can do the rollout effectively. The access to buildings and flats. I already mentioned this. We need practical and legal certainty here, and at present, there is an initiative and a paper which is discussed in the parliament in Germany, and we clearly support this initiative.
This leads me to the question of cable systems and the legal situation. What is the current situation here? It's about the fees to be paid for using our cable systems. Vodafone Deutschland GmbH and Vodafone West GmbH have sued Telekom Deutschland. Basically, the question is whether Telekom Deutschland will stick to what was decided in 2003 in the connection of the sale of the cable subsidiaries, and whether this is now become obsolete. Because we bought these companies, and this was connected to long-term obligations at which conditions the cable ducts of Deutsche Telekom could be used, and this is now controversial. In the most recent decisions, the Federal Court of Justice in December 2021 said that the decisions of the higher regional courts were to be repelled and a new lawsuit was necessary. Nothing has been decided yet.
The lease was paid, and we still think that it is appropriate. The financial impact of these lawsuits cannot be estimated at the current point in time, so please bear with me if I am unable to give you concrete figures here. Mr. Schmidt, you also asked about the shareholders' action of the Delaware Court of Chancery. At present, two shareholders' actions are against us. One of June 2021 regarding the Sprint joint venture and one dating back to February 2025 regarding the share buyback program for T-Mobile U.S. There are no clear indications how much money is asked for, and we cannot give you any information right now what the burdens will be.
In the lawsuit of June 2021, a lot of documents were submitted, and a lot of people were interviewed, and various experts' opinions were submitted, but a date for an oral hearing has not been defined yet. For the lawsuit dating back to February 2025, Deutsche Telekom has asked to dismiss the lawsuit because it's not logical. No decision has been taken yet, and it is not possible to make a forecast now how long these lawsuits will take. Mr. Schmidt, you also asked about the effect of the Gigabit Infrastructure Act on our fiber rollout in Germany, and you asked about the internal target values. We expect standardized authorization approval procedures and the use of alternative technological processes in order to support our fiber rollout.
Regarding the access to buildings, we think it's necessary to have a clear legal regulation for good fiber rollout. It's no use if we are allowed to build in the streets, but if it can't get access to the buildings. We have clear targets, for example, regarding the coverage of households and also 2.5 new homes passed lines, but we do not have any specific, geo-specific KPIs. You also want to know whether we still see problems in implementation on site for legal and regional decisions. Yes, all these decisions can have an impact on investments, but it still depends on the implementation in Germany. For Germany, the public interest in the network expansion at just state and regional level are now implemented.
We do have the legal framework conditions, but now they also need to be implemented by the municipalities in order to be fully effective. As a background information, why do we still have these problems in Germany? Because we have to build underground. We have only very few masts and towers. In other countries, it's different, and therefore it's much more difficult for us to connect rural areas in Germany, and this is why we have to use civil engineering.
You asked about satellite cooperation, Mr. Schmidt, and the question was whether through T-Satellite we see options to achieve better coverage, mobile coverage. Mr. Pontzen, I think that was your question. Let me just remind you that Mr. Beckendorf will be the next speaker on the list, then Alexandra Muhr, Ms. Muhr from SDK, and then [Jack Abramovich from the Gerhard Strack Foundation]. Thank you very much. Mr. Pontzen asked question about T-Satellite and Starlink. I talked about this before, where we don't have coverage yet. Of course, we want to offer satellites as an additional option. We promise to always make sure that our customers have the best network. Satellite is a good option. It has to be integrated into the mobile network, of course. It will be integrated, and we're also boosting resilience.
If something should go wrong, then of course the satellite link will work. Of course, we will not only be able to transmit voice but also messaging services, for example, through the Starlink connection. I think that for business customers as well as retail customers, this is an interesting use case. We can already see today that there are maritime use cases and also government use cases. Satellites are getting more and more important. We call this the network of networks, and of course, we will always do everything in order to be able to offer the latest technology to our customers. It doesn't always have to be terrestrial technology. Mr. Pontzen also asked about the range of our fiber network in the U.S., our position towards AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile U.S. has a clear advantage over the others.
We are number one in terms of 5G in the U.S. It has a lot to do with the spectrum position that we acquired when we joined together with Sprint. Today, there is no relevant fixed network that we have in the U.S. That's why when it comes to the fiber race, we started from a weaker position compared to AT&T and Verizon. We deliberately focused on an acquisition strategy with the acquisition of some companies, and I already pointed out that we want to do more on this score. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater in terms of acquisitions. We want to be smart about it. That's why we believe in joint ventures. These are partnerships with private equity companies. We share the infrastructure cost with these private equity companies.
When it comes to marketing these products, we will do that ourselves. We don't have as much capital tied down, and we share the capital cost, and they are not consolidated in our balance sheet. At the same time, we have the biggest fixed wireless access. We offer the best fixed wireless access. Now, what is this all about? We serve homes via the 5G network. We have a very strong 5G spectrum position, which gives us this capacity via the mobile service to connect homes. This is working very well in the U.S. because especially in rural areas, fixed line service compared to Germany, for example, is very poor. The mobile service is a really viable alternative.
We currently have some, somewhere around 8 million customers that are already using this service. Now, we will keep you up to date, but we're not panicking because we don't think that convergence is a must in the U.S. market. Do you think that the media content strategy is sufficient in order to reduce fluctuations? Now, this question relates to Germany, and my answer is, when it comes to MagentaTV, we are an aggregator. What is an aggregator? An aggregator joins all services, merges all services. We have analog, we have the streaming platforms. We also have exclusive rights that we sometimes acquire, like the broadcasting rights to the football World Cup. You can see all the commercials on TV. 44 games. For 44 games, we have exclusive rights.
Of course, the matches with Germany will also be shown on free TV due to legal reasons. Now, we have functions like voice control, for example. We have metadata that can be used. We can offer a lot of features that other platforms don't have. The end result is that we have very good customer retention. Also, grassroots sports is part of our offering. Basketball, Champions League. We do have exclusive content on MagentaTV that only we can offer. Most of our customers are really happy about this aggregating function. Every now and then, we will acquire exclusive rights to pictures and to events like the Football World Cup. You can also use MagentaTV as a streaming platform.
It's much more cost-efficient, because you have to spend less than if you purchase an account for these individual streaming vendors. The next question, security incidents and the security of your supply chain. Now, NIS2, which you mentioned. Now, the tightened European requirements on the protection of European infrastructures, we welcome that. We are implementing this right now with additional actions on the resilience of our computer centers and a certified emergency procedure. Maybe as an anecdote, yesterday, Lieutenant General Bodemann joined our management meeting and informed us about the security situation and about ways in which we can cooperate with the Federal Armed Forces. We also decided yesterday that the physical infrastructure of our buildings and critical network components should be additionally reinforced with camera technology and also adequate staffing.
We have an incident management and attack identification technology, so-called NOC, which is a service, 24/7, which sets off alerts, and cyber response teams that are available around the clock can respond to any emergency. We have regular training of all staff in order to identify incidents early on and respond to them. That's a huge topic behind the Magenta curtain. This is going on behind the scenes all the time, and it's definitely one of our priorities because we know that we are a target for cyberattacks. We also want to make a contribution to a safe and secure infrastructure in Germany in a crisis situation. Our program is much bigger than I could tell you right now. In terms of the security of supply lines, we have proactive monitoring.
We keep the Supervisory Board informed at all times. We have a multi-supplier strategy in the company, and we always have alternative suppliers. We constantly monitor supply lines. We have a separate unit for this and we try to minimize risk through various actions. The GPUs that I mentioned before, that's a case in point, and the memory chips that you find everywhere are now really scarce because of the rising importance of GPUs. We need to address this as well. Mr. Pontzen, you also asked about the enhancement of our cyber strategy. Now, critical facilities, while we protect them through technical physical actions, then we monitor our networks around the clock. Depending on the time of day, we have 30,000-50,000 attempted attacks on our networks per minute. Well, how is that possible?
Well, all of these are programs, and they are constantly operating in the networks and keep trying to attack the network. I can tell you, as software, it's tireless. It's always on the go, and it will not disappear. This is going to get even worse. We need to make sure that we have firewalls and resilience actions. We also have geo-redundancies as part of our resilience approach. I don't want to go into too much detail, but we have, several layers of redundancies. If certain components fail, automatically other components will step in. We do not only have a twofold redundancy, but in certain functions, an X time redundancy. If we are attacked, if somebody attacks our network, then other parts of the network will step in.
Mr. Pontzen, you also asked about the influence of government requirements on our targets and the importance of these initiatives as for the attractiveness, our attractiveness as an employer. In all markets, I remember 12 months ago, we had the same discussion at the AGM, we always work under applicable law. In the United States, we also respond to legal requirements when it comes to DEI questions. I can also tell you that in all our markets, wherever we are, we stand by our principles, our values, principle of equal opportunities, diversity, and we also uphold our other corporate values. I can assure you that there is not a single market in which we operate where we have to hide our values or ignore them. We don't moralize either. We don't engage in a moral political debate in the countries where we are.
This is not our job. Let me move on to the DEI activities. That's a really important issue in terms of employer branding and employer attractiveness. I don't need to tell you that we are the leading employer 2024, 2025. We are among the top level, the top 1% of employers. We are diversity leaders. Across the generations, we encourage equal opportunities, lifelong learning. We employ younger people, older people, men, women, no matter their background. This is a culture that we implement, that we live, and it is also recognized by the outside world. I think we are more than just an average company as far as this is concerned, but we are a role model, and this is also our aspiration. How do you approach, or how do you address energy demand in your computer center?
Is this a risk for climate protection targets? Of course, Mr. Pontzen, these computer centers require enormous amounts of energy, so no doubt about it. Now, if Germany wants to be a place where you can build such computer centers and operate them, then this country has to be in a position to offer low-cost energy. Germany is not that place yet, so we urgently need to work on that. That's my appeal. We definitely need subsidies in order to build future-oriented computer centers and introduce technologies for the future. We are absolutely aware of the fact that whenever we build computer centers, data centers, and operate them, then of course we need more power.
We have to see where that power comes from in line with our climate targets, where we can source green power from, maybe wind farms or from other sources. In Munich, for example, we've been able to conclude contracts with suppliers of renewable energies. Since 2021, we've been able to meet our energy demand wherever we are from these sources and the energy consumption by 2027, we want to keep it at least stable. We are building data centers. We are building the network, expanding the network. All of this requires more energy. At the same time, our ambition is to save on energy consumption and to use energy more intelligently. We want to, at the same time, while we expand, we still want to save energy. Actually, we are using more power, but we want to save more.
That's why we have to also convert our network. For example, an antenna doesn't have to transmit at certain times. Nowadays, antennas are always operational. If somebody goes into a cell and then leaves the cell, of course, the cells have to be switched on and off, but if there's nobody in a certain cell, you can switch it off. The experience for the customer is the same. For us, this reduces energy consumption enormously. This is a very ambitious target that despite our expansion, we want to keep our energy consumption constant. It is one of our targets anyway. This is what we're going to work on in the next few years. You also asked about the cooling concept, water cooling and waste heat.
Of course, whenever data centers, and they all generate enormous heat, then this is recycled. By recycling this heat, you recover energy for heating other facilities, for example. This is done or measured through the Power Usage Effectiveness, PUE factor. Currently, our PUE is at 1.3. In the Munich center, it's 1.2. You can already see how energy efficient this center is. Since these GPUs, these racks, will be cooled by water, the energy efficiency of these data centers is going to go up even. The waste that is generated can be recycled to a larger extent than today. Economically speaking, this is very important for us. We want to achieve this because we don't want to waste any energy, and we don't want to waste any heat because we can use it profitably.
The group-wide water consumption is going down 9.4% since last year. Our clear objective here is to keep reducing energy and water consumption, but 9.4% was the reduction last year. Now another question about the women's quota, if you will. The women's ratio in the workforce, 24%, and you asked how we can boost that share of women in the workforce. I said before that diversity makes us stronger. It's one of my convictions. It opens up new perspectives. It helps us to take better decisions, and that applies both to gender diversity, age diversity, and also international diversity. The primary interest for us should be to make the company even more successful. I mean, the priority is not to ask, "Are you a man or a woman?
Are you young or old?" I mean, the most important question is who's the best one for the job, and who can make the best contribution to the company? Now this is our point of orientation, but of course, we need to make a bigger effort to recruit and select the right people and to put a bigger focus on the role of women in leadership positions. We're already doing a lot. This is very important for us to strike a balance here, a gender balance and an international balance. This is an important part of our recruiting and hiring policies. I mean, of course, this is a company that is in love with technology and so our share of women is still relatively small, but it's definitely one of our priorities to boost that share.
These are my answers to the questions raised by Mr. Pontzen.
There have been a lot of questions, so can I ask that questions that have been raised before will not be raised again by other speakers as well because we've already provided ample information. We're now continuing with Mr. Beckendorf. This is a representative of the DSW. I'm very pleased about that because the DSW awarded a prize to Mr. Höttges for good corporate governance, and I'm very pleased about this. Actually, you gave the same award to me 3 years ago, and that prize to Mr. Höttges some time ago. This prize was also awarded to my predecessor here, Mr. Lena. Mr. Brandt was my predecessor at another company that I was working for.
Mr. von Schimmelmann, a previous colleague of mine from DHL also received this prize. Yeah, I can see that you're patting each other on the shoulder. That's certainly a good reason when you look at the list of the laureates, and you will find it's a long list of distinguished managers, including now Mr. Höttges. Don't worry about your 10 minutes. You still have your 10 minutes of speaking time.
Thank you. I'll need them. I just wanted to say that, it becomes increasingly hard to find adequate candidates for the DSW award. My name is Beckendorf, and I am representing the DSW in North Rhine-Westphalia, and I am representing private investors at today's AGM who have delegated their right to vote to us.
First of all, I'm pleased to say that this year's AGM is a face-to-face meeting once again, a physical meeting. After all, an AGM can only be successful if there is a personal exchange between management and shareholders. The fact that we have a physical event here is a token of a good shareholding, shareholder culture, and we would like to praise that. We would like to show our respect for the excellent results achieved. 2025 was a very successful and sound year. The forecast for adjusted EBITDA AL and for free cash flow was raised several times throughout the year, which has become some sort of standard. Having said that, the results reported were also negatively impacted by currency effects. At the same time, the very strong performance of T-Mobile U.S. played a major role for the success of the company overall.
The aforementioned achievements referred to the organic growth. We would like to thank management and all staff of Deutsche Telekom, and we would like to ask management to pass on our thanks to your workforce. Ladies and gentlemen, on a less positive note, let's now take a look at ROCE profitability. ROCE was down from 8.5%- 7.5% in the previous year. For the current year, you are expecting a further minor decline before you're then expecting another marked increase. Even though the negative trend is mostly down to negative one-offs, the question is how you intend to achieve a ROCE of 9% by 2027, which is what you announced at Capital Markets Day. How reliable are the underlying assumptions for that? Let's take a look at the U.S.
T-Mobile U.S. continues to be the group's growth engine. Nonetheless, negative currency effects last year showed that we are very much dependent on the U.S. business, which accounts for around 2/3 of adjusted EBITDA AL. This means that we are facing a major risk. In addition, the competitive environment in the U.S. mobile market is becoming increasingly fierce, which is reflected in higher price sensitivity among customers and higher churn rates. How can you prevent that T-Mobile U.S. is losing ground? Margins are down and prices are under pressure. Increasing pressure, increasing competitive pressure does not only affect mobile operators. Satellites also play a major role that complements the current scenario. T-Mobile U.S. cooperates with Starlink as part of satellite.
You said that starting in 2028, you also want to work with Starlink, and you want to use satellite for mobile services starting in 2028, even though in the past, Mr. Höttges always seemed to be quite skeptical about that. How does the board of management look at a possible threat through satellite operator for the mobile and broadband businesses in the U.S. and Europe? In Europe, we hold a share in the IRIS² consortium. In Europe, we are trying to be more sovereign, but how does that fit the cooperation with Starlink from 2028? Or is the partnership with Starlink actually a sign of the fact that you don't expect relevant European solutions to come into play in time? About the German market. The German market remained below expectations.
Despite the fiber rollout with 2.5 new lines and more than 1 million FTTH customers, you actually lost 49,000 broadband customers in the previous year. In 2026, you realigned your fiber strategy. What's new about that? And when do you expect this realigned strategy to help you achieve your goals? Right now, the German fiber industry is in the midst of a crisis. We've seen shock waves in the industry, and smaller providers are only able to survive in the market to a limited extent. So what role can Deutsche Telekom play here in the fiber market? What are your strategic options? Ladies and gentlemen, we look at the amendment of the German Telecommunications Act in a critical way.
The Federal Network Agency in the future will be given the right to switch off a copper network in a region that, from the point of view of the Federal Network Agency, offers a relevant coverage of the fiber network. This means that part of the infrastructure would no longer be used, and that would mark a major interference of ownership rights. It would actually mean that the state would more or less expropriate a company, and we believe this would not be acceptable. Here are a couple of questions. What are the financial and organizational consequences that the Board of Management expects from the amendment to the Telecommunications Act? What does Deutsche Telekom intend to do to make sure that investments are secure and that ownership will continue to be protected?
In other group areas, there are also several questions regarding the strategic orientation, for instance, in the systems business. The Industrial AI Cloud was successfully taken into operation together with NVIDIA in Munich and positioned as an important center of innovation, as Mr. Höttges explained this morning. What has been your first experience, and what is the current level of utilization? Do you think that this will generate considerable earnings, or do you think it is more of a symbolic project that will not have major economic significance? The E.U. is providing funds to expand the AI environment, and the Schwarz Group is also planning to set up an AI gigafactory. It was estimated that EUR 8 billion-EUR 10 billion need to be invested in the setting up of such a gigafactory, according to Mr. Höttges.
What's the current status of your plans to set up such a gigafactory with the Schwarz Group? What are the prerequisites to be met for that? About sustainability. In the past fiscal year, within your own company, you achieved climate neutrality. At the same time, you missed out on another target. By 2025, you said that 50% of your electricity would come from green energy. However, you only achieved 26%. Why did you fail to reach your target regarding electricity so clearly? You said that by 2030 you want to be at net zero emissions. In the previous year, you talked about 500 tons of CO2 equivalents, but now you're only talking about 959 kilotons. How do you intend to close this gap?
How did this come about in the first place compared to the prior year? Before I talk about today's agenda, I would like to make two more comments on the Board of Management. Regarding the succession planning for the CEO, we can see a new situation. We don't know where the situation is headed now that Claudia Nemat and Srini Gopalan have left. Now there's a new situation again because Abdurazak Mudesir, responsible for product and technology, decided to leave the company as well. This is a very central post on the Board of Management. This member of the Board of Management, you know, left the company just six months after he'd been appointed. We believe that this is really worth talking about. Mr. Höttges, you also mentioned it.
You also said that there is a competition ban. Was Mr. Mudesir entitled to receive any severance pay, even though he voluntarily left the company? Now let me come to the agenda. The dividend proposed EUR 1 per share marks an 11% increase year-over-year, which is yet another record dividend. Related to the unadjusted earnings per share, we have a payout ratio that is even slightly above the proposed threshold of DSW, which is 50% of the group's profit. In other words, Deutsche Telekom shareholders still have their share of the company's success, and we welcome that. Under item four, this is about granting discharge to the members of the supervisory board. I have another question here. Mr. Lars Hinrichs left the supervisory board last year.
In 2025, he only attended one of three meetings of the Innovation and Strategy Committee of Telekom. What are the reasons for that? Under item seven, we have the proposed new members of the supervisory board, which we support. It would have been very nice, however, if Dr. Herzig had been able to attend today's meeting here in order to introduce himself personally to the shareholders. We would like to obtain more information on the underlying nomination procedure for the members of the supervisory board. How many candidates did the supervisory board talk to as part of this procedure? The qualification matrix, which was published showing the skills of the members, is still insufficient from our point of view. In the previous years, we always criticized this procedure and the criteria.
However, unfortunately, you failed to react to it and failed to revise the relevant criteria. Why is that? We would like to expressly thank Mrs. Kollmann and Mr. Streibich, the two departing members of the Supervisory Board. We would like to thank them very much for their many years of activity on the Supervisory Board. Back to the current year. Revenue and earnings will continue to rise. Adjusted EBITDA AL will rise by 6%, free cash flow 3%, and EPS by 10% to EUR 1.20. That's the plan. This forecast looks very promising. Next year, we believe it would be realistic to pay out a dividend of EUR 1.10, and these continue to be good prospects for the Telekom shareholders.
To wind up my talk, I would like to thank the management and all the staff of Deutsche Telekom for the work done. For 2026, we wish you the best of success. Thank you very much for listening.
Thank you. Before we continue with Alexandra Muhr, I would like to answer the three questions you raised. First of all, Mr. Mudesir was not paid any severance. The reason why Mr. Hinrichs only attended one of three meetings was that he was afraid that there might be a conflict of interest, which is why he then resigned from his mandate and did not attend the meetings anymore, which we welcome. As for the nomination procedure, we talked to three candidates, of whom two were proposed at today's AGM as new members. As for the competence.
On my corporate governance roadshow, I've also had intense talks about that. Yes, we'll look into it and how we can improve it, but it'll always remain a complex venture. I've taken this on board once again. Mr. Schmidt had also pointed it out. I think these are the questions that you asked to me. Now we are continuing with Alexandra Muhr. Please, be sure to stick with the 10 minutes because we still have a long list of questions, and we'll have to restrict speaking time further anyway.
Members of the Supervisory Board, members of the Board of Management, dear shareholders. My name is Alexandra Muhr. I am representing SDK shareholders, who delegated their rights to vote to us. I would like to make two positive comments to start off my talk. We very much welcome the fact that this AGM has been organized yet again as a physical meeting and that the dividend payout ratio amounts to 50%. SDK believes that this is a very good thing. About the items on the agenda, unfortunately, we won't be able to approve item eight on the agenda because the various capital related measures and the approved capital exceeds the 25% threshold defined by our organization.
Item 10 is an item that we will abstain on because we cannot see to what extent the relevant clause on the place of jurisdiction can actually take effect and what it will mean for the company.
As for the election of Supervisory Board members, there's Mr. Wintels, and he holds various mandates, which we think is a critical thing, but we will approve his election anyway because of his excellent expertise, and this will certainly improve the competence of the Supervisory Board overall. We also believe that Mr. Wintels will set aside enough time, you know, for his activities at Deutsche Telekom.
Ladies and gentlemen, the business year 2025 of Deutsche Telekom went as planned. The Management Board attained the targets set for the year. Group sales and adjusted EBIT of the company both rose, as did the special effects on the adjusted EBIT. The other metrics, return on capital, financial liabilities, equity ratio, and provisions have not changed significantly year on year.
The complex international business as well as the opportunities and risks associated with it have been discussed in a very transparent way in the annual report. Not only with regard to the group, but also the reporting on the different segments. A word of praise for the reporting as well. Regarding comments on the financial metrics, I want to limit myself just to a few points. What I noticed in the annual report was that you wrote regarding the radio tower business. Here you have differing approaches depending on the market, and there are different markets, the U.S. and in Europe. In 2025, for example, in Europe, you spun off three towers in a separate company. Do you operate only purely opportunistically here? I find that hard to believe because the agreements on towers are usually long-term.
Are there strategic considerations on how you want to deal with this tower business going forward? I also had a question about the U.S. and cyberattacks that took place in 2021 and 2022 and the court proceedings relating to these. Because Mr. Schmidt already asked a question about that, and I think it was adequately answered. Next question that I have also relates to the business report for 2025. Under provisions, you talk about the personnel transformation program, which relates to a certain U.S. subsidiary. Could you tell us what this involves? The personnel adjustment measures in the U.S. I also have questions about your forecast regarding the future business trend. In business year 2025, you attained pretty much all your goals, your targets.
In 2027, the targets you set for these, in terms of, you know, you're behind these forecast values for 2027, and that'll. It's very ambitious for 2027 and 2026 as well. The geopolitical situation is making it difficult, and it might make it difficult to attain the targets for the year 2027 as well. That leads me to the following question. At the 2024 targets you communicated at the Capital Markets Day, are you going to adjust these, or do you think these are still attainable this year? The next year. Political conditions have changed. Also economic conditions have changed significantly. I'm thinking of events in the Middle East and they could cause the economic situation to deteriorate this year. How do you see these macroeconomic risks in terms of?
My question is, do you wanna stick to this assessment that you made previously, or do you think, Telekom and the U.S. subsidiary will be able to weather these unfavorable conditions right now? In this context, I have several additional questions. Which of your segments or as a result of the current situation might be particularly negatively affected? For example, problems in procurement, this was touched on earlier. Or development freezes on projects and, if this, what measures do you have in your back pocket? Also the topic of tariffs in Germany and the U.S. We face a situation where this is one of Donald Trump's pet peeves. As a result of your market position in the U.S., can you pass on the costs? You've been successful in doing this in Germany thus far, you said.
What growth potential do you see in Germany and in Eastern and Southeast European countries? What's the competitive situation there from your perspective? In closing, I have a question about our stock shares. The cost of a Telekom share since the beginning of 2026 has recovered. In 2025, though, the share rate declined continuously. You appear. You comment on this in the business report. You say this development was impacted by the weak U.S. dollar and the weak share price development with T-Mobile's share in the U.S. Can you explain to us why the T-Mobile share price dropped over the year and what the current expectations are regarding the T-Mobile share in the U.S. going forward?
Thank you. This brings us to Mr. Jack Abramovich, will be speaking for the G80 Stark Foundation. After that, Mr. Christian will answer the questions of then Mr. Christian Strenger, and two and then three additional questioners will be asked up to the podium to ask their questions. But Mr. Abramovich, you lead the way.
Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders, Mr. Höttges, members of the management board and supervisory board, it's an honor for me to be able to speak before you. This date, the first of April, 2026, as a special day, we're looking back on the business year 2025, where Deutsche Telekom not only showed that it can meet its targets, it exceeded them. I'd also like to express a word of thanks to you, Mr. Höttges, to the entire management team and the almost 200,000 employees worldwide.
The adjusted EBITDA of EUR 44 billion and a free cash flow of almost EUR 20 billion don't just fall out of the sky. They are the result of resolute execution and clear strategic vision. In particular, I should stress the record dividend of EUR 1 per share. That's a historic payout for this company in a volatile market situation. Mr. Höttges, looking back over your entire term of office, one notices your success. When you became CEO in 2014, the share price was. The share price has increased dramatically over this time, and the dividend has doubled from EUR 0.50- EUR 1. You've turned Telekom from a limping company to a European champion.
In the U.S., you call the shots, and that means you are due our most profound respect. Looking at the business report 2025 shows the reasons for this performance. The U.S. majority with almost 53% T-Mobile U.S. means that you have cemented control over it. T-Mobile is the engine of the whole Magenta ecosystem now. Glass fiber-optic turbo. In Germany, the mark of 24 million homes passed was achieved. Last year, 2 million contracts were added to this, and this is the backbone. Telekom provides the backbone of the German economy. More than 500 AI projects are ongoing, which shows that Telekom is leading this technological revolution instead of just keep playing catch-up ball. We have to talk about the impact of all this growth on other things, namely our net debt. Yes, it declined slightly last year.
Nevertheless, we have a debt of EUR 132.5 billion. That's amount that should cause this give rise to concern as a result of high interest rates. The ratio is 2.62 in interest expenses. This might need to be restricted or lowered a lot. We're buying back EUR 2 billion in shares, and we're pleased about this. We wonder whether this money could not be better used to reduce the debt level. Based on analysis and the statements made by analysts since the last Capital Markets Day, I have two questions. With regards to the migration to fiber optic, have you thought that the parallel infrastructures of copper and fiber optic cause huge costs? In the past year, talking about the switching off of copper by 2030. My question has been partially answered already.
How many switching stations were switched over to fiber optic last year? Looking at the savings and costs, will these have the 100% impact by the end of 2027? Artificial intelligence, you said, will be driving the margin in the future. At the same time, what % of margin improvement in Germany in 2025 can be attributed to AI and automated processes? How can you ensure that we won't lose service quality, which right now is our most important feature setting us off from the competition? Another point is debt management.
In view of the fact that significant part of our liabilities have to be refinanced in the next 24 months, how do you assess the risk that increasing interest could cause headwinds in the future, and could it jeopardize investment in 6G and other future technologies? Why is management prioritizing share buyback instead of spending the money on reducing the debt structure to optimize capital costs? Deutsche Telekom is stronger than ever before today. T is shining all over the world. We respect your performance, Mr. Höttges, but call for you to show tremendous discipline so that Telekom can become even stronger and get traction going forward.
Thank you, Mr. Abramovich. Mr. Frank and Mr. Strenger, Mr. Thomas Lohninger, Mr. Markus Dufner, and Erna Demir Devran will be the next persons at the podium.
I'll start off with the question of Mr. Abramovich regarding T-Mobile U.S. and stronger competition in the U.S. Our forecast for business year 2026 and the following remain the same. In February, at the Capital Markets Day, this was confirmed by T-Mobile U.S., and we're very successful. The competition has, you know, they come and go with their announcements of price changes. The bottom line is we have the best network, and it's getting better and better in the U.S. too. That differentiates us. We have the best service. We're a carrier. Against this background, there's no question that we're going to stay on our successful trajectory. We're not going for volume at any price either. If the competition takes off its gloves and gets more aggressive, then we'll have to respond on the cost side.
We are already better on the cost side than the competition in the U.S., and we're banking on digitalization and AI. We're doing our homework. We're staying fit for the future. If the competition believes that they need to get more aggressive with their pricing, we will be prepared for that. To what extent can Deutsche Telekom be actively involved in the consolidation of the fiber optic market in Germany? Where do you see the opportunities, and what are the options? Well, we are referred to as the dominant company in the market, and I won't comment on that, but it's the case. In this context, we believe that if we can help somebody, that we will. If a company is up for sale, then we'll take them into our portfolio.
That won't be easy from an antitrust perspective, but we'll have to look at opportunities when they arise. If larger stakes are involved, I think the German Cartel Authority and the antitrust authorities will be looking very closely at that. Also, the partnerships, one with Evita and then GlasfaserPlus, these are options. We're working with local competitors to build infrastructure jointly, and that's also a model for consolidation. We want to offer communities partnerships if they want to build out fiber optic. All these things help when you have a lot of small competitors just fighting to survive, and that allows them to have access to our customers in the market too. Question about the Industrial AI Cloud with the AI factory. What's the experience with this, and what's the current capacity utilization?
I'd like to express my respect for Ferri Abolhassan at T-Systems because his team, within six months, from the idea to this, to the realization of this plan, that's how long it took, 6 months. That's record time, and that deserves my utmost in respect. We've gained a lot of new customers over the last few months. We've been up and running for 3 months with Quantum Systems, Wandelbots and Siemens, PhysicsX. These are all companies that are joining in. The utilization is said to be 40% right now. That's what we've achieved in this short amount of time, and we'll have to observe this over time and how intensely it develops. The startup was at least very promising. Next question relates to the revision of the Telecommunications Act.
You asked about asset protection and reliability, and whether it was an intensive positive dialogue with the policymaking sphere. I can put it this way, the switching off of copper. I commented on that in my presentation. We don't think that's acceptable. If that happens, that will be tantamount to appropriation. We will do everything we can to prevent that from happening. The revision of the Telecommunications Act, the Federal Network Agency is to have the right to initiate switching off of the copper network in the future. I pointed out in the legislative procedure here that the digital ministry should improve FTTB and FTTH build out to apartment buildings and multifamily homes.
That's where the priority should be set because we need the right conditions, first of all, the right underlying conditions before we can roll out fiber optic in multifamily residences. We welcome this initiative, and this will lead to legal certainty that will probably provide more clarity going forward in the next few months. You also asked about the reasons for the failure to have 50% green energy used in the contracts for electricity use. We didn't meet that target. That's true. We're at 26% right now, and this metric applies to the group, not including the U.S., and doesn't include the U.S. Outside Germany, our electricity needs are covered 100% by renewables, but with PPAs, we have limited capacities. We have to directly receive electricity from producers, and we've had to reduce this amount.
Also the certificates of origin, we have to make use of these right now. Of course, we're interested in concluding these PPAs in the first half of the year, this number will increase. It was the market that led to us only being able to attain 26%. You asked about the details regarding the climate transition plan. It's intended for internal steering and planning of our emission reduction measures. We have an interest group to achieve this target, and they inform the public on this. The management board and supervisory board have confirmed this. Last year, we saw major potential in the supply chain, but that didn't turn out to be the case. The measures we've already begun and additional activities will come online to attain the goals we've set there.
Our annual plan is we want to reduce our targets there, and we want to also we'll be relying on our suppliers in the supply chain to reduce CO2 emissions. At the same time, reduction of greenhouse gases can be achieved in other ways as well, for example, through the use of our devices. Also satellite providers, including in what does the competition from them look like in the U.S. and Europe. Also in broadband and mobile. We've discussed this already. At present, we don't see any danger of cannibalization. In other words, we don't see any danger that the satellite providers and there's only satellite companies. There's only one really, Starlink. AST don't and others don't have such a broad offer in the market as Starlink does.
It's the leading technology with most satellites in orbit and in rural areas, they have a very interesting offering for supply. That's been in place for some time, and we're positioning our broadband offering and mobile because the bandwidth is much higher than satellite can offer. But the spectrum used by Starlink is much less, significantly less than what we can use here terrestrially. That's why, because a lot of demand can't be executed by satellite. It's just too much, the volume. We see this as an addition and add-on to our mobile offering, and that's why we concluded this deal with Starlink, so that customers have a redundant alternative supply regardless of where they are in the mobile area.
We see less risk of cannibalization, and we see it more of a supplemental. Also, you ask about IRIS² from SpaceRISE and the planned Starlink collaboration in Europe. You asked how this fits together beginning in 2028. IRIS² and Starlink don't contradict each other. They both strengthens connectivity in European sovereignty independence. Also, they in the SpaceRISE consortium, we're part of that and for things like 5G and also T-Systems with IT and computer center services to supply companies in Europe with this service. The Starlink partnership, as I said, is concentrating de facto on direct-to-device. Basically, if they don't have mobile service, you can communicate via satellite on your cell phone. These are both excellent supplements.
Our strategy is, with all these technologies, to really provide the customer the best service in a simple way. We're not talking only about exclusive satellite service and just working with one partner. We don't wanna become dependent on one partner.
You also asked the question concerning the reorientation of fiber strategy in Germany. I already mentioned this and how we can go above the rate of 20% in the uptake rate. This is very important. We cannot only keep on building infrastructure which is not used, but we have to utilize our infrastructure because it's enormous investments we are making, EUR 2 billion-EUR 3 billion per year going into fiber technology. We have to improve utilization. We are good in the rollout to the homes passed, and here we are also having better productivity. We are cheaper, and we now have to go for utilization, and we do this with additional sales initiatives.
For example, the telecom shops that you are all familiar with were given new staff, and this staff also goes to the home so that you know who the people are, and the people can give you advice at home how fiber infrastructure could be built, what it would look like, what is required for this. This is an additional service that we offer. The same is true for multi-dwelling units. If we are in a building, then we can easily go to the families and ask them whether they want to switch to fiber. We also saw that especially single-family homes have a higher take-up rate, and this is why we want to focus on single-family homes, especially in rural areas. Here we want to win more customers.
The owners of single-family homes simply see that the value of their real estate and also the reselling value is higher if they can already offer a fiber connection. The next question by Mr. Beckendorf is regarding Industrial AI Cloud. Of course, we are not doing this for altruistic reasons, but also in view of the major gigafactory we are discussing for Germany. Deutsche Telekom does not need a gigafactory. Germany needs a gigafactory. Germany needs the sovereign data center architecture. This is why Germany and the public authorities have to provide the necessary money. They have to book capacities, and they also have to offer a reasonable energy and electricity price. A company such as Deutsche Telekom can really go on investing. We are in discussion with the European Union and the German government, and we plan to scale up the business model.
We laid the foundations already with our industrial cloud in Munich, and we can ramp up these capacities. This will not only give us higher revenues, but it will also give us a better customer retention in other areas, for example, connectivity, which will open up new business models. You also asked about prerequisites for the big giga factory. I already mentioned this, and by the way, such a giga factory, the European Union wants to have five or six of them in Europe. It costs between EUR 8 million and EUR 10 million, one of them. An investment in this size is only possible if you've got a good business plan that covers these ginormous investments. We need utilization. The state has to be the anchor customer, and if it does, and if it ensures utilization, we can go forward. Then we need good land.
We need good electricity connections. There are good competitors in Germany. No worries there. The question is, what will happen with the investments that were announced by Mrs. von der Leyen regarding the giga factories we want to build in Europe? We have to wait for the tenders, which will be published in the next few days. We have support of our partners for these investments. Brookfield, for example, the tower companies are also financed with them. We also have the Schwarz Group. If we were to build a giga factory, they already announced that they would join in, and this reduces the risk for Deutsche Telekom. You asked about the towers and the tower business. This was a question raised by Mrs. Muhr. You asked whether we are opportunistic in this area.
Well, first of all, we started to privatize German towers, and we found Brookfield as a partner. We now hold 49% of this company. In the European companies, we outsourced the towers into individual companies. We have not decided yet to put them on the market, but it's an option that we have not used yet. This would give us even more financial opportunities, and this will be used as soon as it seems to make sense and value generating. In the U.S., we don't own the towers anyway. There, the towers are owned by large tower companies, and we only lease them. We do have a strategic partnership with the company. We are very happy about the cooperation and the results, and Mr. Langheim is responsible for this.
As soon as Mr. Langheim gets involved, it will work, and I don't have any worries about our towers. This leads me to the topic of price increases in the United States and whether we could manage to increase prices there. Yes, this is one possible conclusion. It always depends on the market environment and the market dynamism, but the Americans also see this as a possibility to grow earnings. How far are you affected by the tariffs in Germany? This is a question to Mr. Illek, basically, but I will take it over now. We always produce in the relevant country. We always are local with our networks, and this is true for our networks. This is true for our data centers. The tariffs do not affect our core business. There is a certain relevance if it's about procurement of end devices.
For example, for T-Mobile U.S., devices or components of devices are now imposed by taxes, and the devices are getting a little more expensive. The Americans will pass on the higher costs to the customers, who will have to pay more for the devices. A short answer to the question is that the tariffs and the entire debates about tariffs are negligible to Deutsche Telekom or are even irrelevant. This leads me to sustainability. Mr. Speich asked about the adjustments for climate and diversity and a say on climate during the AGM. Well, Mr. Speich, we did not change any of our goals. After achieving our balanced climate neutrality, we will continue to work on these goals, and we will stick to our goals regarding carbon emissions and energy consumption and circularity. This is the term we haven't used today yet.
Transparency is of utmost importance for us, and this is why we also have an external report on this topic. We do not plan a say on climate for the next AGM, and such a vote is not required. Currently, it's not recommended by the German Corporate Governance Code. Well, we should just do it and not just explain it. We want to be transparent in our reporting. We work to achieve our goals, and as long as we are successful regarding our carbon goals. This is more important than just explanations, but I'm still committed to this. The ecological situation is of utmost importance for our company, and this is the end of my questions.
Yes, perhaps I can take up, say, on climate from the point of view of the Supervisory Board as well. We don't have the ambition to have it in the next AGM. Mr. Höttges, as well, what else do we want to vote on?
Well, you have the possibility as the AGM not to grant relief on the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board, and so this is sufficient. We will not have a say on climate in the next AGM.
Now we move on to Mr. Illek.
Okay, let me start with Mr. Beckendorf's question, whether we stick to the yields, the capital yield of 9%. First of all, the simple answer to the question is yes, but perhaps some more background information. We calculate this after tax. Not everybody is doing this, and there are no adjustments that we apply. This means that in 2024, we had return on capital of 8.5%, which was a little lower than before, but this is a non-recurring effect, and this gave us strong tailwind.
Now we expect special costs regarding U.S.cellular, which are reducing the return on capital. For the following years, we expect roughly 9%. The next question by Mrs. Muhr is similar. Capital Markets Day 2024. Let me point out the conference on the 25th of February. We have got two major challenges along the financial KPIs. First of all, the service revenue in Europe, 2.5%-3%. In this context, also the operational leverage, so the ratio between costs and service revenue, because the service revenue is not what we wanted to achieve in Europe so far. We have got two yellow lights, but basically, the expectation is that we are in line with our overall targets. Next question, the share price of the Deutsche Telekom share.
Why did it go down, and what is the effect of T-Mobile U.S.? Just to give you some background, T-Mobile U.S. on the 3rd of March 2029 was at $273, and now we are EUR 273. Why did we go down? Because there is a sector rotation. The investors went into AI companies. This had an impact on the overall industry. Now, taking a look at it, T-Mobile U.S. has a peak value of $210, which is 10% below. We also had a weaker dollar, which is another 10%. In fact, this means there was a drop by 35%. If I take a look at the share price of the DT share, on the 3rd of March, we had EUR 36.
We are now at EUR 32, so a drop by 10%. The inherent value of the European business increased, although we have a decrease. DT had a smaller decrease than T-Mobile U.S. This is explaining what happened at T-Mobile U.S. and at DT. Growth potentials, another question by Mrs. Muhr. In Europe, I already mentioned this and Tim already explained this. T-Systems and the European companies in 2025 showed an excellent performance, whereas the German companies showed a slight decrease. We now expect the German company to come back and to grow, and this is also true for the other segments. For all the segments, we expect growth. Whether we will achieve the seven, this revenue corridor I mentioned is still to be seen.
Now we are confirming all the goals with the exception of the two KPIs where I said we've got a yellow traffic light at present. Macro risks. The macro risks we are facing in 2026, from my point of view, are comparable to what we saw during the Ukraine crisis. Inflation rates and energy costs are the problem here, and you know that we hedge our energy costs over a period of 4 years. The energy costs for the year 2026 have already been fixed. 80% have been fixed, and they are not affected by what is happening on the energy market right now. Now, in the mid-run, we do not see any necessity to go away from our targets. We have some risks regarding procurement for memory chips and other devices.
There, the costs are going up, but we've got a bill of materials tear down, and we calculate the expected price increases. We've got a professional organization which tries to mitigate price increases. In other areas, we also have some optimization potential in the procurement area so that we do not expect a negative effect at the end of the year. Mr. Abramovich on debts. I do not see him now. I do not know where he is. He asked whether we should reduce our debt much more strongly. Let me give you the debt ratio in the recent years. 2.78 in 2024, 2.62 this year. We are going down in our debts continuously, and we also got an upgrade by Moody's.
If I take a look at the firepower that we have on our balance sheet, then I can say that we are much better equipped than any other European telecommunications provider, services provider. There was another topic. Do we have access to the capital markets? You know that we have refinancing of at least two years, EUR 12 billion bilateral facilities that we can draw, EUR 6 billion refinancing needs in the next two years, if I remember correctly. I assume that nothing can go wrong in this area. Refinancing interest risks. I mentioned this already. Let's move on to the next question asked by Mrs. Muhr. These were special effects, provisions.
We had special effects of EUR 1.1 billion, which were mainly attributable to the European business, and the Americans had a major restructuring in the fourth quarter. They took out some management levels, especially in administration, and they focused on the management layer here. This is a program which affected several thousands of people, and this will be in the books for 2025, but only have an effect on us this year. There are a few thousand people who were laid off in the United States. Okay,
Thank you very much, Mr. Illek. This leads us to the next block of questions. Mr. Christian Strenger first, then Thomas Lohninger, Markus Dufner, and Mr. Devran Demir. I do not want to restrict the speaking times further, but perhaps you can do it similar to what the previous speakers did, because we've got more than 20 people on the speakers list, and we would be grateful if you kept it short. Mr. Strenger.
Dr. Appel, ladies and gentlemen of the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management, dear shareholders, my name is Christian Strenger, and I have been satisfied minority shareholder for a very long time, and I'm professor of the Corporate Governance Institute of the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. Mr. Höttges is not here yet, so let's start with a more difficult question. There is the topic of whistleblowing, which is more and more important nowadays, and there are currently some news in the press about it.
In order to cope with this topic, with a good whistleblowing system for employees and customers, is something that has just now gained importance again. This is a system which should also have an external contact, and reporting channel which is easy to access in order to especially make employees safe against the repercussions. Deutsche Telekom has the tool of an anonymous whistleblowing system, but it doesn't point it out very clearly. Because there is the possibility to also report incidents to BKMS. This is important for employees if they blow the whistle on very complex topics. It would be easy to guess who was the whistleblower, so it's important. I looked into this topic in detail, and the independent whistleblowing contact with the BKMS system is not really mentioned.
It would be important to make this a little clearer that you do not only have the TellMe system. I don't have any problems with the TellMe system, but that people also know that they can report their grievances to independent institutions. Now the question, how many people reported an incident in 2025? Especially, how many employees reported grievances at the different areas? Ladies and gentlemen, the important topic, how are we faring compared to our European competitors? It hasn't been mentioned so far, but we are excellent here. We are 100% better than all of our European peers. This is not only good news for the shareholders.
We could then ask ourselves: Can't we take over one of these companies if they are quite cheap at present? This would be difficult probably from an antitrust point of view, but perhaps you could knock on some doors whether somebody might be available. There is another question linking up to this: Are you looking around in Germany and in Europe? Are there any companies who are available and do you and the required financial options are there, as Mr. Illek already emphasized. Mr. Höttges, it's really a pity that you are not in the room right now because I wanted to pay you a compliment. I wanted to tell you that you really gave a very good presentation at the beginning.
At the same time, this also triggers a question in the interest of the shareholders, because if you can present Deutsche Telekom in such a wonderful and fascinating way, why don't you use this in advertising for Deutsche Telekom? It could be also interesting for us, because last year, we granted a slightly higher compensation to Mr. Höttges. If he is communicating to people directly, it has a wonderful effect, and this could really support the advertising of Deutsche Telekom, and we could perhaps get some of the money that we granted him back.
This was one topic. Another one. Mr. Höttges now has a contract up until 2028. Now, as he also makes very important and relevant political statements, 2028 will be just before the next general elections. If we all support this, and he is willing to do this, he would be an ideal person for Berlin.
There's a lot of work to be done in Berlin, and he cannot change from the board of management to the supervisory board immediately. It would also be questionable whether Mr. Appel would admit this. The German Corporate Governance Code says that you have to wait at least 2 years. Mr. Wintels, with his 25%, could overrule this regulation. If I know him well, he won't do this. It would be a good opportunity, because Mr. Höttges said this very clearly: Some things have to change in Berlin, and we need excellent people in Berlin, people who can perform well. This would be very, very important. I already asked him the question a year ago in Frankfurt, and he said: "No, it's so nice here at Deutsche Telekom." I can understand that.
If the contract expires, he can think about it again. It would be a good idea if we had such high performers as Mr. Höttges to go to Berlin. I am sure he will hear it somewhere outside this room. If he comes back, perhaps he might also answer whether he would be willing to pursue this idea. Well, ladies and gentlemen, 8 minutes are over. That was everything I wanted to share with you. Only a few thoughts. Mr. Appel?
Well, it's all good, but the time for the answers, I just roughly calculated this, is twice as much time as the question time. This is okay-ish, but to tell the shareholders to keep it brief is perhaps a little bit unfair. It would be good for the shareholders to have a little bit more time for the questions. That's everything. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Mr. Strenger. We're waiting then for the answer also by Mr. Höttges. Next question comes from Mr. Thomas Lohninger.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, dear Internet, my name is Thomas Lohninger from the NGO, and I represent the shares of the Ethical Shareholders Association. I speak on behalf of the Internet and of somebody who actually helped to work on network neutrality between 2013 and 2016. In 2017 and 2019, I also attended AGMs, and at the time, I said that the product StreamOn is a clear violation of network neutrality, so it violates valid E.U . Law. I was right because the European Court of Justice banned the product in 2021. The highest E.U. court made clear that discrimination is unlawful also in Telekom's rates.
In 2019, I told you that the existence of StreamOn keeps data volumes artificially low at the cost of the population. I based my argument on a study, and I was right. StreamOn was banned, and since then, data volume went up dramatically without added cost for consumers. The image is always the same. Deutsche Telekom deteriorates its offering and its services and then makes its services scarce and makes these services more expensive. It's an artificial scarcity, and only if that is removed, the situation for everyone will be improved. We see the same pattern when it comes to interconnecting the Deutsche Telekom network and all the other networks on the internet. The global standard is to have this interconnection without any charge. Bill and keep. Through interconnection, you get global connectivity. This is what internet is all about, right?
Interconnecting different networks. You can reach the entire network if you purchase just one access. That gives customers a lot of choice, freedom of choice to access any network worldwide. Unfortunately, Telekom, in this respect, violates network neutrality. 99.996% of all peering agreements are without cost, without charge. You don't need to pay for this service, for this interconnection. It's peering at the same level, and that is the best option for everyone involved. Only Telekom violates this principle. It's part of this 0.0004% that actually charge for this service. It can afford to do this because of its market dominance and only within Germany. Those who don't pay have difficulty accessing the total network. Only if you want to access other Telekom customers, you have to pay a price for this.
We are not talking about small amounts here as the Tagesschau news show has reported. We're talking about high amounts of money per month. We are talking about German research networks that during the pandemic were inaccessible to many during the lockdown, the COVID lockdown, because Telekom charged too much. We're talking about small regional internet providers who are flooded with complaints by users because the interconnectivity didn't work. The small provider has to pay the big monopolist so that their customers can send data into the network. I'm not surprised that Germany is lagging behind when it comes to network build-out. This is not a small versus big issue because the big players get a discount from Deutsche Telekom.
Industry associations like CISPE, for example, who only have European members, have confirmed that this problem exists with Deutsche Telekom. Allegedly, Deutsche Telekom needs these payments because costs for them are so high because of the high data volume in the network. Do you remember how much data volume, Telekom actually gave their users for free with StreamOn? Now, this worked from 2017 to 2021. How is it possible that it is now so expensive so that, it goes beyond Deutsche Telekom's, means? If, the Arte and Spotify send data packages to Telekom, they do that because, German users are using Telekom services. Getting this access is a service that Deutsche Telekom sold to its customers. We're talking about charging people twice for the same service.
They're getting this from their customers and then from the services that their customers want to use. The internet line only works for Deutsche Telekom if two parties pay for it, and with either a hoster or somebody else that pays Telekom. Only if the payment is made, data can flow. This is a paid fast lane, and this is a prime example of a violation of network neutrality. That's why my NGO along with the Federation of German Consumer Organizations and others have lodged a complaint with the German Telecommunications Authority. On netzbremse.de, you can find this complaint. With all the necessary information. You can also leave a donation there. We're doing this on behalf of our customers because they are complaining about this problem.
If you look for any help on the Telekom website, you will hear from desperate customers who are all telling the same story. I cannot use this service on the Internet. It's not loading. There is no connection. But if you pay for a VPN, for example, everything works fine. What can I do? Telekom's official answer is, "Then why don't you use a VPN?" In other words, if the service of your choice is not paid by Deutsche Telekom, you have to pay for a VPN that Telekom offers. This is a broken Internet. This is a violation of the core principle of network neutrality. There's one thing that really surprised me in this project: how much fear there is on the part of the companies involved. No matter where I looked, everybody has this problem with Deutsche Telekom and the enormous costs for interconnections.
Hardly anyone dares to complain about this, because whoever does will have to pay even higher costs or will be cut off from maybe 40% of the German market, which is like a death sentence for a European company. I'm just giving you the truth here. These methods are reminiscent of a mafia movie and need to be outlawed, and this is why we have the Federal Network Agency, Telecommunications Agency. I hope Mr. Müller will remember what they have to do in order to prevent these practices from occurring in Germany. Now, let me ask my questions in the remaining 2 minutes. What is the revenue that Telekom generates from interconnecting networks per country? How much costs were incurred from the dismantling of StreamOn? And how many customers inside or outside the European economic area still have contracts with zero rating functionality?
Have you become aware of this aspect in the E.U. regulation, and what is the impact on the company?
Next speaker is Markus Dufner from the Association of Critical Shareholders.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Board of Management, Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom AG, Mr. Höttges, Dr. Appel. My name is Markus Dufner. I'm the General Manager of the Association of Critical Shareholders, and I'm speaking on behalf of our 29 member organizations at today's AGM. We represent, Mr. Lohninger mentioned it already, almost 220,000 shares of many small shareholders. Ladies and gentlemen, this year, my organization celebrates its 40th anniversary. I think that we haven't missed any of the 30 AGMs of Deutsche Telekom AG. My first one was in 2007.
I'm especially pleased that Thomas Lohninger from Epicenter.works just spoke here at the AGM. I think, he addressed a key issue. It's understandable that the complaint was lodged with the Federation of German Consumer Organizations. We support their demands. We are 100% behind this complaint. I'm going to give you a couple of more explanations, and we are not going to ratify the actions of the board of management and the supervisory board. Mr. Höttges, how do you handle this situation that there is now a complaint against Deutsche Telekom because of the violation of network neutrality? Ladies and gentlemen, we wish for a responsible and customer-friendly Deutsche Telekom, but we are unfortunately still very far from that. The issue of energy consumption, Mr. Pontzen from Union Investment already raised this issue.
Deutsche Telekom is considered to be a sustainable company and emphasizes that it is climate neutral in its operations, but there are gaps. Due to the quick build-out of your infrastructure and the global data centers that you operate, energy consumption of the company has gone up enormously. An exclusive operation with renewable energies is not planned currently. The energy consumption of data centers is really huge, as you mentioned yourself. Now, if you have this insight, why are you not operating these data centers in a climate neutral way? Some data centers use as much power as a small town, and this is even going to go up due to the use of AI. There's an enormous water consumption because the systems need to be cooled.
In Germany, we're still in a somewhat comfortable situation, but if you look at Southern Europe, for example, it's a completely different matter. Studies from the U.S. have shown that gigantic data centers will lead to a deterioration of air quality, water quality, at the expense of communities. You know, amphibians and small species depend on a natural environment. I mean, from what you said, I got the impression that you're not taking this seriously, the protection of flora and fauna, because you kind of joked about it. Mr. Höttges, please be honest. How high are the emissions in the supply chain of Deutsche Telekom when it comes to building servers and data centers? Why are you not including these Scope 3 emissions?
Because one thing is clear, the infrastructure that Deutsche Telekom is building and is using needs to be sustainable. Another key issue is the planned cooperation with SpaceX and its Starlink system. Basically, the idea to close gaps in coverage, it makes sense, but there are enormous risks because Elon Musk controls Starlink, and he has already demonstrated that the decisions he takes can have global implications. For example, in the Ukraine conflict, Europe could become very much dependent on one single U.S. company. Also, technical utilization is very limited because a very small number of terminal devices has even access to the system. We cannot afford this dependence. Infrastructure has to be transparent and needs to be controlled in the interest of our society. Questions on the U.S. business. Why is Telekom involved in U.S. campaign funding via T-Mobile? It's not doing that in Germany.
What are the principles that you use to decide which political party to support? Secondly, in your management report, you say that group-wide standards like the Supply Chain Act and the DEI policy will need to be adapted in the U.S. How can you talk about global responsibility if key human rights standards and environmental standards are not maintained in the U.S.? Why don't you have the ISO certification for industrial safety in the U.S. that applies elsewhere? Your U.S. subsidiary has stopped certain DEI programs, it seems after pressure coming from the U.S. government. Why did you do that? Deutsche Telekom insists on codetermination rights of its workforce. Why is that not guaranteed in the U.S.? Other questions about group-wide standards and human rights. Your human rights statement is voluntary without any monitoring mechanisms.
When will Deutsche Telekom have a human rights governance that is in compliance also with the due diligence in the Supply Chain Act? How do you make sure that there are not double standards used by the company in the U.S. and outside the U.S. which could harm the company? Three questions about remuneration, transparency, and ESG inconsistencies. First, why in the remuneration report is there no reference to social standards, equal pay as prescribed by some standards? Deutsche Telekom actually excludes the U.S. business from its ESG targets. Why are you not including this in your reporting? Third, if the U.S. segment makes up more than half of your bottom line, how can an ESG record be credible if it doesn't take into account your U.S. business? How does Deutsche Telekom want to be globally responsible if the U.S. subsidiary is not included?
Secondly, when will your remuneration report also include ESG targets to see that the commercial success and the financial success is fairly distributed? When it comes to agenda item 7, elections to the Supervisory Board. In the case of Dr. Appel, we would vote no. Item nine, remuneration of Supervisory Board members, we also will vote no. Item 11, we do not approve the remuneration report. Dear shareholders, let me summarize. Violation of net neutrality, high environmental burden due to data centers, lack of transparency with regard to Scope 3 emissions in the supply chain make clear that Board of Management and Supervisory Board are not living up to our expectations. That's why my organization calls for a rejection of ratification of the actions of Board of Management and Supervisory Board. Thank you very much.
Next is Devran Demir. Who represents Ms. Stappenbeck? After the next question, we'll answer the questions, and then Reinhard Matthäus, Mr. Eberle, Ms. Herner, and Mr. Peter Streichhan will take the floor.
Dr. Appel, Mr. Höttges, dear members of the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management, dear shareholders of Deutsche Telekom. My name is Devran Demir, and I speak here on behalf of the Umbrella organization of the critical shareholders and its 29 member organizations. As discussed previously, we are at a watershed today for Deutsche Telekom. Deutsche Telekom is investing again. Investing a lot in new AI factories and data centers, including the new facility in Munich, plus a lot of international projects for its business customer segment. Progress, yes. How are the employees involved in this? What is their share? As a former state enterprise, Deutsche Telekom bears special responsibility in this regard.
For us, it is clear that we need a democratic and transparent infrastructure. Projects must be shaped such that civil society is involved and that the ecological implications are clearly defined, and that the interests of society are borne in mind beyond economic interests. We are seeing double standards here. Employee rights and safety standards are not implemented and covered everywhere. Certain programs have been stopped, partly under political pressure. However, employee safety should not be dependent on the mood of individual managers. We believe there should be uniform standards for employee rights and for various processes, including external audits. Certain rights are completely ignored in the U.S. Energy consumption and things like that are not considered for remuneration. We believe that the reasons given are not right.
It looks as if Deutsche Telekom wants to make more profits in the U.S. at the expense of the environment. The question for me is, why is it that Telekom is taking this approach to its U.S. business? Dear shareholders, environmental pollution, employee rights and risky partnerships make it quite clear that the board of management has failed to meet its responsibility, which is why we demand that the board of management not be granted discharge at today's AGM. Another important topic is board of management remuneration. As CEO, Mr. Höttges received EUR 11.2 million last year, which was more than the usual EUR 11 million. That's the usual threshold. When you look at the average salary, then we have a ratio of 138 to 1 here in comparison.
Related to a median salary, it is actually 589 to 1. The entire remuneration paid to the board amounted to EUR 40 million, and it wasn't quite clear to what extent all this money was connected to specific targets. For instance, providing the right framework for investments and things like that. It's not transparent to shareholders how this can actually be guaranteed. I would like to ask the board of management the following questions: What are your strategic targets? From your point of view, what is an environment that is conducive to investments? We also think that employees should have their fair share. ver.di demands a 6.6% rise and EUR 120 more for trainees. That's the least you can do to make sure that your employees have a fair share of the company's success.
Dear shareholders, the decision for us is do we just want to have a Telekom that focuses on profitability and that accepts dependencies, or do we want to have a company that also lives up to its social responsibility? We think it is time for a new course. Telekom should take responsibility for its employees, for the environment, and for society as a whole. Thank you.
I would like to make an announcement. We are going to restrict speaking time to 5 minutes starting with the next group of speakers. It is now a quarter to three. I would ask if you still have any questions, please proceed to the speakers' registration counter because I am going to close the speakers' list in about 15 minutes. So if you still have any questions, please proceed to the speakers' registration counter. Now we are going to answer some of the questions raised. Mr. Höttges.
Mr. Strenger. You mentioned advertising in connection with my remuneration. Now, we will consider your proposal, and we'll discuss it with our advertising colleagues. I don't think it's a good idea, but let's see what the colleagues are saying. You talked about possible takeovers from European competitors, and you wanted to learn more about our investment plans in Europe and beyond. We generally, you know, monitor our portfolio. We always keep an eye on several options, and then it remains to be seen whether they will materialize or not. We're not doing any bad deals. If prices are too high, then we opt out. Yes, of course, there are always competitors for every transaction. When it comes to organic growth in the fiber and non-organic growth.
There are several options, and yes, we are generally interested in making acquisitions, but that's all I can say here. Anything else would be speculations, and we do not generally comment on M&A transactions anyway. Let me get back to Mr. Lohninger’s comments. To start things off here, it's just not right what he's saying, and I am saying that what he said is wrong. You talked about an alleged discrepancy regarding network fees. No, we are not, you know, creating an artificial scarcity of the data streams. Any asymmetric data streams, you know, as part of interconnection are a completely common thing in our industry. The E.U. regulation on open internet expressly allows that we charge fees for peering and the transit of data, and that does not breach the rules regarding network neutrality.
The court in Düsseldorf recently corroborated that the transfer of comprehensive data through our lines is a service that we can demand a fee for. Well, first of all, this has got nothing to do with our agenda here today. Second of all, if you're not happy with the service we offer, why don't you go somewhere else? Thirdly, you know, in the past, when we exchanged certain network services with others free of charge in the past, then that was because we gave data traffic and we received data traffic. And if it was about the same amount of data, then no fees were charged. Now about 90% of all the traffic comes from the internet companies, and we're not charging anything for it, which means that we are covering 90% of the various companies' networks.
We need to make sure that we have the necessary capacities for that, and we try to then reach an agreement legally with other companies. That wasn't possible because other big internet companies said, "What do you wanna do? We just, you know, block all your networks with spam and all that other rubbish, and that's it." I said, "Okay, if you wanna do that, then we want you to pay for it." I wouldn't know why that would be not legitimate. It's in the interest of the company and of the shareholders. We said, "If you don't accept that, then we'll take it to court." We won against Meta in three instances, and Meta will now pay EUR 40 million to us in damages. Our point of view was actually corroborated in court.
That's why I think all your allegations are completely unfounded. You talked about energy consumption and our climate neutrality goal in connection with our data center in Munich. Well, what you said is not true. We are greenhouse gas neutral across our operations. Since 2021, all our electricity in networks and data centers, 100%, comes from renewable energies. That also holds true for Munich. The new AI cloud center in Munich receives 100% green electricity and has a very efficient energy value of 1.2. 100% of the electricity is green electricity. Plus, we have a very innovative cooling solution of the Eisbach, which is very efficient. That's what I meant when I said, you know, flora and fauna and progress belong together.
We want 100% green electricity, but we also want 100% progress in this country. You talked about employee interests at our subsidiary in the U.S. Now, there are often employees in our industry in the U.S. are not unionized. However, it is always possible to hold elections to form a union. All our employees in the U.S. have a right to join a union or to set up a union. Whether or not this is going to happen is decided by the U.S. employees on the basis of U.S. regulations. We generally and globally respect the right of assembly, but we cannot change any existing laws and rules in the U.S. Mr. Strenger, you asked whether I wouldn't be the ideal person for the German parliament in Berlin.
Well, I thought about that, and what I'm saying is everybody's got a right, has an obligation to do something for this country. I will also say that by doing my job here at Telekom, I am also making a contribution to the competitiveness of Germany as a country. However, I also believe that, you know, I don't think I'd make for an ideal politician in Germany. Probably I'm too stubborn for that. But yeah, well, I still have some time to spend at Deutsche Telekom anyway, so I can still think about it. With that, over to my CFO.
Mr. Lohninger. You asked about revenues and costs of interconnection and what are the costs from the discontinuation of StreamOn. I have to disappoint you because, we haven't been able to find any data on that.
I can't comment on revenues or cost structures here. It's small financial contributions in total, small fees, as Tim already mentioned. Basically, we give data and we receive data, and we don't have any numbers on the discontinuation of StreamOn, I'm afraid. I'm through. That was the only question I had to answer.
Okay, I have a couple of questions to answer first from Mr. Dufner. Mr. Dufner, you asked about the remuneration report, and you said that it would be important for the shareholders to see whether the company's profits are shared on a fair basis. I think it's important to look at two KPIs here. First of all, employee satisfaction, and secondly, customer satisfaction. Needless to say, you can, you know, inflate reporting beyond those KPIs, but these two are particularly important.
You will find them in the remuneration system, which is documented in the remuneration report of the board. The company has reported extensively about this topic anyway for a long time. We also report on the number of women in managerial positions and have been doing so for a long time. Of course, you can always demand more, but we believe it's in the interest of the shareholders that the most relevant factors are covered, and that's diversity and employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Mr. Dufner's second question referred to IFRS 16. Of course, we also look at differences in pay. That is analyzed and evaluated.
We look at how the salary or the pay of our members of the board have developed over time and benchmark it against others, and we're not aware of any major anything that would give the idea that the pay is inadequate. Mr. Demir, you said, "Please state your strategic goals, and how can you provide a framework that is conducive to investments?" Well, that would be a framework that allows us to, you know, generate return on investment on all the investments we make. Strategic goals, let me give you one example for the CEO. The question was, can we ascertain that we have a lean organization in place? Can we really monetize our networks? These are the kind of goals. As for the ESG multipliers, we look at Scope 1 and Scope 2 as a basis. Why that?
Why not Scope 3? Because transparency of Scope 3 is still kind of wary and cannot be guaranteed. These were the questions to me. Still, any questions pending?
Yeah, there's one more. Another question from Mr. Dufner. You asked about a change of programs in the context of diversity in the U.S. Well, first of all, we respect local law in every country where we have a footprint, generally, and all of these countries are democratically legitimized. We respect the basic values and equal opportunities, and this is the compass that we will remain committed in. In all of the countries where we have a footprint, you know, rights are not generally violated, and whatever happens in the U.S. is based on U.S. law and U.S. regulations.
As for the employees of T-Mobile U.S., Mike Sievert, the CEO at the time, made it clear that values such as inclusion, tolerance, and a safe environment for all employees are to be adhered to. That was made quite clear, and this has also been confirmed by the current management team in the U.S. Yeah, this is certainly in line with the goals and the values of Deutsche Telekom overall. Mr. Strenger, you asked how much information was disclosed on your employees worldwide. Somebody said that TellMe is not shared in a transparent way. It was said that some information is provided through the TellMe whistleblower portal.
In 2025, we had 361 compliance-related hints, 275 of which came from employees in the whistleblower system. Whenever there is a hint, we have a special department in place under the responsibility of Mrs. Bohle, and they look into it. Now the last question, that's about Scope 3 emissions. We said that we use 100% renewables for our data center service and network technology. That falls under Scope 3 emissions. We transparently report on those emissions in our relevant reports. In our reports, we also make it clear how we want to achieve climate neutrality in the future. In terms of AI, we have an enablement factor of one to four that is relevant to us. Making networks and processes more efficient will also help us to reduce emissions further.
By the way, AI is quite helpful in many areas when it comes to improving our carbon footprint, and that's why this is also part of our Scope 1 to 3 documentation.
Excellent. That brings us to the next block of questions. The gentleman that I've just named should step up to the podium and to give their presentations and questions.
My name is Reinhard Matthäus. I'm a private shareholder and have been since 1996. I'm someone who just [has] a retroactive look. I think it's a pity, even though I registered before this event, Dr. Appel, and we had problems last year. I think it's a pity that before I even start, you reduce my time. You've been doing it better than last year, but you have room for improvement. I would ask you. It's not good when you come here as a shareholder. I came from Freiburg, and I spent the night in a hotel. We have a tax on our dividends. You're the only person in Germany that I know, probably because this used to be a state-owned company, where indirect shareholders get to speak first, and then the actual shareholders have to wait till last.
Let me briefly, you know, trace back over the last few years. In 1996, you went public with an incredible advertising campaign, but as a kind of a weak company, given your past as a state-owned company. Today, you're a strong company, powerful company, and you've gotten rid of a lot of the ballast from the state-owned time. Although the state as a shareholder is still around. The shareholder, the state, has never said that they thought that Telekom is bad, the supervisory board and the management board. That's amazing, ladies and gentlemen. Let me tell you what I thought was bad about the last 30 years, though. There's been three placements of shares and a lot of ruffled feathers.
Mr. Grube was an advertising figure, regretted doing that advertising for Telekom, and he died 10 years ago. I took the liberty of researching this, and I'm glad that you finally reached a phase where you're paying good dividends and including closing this gap between 332 and 105. That's an achievement of Mr. Höttges and his team. What really infuriated me as a shareholder over the last 30 years was that once you had T-Online listed on a public exchange. You did. I didn't like that IPO with them. Also, he did a lot for Deutsche Telekom T-Connect. I think we should hold him fondly in our memory because I think he did a fantastic job. In preparing for today, I looked more closely at several things that I'm interested in.
I've been a shareholder for many years, not just in this company. Mr. Höttges and his team probably know about AI, which answers about 80% of the questions today. I'm not a telecom customer and need to be acquired. I'm just an average guy. Every producer of diapers, of nappies, knows how much they can sell to consumers. So an average AI should know what amount of sales can be generated in the life cycle of an individual. Do you calculate that? Because that's an important metric, I think. I have a feeling sometimes when some speakers are up here that they present a skewed picture of Deutsche Telekom and its business. Since I'm here standing in front of you, I'd like to ask about it. If you terminate my speaking time too quickly, Mr. Chairman, then I will object.
First, let me come to my question. If I see things correctly, the business in the U.S. was acquired at some point, but not as a subsidiary, but rather through numerous mergers and management work. It's a listed company which has a very high market capitalization of EUR 250 billion. As far as I know, it's the only listed company in Germany. You're the only company in Germany that has a successful business in the U.S. That's pretty amazing. Usually, the Americans don't aren't open to European investors. Just look at what happened to Bayer in Leverkusen, right? German companies burn their fingers in America, usually. If I understand your strategy correctly, it would be good if you could explain it more. Do you attach importance to the de facto majority stake?
We do have more than 50.1% of the share there. U.S. business is supposed to grow, supposed to pay out dividends, and if it has money left over at the end of the day to buy back shares. That also brings money into the purses because but you don't seem to valuate the shares in the U.S. If we have 53%, then the CEO probably gets together with the CFO to decide on whether to sell 1% or so. Then that means a big injection of money coming to Germany. Did I understand that correctly? Because some statements have been erroneous in this regard. Is this a very successful listed company? That there's a similarity in name to the German business, but you're actually just the majority shareholder.
Does that mean that you really tell them what to do in America? I would also like to know one thing. I have submitted a question. If I submit a question, will I get a written response? Would you agree to that? Yeah, I am glad. I have one request that's really important to me, a big request and something I don't understand at all. Deutsche Telekom, for me, is really a blue chip name on the public exchange. Last year I said, "I would like to have the staff capital participation." Then it was 1,050, and then it was 2,000 beginning on January 1st. I didn't get a response from you, so I assume it's still 1,000.
We talked about capital formation on the agenda, and the head of HR has a huge interest in this. If I look at the website of your investor relations, I see KV-KWA, federal government, and investors. I understood that shareholders of Telekom. Do one thing, you're a beacon in the capital market, and even if you provide a 10% discount, every American company does that. Why are the Americans and their T-Mobile U.S. so successful? Because they know how to motivate people, and I would urge you to do the same. Think about it and then capital investors will respond. Looking out there's twice as many people as we see here. Also the interns that you hire, I think you should give them a bonus.
Well, thank you. You've spoken longer than anybody else, but I still request the speakers to limit themselves to 5 minutes. Maximilian Eberle is next, followed by Daniela Werner. I have an announcement to make. I wanted to say that the registration counter has now been closed. So Mr. Eberle.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for Dr. Appel for introducing me. Maximilian Eberle is my name from Oberursel. I'm the shareholder representative of number 48812. I have the following observation to make because this is a multi-billion company and we have a speaking time. I need 15 minutes because it's very complex and you allotted a huge amount of time to other persons to ask their questions, and that's why I would ask for the shareholders to be given more time to ask their questions.
We're talking about a shareholder culture here in a positive light, and that we should also be given an, you know, an ample time. We're not looking for confrontation with, and you're not looking for confrontation with the shareholders, but some critical questions are going to be raised. I've already suggested that the speaking time be increased to 50 minutes. It's worth it. Even if we're here till 10 P.M., then we'll be here till 10 P.M. But then will all the persons involved, all the stakeholders will be satisfied then because I thought that Lego thing was pretty childish, but, and Germany at least was shown on that little model. But all the other countries you're present weren't there. I think you meant it well, but the whole history behind that and how many countries do you operate in, for example?
It's fantastic to look at these nominations here, and I would expect that the management board and advisory supervisory board would comment on these nominations. On page 3 and 4, what they say there, I have my doubts as to whether that corresponds to the truth. I would be embarrassed if this was a sales product because. Then last year I asked about the cost of gas, and I also asked how many people are affected by that, and of course, how great the expenses were in 2025. I would like to know how much you spent for that, and I would be interested as well. Would it be conceivable that as an honorary guest for next year that Mr. Bauer, the architect of the Telekom building, could be invited here?
Cause he doesn't live far away, and I think it would be just a show of respect because this building is unique throughout the world. That's just a positive suggestion, and to invite him as an honorary guest to this event, even though it doesn't really have to do with telecom business. The following, you know, 50 years ago, Apple was founded and, as you know, that's a huge multinational company with an annual revenue of $400 billion. Dollars, I mean. It's a little weaker now, of course, but that's exactly what I'm talking about here. You know, the business in the U.S., the dollar is a critical variable in the equation, and how much revenue is generated in the U.S., all of that is, you know, subject to this currency risk. How about other countries, though, like Africa?
They're considered to be growth drivers. Where do you see potential out there with real sustainability, which will really drive growth at this company? In the coming 5 years up to 2030. The average salary in Germany is EUR 80,000. You said 10 minutes, and I think it's impolite if for no reason you shorten my speaking time.
Can you just ask your question? That's what's important.
No question, I see the clock, and I assumed 10 minutes would be the allotted time. I think it's not necessary to cut me short because I wanna say a lot more, but it's a pity. Nevertheless, I really cross my fingers for the 190,000 employees here.
In closing, I'd just like to ask the quota of severely disabled persons at your company. Another recommendation, positively meant, as a former employee who has died now. I think next year we should have a moment of silence for all those who are no longer with us. I thank you for your attention. Hope that this event continues to get traction as a positive event.
Yeah. Next, Mr. Werner, and then Peter Streichhan, and then we'll answer the questions.
Good afternoon. My name is Daniela Werner, and I am a customer, I'm shareholder, and I'm a citizen of this country. In these three functions, I have a few comments and some questions addressed to the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board. My first point is about the forced migration of MagentaOne 2.0. If you have MagentaTV. Just some background, I used to use the media receiver, and I was highly satisfied, and I could watch programs over and over again when I stored them, but now it's gone. This piece of technology will be gone. It's scrap, and I got a MagentaOne box. I hope it works. The target date was the 31st of March, and I was wondering whether the date of the AGM is in direct context.
I will be surprised whether it works or not, but the following questions on this: Has there ever been agreement with the users whether they wanted to have this forced migration being a restriction? I think it's rather autocratic and not democratic to just switch off this technology. What would have been the additional costs if you still had a parallel operation of the old system? What are the experiences so far by customers who had problems, who didn't have any problems? Will you have further adjustments regarding the user interface if the experience is not so good? I heard that with EPG, the function is not very good, and people are not satisfied. The main point, why Google? Without Google, you will not get any MagentaTV any longer, and I don't like it. First of all, coming back to your refusal, Mr.
Höttges, to switch off the copper network. I think it's good that you have such a clear view, but for Magenta 2.0, there was no problem to just switch it off to retire the system. Isn't there an alternative to Google, this data stealer? I think you are giving the data for free. In Munich, it's different. For the business customers, you use SAP, but for the normal people in the street, you have to use Google, and you can't do it without it. Just a question, was there money paid from Telekom to Google or from Google to Telekom, or is this a win-win-lose situation? Telekom win, Google win, and customers lose because we no longer have the option to choose. I really try to be quick. T-Mobile U.S.
For me, it's quite worrying that we are so dependent from the U.S., the revenue from the U.S., and this is a market in a country which is led by a dilettante, by an autocrat. I would like to know about your strategy in this country. There was this strange meeting with Trump in 2025, where Zuckerberg and Altman and Cook and everybody were there. Was Mike Sievert there involved as well? Did Mike Sievert get an invitation? Didn't he follow this invitation? Secondly, would Mr. Gopalan be invited in a future meeting, and would he come or wouldn't he come? Well, T-Mobile U.S., the task of the DEI program is a political statement. This is something that you have to be very clear about.
It's a statement, a political statement if you wish it to be or not, and perhaps you could have done it in a better way because this is really now a stain here. Fourth point, fiber rollout. Last year, I asked you, do you see the end of the road regarding the requirement of speed and volume on the part of the users? I have to say that I am absolutely happy with DSL and copper cable, and if I don't have to, I will not use fiber. You already said that you won't switch off the copper lines. It's not yet imminent. I would really feel bad if somebody would just steal my DSL and the copper line while it works. My experience is if a piece of software is renewed, then it's really very difficult. I would say never change a winning system.
Here I see the red light flashing. I'm very sorry, I'm not finished by far. I would like to continue. Banning smartphones from the schools. I also asked it last year. People always say the media competencies of our youngsters have to be improved. It's just like sitting in a boat where the water is already coming in and then you start teaching them swimming without giving them the rescue ring. What is the impact on your revenues if, for example, for many hours a day, the mobile connection will be switched off for young people? We have responsibility for our people, and AI in soft toys is a crime. It should be banned. I will not talk about sustainability now, although I have to say it's euphemistic to say we will just give the heat to the Eisbach.
It will lose its name then. Wouldn't it be possible to just use this heat for district heating? You create heat, and you then hand over this heat to the municipality, to the utility, and they will have warm water and warm flats. Then the psychological footprint of your activities are very important. This leads me to the topic of AI. AI is the Pandora's box that we have opened. It's a technology which combines blessing and curse. I will not say that it's all bad, but a lot is bad. Especially if applications are moved to the Internet and are exposed to everything you can have, cyberattacks, fake news.
Can I ask you to ask your questions because you have been talking 2 minutes too long already? I didn't get this. Please come to your questions now.
Okay. My question is: What is the ethical attitude of Deutsche Telekom, especially you, Mr. Höttges, regarding AI, especially regarding cyber abuse, manipulation? The gates are open, especially for aggressive cyber applications. Regulation is required. Do you want the users, developers, and the connectivity providers, such as Deutsche Telekom, to make certain, to take certain precautions? I think it's not good if you just leave it to the parents. AI is something that has now escaped into the world, and now we are trying to get it in again. This is it. It is too late in many areas already. I have to skip a lot of the things I planned to say, which I think is a pity because it's important for me as a customer, as a stakeholder, and as a shareholder. Mr. Höttges, please be responsible.
AI is a technology which is or might be much more of a curse than a blessing. Talk about the bad points of AI and please accept that some people want to have an analog life and still want to control their own lives. I would like to pay compliments to the call center employees, the agents of Deutsche Telekom, because if you really want to talk to a real person where you can perhaps exchange jokes and sometimes also quarrel, this was also working very well, and I always gave five stars. I got another SMS message asking me to give an assessment, and I will send a very good one because it was good. Well, of course, perhaps at some point in time, people might say, "It's Mr. Werner again."
He doesn't want to talk to the chatbot. I will immediately lead him to the real person, and this is really what we need. I want to talk to real human beings.
Thank you very much, Mr. Werner. Then we've got Mr. Streichhan, and then we answer questions, and then we'll have another list of people. But first, Mr. Streichhan.
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Peter Streichhan, and I represent my family's own shares. When I say ladies and gentlemen, I'm really talking to everybody because the gendering is something that I do not like. I want to have a clear language, and this is also true for the critical shareholders. This is really an insult because this also means that people who are not part of the critical shareholders are stupid and idiots.
No, everybody here invested into the share, but you also have to take into account that everybody has the same value. The presentation at the beginning given by Mr. Höttges really deserves our respect. It was wonderful. If you retire in 2028, all the federal chancellors would be happy to have you as the department head of the press department. You would probably lose 97% of your income. Perhaps the remaining income would still be enough to buy some Telekom shares for your grandchildren. Mr. Strenger already said this. Yes, you have to go to Berlin. Perhaps you say this person is too talking too much, but I have 70 years experience in politics, and I saw that many people who were very aggressive in the beginning but were then tamed down in politics.
Probably this would also happen to you, and we can talk about it bilaterally if you wish. You also said that the group uses a lot of AI, but I also think you've got the Easter bunny also as one of your employees because I was suddenly moved backwards in the list of speakers. I got on the list together with Mr. Strenger, but then I'm eight places behind him. I would like to praise you that you have a face-to-face meeting here, and I will also tell you one: democracy sometimes is a nuisance, but it also needs some meetings until 9:00 P.M., 10:00 P.M . More than 55 years ago, for two terms of offices, I worked as scientific consultant, and the best times were after midnight. You learned a lot. That was really democracy.
When most of the members of parliament were tired, you really could talk the truth. Perhaps we should really say 10 minutes for everybody or 15 minutes for everybody. Let me come back to the share. I will appeal to you not only to the benefit of the Telekom share, but to support shares in general for several reasons. We will not be able to pay pensions in the future if you don't have shares. There is a misdistribution of wealth, and you need shares. If AI does not only replace experts but liquidates experts, it's difficult how to manage your life. You have to invest in shares over and over again, and you should not have a tax discrimination. Mr. Steinbrück has said that he wanted to give a benefit to the shareholders as compared to workers or employees.
No, this is absolutely wrong. This is an improvement for all the dividends for the smaller people to 100% and for the richer people, only 11%. Then the disappearing board member for technology has been mentioned before. The question is: Will the company also be able to request money from him? Because this is also possible if somebody leaves so quickly. I think the supervisory board was sleeping too much. Alfred Herrhausen always asked, "What is the difference between a dog's hut and the supervisory board?" This is really telling you that the supervisory board is not of any use. Now the United States, I've got a very specific question on that. Deutsche Telekom United States is paying something for the 250 years celebrations. This is the celebrations of the independence.
Is it ruled out that money of Deutsche Telekom, of us, of the employees, is flowing into this building of the new hall by Mr. Trump? The U.S. president, in order to be careful, has very interesting ideas. If he comes up with the idea and says, "Well, my MAGA colleagues phone so much," but then all this money will be given to T-Mobile U.S., and he will say that the profit is going to the dead fucking Germans. Well, we have to ask about the taxes. Is there a possibility to fight against this? I already see the red light flashing, but red is a wonderful color of love and blood, that it's always seen as negative here. I don't really like it.
Could you please ask your questions?
Sure, I am on it. How many sponsors? How many, how much is sponsored? How much does Telekom sponsor? The Value Munich and the Telecom Baskets and the culture field. The last question on the Football World Cup: What made you give the money, the good money of Deutsche Telekom to one of the most corrupt persons in the football world, Mr. Infantino? I read that, the two broadcasting stations are paying EUR 172 million to the FIFA. How much are we paying? How much did we pay? Will this be a profit or a loss for us? Thank you very much and have a good Easter period.
We'll now move to the answering of the question, and then I ask Mr. Heinz and Mr. Hans Holzwarth, Mr. Saltin, and then Mr. Florian Erlac. The only question that you asked me, if I remember correctly, and I'll have to check it up, you asked me with the we can invite the architect of the T-Kom as an honorary guest here. Well, we have never discussed to invite guests here to the AGM, but I think we should rather be careful and not invite any special guests. We will take it up, and we will discuss this. Perhaps we can invite guests in the future. Now over to Mr. Höttges.
Mr. Muth's question. If the stake in T-Mobile, rather than selling them, if we keep them, whether this would be profitable.
Yes, it's true, we can generate cash through this. We said at the start of the year that we are not going to sell into the share buyback program, because it's a high-value asset, so it's worthwhile keeping our stake and even raising it in T-Mobile U.S. Definitely not below 50%. How much revenue do we generate in the U.S.? Are there any activities planned in other countries? First of all, roughly 2/3 of our revenue comes from the U.S., 21% in Germany, and 10% in the European portfolio, and 3% comes from T-Systems. Now, what we are doing now, and we've seen this before, whenever we somehow ramp up our activity somewhere, it's in those markets that are going well. We're not going beyond this right now.
We're not expanding the current portfolio right now, so nothing is planned on this score. Customer acquisition, what's the average revenue per customer across the life cycle? Revenue earnings per customer per life cycle, we don't publish those figures. We report the KPIs, and we basically manage, value comes before quantity, and we reward long-term loyalty. The life cycle revenue, we don't report this publicly. What is the ratio of people with severe disabilities? In 2025 was 7.75%. There's a legal requirement of 5% of the workforce, and we are above that legally required ratio. We've always felt committed to people with serious disabilities, and this will not change, so we are above the legal requirement. These were my answers.
Let me pick up here. Mr. Dufner, you are mentioning the credibility of including the U.S. business in our ESG reporting. We actually don't separate the segments. We of course include the U.S. segment in this. You mentioned a group-wide human rights governance system by including T-Mobile U.S. Deutsche Telekom faithfully implements the requirements of the Due Diligence and the Supply Chain Act. Deutsche Telekom as a, an independent stock-listed company. T-Mobile is an independent stock-listed company, so it is subject to U.S. regulations and not German regulations. It is not impacted by German legal regulations. Mr. Lohninger, you raised the question about the number of customers with zero rating and network neutrality. With regard to the zero rating customers, I don't have any figures that I can share with you. We of course comply with all legal regulations.
I pointed out before that we report to 230 agencies, authorities. We are permanently monitored, and there are no problems that we needed to talk about. Is there a commitment to network neutrality as part of the Digital Networks Act?
First of all, of course, we champion the open Internet. We are also committed to a flexible legal framework within the European Union. However, we think it's very questionable that the E.U. is now missing a chance to adapt the current rules to modern technologies like 5G slicing, and that's why we called for an innovation-friendly legal framework. We are committed to a high-performance open network, and we have always pointed out that we will stick to the law when it comes to the data traffic management and the interconnecting with other networks.
We, of course, respect the open internet regulations in Europe. Blind network neutrality, as Mr. Lohninger is calling for, would lead to a dire situation that everybody has the best possible bandwidth. That sounds good, but if you operate a machine, a robot that has to respond in milliseconds, and if you download a video or send a text message, and you need milliseconds, then I don't understand why the fastest capacity must be available to everyone. It's not logical. You won't find it in China or in the United States. It's again, an invention of the European Union, and it will harm our economic future.
My appeal is that every service, of course, has to be available to every customer, but there has to be an option to differentiate our services according to the technological requirements that we have, whether it's a robot, whether it's an ambulance or a police patrol vehicle. Because the networks today can provide this differentiation. We don't want a blind network neutrality definition, but a differentiated network which supports the performance of our economy.
Now let's move on to the complaint that was lodged on this issue. I think I've made a clear statement here. The higher regional court in Düsseldorf has confirmed our legal perspective on network neutrality. This demand in terms of fair shares, in terms of the fair share when it comes to peering has been upheld by the German judges.
Next topic, waste heat in Munich from the data center. It's good that you're raising this question, Mr. Werner. Because I obviously didn't, I wasn't clear enough in terms of the Eisbach. The Eisbach, we get water from this river. The data center, of course, heats up the water. We use this, the heated water in order to heat basically the entire area, the Tucherpark in Munich. The waste heat goes into the heating system, which cools down the river again. After the water has cooled down, it will be again discharged into the river. This is an optimal use of waste heat, and this is also in line with the E.U regulations, with national law, and in the Munich case, also local requirements.
This is exactly what we are managing to do here with the distance heating network that we have set up, along with the data center. I think it's an exemplary situation. Now, let's move on to human rights standards. As an international group, of course, there is always a tension that we have to navigate between different sets of laws. In Europe, we have legal guarantees for equal opportunities and E.U. regulation on gender quotas, for example. We're pursuing these objectives as they are stipulated. The board of management also makes sure that the requirements of the German Corporate Governance Code is complied. T-Mobile U.S., of course, is always in line with applicable U.S. regulations and legal requirements, which we pointed out before. They don't do anything that violates our set of values.
Dufner, you asked about the lack of the ISO certification 45001. On industrial safety, we make sure that in terms of industrial safety, all applicable rules are complied with. Secondly, certification with this ISO standard is not necessary. Wherever a tender requires it, we will always implement the necessary requirements. The DEKRA, for example, is a certification institute which will always confirm our compliance in these cases. You also talked about the global footprint. Deutsche Telekom has a footprint in 50 countries worldwide. Mr. Streichhan, you raised the donation T-Mobile U.S. for the 250th anniversary celebration in the U.S. and the construction of the ballroom in the White House. T-Mobile U.S. deliberately did not donate any money to the ballroom, but the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which includes the White House.
T-Mobile has no influence on how the money of this fund is spent in Washington, D.C. I mean, it's a common practice for U.S. companies to donate money to this organization. Of course, it's a duty, and it's also our commitment to do this on the occasion of the 250th anniversary celebrations. Mr. Eberle, you talked about growth potential and real sustainability and the fact that this provides some tailwind for us. I absolutely agree. Our customers are very much aware of whether we act sustainably or not, and also our human rights record. If you consider our campaign against hatred in the web or environmental issues, you can see that we attach great importance to this and also to communicating this.
We see the biggest impact in the interaction of sustainability and digitalization, especially energy-efficient networks with high resource efficiency, to somehow translate this into practice. The sustainability issue is not just an ethical issue for us, it's also an economic issue. I don't need to tell you, if you can save on power, on energy now because you have smart networks, you will save a lot of money. Suddenly sustainability becomes an economic factor, and then everybody enjoys doing this. Especially when it comes to energy and circularity, for us, it makes economic sense, and this makes it even more important. Mr. Dobner asked about double standards, U.S., Europe when it comes to the brand and reputation. Now, the Americans use the T. They use the brand in identical fashion.
The fact that we are the most valuable brand in Germany, well, not just in Germany, but the most valuable brand in Europe, ahead of companies like Adidas and Mercedes. It's due to the fact that we have a very consistent approach to our brand worldwide. We present it very consistently. T-Mobile U.S. pays license fees to us for using our brand in the U.S. T-Mobile U.S., like all of our other companies, are subject to national legislation, national law. We always have to fit into the respective legal system and legal and customs also. Mr. Werner, you asked a question about the DEI program at T-Mobile, and you said that we had given it up and what it really means to us.
Now, diversity, equal opportunities and the conviction not to be party political, but to act as a company on the basis of sound values. I like T- Count on Me is the U.S. translation of our German slogan. So you can see these identities match. The U.S. government, with a view to the DEI programs, has made new legal requirements, and these were published, and we have been very transparent. Of course, we need to comply with these requirements.
Next question from Mr. Werner: The demand for bandwidth and high speed keeps growing. The data volume in our fixed line network goes up by 15% every year. That's why we set our faith on fiber, because it's much better.
I remember AGMs when we were criticized by many people for not having any fiber, no fiber network, and now we're leaders in fiber build-out. Of course, not everybody feels the need to purchase a fiber connection, but we need to act early. We cannot start acting when people feel the need to purchase fiber. We have to act now, definitely. We will keep working on this and we are by far the leader and far ahead of other investors when it comes to fiber build-out. In the future, you will be happy that this management here actually pursued this build-out so strongly because it will make sure that we are a highly profitable company in the future.
A question by Mr. Streichhan, whether a windfall profit tax is planned in the U.S. I have no information that the U.S. government is planning a windfall profit tax. Mr. Streichhan, there was another question whether after Mr. Mudesir left, there were still any claims from Telecom. Well, if certain things develop differently from what we expect, then some claims might arise, so this wraps up the answers to the questions from the last block. Now Stephan Heinz is the next speaker. We have 17 requests for the floor still on the list, so I would like to ask every speaker to really stick to their 5 -minute time allotment. Stephan Heinz. Stephan Heinz does not seem to be here, so let's move on to Mr. Oswald.
Mr. Oswald, should I call up someone else first? Okay, then Michael Saltin will come to the stage. Where is Mr. Saltin?
He's not here either? I think Mr. Oswald is ready to take the stage. Well, is Mr. Heinz here? He should raise his hand and Mr. Saltin. Well, you can see that it really makes sense to limit speaking time. Mr. Oswald, finally.
You cannot just violate shareholders' rights. You have to play by the rules because every shareholder has certain rights according to the German Stock Corporation Act, and you need to comply with them, even if you don't like it. Maybe you have some plans for tonight. Today is April 1st. Maybe it's an April Fool's prank, all of this, including the five-minute speaking time limit. Mr. Höttges, why are you smiling? Would you like to take a peek? Because I've brought along some newspaper articles. This is what things look like in Lohr, in my hometown.
I just wanted to show you what's happening there on the ground. I will explain this in a minute. Mr. Höttges, I will come to your seat later. Don't worry. Everybody would get something to. Just forget about the 5 minutes. I will submit a motion later. Because this simply won't. I can't cram it into 5 minutes what happened in Lohr. I was here before, and I brought some newspaper articles. I showed them to you, and you asked me to. I mean, you said you would look into it, but it has not been solved. Resolve the problem, the fiber problem in my community. Just read the newspaper articles.
Every week, we have full-page articles on what's going on there, so it's very hard to describe this in words. My computer just shut itself off. Mr. Appel, I will just start, and if you interrupt me, I have a number of motions. I have filed a counter motion. Actually, my speaking time cannot be limited. How do we handle this now? Because counter proposals, I can submit them. I can read all of them out. We agree on a different procedure, on a deal, maybe. Should we strike a deal? My name is Hans Oswald. I will comment on agenda items 1 to 11. I welcome all the listeners, the owners of Deutsche Telekom. The gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen up here are our employees, by the way.
Let me point out some things very clearly. My special thanks, and I'm serious, goes to the employees of Deutsche Telekom for their commitment and for their hard work last year because it's them that have really generated this big success. Now we are back to the comedy really of a Telekom AGM. There are members of the management board and the supervisory board. There are shareholders, and the shareholders are like puppets on a string because shareholders' rights are trampled upon by Deutsche Telekom managers. My speech is one big question, and I hope I will get some answers in this dialogue with members of the board. Mr. Höttges, your sales pitch at the start of every AGM is fascinating for me every year. You do a great job. You are a sales genius, a real professional.
You're a natural when it comes to your marketing skills. That's a hard act to follow. Thank you very much for this. It deserves a round of applause.
I don't think any representative from another DAX company can keep up with that. Well, usually I like to hand out red cards, but this time it's a green card. For you, Mr. Appel, I still have yet another color. Can I ask that you ask your questions now? Did I mishear? Sorry, my hearing aid's not working. Mr. Oswald, let's play the same game as last year then. It was very interesting what you told me after last year's event, but why don't you continue for now anyway?
You keep on interrupting me, and if at all, you need to speak more quietly. I don't understand your dialect because I am from Bavaria.
That's not a problem. I think we'll be able to communicate somehow and understand each other. Mr. Höttges, like I said, I really like, you know, how you kick things off at the AGM. Who else? Who's gonna do that once you've left the company? I'm really worried if you'll be able to find somebody else. Maybe Frank Appel, because I remember when he was at Deutsche Post, he would step up his remuneration 5x a year as CEO. Mr. Höttges, what I dislike is that after the COVID pandemic, you increased your remuneration by 50%. I then filed a counter motion, which is on display at the speaker's registration counter. These spikes in remuneration don't make sense to me. I do praise you when you deserve it.
If you don't deserve it, but I also praise you if you deserve such a rise in pay. Can I ask you quite openly, I mean, this is the AGM of a global company. Is it? Or is this just a major museum of bureaucracy with lots of optical fiber all around us? I mean, even in a small town with 16,000 people, we often see hybrid events. Why is it not possible for Telekom to also organize hybrid AGMs? Hybrid AGMs are the only acceptable solution for a shareholder. For instance, last year I also wanted to show up, but then I wasn't able to because I was ill. I would've been able to follow or attend the AGM online. Can I ask politely that you finally introduce hybrid AGMs? That would be modern communications. Question.
How do you organize the meetings of the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management? In a hybrid fashion or differently? I don't mind, by the way, if you answer my questions straight away, Mr. Höttges. A lot of people out there are wondering why Telekom is investing billions in optical fiber only to see that Elon Musk is offering, you know, mobile coverage everywhere, be it at the Kilimanjaro or in my home via satellite. What's gonna happen in 3 or 5 years from now when people no longer even need a line, a fixed line, because they can use the Internet at much better cost on a mobile basis? By then we will have invested billions just, you know, money down the drain. That can have a major and negative impact on Telekom's business.
Maybe Telekom will cease to exist if Elon Musk offers internet to everyone via satellite. Then again, you have a major advantage with the optical fiber because you can transfer large amounts of data, but then maybe Elon Musk will be able to do the same before long. When do you think will Telekom be at the end of its wits here? Do you think you'll be able to really beat SpaceX? More money is invested there in space. I would guess trillions. That's the future. So is optical fiber, you know, something that would become obsolete before long? That's my question to you. Now, let's be honest here. Why is it that Telekom red tape is more complicated than with inland revenue?
Why do we need approvals from different parties before we can send out a bulldozer to lay the next cable for a fiber line? Wouldn't it be better to use experienced staff instead? People who know how to solve problems, rather than just using fancy PowerPoint slides and sending out the wrong people to do it? When will Telekom finally become a company that gets down to business rather than just performing endless tests? Optical fiber. Let's talk about Optical Fiber Plus or GlasfaserPlus. That's actually the name of that company. What went wrong in companies such as Lohr am Main, the so-called Snow White City? Construction projects were halted and all that under the Magenta flag. Is this what progress at Telekom looks like today? I brought a couple of newspapers here.
In the reports there and online, you can find pictures and videos of the construction sites. You can see that people are really upset about it. I also talked about it with Dr. Illek. He didn't even know about it, and I even sent him some information in writing. That's why I brought these newspaper articles here, and I've got more, just so you know what's happening out there. You don't know anything about it, do you? I think you actually need to go to some places yourself to see what things are like. The biggest joke in Germany and Telekom. Now let's talk about the empty conduits. Why is it that Telekom is trying to lay new lines next to empty conduits?
Is this part of your sustainable management philosophy, or is this what you would refer to as the network rollout of the future? I hope you've understood what I'm saying here, Mr. Höttges. We have empty conduits, he's saying. You dig out trenches right next to these empty conduits.
Yeah, I think we've understood that. You have spent 14 minutes for talking. Please come to an end here. Please don't put me under pressure, otherwise I'll have to file yet another motion.
Was there a comment from the audience? Thanks. Anyway. Back to the empty conduits. That's a real problem, Mr. Höttges. You should look into that. It would certainly help you to save some money. Is this what you call sustainable corporate governance? Or is this the dual network rollout of the future?
Look, the customers are waiting for the internet. You are tearing up the roads to lay new cables, but then we have a lot of these empty conduits that are not used. Even a lot of your employees are just shaking their heads because they don't understand what's going on. If you'd been more farsighted, you would've been able to lease out the empty conduits to GlasfaserPlus. This could have saved you EUR millions, even EUR billions, possibly. You would have sped up the network rollout, you would have gained more customers, and it would also have been better for the environment. At the same time, you would have made a lot of money by using these empty conduits. Why have you never done that? This is my question to you. Fiber lines via empty conduits, that would be good.
Then how about your construction sites? How is it possible that your construction partners, you know, had to be stopped in different regions because their work was simply a disaster? I occasionally sent pictures to Mrs. Bohle. I hope that she forwarded them to you, Dr. Appel, and you, Mr. Höttges. For years and years, I've been sending her some of the newspaper reports. Who looks into that at Telekom? Who takes responsibility if underground we only have pieces of cable? Do you think that quality is important at all, or does it only matter to you how fast you can dig the next trench?
Can I ask that you come to a close, please? You've been saying for the third time that this would mark the end of your comments.
I'll begin in a moment. You keep on confusing me here. When it comes to the empty conduits, everything would have been much more cost efficient and faster if you had made use of these empty conduits, and it would have been much better for your customers too. We believe that costs could have been up to 80% lower if you had done all that. You know, if you had used the empty conduits and manholes more efficiently. The liabilities of Telekom amount to EUR 140 billion. Now think twice about that. That's so much money. It would certainly make sense for you to save some money. Then you decided to work with this Australian company, and, well, then they took charge of things, and that's yet another reason why customers are leaving the company in large numbers.
Now, Mr. Höttges, in Lohr, in the city of Lohr, there's something I wanted to show you, as I promised. I have been asked by representatives of, the Snow White City Lohr to tell you this, to wind up my little speech here. You are granted the honorary doctorate for the fiber rollout in the city of Lohr, and I wanted to give you the certificate personally.
Speaker is off mic. We can't hear him. Okay, this is the end of your comments. Thank you very much, Mr. Oswald. Mr. Michael Saltin is the next speaker. Michael Saltin. Have at you. Mr. Saltin is the next speaker, please.
Dr. Appel, Mr. Höttges. Dear members of the supervisory board, dear members of the board of management, dear co-shareholders. First of all, I would like to thank you very much for holding this event face to face. That shows good leadership. It stands for transparency, and there are a lot of other DAX companies that are not doing the same, unfortunately. Also, I would like to thank you for offering warm meals. I criticized last year that that was not the case, and it shows that you are considering the shareholders' feedback. I would also like to thank your staff at the speakers' registration counter. Last year, I criticized that the annual report wasn't available. This year, various copies were available. So yes, they are key and we can count on them. That brings me to my questions.
I have several questions. I hope that I'll be able to mention them all in 5 minutes. First of all, the capital increase. We've talked about this before, so that first of all requires an anticipatory resolution. You know, abroad, we've seen various capital increases in Spain and Holland and in England. Germany is not investing enough. The Deutsches Aktieninstitut issued a statement recently according to which the funding, and I wasn't aware that there are different kinds of funding. Funding usually comes from Goldman Sachs and other banks and then sometimes from Deutsche Bank, but they only come in third or fourth. Sometimes they're not even involved in that sort of thing. My question is, in connection with the capital increase, why is it that we don't have enough capital in the German market?
My question is, how can we improve things here? How can we make sure that more capital increases will be made possible for the shareholders in this country too? Which brings me to IT and service security. What are you doing in the field of open cloud? That's been the talk of the town for a couple of weeks. Anthropic developed it. Mr. Steininger from Austria now went to one of the big providers there. Then quantum technology. Is Telekom active in this field at all? There are two universities, one in Munich and one in Siegen, that are very active in this field. Have you done anything to work with them because there are 30,000-40,000 attacks per day, you know, on Telekom alone. That shows that it's important to do something about it.
At McKinsey, a couple of weeks ago, we heard that an attack was launched and all the McKinsey data was analyzed, and they didn't even realize it. That shows just how dangerous such attacks can be, and we should, you know, look into what quantum technology actually means. With quantum technology, you can detect errors in the system all over the place.
I have the question about early retirement for employees. How many employees have made use of early retirement option in the last few years, and how will you deal with this going forward with this program for early retirement? I have several questions, actually. What does the age pyramid look like among the IT staff and the gender structure, women versus men? Is it dominated by males? I would be interested in hearing about that. Well, I have several questions. What was that again?
I think that's good. I'll stop there and I would thank you for the opportunity here. Wish you all the best, you and your staff, and we hope that the dividend will continue to rise because you have a lot of stock yourself. You earn yourself on it. I wish you all the best and God bless you. God bless Telekom and the board of management so that Telekom can continue to grow.
Thank you, Mr. Saltin, for sticking to the speaking time. Florian Erlach is next, and then we'll answer the questions. We'll have Sven Buthsky-Schiemann and three additional persons. First of all, Mr. Erlach, you have the floor.
Hi. My name is Florian Erlach. I'm a shareholder and CEO of a blockchain platform in Europe. Last year, I couldn't take part in the annual shareholders meeting because I had a business trip to China. I have three topics that I wanted to address today.
Louder. Is that better? For me, there's three topics of importance: AI, blockchain, and compliance. If possible, maybe you could provide me the answers in writing. I sent you them in advance in writing. Also in 2023 at the AGM, where you answered my questions in writing. That's actually a good thing. My question: What's the situation with our AI and blockchain services in the group compared to total revenue as a ratio, total ratio in 2025 and also the KPIs in 2025 in comparison with the previous year? Because the share price thrives on expectations. I think that's an important point. Second question is, or this is rather a statement of fact. I found an old AI article by you. New opportunities in customer services through AI.
I took the liberty of looking at the LinkedIn or putting it on my LinkedIn profile because I think this could be used as a model for Telekom going forward to 2030. In my opinion, this supplier possesses a new AI technology called decoding, and the cost of the data center is GenAI coding. Coding is what they do, and I think this is worth discussing at Telekom too. In closing, I would also note, aside from AI and blockchain, those are the two big technologies of our day and also technologies that Deutsche Telekom should focus on in the next few years in order to generate sales and profit because there's big profit margins on new technologies, and that's what produces dividends. My last point, I don't want to stretch it too thin with my 5 minutes. Compliance.
Can you confirm that the management board is in full compliance with the Corporate Governance Code? I would be interested in hearing whether you include or exclude suppliers there because there's a legal notice of 107/22 that it still hasn't implemented, and I would be interested. It's not compliant, and I'd be interested in hearing if they're still not compliant because when I read the Corporate Governance Code, that would have an impact on that. I would close with a quote of Einstein: If you can't trust somebody with the little things, then you can't trust them with the big things.
Thank you, Mr. Erlach. We'll answer your questions in writing, and that's an efficient way to do the things. I found a video of myself on the internet in Miami. It was of my presentation 3 years ago. If you look at it closely, you'll see it has the same code as the official video. Okay. Now this brings us to the answers to the questions. Sven Buthsky-Schiemann and Beckendorf, and Mr. Henrik Alexander Sonnenberg, and Sven Hühling will have the next questions. They're in the next block.
Mr. Oswald has submitted questions. I answered the question about successor planning already, and I'm convinced that we will find a very good successor, too. Another question related to my remuneration at Deutsche Post. You said that my remuneration had been increased by 5x. I'll leave that without comment. I won't comment on that. There's significant fluctuations at Telekom, and that depends on short and long-term programs.
Sometimes if it's also related to target achievement, over a period of time, if they meet all their targets, then their remuneration is much higher than just the fixed part. Mr. Oswald, why did Snow White change her Wi-Fi password? You should know. Because just using seven, she just used sevens as a password. So much for Snow White. Look at chats now. We have 250 mail contacts, Mr. Oswald, with you, and I have all of them here. I know the build-out in Lohr better than any other city in Germany, thanks to you. We analyzed all of your questions. We know the background to Aschau, and we know about the properties that haven't been connected. I don't want to go into such detail here at the AGM.
Also, I don't think it's relevant because of data privacy when you talk about things like this here. We have different views of build-out. If we did it the way you would like, Telekom would be bankrupt today. We're very efficient in it, and I could give you a lot of references in the internet where we document where we've made film clips at how we secure quality in the build-out and make sure we don't have any empty pipelines where municipalities have laid pipes like you might find in Spain. I don't think we should discuss this bilateral discussion about Lohr here at the AGM. Rodrigo will attend to this and try to make sure that you get some traction there, but I don't think it's a topic for us here. Now turning to your questions.
You mentioned hybrid versus in-person AGMs. We deliberately decided on this in-person meeting because we want to have a personal exchange with our shareholders. Of course, we could have an online event and let us know if that's what you would like. If we get the message from enough of you that you wanna be online, fine. So far, we've received the opposite message that you would like in-person meetings. You compared our millions in investment in fiber compared to Elon Musk's satellite solution. First of all, satellite can't replace mobile or mobile communications or fixed network. If you think about all the customers, the numbers of customers in these big terrestrial networks, and then the capacity of satellites, we would have an artificial bottleneck if we did everything through satellite.
Besides that, the latency is much higher with satellites than with our terrestrial systems. Capacity and the power of fiber is much greater than satellites, and 99.9% of traffic goes through these fiber and mobile networks. When you think we should decide to move everything to satellite that don't belong to us, that we can't influence, and where other regulatory conditions apply? That's why I'm saying it's all the more important that we improve our 5G capability and fiber capability 'cause that's where the future of telecom is. Also where in places like rural areas or national parks or in the mountains, then we'll include satellite. Where we need it, we'll include satellite in our service range. Mr. Oswald, you've talked about the future viability. No, it's the same question, so I'll go to the next one.
One, when will Telekom finally be a telecom that acts and doesn't just analyze? I'm sorry that we analyze so much, and we don't want to work in a hypothetical realm. We want to be doers, and we connect 2.5 million households with fiber each year and at lower cost now than before. That's why I'm of the opinion that we are doers, and we aren't just sitting back and analyzing things. If we are bureaucratic, then that's what we're trying to move away from. A part of our T culture is to cut the red tape, and we're self-critical in that endeavor. I think that applies to all of us too. That's what it takes to become more pragmatic as a company. You mentioned MagentaTV in comparison with Google. Mr. Werner, MagentaTV uses different clients.
On our hardware, we use Android TV client, which then establishes the connection to MagentaTV. This client still requires a Google account in order to use MagentaTV on Android. It's also available via other clients. Access to these clients is on your setup box under the rubric of apps. For example, Amazon or Samsung, you can also link into MagentaTV through their apps. If you do that, you don't need a Google account. For us to be able to offer the Android TV platform in this infrastructure, which is used on all non-Apple devices, those are Androids, and then you'll have access to the Google client. I know that it often leads to confusion among customers, but that's the software architecture out there that makes it possible to access services.
There was a question, what's the ethical attitudes at Deutsche Telekom regarding AI? That's a very important question. To put it in no uncertain terms, we only want to really advocate and use AI where it supports people and protects people. Can AI perform or can it ever have control over decisions? No. That always remains in the hands of human beings. We will not leave that ethical standard with the agent model either. There's even people, human beings there that look at what the agent does and see if it's correct. If it is, then we move one step forward with automation. It's called human-machine interface. We have very strict internal review procedures that all AI applications have to go through before they're put into actual use.
We really analyze that, and it's an extremely complex system, but it supports people, and it doesn't replace them in their roles. We have special AI and security teams that are appointed to look at these things. Without AI, though, we wouldn't be able to counteract all these attacks in cyberspace in real-time. We need AI to protect our services and our networks, and they help our company to become better on the whole. Mr. Werner, you asked about possible additional costs of parallel operations in the switchover from Magenta One to MagentaTV, and the cost of parallel operations for Germany alone would be more than EUR 10 million if we ran these parallel to each other. That's why we decided to migrate the platform. We're doing this with our customers.
It's a better platform. It's got higher quality, and I hope that it doesn't cause any problems for our clients. But you have to change software sometimes to further develop a service, and that's the software release that we've just had on our platform. Mr. Saltin, you talked about the role of our cloud services in the IT. The T Cloud public used to be OTC. Telekom Cloud is our own public cloud platform, which we operate in high-security European computer centers. It's in line with all regulations and compliant and has received all the necessary attestations from the Federal Agency for Security. We test it with a holistic concept for security. We also look at the data privacy protection in an encapsulated environment and go through numerous security tests.
Deutsche Telekom is further developing this on and the cloud. 2,400 cybersecurity specialists are working now at Telekom, finding cloud and security solutions to differentiate our offer from the competition. Open Cloud or T Cloud Public, as we call it now, is our own European security cloud. It's a central component of our cybersecurity strategy and independence strategy or sovereignty strategy. Mr. Werner, you talked about the customer experience with the switchover to MagentaTV. I've already answered that question. If you need more information, just get in touch with us and we'll find somebody who can help you with the switchover to make sure you can get through it. You talked about our migration targets or our climate targets rather. These have been agreed upon for the entire group.
The climate transition plan includes an ambition, this 2040. That's Scope 3 we're talking about. The American business is included in that, and we report on our progress and status every year. You talked about the operating interface of MagentaTV and the program guide. I think it's great, but I'm just one user. Our other customers are highly satisfied with this too. There are some critical voices, and we rely on their feedback to improve. We reported on promoters earlier, and it's their satisfaction with Magenta is very high. You talked about the media receiver for MagentaTV and experience with users. With MagentaTV, right at the present, the Connect test has been given a mark of excellent, and we completed that test. No TV service in Germany is rated that high.
In the development of the new platform, we surveyed users and also took into account their feedback during the development. Mr. Werner, you talked about the role of Google at MagentaTV. I already answered that. By the way, no customer data is shared with Google only because they dial. Because you dial in with a Google account, doesn't mean that your data is automatically sent to Google. That's not part of this service.
Mr. Werner, you're also talking about possible future meetings between the U.S. president and managers of Deutsche Telekom. Everything that we would say today would be mere speculation. We did not have anything to do with the dinner you talked about. I personally have never met the American president. Regarding future meetings, I can't speculate on this. This depends on what is coming, but at present, there are no plans. ESG criteria, a question by Mr. Demir, are excluded from the U.S. business, and it's not part of the compensation system. Special circumstances in the United States, such as rural 5G rollout and what happens after natural disasters, are not shown. Apparently, Deutsche Telekom wants to just get the profits without doing anything for sustainability. How did you take such path towards the U.S. business?
This was what Mr. Demir said. The climate goals of Deutsche Telekom apply worldwide also for the United States. This means that we want to achieve our climate goals, and this is also reflected in our compensation. Each manager of this company is partly paid on the basis whether we are sustainable, and this is not happening for all the companies, especially not for all German companies, but for us, it's normal. Are these goals attained? Well, regarding the two ecological targets in our compensation, we are excluding the United States at present. The aim of the incentivization is always steering the company on the basis of all the sustainable dimensions. There should never be an incentivization where you do not take into account sustainable goals or take, or make economic goals more important.
It would be bad for us, and you can also see this in our compensation report on page 40. You partly quoted from this. There are structural differences of the U.S. business because it differs from the business models in Europe and in Germany. I would wish that we could more integrate the U.S. into the KPIs and the compensation. Of course, in the U.S., we also have to agree things we do with the other directors on our board. Ban on smartphones in schools. This is, of course, a very difficult discussion, a discussion that we have on the basis of society. I think it's good that we have this discussion and that it's important to involve experts. We also support these experts through our foundation.
We also want to make sure that we support the media competencies among students, and we want to act against hatred in the web. The debate, the discussion in society and the experts discussions first need to take place. We will not blame people or point fingers. Otherwise, people would say we are partial anyway, so we leave it to politics and the experts to come up with a view. I have my personal view on this, but this is true for everybody. We do not expect any declines in sales. Perhaps less data might be used, but we do not see any risks for our revenues. This brings me to Mr. Oswald's question, why we sometimes have new lines, although we already have empty cable ducts.
We use these empty cable ducts if they can be used, if it makes sense. This is definitely part of our rollout methodology, and we are doing this thousands of times in Germany. I could give you a long list, but it's not always possible because sometimes the cable ducts are too short or the stretches are too short, or we have too many things in them already. This is what I leave to my technicians to find the right answers, because if the boss meddles into the affairs of the experts, it won't get better. This leads me to the meetings between the Management Board and the Supervisory Boards. Well, you should just experience some. Well, we normally have face-to-face meetings.
The Management Board meets on Tuesdays, almost every day, so we have intensive discussions, and this is unusual for many companies. We really deal with all the individual items on the agenda and projects. Some of these meetings are also virtual. People can dial in from wherever they are. Yesterday, for example, Fariborz Ahoulahsan was with a customer. He couldn't be there all the time, and he dialed in when he was available. I do not want to talk on behalf of the Supervisory Board. Over to you.
Y es, the Supervisory Board also makes it possible for people to participate virtually. This is also part of our articles of association, but we are in favor of a face-to-face meeting here. We don't want to have a hybrid meeting because it would increase complexity, so we will also probably plan to have a face-to-face meeting next year.
I already answered the question, the meeting between Zuckerberg and Cook and Altman. These were tech companies. No telecommunications companies were involved, but I'm not sure about all the details. I can tell you, however, that we were not present. Mike Sievert was not invited and did not participate. This brings me to the soccer rights. Mr. Streichhan, you talked about the Football World Cup and the payments necessary for this. For the German market, we've got the media rights for a total of 272 matches. The men, 2026, women, 2027, 2025 and 2027. So it's not only the Football World Cup of men, but it also includes others. We've got a good reach, and this helps us promote MagentaTV.
Yesterday was a good day for us because we are happy that the Turks are now also qualified, and not only because we've got 400 million Turkish people living in our country, but because all the games are exclusive to MagentaTV. This means that probably everybody will come to us in order to watch these games. If you have MagentaTV yourself, then we hope that they will use our connectivity because we see people who use our TV products are also more loyal regarding the other products, and this is exactly our business model, to have reliable and good customer service. We sub-license some of the World Cup rights to the German broadcasting channels, ARD and ZDF.
The German matches have to be shown on public TV, and we received a three-digit million figure, including the advertising, plus the new customers who we'll get for MagentaTV. We assume right now that the investment, which was roughly EUR 200 million, will turn out to be a profitable investment for us and that we will have financial success. You also asked about sponsoring and the distribution of sponsoring costs. Well, if the customers see that we are also sponsoring sports, they are more loyal, and they give us a higher Net Promoter Score than other customers. It's just a felt element which is important for the assessment received from our customers. Therefore, it's necessary. In 2025, we spent EUR 368 million for sports sponsoring, for donations, roughly EUR 27 million.
In 2024, it was EUR 314 million, and for sponsoring, EUR 33 million respectively. It's important for us that it always is in line with our values. We never only focus on one sport, Bayern Munich in soccer, but we also do it for other sports and for local initiatives. For example, the Telekom Baskets for all people living in Bonn, we just extended the contract.
Mr. Oswald, another question on the quality assurance in civil engineering. I already comprehensively answered this question, and I will ask my team to send you video material and expert material so that you see what we are doing. Mr. Diehl will do this personally because he also needs something to do. Mr. Illek, do you still have questions?
Yes, one. I got a question by Mr. Saltin. Based on our topic regarding the increase of the authorized capital, asks, "Why don't we have more capital increases in Germany?" This is always an advantage, but we also have to be aware that the earnings per share is going down then. We now want to have this item on the agenda in order to have the flexibility for our corporate financing in the future to also do a capital increase. We, first of all, want to finance our investments from our free cash flow, and this is the last way out. This is a possibility, but this is not a usual financing tool for us.
This leads us to the next round of questions. First of all, Mr. Sven Buthsky-Schiemann, then Yasin Bozkurt.
I'm sorry, this was not part of the program. This was not intentional.
I'm sorry. Members of the Board of Management, members of the Supervisory Board, ladies and gentlemen. I will try to be brief. I do not want to destroy this glass. Let me put it here. I will try to be brief and to the point. My name is Sven Buthsky-Schiemann, and I have three hats on. First, I represent my family office. We have shares in companies, participations in companies. I am also the chair of Corrosion Protection developer in Germany, a globally leading company. The third one, I have an NGO in Tanzania, in Africa, focusing on the economic and scientific cooperation between universities and companies from Germany and Tanzania. Now, I have three, I hope, exciting questions for you.
As a person knowing about business administration, I know that we've got two main levers in order to optimize profits. Either we can reduce costs and increase revenues or do both. Now talking about reducing costs. Here, I would like to know whether there is a statistical analysis regarding the standstill of your operations. Here, I'm mainly talking about towers, although we already learned during the AGM that most of the towers were outsourced to subsidiaries or leased. Which if the operations are not utilized, this means that there is no revenues coming from these assets to the company.
Here I would like to know, especially what is happening if you've got corrosion in the electrical contacts for the towers, for example, especially in the neighborhood of the coast on islands in hot climates, United States, Florida, or 5G network offshore wind energy converters, whether you've got unplanned problems with your assets, standstills of the assets. If so, then I would like to perhaps also help the engineers and show some possible solutions how to handle such problems. The next exciting question: New markets to increase your revenues. I personally spend as much time as possible in Tanzania. Tanzania, as all the countries in Africa, if statistics are right, we'll see that the population will double in the next 25 years, and this is an enormous amount of people. As an optimist, I do see huge opportunities in these markets.
Perhaps not even the Asian companies see them, and we should not leave them to the Asian companies. There are huge opportunities also for European companies. The prices, in my opinion, the prices for telecommunications services are not very low. I can see what I pay for my prepaid cards there. What I also saw in Tanzania is another very interesting business model of telecommunications companies, that they offer financial services. I can have a credit on my smartphone, and I can not only use this credit for making phone calls, but I can use it to pay in a restaurant, to pay in a car workshop. I can pay my electricity bill. It's not a replacement of a bank account, but it's an addition, and the telecommunications service provider will earn a certain fee for each transaction.
The question is, even if financial services in Europe are more strongly regulated, whether this might not also be a good possibility for you to generate additional business. I see the time is flying. A lot was said about the copper networks. One day, when we have full coverage of fiber, these copper lines might be obsolete, and so I came up with the following question: Is it profitable to take out the underground copper cables? Copper prices are high. There is a lack of supplies. Might it be possible in a few years that you can have extraordinary profits that will also help the share price by selling this copper? Now, I wish all the participants of this AGM an exciting and constructive day, and I would like to thank you for your attention. Thank you very much.
The next speaker is Mr. Yasin Bozkurt, and then we have Henrik Alexander Sonnenberg. Mr. Bozkurt first. Yasin Bozkurt. Mr. Yasin Bozkurt, are you still here? That seems not the case, then would you a pparently, this is not the case, so now I would like to ask Mr. Henrik Alexander Sonnenberg, and then after him, Mr. Sven Hühling. Perhaps Mr. Eberhard Erich Eichmann could also come close to the stage already. First, Sonnenberg , please.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for this personal invitation to this AGM. Unfortunately, this is not happening for many of the German DAX companies. A question to Mr. Appel: Why don't you have a personal meeting for RWE? Statistically speaking, the mobile communications network is better in Albania than in Germany. I went there. I saw it myself. I live in Bergisch Gladbach, and I asked your colleagues outside why we don't have such a good connection.
He, the person said it's probably due to the mountains and the forests, and it hopefully works in the future. Mrs. Merkel, in her State of the Union address in 2005, said that the communications network has to be expanded, but we are not yet well connected, and I would like to know from you when we will have a mobile connection everywhere in Germany. Based on the information by a major German newspaper, AI is the second biggest risk for small and medium-sized enterprises at present. The largest risks are hacker attacks. How do you want to make sure that this changes in the future? The third sale of a T share in Germany showed share price of more than EUR 60.
When do you think will we be back at this share price? In the past, you had a very nice advertising figure, Paul Panzer. This was when you were privatized.
Why don't you use it any longer, and how much did you have to pay for the copyright? It didn't even take me two minutes to ask my questions. I think it's good to restrict the time. I don't want to hear the CV of everybody. Have a good time. Bless you, and bye-bye.
Thank you very much for your very brief intervention. Let me ask again whether Mr. Yasin Bozkurt is back in the room. Is he here? If this is not the case, we'll now listen to Sven Hühling and then to Mr. Eichmann. First of all.
Thank you very much, Mr. Appel, for giving me the floor and for listening to me. I will be brief. Well, it's a pity that Mr. Höttges is not here. I first have to tell you a secret. Well, I tried to have a nice outfit today.
First of all, everything is clear. You said that if there are any problems, then we should address your employees. I did. There was something that made me very sad. You blocked my mobile phone number on the shareholders hotline, and there was a member of staff who said that I have to talk to an AI, and she blocked my number. Ever since, I was not able to reach you any longer, and I'm very disappointed because, as a shareholder, I have the right to call you directly, and I wanted to do this. It's a pity that Mr. Höttges is not here. I hope that he can see me, he can hear me. But now I would like to tell you a secret. I got a contract from Paramount Pictures, so I was taken on by Paramount Pictures.
I have to remove my shirt, and I'm extremely proud of this. Mr. Höttges also got the, this, and I hope that you will all give him an applause. He's now part of Paramount. CO2, you can see clouds. This is not interesting any longer. You can use as much electricity as you want. First of all, Mr. Plaume, you answered all the questions. You don't have to ask any question to me. I have a request to you. I was in five shows in all the different broadcasting stations, also with Stefan Raab. I produced Raab TV, and I would be happy if you gave me a Telekom T-shirt or perhaps two with a T on it. Mr. Höttges. You were taken on by Mercedes, and now I have to do a break. This is also important for Deutsche Telekom. I now ask you very politely.
I'm not watching the time, but this is really important. I waited for a long time. I want to do a reset with Deutsche Telekom. I got the Mercedes share for—as a gift, and I had to hand it over to Paramount, and then I had to do a 24-hour reset. It's called Sound of the Machines. We keep it quiet for one day, and the next day it starts again, and then you got your entire transfer. I want to do the same thing with Deutsche Telekom. The problem, however, is I got some future shares, and the future is that I am growing older with you, but that's not too bad. If you give me one share for free, I can do a reset with you, and this means that there is an end date. Paramount and Warner Bros. How do you call it?
Do you know? They have archives. There is a 70-millimeter archive for the 70-millimeter films. There is a music archive, and there is an archive for logos. On the 17th of November, there is an end date, if you do not want to do the reset with me. Mr. Höttges, could you please listen to me? This is very important. There is an end date, the 17th of November, 2029. If the Mercedes boss wants to do it with me, we'll do a reset. You will give me a share, I hand it over to Paramount, and then you will get your transfer. I ask you for something very nice. I do not want to talk for too long because everything has been said already. Everything is clear. I'm extremely sad that you switched off my mobile phone.
There was a lady on the phone, and she said that I'm asked to talk to an AI. Now, let us talk about AI. Ever since I talked to AI told me that Mr. Höttges will give me an HD Plus card for free or an waipu stick because I fill the media library. This is what the AI said. If you have a generous heart, I would be happy if you gave me an HD Plus card, which I put into the relevant slot so that I have access to Sky and all the stations for free. Then I do not want to burden you for too long. Well, I really love you dearly, but I also feel cheated by you because these are future shares.
Well, you are no longer trendy here because I know about bans on smartphones, and I see this in a critical light. I think this is really a pity with the ban on smartphones because it seems to be spreading. Now, I've got three sentences, Mr. Höttges. As you are a future company, I have the right. I would like to be in the Quiz Champion with Johannes B. Kerner when Wolle is there or another broadcasting station. I want to sit there with a Telekom T-shirt. I want to be part, and then I will also be in your media library. I'm not doing it for the people. I do it for fun because I have to get away from cigarettes, because we'll have a cigarette ban starting on the first of March.
If you have the videos on which and people are smoking, you have to mark the videos that there is smoking. I will be finished soon, Mr. Plum. I know that your customers in Bremen consume baking soda and as you have contacts with the Schwarz Group, I'm looking for somebody. You don't have to give it to me for free, but I am looking for one of the baking soda. This is your customer. Then there is a Nelson Mandela Square in Bremen. This is a two football fields large area. Your customers, our customers at some point in time will no longer be there, and people are.
The influence in Bremen, and I don't like it, and I would be happy if you gave me contact to Lever, for example, because baking soda is very popular. It's not quality, it's not like Dr. Oetker, but it's just cheap, a cheap product. Finally, the last sentence, and this is very important to me. There is a share which will break some companies' necks. If I have the right, if I feel that these companies are not well, and please also pass the message to the boss of Mercedes. I hope that you all put your money together and give me a LIN share. Only if I get a LIN share, I can do a reset with them as well, and then I will also transfer it to Paramount.
Just very briefly. Now, please come to your close.
Yes, yes, I will. Mr. Höttges, could you please listen to me one more second. You interrupted me. Well, the reset is as follows: I have to be given the share for free, and then I can do the reset, and I would like to do this. The share is at risk. The chocolate will be stolen, and the share price will go down. If you want to give me a share, I will help them. I'm ready. Now you've got my approval. There will be another shareholders meeting at Mercedes. I will also be there. CO2 carbon emissions, you don't care a shit. I don't care a shit. No, it's about your future. If you give me a share for free, I will help people. This is an important topic.
If you were to give me a T-shirt for the TV shows, I would be absolutely happy. Also an apology for blocking my phone, because otherwise I could have called Mr. Plum about this transfer, and I couldn't do so, but I did it now.
Yes, I am. I talked for 5 minutes, and I hope you accept all the information. We will see each other next week in the stream and say the best to Olaf. I'm ready now.
Mr. Eichmann is the next speaker on the list.
I just got a little heavier. We have an anniversary today. This is my 31st AGM, and the 30th ordinary AGM. One was extraordinary. That was in Hanover at the time in 2009. There were actually two AGMs in that year, one ordinary and the other extraordinary. Now let's come to my questions. For 28 years now, we've been in a competition. The competent authorities, regulators, the Federal Network Agency, forced us to actually pass through the services. Mr. Ricke, CEO at the time, said that the loss was EUR 280 million. Mr. Obermann confirmed this, that this was a distortion of the competition. That was then resolved. Now we have internet telephony.
I'd be interested in one thing, whether competitors are just too lazy to invest in their own networks. Now, if you go into the web from Bonn, and you want to access an internet site in Berlin, then this is sometimes routed through Frankfurt or Hanover or Hamburg. Or when it goes abroad, it can go through different networks. I mean, this does not involve any additional cost. If a competitor is too lazy to invest in their own networks, they can just route their calls through Deutsche Telekom. I'd be interested in whether this is really the case. You know, these routing charges where Deutsche Telekom really has to pay for. The question is whether that's a real problem for you. If that's true, are there any means you have to stop this?
I have a question on artificial intelligence as well. There are some fears, I know, but I think that Deutsche Telekom has some safeguards here. Let me give you an example. For a particular reason, I asked Meta AI whether it can change a EUR 50 bill, because 40 years ago, a smart guy, but it was actually fraud. Actually produced a 55 German mark bill, and of course, that ended up at the police. I asked Meta's AI whether it could change a EUR 55 or a 55 German mark bill. The answer was, "There's no problem. You can exchange your 55 German marks bill at a Deutsche Bank branches." There was also some other occasions when the AI came up with very weird responses. My fear was that AI is really vulnerable.
The originally good idea of using AI can run into serious trouble. Based on experience, I guess you have safeguards against such errors. As Google says, that there might be errors in answers that are provided by AI, but I'm pretty confident that Deutsche Telekom has these safeguards, like business clouds that include highly sensitive business data. There are really, I'm sure, stringent security requirements. That's why I'm asking this question, whether this is really true. That others who share my fear, that they can be reassured that Deutsche Telekom's top priority is really security. I assume that Mr. Höttges is going to confirm this, that security is their top priority. Let me just have a drink of water, and then I will finish.
It's important to drink enough, even if you're not thirsty, because otherwise you get you know a little swoozy woozy. Thank you.
Last question to find out whether Mr. Yasin Bozkurt is here. It's not the case. We'll move on to a next round of answers. After the round of answers, Mr. Rink, Mr. Lührmann, Mr. Nils Klein, and then Oliver Lokamp are on the speakers list. Now a round of answers. Let me take a first question that Mr. Erlach raised on corporate governance code. Today, it was confirmed that the board of management and supervisory board are in full compliance with the German Corporate Governance Code. Does this include your suppliers? Because as far as I know, there is one supplier where this is not fully the case. Do you think that this supplier is compliant?
Mr. Erlach, you are mentioning the conformity statement of Deutsche Telekom and our suppliers. We are following the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code. On December 30th, 2025, we issued this conformity statement. We still think that we are compliant with the code because after our review, we fully comply with the requirement, with the exception mentioned. We only cooperate with suppliers that are committed to fight corruption in any form. What's crucial is that we fulfill the requirements of the German Corporate Governance Code at all levels, and we make sure that none of our suppliers violates any of the principles.
Now, you also asked the question why RWE is still organizing a virtual AGM. I mean, I'm sitting here as the chair of Deutsche Telekom's AGM, so I would be happy to answer that question when I attend RWE's AGM. Mr. Saltin asked about our engagement with quantum technology and cooperation with universities. Yes, when it comes to quantum technologies, we are active, and quantum communication is one of our priorities. Encryption and quantum-enabled fiber network, these are the issues that we are engaged with. In 2023, we set up our own quantum lab in Berlin, and we also have a wonderful patent on quantum communication, and you can look this up on the internet. We also cooperate with important universities when it comes to quantum technologies, TU Berlin and TU Dresden.
University of Siegen, we also have a cooperation on quantum technology, so we are quite active there. When it comes to encrypting networks and data, you already have to make the necessary preparations now to enable quantum technologies. This brings me to Mr. Buthsky-Schiemann's question about financial services in Tanzania as a new business model. No, we are not going to move into any new territories. We're not expanding into Africa, South America or China. We're staying where we are to the left and to the right of the Atlantic Ocean. Of course, we are reviewing what we can do more in terms of financial services. We have Payzy financial service, financial services in Greece. It is a very simple payment service, and we are thinking about introducing something similar in other European countries.
What's important to us are the Magenta advantages in the app. Maybe you're not aware of this. There is a Magenta advantage or benefit. You will get this benefit, like discounts. You don't have to do anything else, but if you're a Magenta customer, we'll give you some benefits through the app. Well, I think I answered that on the Snow White town. You asked about the gender structure and age structure in terms of our IT staff. In Telekom IT, our internal IT service provider, 74% of the staff are male, 26% are female. Age distribution, up to 30 years, 19%, from 30 to 50 years, 45%, and above 50, 36%. That's a healthy mix, I think. Mr. Saltin, you talked about our pre-retirement offers, and we have two tools here.
Partial retirement and active retirement. This program grew from 630. It's mostly former civil servants that made use of this program. It's a total of 4,832 people who made use of this program, active retirement. The deadline for this program is December 31st, 2026. Whether this will be extended is still not clear, so we cannot really make any statement on whether this program will be continued. The federal government or the federal parliament will have to decide this. Partial retirement is the second tool, 2,086 and 2,440, t hat's sum total 11,492 that have signed up for this program. Partial retirement will continue to be an important tool for us to manage the transition from employment to retirement.
Mr. Sonnenberg, you talked about the figure of Pink Panther that we used for advertising in the 1990s. Paul Panther was a highly esteemed advertising partner for Deutsche Telekom in the 1990s. Unfortunately, the panther's fur did not match our color code, so we actually saved on some license fees that were in these six digits. We're happy that Paul Panthers still works as a testimonial currently for insulation material. Some of this insulation material is made of fiber optics. Here, Paul Panther can also make a contribution from his Telekom past to this industry. This is a wonderful AI answer, isn't it? Let's move on. Mr. Erlach, you talked about revenue and performances when it comes to AI and blockchain, and the importance of this revenue for 25 and beyond.
Now for AI, we don't identify separate revenue figures, but we should change that. AI is a firm part of our EUR 17 billion investment, investments that we make, and it cuts across all our projects. These are just German and European, but it also includes American projects. Blockchain figures are not separately identified currently. A blockchain does not have the kind of momentum in our company or generally in the industry as was first believed. It's not that relevant for us. I know it has certain strengths, but it's not yet commercially viable. AI is a value driver, but it's not a separate part of our revenue, so we can't give you any figures for 2025 or any specific targets for 2030.
For all investors, later this year, we will have a small Capital Markets Day where we will provide explicit information on our AI projects and use cases, and we will also give you more information on our ethical standards. Our small private shareholders can also participate online. Nationwide mobile services. I mean, we're building more than our competitors always. I can see that in the figures. You can follow this up in the press, in the media. More than 99% of the surface area of Germany now is supplied with our services and LTE 92% and 90%. In 90% of the territory of Germany, 5G is available. Sorry, this is not a correct answer. I'd like to hand this back because this is not a correct answer. 92% 5G, 99.3. That's the correct figure.
I would like to withdraw that answer. We need to work on it. We need to correct this. Let's take our time to correct this. I will hand over to Christian now.
I have one question to deal with Mr. Sonnenberg's question. We had EUR 60 for the third when we issued the shares for the third time. I can't tell you when we will go back up to EUR 60. The capital market will decide that. We are now at EUR 30, and in 2002 we were at EUR 60. I mean, we're trading now at a ratio of 15, which is the earnings and share price ratio. If you project this, we're talking about a smaller single digit number of years when we should be back at EUR 60.
Of course, the capital market will decide that, at what price our share will be traded. That brings us to the next round of questions. Christian Rink first, then Klaus Lührmann, Mr. Klein, and Mr. Oliver Lokamp. Mr. Rink, please. Yeah.
Good afternoon. I'll try to be brief, but, I'll try to bring up all the questions I have. Now, I mean, the calculation you just gave us, that was pre-tax, right? Regarding the share price. Anyway, I've got three things that I wanted to raise here. I come from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, city of Schwerin. I'm sure that AI can do a lot, but people can do more than AI. Let me start with the topic of appreciation. Appreciation always starts with praise. All that means is if you invite people, you know, who have done a lot for telecom, then you do more than you think. Because the appreciation that you show to your employees comes back a 100x . I can assure you that. It, it's a good idea to, you know, always invite honorary guests, so to speak.
I would like to talk about the capital increase and the higher dividend and the share buyback. I see a connection here. If you increase the dividend, but at the same time buy back shares and increase the capital, then basically you're doing everything twice. Or is that including taxes or not? I mean, why would you do it? Why would you increase capital and then buy back shares? I think that is a contradiction. I think it would be good if at the next AGM, you offered your shareholders to grant individual discharge to the members of the Board of Management instead of overall discharge to the board. I would like to come back to what you said about NVIDIA and SAP and other companies that you are working together with. These are big players, just like you are.
I do hope, though, that you know that working with Elon Musk may mean playing with fire. Just think of Starlink program.
How dependent Ukraine is on Starlink. I mean, you know, the Ukrainians will be long dead without that system. Yeah, that's playing with fire, and I think you need to be cautious. Sorry, I'm a bit nervous here. Third thing I wanted to say, maybe not the last thing, is this. Sports. Women. You know, except for football, there are lots of other types of sports that are not quite so popular as football and where Germany is active, but where women do not play such a strong role. I am convinced that, Telekom, you know, it would be good for Telekom to act as a sponsor. Not just for something like the Olympic Games. Of course, it would be nice, you know, if Telekom could help Germany get the Olympic Games.
The question is, until then, what can you do to promote women's sport? For instance, volleyball for women. In Sweden, for instance, the women's volleyball team have won all the championships since the mid-1990s, but nobody knows it. What could you possibly do as a company to promote women's sports? Maybe handball, basketball. There are so many options, you know, where the male version of the sport is extremely prominent, but the same doesn't hold true for the women's equivalent. I forgot to mention, there's something I wanted to say about carbon emissions. What's your target by 2030? Do you want to be carbon neutral by 2030? Right.
Regarding your ROSI goal, can you also give us a specific ROSI target to be achieved by 2030, or would that be too far away in the context of carbon neutrality? Do you know what your carbon reduction, so to speak, will be by 2030? What else? There was AI, I already talked about that. Yeah, there's one last thing.
People are the most important thing, not AI, and you know it. If you praise a person, then that has a much stronger effect than criticizing people. I think, yeah, we've heard too much criticism for, you know, everyone who has come here today. That's it from my side. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Rink. The next speaker is Klaus Lührmann, followed by Nils Klein. Mr. Lührmann.
Klaus Lührmann, small shareholder from Thuringia. Ladies and gentlemen, I wanted to talk about seven items at this shareholders meeting. First of all, are there any news about sport sponsoring? I want to refer to the last time I asked a question about this. Secondly, the BT Group plc. Are there any plans to increase your stake? Is Deutsche Telekom represented on its supervisory board? Thirdly, fixed network telephone booths. Is there a strategy for that? I think it no longer works. Number four, satellites of Deutsche Telekom AG. Is a big player from the Netherlands involved here? Then the T-Labs in Berlin, that's number five. That was great news. Number six, the T Cloud and sovereignty. I think that German SMEs are not aware of these products. Maybe you could advertise them more.
Number seven, I believe that an AI factory in London, United Kingdom, would make a lot of sense. Maybe not next year. Could also be sometime in the future.
Number eight. Would it be possible to use AI to protect sensitive information and software systems?
Thank you very much, Mr. Lührmann, for these very precise questions. The next speaker is Nils Klein, followed by Oliver Lokamp. The next speaker is Nils Klein.
Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, my name is Nils Klein, and I am here as a municipal politician from the city of Bonn here today. Now, Telekom, with more than 70,000 employees, is still a big player on the German labor market. However, this goes hand in hand with a big responsibility. In his speech, Mr. Höttges committed himself to Germany as a place to do business. Now, does that mean that you feel also just as committed to your employees? With a view to the upcoming wage talks, we've heard that jobs have to be transferred abroad unless the overall framework conditions in Germany improve. This could be interpreted as a threat.
My question is this, Will the decisions that are being taken in Berlin ultimately go at the expense of your employees? The next question is: How can you safeguard digital sovereignty given the current geopolitical situation? How would that even be possible if you keep on shifting jobs to, say, India? I would also like to remind you of St. Petersburg.
Where teams were working on critical infrastructure before the war, but then after the war had started, they had to leave the country overnight.
Thank you very much, Mr. Klein. The next speaker is Mr. Lokamp. Mr. Lokamp? Barbara Grimberg is the next speaker. Are you here? We brought you forward because Mr. Lokamp wasn't available yet.
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Barbara Grimberg. I studied economic science, and I actually took my PhD there. Some of the answers given by Mr. Höttges do not quite make a lot of sense. He said that shareholders should say what they think and then Telekom would do that. Well, unfortunately, that's not true, because I have requested a printed annual report several times, and it still isn't available. On the other hand, Mr. Höttges said that there's too much auditing, too much testing, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, there is one. Oh, there is a printed report. Okay.
Okay, I withdraw this very criticism. Thank you very much for that, but let me continue. I've got more negative things to mention. On the one hand, you are saying that you want women to be role models and that you want to have more women in managerial positions, et cetera. I applied, I think, in 2002, 2003 for a post on the Supervisory Board for the first time, and nobody ever even talked to me about it. I think it's questionable in the context of AI that you are using AI systems to answer questions. Can I ask the AI system to let me know why nobody ever contacted me about my applications, even though I do qualify for the job and despite my commitment?
You said that, you know, you have to be committed, you have to be motivated, you have to be skilled. I offer all that, but still I haven't heard from you at all.
Mr. Herzig also introduced himself by way of a video. I didn't quite like that. Why is it that he wasn't able to attend today's meeting in person? What's more, I think it is quite cheeky that the salary of the board members increases from EUR 100,000 to EUR 115,000. That's an 11% rise.
Your employees have to fight for a 4% or 6% rise, even though you keep on saying that they are the real pros here. The shareholders only have a once a year opportunity to discuss things with you as part of a dialogue.4 hours is not a long time. There's a lack of transparency.
While you said that you want to improve transparency and that you're already making things very transparent. No, that is not really the case when you look at it. You mentioned the number of households connected to the fiber network.
How many contracts, however, have been concluded with the customers for a fiber line? Over the past four years, you know, I lost my telephone connection for a couple of weeks and nobody was able to sort things out before. Well, they figured out it must have been a problem, a technical problem. Well, then there is Mr. Dohmke, a new supervisory board member, and he does speak German because he is German, but he lives in Seattle. I wonder, that is very far away from here. Will he be paid a second flat? Yeah. Then you talked about rejuvenating the supervisory board. Well, you could have done that 24 years ago when I applied for the job.
There we have the female member of the Supervisory Board, Mrs. Schöttke. She's not here today. Why? Is she already on Easter holiday with her kids? I discovered today that in the city of Bochum, in a tram, there was some advertising on the fiber rollout. We have the same with the beer mat that you distributed here. How much did all this advertising cost, you know, to print it? You showed us a trailer of the data center in Munich, where we saw that the ventilators were extremely noisy, 115 decibels. How much money are you spending on cooling? You're using electricity for your computing power, but apparently, you're also using it to cool all these systems. How many staff do you have in this data center, and how do you protect their hearing?
You said that you want to discontinue or basically switch off copper lines by 2030. Is that still the plan? You talked about digital twins and testing things in a digital fashion. Well, that's nothing new. That actually started roughly 20 years ago when the Internet was launched. Back then, it was referred to as a mock-up, kind of a simulation. What classical data centers do you have, and what services do you offer with these data centers? You mentioned your data center in Munich, and you said that cooling is ascertained through the Eisbach, an ice creek. But how is that possible during summer? You talked about the use of satellites in the future. How many of these satellites will you own in future?
In the same context of satellites, I am surprised that you're not even talking to German satellite manufacturers, for instance, OHB. They are based in Bremen. They are building satellites both for their own company and also on behalf of others. For instance, for Airbus. Then you did not even mention the rocket factory, which is also based in Bavaria, I think Augsburg or Nuremberg. They are also building ramps for the rockets for their own purposes, and they also work together with leading manufacturers from the U.K., from Wales and Scotland. How about Kongsberg? They are also very active in this field. On the other hand, you restricted the speaking time. That's always when I, you know, sign up. That's when you keep on cutting speakers' speaking time short, and I don't think that's a very nice thing to do.
We've heard that you were paid EUR 11.2 million as the CEO, so that's roughly EUR 1 million salary per month. I think that's a bit much. The supervisory board said, "Okay, well, that was a self-assessment, and we think that this salary is adequate." I mean, if you consider that 30% of the telecom shares are still held by the government, you are actually a civil servant. You are paid the same salary as a minister and a state secretary. Ultimately, your activity is worth 5x what a comparable minister would be paid. I would like to thank you for the good lunch that we've been offered here today.
Next topic is, to what extent are you using Indian services for IT programming, et cetera? Next question is, mobile coverage. No, sorry, coverage of, the fiber rollout in the city of Bochum. Are you going to switch off the copper network there? I hope not. Why did you not follow the proposals that I have made since 2002 regarding a salary reform? After all, Deutsche Telekom used to be part of Deutsche Post because before these two companies were separated. Back then, you know, new structures, for remuneration were introduced as well. This should be based on certain factors such as pension insurance, then unemployment benefit, then the, health insurance. That was EUR 8,000, EUR 8,000, and EUR 6,000 roughly, respectively. That would cover pretty much everything.
Then you can also, you know, pay a fixed salary of EUR 1 million or so plus a fee. Just considering all the things you do, you should bear in mind that it's all about making profit so that you can then reinvest part of that profit. I've been saying this for 20 years. Then maybe you could use one quarter of the profit for dividends for the shareholders, another quarter for the wages and salaries as a bonus, but for everyone, top down. The next quarter for repairs and research, and the last quarter to cover any possible risks. Because bear in mind, you keep on talking about your responsibility, but a performance bonus of EUR 1 million, that's about the same salary that is paid to 17 skilled labor. You always talk about your responsibility, but others bear even more responsibility.
A bus driver is paid EUR 3,400 gross a month and then drives a bus and, you know, take a train driver, and then they transport, I don't know, millions of people, maybe 100 s of people on any given day. That certainly is more responsibility than the responsibility you bear.
Sorry, you've spoken for about 12 minutes, so can you please come to an end here?
Yes. Well, I'm aware that I've been speaking for 12 minutes, and I appreciate it. Please tell me, when will you finally dismantle the old telephone booths that are still out there? I am going to submit another application to you because I am qualified. It would be nice if you could then contact me. I would now like to thank you for granting me more time to speak, for organizing this AGM as a physical meeting, for the good meals, and for the printed version of the annual report. Thank you. I hope you'll consider my proposal. Ultimately, you know, I think it's important that we safeguard Germany as a place to do business, because a lot of companies are leaving this company. Why is that? Because salaries are too high and they can produce more cost effectively abroad.
The bonuses and the salaries paid to the board members are, you know, also such a cost factor.
Thank you, Dr. Grimberg. Then I wanted to ask if Oliver Lokamp is still there. If he is, then he has the floor.
Thank you for allowing me to speak. Just a little bit surprised that it came up so quickly. Just I only need two or three minutes. In the last few years, I've also briefly spoken and complained slightly about the flow of information when you apply for something online. In the last few years, I've only had positive experiences. That's why I'd like to praise you for that. I have a question about the fiber build-out, and I wish you would not have so many paper brochures just for environmental reasons going forward.
My question, though, is relates to the city of Bochum and Glasfaser Ruhr GmbH is cooperating with Telekom there for the build-out. In the next 7 years, it's going to be completely covered with fiber without citizens having to sign a contract with Telekom. I have a question in that regard. There's several properties there in Bochum where they have a multifamily residential building, and then also there's single family houses in the same area. How are you planning in this city, in Bochum or other similar cities, to approach that? Do you think it would be possible to have a longer cable passing through a property where you could hook up other houses as well that are, you know.
Because it would be great if Bochum was completely covered with fiber. On these larger premises, there's certain, sometimes buildings that can't be covered. The last question is, I heard years ago that TK telecommunication providers, they offer fiber to the home, to every individual dwelling. What are you planning to do? Because with cable, you can lead cables into the house and through the staircase. Is it really important to connect every dwelling where you're building out fiber, or what's your priority there? How does it look with regard to connection of each and every single dwelling?
Yeah. I was going to propose that we have a break, but first we'll take some more questions. Matthias Muth, Thomas Kirchner, and then Thomas Lohninger also wanted to ask a question.
First of all, Matthias Muth, is he there? If not, then I would ask Thomas Kirchner to step up, and Matthias Muth can, if he's here, get ready and then to be followed up by Thomas Lohninger. First, yeah.
Hello, everybody. My name is Thomas Kirchner. I'm a shareholder of DTAG. I've been listening to what's been said by Mr. Höttges today, and it made me reflect a little bit. In his opening presentation, he told about his vision and stressed the fact that there's a lot of responsibility and that diversity and freedom of opinion and speech and he stressed that these values are very important for him and the company.
In answering the questions, he usually answered that he and Deutsche Telekom make sure that they just stick to the law in Germany and T-Mobile U.S., that they also make sure that they just comply with laws and regulations. The question that I would like to raise as a shareholder and citizen is, does the shareholding of DTAG in T-Mobile U.S. and considering the huge contribution that T-Mobile makes to DTAG's balance sheet, are you or am I as a shareholder negatively impacted by world events? I hear that we're making a profit, and I understand that you want to maximize profit within the legal realm. Of course, that's your good right and as a company.
As a shareholder, my problem with that is that I get a dividend for that profit. At the same time, the world is becoming more uncertain and insecure. Sorry about my voice. It's that's why I'll ask the question I have right away. Do you have the shareholders structure in mind and individual shareholders? Is it important to you how individuals support your company, and what would you say to somebody like me? Or how would you convince me and try to allay my concerns and fears about the company, the company aim and objective of. Sorry, I hope you understand roughly what I mean. I'm just, I can't carry on.
Thank you, Mr. Kirchner, for your statement and question. Let me ask again. Is Matthias Muth here in the auditorium? If not, then Thomas Lohninger has a follow-up question.
Yeah, thank you. I'll keep it short, but I would ask you to answer my question because it wasn't answered yet. What is the revenue for the business in 2025? Because there's people at Telekom that are called peering managers, and there's transit agreements. It's said that the a profit center is also associated with this. So my question relates to the total revenue that was achieved, best of all, split up and/or or rather broken down. Also, you said it was groundless what I said, but when I said that your speed is slow, we're showing it on our website, and you talked about a court and a litigation going on. Matter gave notice on a service, and you had to keep paying for it. Network neutrality is not even addressed in this ruling, court ruling.
That was the argumentation that we forwarded because the customer has incurred damage. That's at least my second question. You talked about ratio. There has to be a proper ratio, but customers aren't interested in this. When you buy internet services, you have to be able to rely on getting the whole internet package. I'd be interested in hearing whether this is the official recommendation to have a VPN, to have the different options that would guarantee network neutrality for the customer. I won't go into open internet details here, but I think it's pretty interesting to look at what's happening in interconnection market right now and also this exaggerated network neutrality in 5G and trying to understand, as you said, the technical characteristics should allow this, a distinction to be made.
That's what the internet neutrality regulation is all about. What would you say, especially regarding specific products that Telekom is planning to put on the market? Because we've been having this debate since 2025 since the Commissioner Oettinger triggered in Europe. I think it would be good to put this on an objective footing, because the majority of countries in the world don't have network neutrality laws. But maybe they exist, but in the U.S., where Telekom operates at the federal level, they don't have network neutrality. Donald Trump abolished it. When you say we have to abolish it in Europe to make possible 5G innovation, why don't we have these fantastic new products then? I hope you'll give me the revenue figures for the last business year.
Okay. If Matthias Muth isn't here after all, I can't see him anywhere, then we can strike him from the list of speakers. We've heard all the speakers now, and before we respond to them, I would like to note that after the end of the general debate, we'll go to the voting, and after that, we'll talk about the proxies and the voting rights and give you notes on the voting and also ballots that were already cast by mail. It's required that we provide these notes regarding these voting procedures. This brings me to a question from Mr. Rink. Mr. Rink, you ask whether it's possible next year to not discharge the entire management board, but to do it individually.
Well, we look at these proposals each year, and it depends on practice in our branch, and that's why in the 12 months, we'll look at that again. I can't promise you that we'll do individual discharge instead of a collective discharge of the work of the management board. That was the first question, Mr. Rink. The second question. Dr. Grimberg had five questions. Let's start with the question about you wanted to know with regard to AI, why we didn't contact you regarding advertising because you have the qualification for this. Ms. Grimberg, we have certain criteria, and we go through these criteria also with external consultants and these criteria that we have, you were never on our list. I just have to be honest about that. I have to admit that in all honesty.
That's why we didn't contact you, because you weren't on our list. That's our responsibility on the supervisory board to proceed as we do. Then you, doctor, you asked, this was asked by Dr. Herzig. No, this was a question about Dr. Herzig, why he isn't here. You have to respect that there's people who have other responsibilities as well, and changing these short-term isn't always easy. If he's not there next year, then we would listen more closely to your criticism. We have to accept that not everybody can make it to this event. You ask whether Mr. Duncker had a second residence in Hamburg and whether it's paid for. Mr. Bohn. Whether he has a second apartment in Bonn that's paid for.
The answer is no. Dr. Grim , I can't judge what personal reasons are and what aren't. We're all happy if we're not affected by personal reasons, and he's not on holiday. That's why I'd ask you not to report about these. She's not on holiday, and that's why I'd ask you not to report on these personal reasons in any detail. Also the remuneration of the management board. We believe that the way we proceed with the remuneration of the management and how we determine this is right, and that's why we'll continue to do it the way we do. That was the question you had for me. With that, I'll give the floor to Mr. Höttges.
It might be important to add that most of the remuneration rate for the executive staff and Board of Management is pegged to the performance of the share price development and that there is a fixed component, but most of the remuneration is pegged to the share price. When that develops positively, then that has a positive impact on the remuneration. This brings me to the topic. I'll start with Mr. Buthsky-Schiemann. You talked about after fiber is completely built out and we remove the copper, what we can do. There are two different processes for laying cable underground or in a hollow pipe underground. Then there's a cable. When there's a cable, this cable and this empty pipe can be pulled out of it, and it can be reused, recycled or whatever, or sold.
With the cables that are just put underground with a sheath, with a casing around them, they can't be removed from the earth. There's no possibility to remove them and then to reuse them or sell them. At some point we will switch off the copper network, and then we won't have any energy costs to operate it. We have to build out fiber everywhere, though, before that. Fixed network and investment in our own network and the interconnection fees since 2021, these have been determined by the European Commission with maximum rates. These might be even lower than our actual costs, but they have only very minor importance. I know this, you've been concerned with this topic for a certain time.
We negotiate the most important interconnection fees with our customers, and customers pay and competition. Our competitors pay to continue to use our lines like Vodafone, O2, et cetera, and they resell them their services, and we make sure that we are able to cover our costs.
Mr. Buthsky-Schiemann also asked about technical risks, especially if radio systems are switched off. First of all, the systems are continuously monitored, automatic monitoring, and if there are any disturbances, automatic resets will be made so that the sites will be booted up again. This is how we reduce economic losses. One of the reasons why the Deutsche Telekom gets so many awards, and it's better than the peers, is that we've got a high stability and quality, and that we do not have so many voice interruptions. The systems are not standing still very often, not when there are geopolitical problems. We are more concerned about hacker attacks and natural disasters. Here we have to be well prepared to mobilize the systems again very quickly and to do repairs. The environment and nature are also taken into account.
This is also necessary if you set up a new mobile site where you set up such a tower. Just think of coasts, of floods, of landslides. There are extremely high safety rules, but also other interests we take into account when we build new sites, and this is an important element of nationwide provision of services. There was a question concerning our CO2, our carbon emissions balance. What is not clear to everybody is that there are three scopes: Scope 1 and 2 and Scope 3. Scopes 1 and 2, this is what we need in terms of energies in our own operations, and we could reduce this by 94%. This is almost carbon neutral now. The much larger share is Scope 3. We cannot directly influence Scope 3. Scope 3, ladies and gentlemen, is, for example, you.
If you recharge your mobile phones, even if they are full or if they permanently use electricity, this will produce carbon emissions. It is our aspiration, of course, that we also reduce our carbon emissions in Scope 3. We want to reduce these emissions by 55% by the year 2030. This means all our suppliers who build routers, who build antenna, will need CO2 energy. This should be reduced by helping them, by providing them the opportunity to use greener electricity. Our customers, private and business customers, need electricity. The end device manufacturers need electricity, and this needs to be reduced in a partnership. We have a partnership for emissions reductions. We want to motivate people, and we want to save 55% of CO2 emissions by 2030. I hope that I could make myself clear.
5G is a question that I previously said was wrongly answered. We now have full 5G coverage in Germany of 99.2 or 3% of the population. Where people are living, you have 5G, and there is also 5G standalone, but this is only a technical test. If you look at the area, we supply roughly 99% of the area with mobile connection. This is not all 5G. The pure 5G provision is 90% currently. This means that we cannot provide connections in all natural protection areas, conservation areas. For 5G, we need more towers because they have to be much closer together than for 2G. You can still make a phone call, but you cannot use your data simply because we cannot build our towers everywhere.
30% of Germany are covered with forest, 6% of the country is covered with nature areas. In those areas, it's difficult for us to build towers. Mr. Lührmann, you talked about possible news for cycling sponsoring. No, cycling sponsoring is not part of our aspirations. Our sponsoring clearly focuses on soccer and on basketball. We will not come back to cycling, even if it's now a popular sport again. Mr. Lührmann, you talked about our strategies for public phone booth. We no longer have coin-operated public phone booth. This operation was stopped in 2023. The 12,000 existing sites are now dismantled step by step. In the past, the municipalities never wanted us to dismantle them. Now it can't be quick enough. If we do it, I have to point out, you also have to do civil engineering.
We have to take out everything that there is. You cannot just cut the electricity and leave it in the ground. This all needs to be discussed with the municipality, and this is a big effort, also a financial challenge. We are doing it step by step, but these are 12,000 existing sites which need to be dismantled and rebuilt. We are interested in doing it soon, but we can't do it overnight. You said that you talked about the situation of our employees. Yes, we commit ourselves to Germany, and we also want to have employment in Germany. We invest much more in Germany than in many other countries. We invest into fiber and 5G. Yes, here we still have bundled a lot of tasks for the group.
I also am honest and say, we cannot afford this in the long run if this site is not productive and if it's too expensive, then we have to think about alternatives. This is in the interest of the shareholders, but we also have to do this in order to ensure sustainability. Yes, we can pay high wages, but at the end of the day, they must be worthwhile for the group. Otherwise, we wouldn't do our job properly. This is what we also have to take into account, political conditions and salary wage costs, but also the normal wages. We have to compare this to other countries and take the necessary entrepreneurial decisions. This is a problem because Germany is no longer as productive as in the past, and we have very high wage and salary costs.
This brings me to the harmonization of digital sovereignty and the use of our strength and the comparison with the site in India. Our international site in India, for example, there we've got people who wear magenta clothes with a T on their shirt, and they feel that they are part of Telekom. We have the same responsibility for them and their families as we have for our employees here in Germany. They are just the same members of our Telekom family, they complement our teams here in Germany, and they carry out joint tasks. It's not an isolated job, but they are included in the German value creation. We will never shift or transfer total processes, but partial processes. For example, software coding.
Here, India is an important and interesting site for us, and it also made us much more agile and stronger in the past few years. This is why it's also given us more sovereignty when we use employees worldwide. We do not delegate our value creation, but we strengthen it. Ms. Grimberg , you talked about the satellites. We are not operating satellites ourselves. We don't want to do this, but we focus on our terrestrial use of fiber and mobile communications. For satellites, we are using partners, and there is no exclusivity when we choose partners for satellites. We are interested in using several partners. Direct to device services that go directly to your mobile phone, such as the one from Starlink, are contractually agreed, and we want to offer this with a good quality.
The pricing strategy, how we sell them to our customers, we have not taken the decision yet because the service is not yet available in the U.S. It's free of charge in the premium rates, and in the smaller bundles, you have to pay an extra premium for this service. We are also involved in IRIS², the European satellite concept. I have to say, this is lagging behind a little bit because the mission starts and the individual starts and landings are also influenced by Starlink. You are talking about the political situation of T-Mobile U.S. and the differences with Germany. Yes, in Germany, we are not making any donations to political parties or similar organizations. We are not allowed to do this. Donations to political parties or officials is forbidden here.
In the United States, the support of political representatives is more usual than in Germany, and it's part of good corporate citizenship if you do this. We make sure that we do not just support one party, or we prefer one party, and we are not donating money to the parties directly, but to nonprofit organizations that pass on the money. This is something that is just part of the deal in the United States. Barbara Grimberg , you're talking about the future use of satellites. Our own satellite capacities, I already answered this question. Ms. Grimberg was also asking about the cooling of our data center in Munich. Our Eisbach is really spectacular today. There are many questions about it and what is happening if you have many warm days in summer.
The amount of water taken out is so little that even with a low tide, the amount of water would be sufficient to cool our AI factory or our cloud factory. This is not a problem. To repeat it, we are not heating up the river because the waste heat is used for district heating and for waste heating. You were talking about the risk of hacker attacks. This is a huge topic, and it's also a huge opportunity for this company at the same time, because we are protecting the services and the networks for our customers in our group-wide security concept around the clock. We are monitoring the networks with a major Security Operations Center here in Bonn.
We analyze the software that attacks the ransomware that threatens our customers, and we cooperate with international security centers in order to use the knowledge in the world. Many customers are prepared to spend money for this because they are afraid, of course, that critical company information is stolen. We've got the Magenta Security portfolio for small and medium-sized enterprises. This is a solution that protects devices, provides cyber protection, for example, safety services. We expanded this business quite strongly, and at this point, I would like to refer you back to our website. You can take a look here at our offering. I think we are leading in our segment in this area, and we are developing solutions that use AI, GPTs, and agent models for these services. Mr. Lokamp, you want to know what we do when we connect multifamily homes with fiber.
Yes, of course, we want to do this. Just think about it. If you ask for a technician to repair your washing machine today, you first have to pay EUR 70 or EUR 80 for the technician to come to your home. If you do this for each apartment, for each flat, without even talking about the real work costs, you can imagine how much more expensive it is when we go to the house several times. It simply makes sense if you are in the building once, that we connect all the flats, not only to the basement, but to the individual flats. In the future, we will do this in one step. All the flats will be supplied to not only the people who have rates for this already, who have subscribed already. It would help not to have too many regulations.
If you've got a meeting of the owners of the owned flats and you missed it, then you have to wait for another year before you are allowed to go there again. This is not how it can work. We want to have a simplified process here. You are asking about the transfer of employees based on expensive collective bargaining agreement. In the past, we always managed to find good solutions for the employees, and this is also one of the big transformation services that we provide. Especially Birgit Bohle and her team are doing excellent work here. We also have a social partner with whom we always found a solution in the past, and this also shows the good cooperation that we have in the company.
In the collective bargaining round 2027, we will also find a good compromise that appreciates the performance of the employees and makes it possible to participate in the success. I would like to involve or have the employees participate even more in terms of shares or variable remuneration, but you need the support of employee representatives here. I have to point out that we have enormous competition here in Germany, that we have huge investments, and that we have to protect jobs long term. All in all, it should not be too expensive for us. Here I would like to appeal to the social partners here in the company. We have to strike the right balance because only then will we be able to protect jobs here in Germany. Dr. Grimberg. You asked when the phone boxes are switched off.
This is so exciting that I'm reading it out twice. Okay. Mr. Eichmann, you asked in how far we can also support women's sports more strongly. Deutsche Telekom, as one of the first ones, is already committed to female sports, and we continue to do this. I already told you that we also have the rights for the soccer championship 2027 for females, and we support a lot of female sports. We are the official partner of the German Football Association. We support the German national team. The T is always in there. Just watch out in the next match. We also are the main sponsor of the Cologne Women's Football Club. If the men won't do it, we will push at least the women. Please don't publish it in the minutes. I am a fan of FC Bayern München.
I have to say this, otherwise Uli Hoeneß will be insulted. We are supporting them. We are supporting the Paralympics, the Special Olympics, and this is also true for females. As Deutsche Telekom, with our initiative Equal Esports, we also want to focus on equal rights of men, women, and diverse people for gaming sports and esports, and this is especially of relevance to young people. You, there was a question regarding a new AI factory next to Munich in London, for example. At present, we are clearly focusing on Germany. Our AI factory in Munich is on German soil because we want to have German quality made in Germany, and there are no plans to do anything in non-German sites. In the context of the E.U. Gigafactory initiative, the E.U. plans at least five sites with 100,000 graphic processors.
We are using 10,000 in order to provide high-performing computing services to Europe. We will accompany this initiative and take our investment decision to step out of Germany. We are first focusing on Germany, but we've got more than 300 MW of data centers in Germany, not the GPU, and this, we also have European sites. London is not in there, and London is also a very expensive site. Mr. Müller, you also asked about the vulnerability of critical systems based on AI. Yes, it's true. You never have 100% security. AI, as everything in life, is a gift and is a poison, and poisons always depends on the dosage. We always have to take into account the negative sides as well, and attacks on our software will of course increase with a higher use of AI.
This is true for the time before AI and for our future, and this is why we now have to invest into the protection of our entire infrastructure. Against this background, this is one of the biggest tasks where we have to invest money because this will not happen on its own. Ms. Grimberg, you asked about the classical services in our data centers. We operate certified data centers in Germany and in Europe providing cloud and IT services. All the services meet the requirements of data sovereignty based on GDPR. With the Industrial AI Cloud, we've got the twin core data centers in Magdeburg and in Biere and another data center close to Amsterdam, where the T-Cloud public, the sovereign cloud, is operated. Typical services are IT services for private and hybrid cloud, data protection, virtual machines, SAP, IoT services, and the hosting of security solutions.
Mrs. Grimberg, you asked about the fiber contracts that were subscribed. Now we've got more than 2 million of our customers subscribing to a fiber connection. You are also talking about the hearing protection in our sites. Hearing protection is very important, and we place a high importance on occupational safety and health. We, of course, have hearing protection in these loud environments. Details on the number of people working there is part of the safety and security critical site information, and we are not allowed to make any public announcements.
Mrs. Grimberg, you further asked whether it's true that our copper network and the classical telephone DSL net will be shut off by December 2030. The answer is well known. No. Klaus Lührmann referred to the T Cloud for small to medium-sized businesses. Well, of course, I mean, we're small compared to some big U.S. corporations, and I would've wished for the company to be bigger in this respect. I cannot discuss all the background details. We have comprehensive marketing plans for this in the second half of the year. There will be a campaign, so stay tuned for what's coming, T-Sec and Cloud. I mean, we're well represented in all the expert groups. Mr. Kirchner, you mentioned the shareholder structure and the role of private shareholders.
We manage Deutsche Telekom in such a way that the Telekom share will remain attractive for all kinds of shareholders, no matter how many shares they own. We inform all groups of shareholders, institutional investors, company shareholders. At the same time, they all enjoy the same rights of information. Christian Illek, Hannes Wittig and his team regularly win awards for this. I think, Christian, you've recently won another CFO of the Year award. We're the only German stock corporation that offers its private shareholders a call every quarter where they can receive information that also institutional investors get. I participate in these events, and I'm available for questions, for your questions as well.
Just go to our website, you will find this event there, and everybody can really get involved in this and get the latest information on strategy and also recent developments. This is a unique thing that we offer. Grimberg, you asked about our power consumption and the breakdown. The data center is designed for a 12 MW consumption. The AI center has a PUE value of 1.2. At a PUE of 1.2, 85% of the power goes to the IT systems and 15% goes for cooling, power distribution and other infrastructure. We optimize this distribution continuously using AI systems, especially for optimal cooling in order to maximize the share that goes into the computing part.
Most of the power that we use for our Industrial AI Cloud goes into computing operations and is not used for cooling. Brings me to the question about satellite activities. Mr. Lührmann asked this question about possible equity investments in companies like Airbus. Airbus Defence and Space. Their Chairman of the Supervisory Board is our old CEO, Obermann. We have a project called 6G Takeoff, which has been subsidized by the federal government and has a life of three years. We don't operate any satellites of our own, but we use partnerships to do that. Mr. Grimberg, you asked about the use of Indian services like writing code, for example. We use Pune, Bangalore and Gurgaon. These are our Indian locations. They are an integrated part of our organization, along with the units in Germany.
Colleagues work on software development and optimization for customers in the entire group, with the exception of the United States. Mr. Lokamp, you asked about connecting buildings in the back of other buildings. Unfortunately, we often don't see them in the land registers, so we don't have really good documentation on some of these buildings. That's why we have developed our own land register. Through the copper network, you can identify whether there are any buildings built behind front buildings, so second line buildings. I can't give you any specific information on what the situation is in the city of Bochum, but we build fiber into buildings and into apartments. Since we're building new lines, we don't have some of the problems that others have. I think we need to clarify this offline.
Mr. Lohninger, you asked about our attitude regarding network neutrality in terms of 5G. 5G allows new features, performance features like very short latencies, virtual performances, one infrastructure, interconnecting networks on the Internet of Things, high data rates. Let me give you a specific example. In the U.S., we sell a product called T-Priority. The police, they use this product. Whenever it has a channel, it has priority in the network. So ambulances, police cars can use this service much faster than others, and at a high quality level. So other bandwidths, if necessary, are reduced so that the police can go first. I think this makes sense, this service. It's something that we cannot easily introduce in Germany.
We are using the technological opportunities of 5G very consistently in the U.S., and I think we need to maintain this flexibility also for our flexibility here in Europe and in Germany. This, I think, is too detailed and too technical for the AGM. Maybe we can have this discussion somewhere else, the discussion on network neutrality. We should offer this service first, and then look afterwards whether something has gone wrong. Rather than explaining before anything happens what you need to regulate, and then just use this buzzword of network neutrality because this is too restrictive. We should turn it around. This concludes my list of questions. I have two. There are two more questions that are in progress. Now, I have a question from Mr. Rink, who asked us what the return on capital target for 2030 is.
We haven't published any. We have one for 2027, 9% that I mentioned before. You can assume that we assume rising amounts. A return on capital is probably going to go up. It's not going to skyrocket, but it should be above the 9%. We haven't communicated anything officially yet. Second question from Mr. Lerner. He asked whether there are any plans to raise our equity investment in BT. We have a stake of 12%, which is in our pension fund right now, and benefit from the dividend payout twice a year. There are no plans to expand that stake. One representative of Deutsche Telekom is in the supervisory board of BT. Another question by Mr. Rink.
If you raise a dividend and buy back shares and increase the capital, then all this doesn't go together, right? Yes. If you do all of this simultaneously, that doesn't make any sense. We just want the vote under item eight in case we do a capital increase. We've done this before, and then we acquired SoftBank shares for T-Mobile. It doesn't make sense to buy back shares and at the same time do a capital increase. You're right about that. It will only happen if it's separated in time. In one year, you do a capital increase, and in another year, you do a share buyback. Of course, this needs to be managed carefully. What is the impact of carbon neutrality on your capital, return on capital targets?
We're not measuring this because the impact might be too small. Return on capital, we measure this after tax. 19 billion, that's our EBIT. We have EUR 255 billion net assets. The carbon reduction makes up maybe EUR 100 million-EUR 200 million. It doesn't really fit in the context of these major figures, billions. Now, we printed 2,500 of these beer mats. How much did this cost? EUR 318.50. Now a question which basically stressed out the back office staff a little bit, Mr. Lohninger's question of how high the peering and transit revenue was in 2025. In Germany and all European companies, it was at about EUR 100 million, but we cannot break this down to companies, national companies.
Mr. Lohninger also asked about the 5G products. We have 5G gaming, mobile cloud games with different latencies. We have campus networks for electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles that operate in factories, outside factories. We have video production where you need high bandwidths for interviews, for example. We've got Apple Watches and the RedCap standard that we offer. All of these offers require certain network parameters. Of course, you can be upset about this from a network neutrality perspective, but against the backdrop of the customer interest and customer benefit, this is important. T-Priority, I mentioned that for first responders and fixed wireless access. The use of mobile services that you use at home. If you have your router connected via mobile, you need different parameters. There you also need to have a chance to differentiate your services.
Now this brings me to the 6G network. We are currently developing 6G. If, again, we impose ourselves certain barriers like sensing and other vectors like AI functionalities, if we limit ourselves right from the start, then the innovation strength of our country is severely curtailed, and we will lag behind even more behind the Americans. Mr. Lohninger, you also asked whether we issue the official recommendation to use a VPN to our customers. Now, I was personally really annoyed by this question because you personally know we had an employee in a tweet. She simply wanted to help somebody because somebody complained along the lines that you also mentioned, and she tried to help this customer and told him that you can use a VPN. Now, I mean, you just put her on the spot here.
You basically humiliated her by using this example just because she gave a wrong answer. I don't think it's right to do that. Because our service staff, they respond to hundreds and thousands of questions, and according to our slogan that you can depend on Telekom. Of course, mistakes happen. Simply to pick this out and blow this up so much, I think should not be done. Of course, every individual provider takes its own decisions. It's not us. We believe in direct interconnection, and we also believe in a flexible and open internet for everybody. This was an individual mistake that I don't want to keep commenting on. I think I've answered all the questions. Thank you very much.
Can I assume that all questions posed by shareholders today have been answered? If not, please pose your question once again.
Last year I was positively surprised because you stated how much money you had paid for the due diligence insurance, which doesn't exist in other countries. Unlike last year, you did not specify the same amount this year, nor did you tell us how many people participated in this and how much damages had to be paid by the insurance companies. What's the relevant amount here? It would be nice if you could specify that. If the numerous back office staff are not able to answer this question at short notice now, then I would appreciate it if you could email me your answer. You do have my email address. Thank you very much.
Right. Thank you.
Just an objection to the minutes. I did not specify any individuals. I was referring to several statements made by Telekom through Telekom hilft and on Twitter, et cetera. You just mentioned a female employee that I did not mention.
Mr. Lohninger, this was an individual case. There was a tweet, and the employee then gave the answer that it would be possible to use a VPN. Then, you know, somebody fed back to her that, you know, Telekom was making a fool of themselves. Well, for many years, that was precisely the recommendation given by Telekom staff. You're saying it's an individual case. I am saying that this happened, you know, continuously. That wasn't a question. Thank you. There is another comment.
Yeah, just briefly. I did ask a question about AI. Just to be sure, and I mentioned this 55 Deutsche Mark banknotes. And I also said that the Google AI is saying that there may be an error. There are probably loads of people who are afraid that the same errors may occur with the AI systems used by Telekom.
I'm assuming that this will be stopped and that those who are afraid, you know, can be reassured that you'll be dealing with it.
Was this a question or a comment?
Well, it just because my question had not been answered, but this is not an additional question.
Well, let me reiterate what I have said in another context before. Obviously, we are using AI to answer questions, but there is always a person that plausibilizes the answer so that you wouldn't actually see a 55 Deutsche Marks banknote. Yeah. I just wanted to make sure that we pass this on to whom it may concern. Look, you don't have to be afraid of Deutsche Telekom's AI systems. You know, they make sure that there's no misuse and no errors. It should be a good thing for everybody involved. That's just what I meant to say. Right.
There's another follow-up question.
I'm sorry. I would like to get back to the Google-related question which has not been answered. Is there an alternative to this web client? And secondly, has any money paid either from Telekom to Google or the other way around? Or nothing at all? And then, sorry, there's one question that I forgot to mention, but I'll be quick. Creative occupations like authors, speakers, cameramen, et cetera, people working in media, such jobs are very much under threat because of AI. And in this context, I would like to know, you know, you showed us this trailer with Albert Einstein. Was this an AI-generated trailer or was it an actual actor? If it was a proper actor, then I'm impressed. If it was AI, then I must say that's quite scary.
Well, let me answer this by saying usually, you know, for any such films, we use about 50% AI. It's a mix of human actors and artificial intelligence. That, of course, clearly reduces the cost of production and also gives us more room for creativity. The second question, I'll have to look it up, but as far as I know, no money has been paid between Telekom and Google here. Of course, license fees are always paid. You can also use another client in connection with your MagentaTV, for instance, Samsung. Then this would not go through your Gmail account necessarily. You can also use another account. There are alternative access options. If you like, we can put you in touch with one of our technicians, and he can give you more information about how to do this.
Another question?
I believe that my question has not been answered. My question was, I said that I'm having some ethical problems with holding Telekom shares and benefiting from the profits that you have generated. Can you give me, I don't know, a piece of advice or can you dispel my concerns at all? Because I am a Telekom shareholder. I mean, can you sort of encourage or motivate me to buy more shares? Because your answer was kind of a very general answer. It would be nice if I could filter out some feedback specific to me.
When I try to do that, it would be something along the lines of, "We don't care about ethics at all, and if you don't like it, then just sell off your stock." But I can't believe that this is what you were actually trying to say. That's why I'm saying I don't think my question has been answered. It would be nice if you could, you know, specifically react to what I said about my ethical concerns with buying Telekom shares due to the situation in the U.S.
My answer is this: Telekom is active in Western countries and in Europe and in the U.S. We don't have a footprint in Asia or Africa or South America.
In these countries, we represent, you know, the rule of law and the relevant laws, and that also holds true for the U.S. Not just since the Trump administration took office, but, you know, we've always honored the laws and regulations there. We have more than 70,000 employees in the U.S., which means that we have a lot of responsibility also for their families. In the U.S. in particular, Telekom has a reputation of being one of the cost-efficient providers that offers excellent quality at the same time. We also cover those groups of the population that cannot afford an expensive AT&T and Verizon contract. In addition to the 75,000 staff that work for us, we have, you know, hundreds of thousands of customers. We have a footprint in America, where we have an American democracy.
If there's anything to criticize, you know, I can't do that because I can't change it. If you demand that Telekom withdraw from the U.S. because you don't like the current political system there, then yes, that is up to you. But Telekom, you know, cannot take responsibility for that sort of thing. I couldn't take responsibility for that because we do have responsibility for a lot of people in the U.S. We are the most important provider of 5G services in the U.S., for instance. Let me reiterate. Our corporate values that we represent and that we also stick to in Germany and elsewhere, in terms of diversity, in terms of freedom of opinion, et cetera, these values apply in the U.S. just as they apply in Greece, Poland, Germany, et cetera.
We cannot take any political influence that would just, you know, curb us. Of course, we would never approve any breach of the rule of law in the form of corruption or anything else, no matter where it is. As far as the shareholder structure is concerned, we follow the rules of the capital markets, and whoever wants to buy stock can do that. I don't know every individual shareholder. You know, there are millions of shareholders across the globe. We have a lot of shareholders from Germany, but also a lot of shareholders in the U.S. who play a very dominant role in the global capital markets anyway. I hope that this has. I don't know. I can see you're nodding.
I mean, we can't discuss that bilaterally any further here, but I hope that my answer has provided some insight.
Well, you're not making it any easier for me to take a decision. I'm not expecting you to interfere with policymakers or to completely withdraw from the U.S. I was hoping to see more, say, commitment, or maybe I was expecting you to come up with a statement that would, you know, put me in a position to continue holding Telekom stock with a clean conscience. I'm a little disappointed that you haven't made that decision any easier for me. It is still a difficult decision, but thank you anyway.
Let me add to this. Needless to say, the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management are also dealing with the question that you just raised.
The supervisory board believes that Deutsche Telekom's values are being filled with life. The world is not just black and white, it is gray. That's something that we need to handle, and that always comes with new challenges.
All right. There's another follow-up question.
Mr. Höttges, Dr. Illek, thank you very much for answering the questions. Nonetheless, my questions have not been answered completely. I asked about the open cloud that was the talk of the town a couple of weeks ago. What's Telekom's position about that? I did ask about it, didn't I? You provided the same answer to another of my questions last year. In Spain, you know, we also have a capital increase and prices go up and up. You do buy back shares, and the share prices are down.
That happens with a lot other companies too, like IONOS. Sometimes then share prices are up, but just briefly, and then they go plummet again. My question is, what does Germany have to do? For instance, the main shareholder of Varta also said that he doesn't understand what, how Germany is handling the situation, why small investors are put at such a big disadvantage compared to the big investors. There was one company where that did a capital increase and then reduced capital at the same time. Now, that is permissible under German law. How is that even possible? That's what my question was all about. It's a theoretical question, which is: What needs to happen in order for capital increases to be possible in Germany again? You did not answer that.
Well, I did answer your question. I mean, that's what you said last time, too, because I brought up the same question last year.
Sorry, I have another question regarding the taxes and electricity costs. How high are they, like, electricity costs? Like internationally speaking, are we at the top? How about the taxes? Yeah, I forgot to ask about that. Thank you. Thank you for answering the questions so far.
Good. Okay, we have one question to go. Actually, only follow-up questions are permissible now. Okay, one last question.
I do have a T-shirt for you. Now, if we manage to, you know, come to a close here sometime tonight, then I can give you this T-shirt.
Mr. Eberle's question on the D&O insurance. The D&O insurance cost EUR 365 million, of which supervisory board members and Board of Management members, yeah, are covered. I'm not aware of any damages. I'm not aware of any cases where we would've used the insurance. Now have all questions been answered?
There is a last question, but this is really the last question.
Let me t he factory that you talked about, you know, for all these servers. If you want to build another one in Germany, then let me tell you, the wind turbines in Northern Germany often stand still because the energy cannot be used. Because in Bavaria, you know, I mean, Bavaria prevents the energy that is generated in the North from being transported to the South, and they've been doing that for decades. Just to let you know. I mean, there's enough energy in the North. Just throwing it out there, wind energy.
Well, let me try to answer this question. I hope I got it right. As for Anthropic and Claude, Telekom yeah uses both of them as important elements of our AI portfolio. Of course, we always make sure that compliance and data protection rules are adhered to. We're not using these technologies exclusively. Claude is part of our service offering, and we have piloted Claude in the company actively and currently there's a discussion about gaining access for Anthropic and using that client too. Right now, we are using Azure a great deal, needless to say. We bought 50,000 licenses from OpenAI and for ChatGPT Enterprise for our staff. Needless to say, we are using different large language models.
We are working with different partners, and that's why we are sort of agnostic, if you will. We haven't, you know, exclusively opted for one or technology or another. Right. I think the last point raised was more of a statement than a question. It was said that a lot of wind energy is generated in Northern Germany, so that would actually be a question to a board member from RWE. And, you know, how this energy could possibly be made available to the data centers when the sun's not shining. But we might want to discuss that on another occasion. Let me ask for the last time. Have all questions of the shareholders been answered?
I hereby state that all questions have been answered, and I hereby close the general debate. I would like to thank all speakers for their contributions and the Board of Management for answering the questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now proceed to the votes pursuant to Section 17, paragraph two of the bylaws. It is my responsibility as chair of the meeting to determine the manner and order of the votes. Voting will take place via mobile voting devices that we're using as electronic ballot boxes. Votes are assigned to shares by scanning the QR code printed on your AGM card. The votes recorded using the mobile voting devices will be transferred to a computer system for vote counting after the voting period closes. The transfer and the subsequent counting will be supervised by a notary. The addition method is used to determine the voting result. In this process, the yes and no votes are counted separately and then added together to determine the total number of votes cast. Abstentions will not be counted.
To ensure notarial supervision, you may cast your votes only here in the main room, that is in this New York hall, including the gallery accessible to you. If you wish to participate in the voting, please proceed to the main room now and have your AGM card ready. For the sake of clarity, I would like to point out that voting by the company's proxies as well as voting by those intermediaries, proxy advisors and shareholder associations that make use of the virtual voting card service, will take place differently from what was previously stated. They are cast by the present proxy holders or the present representative of the respective intermediary, proxy advisor or shareholder association releasing the votes previously submitted electronically. Subsequently, these votes are also entered into the computer system for vote counting. In addition, shareholders have made use of the option to vote by mail.
These postal votes have also already been electronically recorded and are taken into account by the computer during the vote count. Before we proceed to the vote, I will once again announce the current attendance. The number of shares has changed. Right now we have 3,432,207,603 low par value shares. That corresponds to EUR 8,787,450,703.36, or 69.97% of the capital stock, which consists of various parts. The relevant numbers will be shown on the screen in a moment, likely. Here they are.
In addition, we've received postal votes from 19,899,889 low par value shares, which will be taken into account for the voting result later on. This means we have more than 4 billion low par value shares, and this corresponds to 70.38% of the capital stock. As for the individual items on the agenda, I would like to point out that I will, first of all, take a vote on the proposals made by management. We will now proceed to the votes on the administration's proposed resolutions regarding agenda items through to 11. The updated version of the management's proposed resolution for agenda item 2 is up for a vote. I already presented this when I called for agenda items 2 through 11 prior to the general debate.
The differences from the proposed resolution contained in the invitation to the AGM result from the change in the number of shares entitled to dividends compared to the number used as a basis in the invitation. As previously announced, the dividend to be distributed in accordance with the proposed resolution remains unchanged at EUR 1 per share, per low par value share. For agenda item 3 to 11, the management's proposed resolutions are presented for a vote with the wording derived from the invitation to today's AGM, published in the Federal Gazette on the 27th of February 2026. Regarding agenda item 3 and 4, I would like to draw your attention to the prohibition on voting pursuant to Section 136 of the German Stock Corporation Act.
Furthermore, for the sake of order, I would like to point out that regarding agenda item 5, that anyone who wishes to reject only one or two of the appointments of Deloitte proposed under sub-items A through C, must vote against the entire resolution under agenda item 5. If this proposed resolution is rejected by a majority, I will conduct a separate vote on sub-items A, B, and C. Regarding agenda item 7, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in this resolution, you may vote separately on the election of each candidate by way of a separate vote. Resolutions on agenda items 2 through 11 require a simple majority of the valid votes cast.
The resolution on agenda item 8 requires, in addition to a simple majority of the valid votes cast, a majority of at least three-quarters of the share capital represented at the time of the resolution. The respective resolutions on agenda items 9 and 10 additionally require a simple majority of the share capital represented at the time of the resolution. If you wish to vote for or against one or more of the management's proposed resolutions regarding agenda items 2 through 11, you must now proceed to the main room. That is here in the New York Hall, including the gallery accessible to you, and have your AGM card ready. The votes will be consolidated. This means that voting will take place in a single round using the mobile voting devices with each item on the ballot treated as a separate matter.
You decide independently of one another to what extent you will participate in the voting by casting your vote and whether you will vote yes, no, or abstain. Once voting has begun, give a clear hand signal to the staff members assigned to collect your votes. A staff member will then approach you. In fact, they're already waiting. First, present your AGM card to them so that the QR code on it can be scanned. Next, for each of management's proposed resolutions regarding agenda items 2 through 11, please indicate whether you support management's proposal. That is, whether you wish to vote yes or oppose it. That is, whether you wish to vote no. If you wish to abstain from voting on management's proposed resolutions regarding individual agenda items, please indicate that as well. Next, review the voting preference displayed on the mobile voting device.
Confirm to the staff member that your voting preference is accurately reflected. After this confirmation, the staff member will cast your vote. If you wish to abstain from voting on all agenda items regarding management's proposed resolutions, you do not need to inform our staff of your voting preference. If you have any questions about the procedure, our staff will of course be happy to assist you. I now ask our staff to collect the votes here in the main room. Voting is hereby opened, and I am indicating this by way of the gong.
Have all shareholders who wish to vote yes or no on one or more of the management's proposed resolutions regarding agenda items 2 through 11 cast their votes? Are there still votes to be cast? Please indicate a clear hand signal if this is the case.
Let me ask again. Are there still votes to be cast? Please give a clear signal with your hand. This is not the case. I hereby declare that all the votes on agenda items 2 through 11 have been cast and I hereby close the voting.
I will announce the results of the vote as soon as the tally is available. The notary public will now count the votes. There will be a brief break and I will come back to you. Thank you.
[Presentation]
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now continue. I have the voting results before me. Now another photograph. Yes, thank you. The general meeting has approved all of the board's proposed resolutions. Well, yep. I will now announce the results on the individual items on the agenda, and I will give you the voting results. Where am I now? The general meeting has approved the proposed resolutions with the number of votes presented. We had 70.38% present during the vote. On item two of the agenda, the result was 99.85%. This was the resolution on the appropriation of profit. In line with the presence that I immediately presented before the votes, and the numbers are available for inspection here. On agenda item 3, there was the result of 99.21% of the necessary votes.
The discharge was granted for the members of the Board of Management. On item four, the approval was 95.4%, and this was the resolution on the approval of the actions of the members of the Supervisory Board for the period affected. Thank you very much on behalf of the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board. On item five on the agenda, the result is 99.62% of votes cast.
We have the necessary simple majority of votes, and Deloitte GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft, Munich, was appointed as auditor and group auditor for 2026, auditor for a review of the condensed financial statements and the interim group management report for the 2026 financial year, and as an auditor for any review of additional interim financial reports for the 2026 financial year and the first quarter of the 2027 financial year. On item 6 on the agenda, there was approval of 99.68%, reaching the simple majority necessary. Deloitte GmbH Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft, Munich, was appointed as auditor for sustainability reporting if this is required by the government and is the task not part of the auditor's activities anyway. On the election of the supervisory board, Mr. Frank Appel received 93.06% of the votes.
With a simple majority necessary, Dr. Appel was elected as a Supervisory Board member. On Stefan B. Wintels, 85.51% of the votes cast elected him as a Supervisory Board member. Dr. Thomas Dohmke received 99.17% of the votes cast, and thus reached the necessary simple majority, so he is now a member of the Supervisory Board. On Dr. Philipp Herzig, the 99.08%. Oh, sorry. 98.08% of the cast vote and a simple majority, Dr. Philipp Herzig was appointed member to the Supervisory Board. I would like to expressly thank you for giving me and my colleagues your trust. On agenda item 8, 95.62% of the votes cast, and this means the necessary qualified majority decided about the cancellation of authorized capital 2022 and the creation of authorized capital 2026.
The full content is to be seen under item 8, agenda item 8 in the invitation. On item 9 of the agenda, 98.32% of the votes cast, thus a simple majority, was in favor of the resolution on the amendment of Section 13 of the articles of incorporation and the remuneration of the supervisory board members. For the full text, please view the invitation under item 9. On item 10 of the agenda, 57.14% of the votes cast decided on the inclusion of a jurisdiction clause in Section 21 of the articles of incorporation following the proposal as shown under item 10 in the invitation to this AGM. On item 11, 95.11% of the votes cast, thus the necessary simple majority, approved the remuneration report for the year 2025.
I now only focused on the necessary votes, and the detailed results were shown on the screen, as you saw. I point you, or I refer you to the numbers shown on screen. All interested shareholders can also get the results at the speaker's desk, and you can also see these results on the webpage of the company after the meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, this leads us to the end of our agenda. I would like to thank you very much on behalf of the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board for your personal participation in this year's AGM. I also would like to thank you for my election, for the election of Mr. Wintels and the other two members. I would like to thank the employees who helped prepare and organize this AGM and contributed to its smooth conduct.
Finally, yes, this is well deserved. It was a long day, a long evening. Finally, I would like to note that the next annual general meeting of Deutsche Telekom AG is expected to take place on the 14th of April, 2027 in Bonn, and we invite all the shareholders once again cordially. I wish you a safe trip home. Goodbye. Today's meeting is closed. Goodbye and see you.