Hello to everybody. A warm welcome. Today, thanks for joining even though there are a couple of other events at the same time. I think it's worth listening because we've had a strong first quarter overall. We're very positive about the full year, and we will give you a couple of details on this matter during the next half hour, and then we are happy to answer your questions. I'm on page four. As you can see, subscriber base year-on-year grew by 160,000. EBITDA is above plan. The nice thing which we know internally, and we're not distributing it in full detail, is that any activity, any company, even the smallest one, is above plan.
Both segments, for sure, but even on a smaller scale, any of the companies is doing really well, and any of the subsidiaries. Free cash flow is also positive, with EUR 62.7 million, and in line with our expectation. If we go one step deeper on the subscriber base, we have been able to grow the total subscriber base, and you know very well, by 163,000 year-on-year and 26,000 net adds in the first quarter. On postpaid, we have a slight gain.
I think we have expected maybe a bit more, but we have seen a couple of impacts on EECC, specifically in January, where processes were not perfectly established. February and March showed that we are fully back on track. We have significant wins in terms of percentage on our freenet-based tariff plans, up to almost 100,000. Really great momentum on waipu.tv, with +26% up to 769. Ingo and myself, we are actually in the waipu.tv or Exaring office this morning, and we have seen that, by yesterday, we almost are crossing the 800,000. The momentum keeps going, which is really great.
It's really great because we also see that on freenet TV we still have losses in the subscriber base. We see that I think we've taken the right strategic decision to have both of them, and we overcompensate the losses in freenet TV very soon with waipu.tv. This is the first quarter where by the end of the quarter waipu.tv has more subscribers. But doing really pretty well, and give you some more details in a second. On page six, even more detail on mobile net adds. What happened during the first quarter, finally, we are with T-Mobile and Vodafone on 5G tariffs, as you well know.
The good thing is that we have now also the first what we call the own tariff plans under our own name and brand with 5G. It's always stepwise. First, we get the next technology on what we call the original tariff plans like Red and Magenta. Then with a little delay, we are also moving them into our portfolio, which is not a technical or process delay. It's always kind of a gentleman's agreement between us and the network operators. They want to protect their new technology for a certain period of time, which is no damage to us, and this is why we follow the rules. Other than that, we have already informed you about the brand transformation. We are in the middle of it.
The rebranding is heavily ongoing. We will also change some of our legal entities, not on the AG level, but on the lower level. We are changing some of our limited companies in the naming. All that is ongoing. We have done a couple of tests once again with the new brand. The customer perception is really positive. Internally, people are very excited. We have had a bit of a worry after 20 or 30 years with Debitel and mobilcom. It feels like even internally, it's kind of a relief that we're moving into the one unique name.
The positive momentum with the employees is also great to see now when we need to go back from Corona back to offices. I think that's perfect. It's a perfect match, these two elements or two situations at the same time. The captive channels remain the most important ones, but you see on the lower end of the page on the left-hand side compared to last year, captive is a bit lower. This really indicates that MediaMarktSaturn and our freenet dealership is gaining momentum again. There was the impact last year on the lockdown. Now we are back on around 70%.
I think that is a healthy and from our point of view, balanced situation. I also want to mention that the cooperation with MediaMarktSaturn is recapturing its momentum after their really difficult times with all the lockdowns. New management is on board. There's also a new guy in communications and marketing, which comes from Deutsche Telekom, which we have known for the last 20 years. We are currently discussing with him and the legacy team on how we continue and can do even better this year. I think the channel will be performing better than 2021 and 2020.
I think that's all positive, and therefore, I'm also positive that in Q2 and the following quarters the net adds will be higher than in the first quarter. Next page, we give you a bit more details on waipu.tv. We've done a TV campaign mainly in order to strengthen the brand. We see that this pays back. We were for a long period reluctant to invest into branding, but we have done it now, and we see a positive impact. We will also do the same in Q2 and Q3.
We think that really we have a positive momentum of the platform IP as such, and we also see that we need to make use of, I would say, the difficulties of the others. If I may add a bit on competition. We see that Sat.1 is basically not doing any B2C marketing anymore. They have lost a couple of their B2B customers, such as M-net and NetCologne. They are not really in a remarkable position as a competitor. We see them in Germany more in a phase out. We hear that United Internet is also not too happy with it, but the fact that we hear that also means that 1&1 United Internet is interested in the topic of TV, which is a change from the past.
We have signed an exclusive cooperation deal with Deutsche Glasfaser, and we will now offer. They have around 100,000 active TV customers, but 8x more that are not using or consuming TV from them. We have now agreed with Thorsten Dirks, the CEO, on CRM campaigns and switch campaigns during the third and mainly fourth quarter this year. It will take a little time until we see the impact. We are very, very positive and excited, and we have met them, the whole management team last week on ANGA, which is a German cable and fiber fair. I think we will gain a lot of momentum there.
This cooperation also triggered a couple of other talks, for example, with Deutsche GigaNetz, with some local providers. We have also started to do a pilot project with Vonovia, which is, you all know, one of the biggest landlords in Germany. They want a specific solution for their lease partners or, we are doing that. I think there is really a lot going on, not yet official. We will also sign a deal with one of the most well-known set-top box providers on the globe. They have asked us to implement waipu.tv there.
I think there's a lot to come, and I think with either the next or the December meeting, we have yesterday decided that we will give you a broader look into it and even more details in order for you to understand what's going on. We're really, really excited. We think that is now kind of the turning point into a much stronger and much faster growth period than we've seen before. Also on Media Broadcast. Media Broadcast does not only consist of freenet TV, but also the B2B business, which is important, and the radio business. Step by step, freenet TV, fifth anniversary, price increase in Q3. Still, on the RGU side, we are losing, which was and is expected.
We're still our team is working hard on getting this curve or this trajectory much flatter in the future. On B2B, we have signed a long-term contract with 1&1 or United Internet. We will provide the entire field service for the active infrastructure of 5G, which in many aspects is interesting. First of all, we make use of an existing workforce on the one hand side, so it's commercially viable for Media Broadcast, but I think it also gives sends a signal to the entire market that our 5G campus and all the activities of Media Broadcast are accepted by this new operator, which kind of I think is a quality signal. Hopefully we'll find other companies that ask for the same services.
There is a couple of talks with a number of partners at this stage. On Antenne Deutschland, still a small unit compared to anything else we do. We have now five own programs. We have launched our marketing agency or the ad sales agency. We have all the revenues depend on the number of listeners per hour. You see here that we have a growth of +70% to the previous measurement, 157,000 listeners per average hour. The biggest channel in Germany has 1.5. I think we're growing. We're very positive that also this company will, from 2023 onwards, contribute positively to bottom line. This already brings me to the outlook for the current quarter.
As I said, we expect stronger net adds in mobile. We have also launched Müller Mobile on fourth of April. Müller is a discount drugstore chain in Germany with the freenet internet product. It's supposed to be launched as a fixed mobile service, but then end of Q2 or maybe early Q3 in the fixed line area. The digital lifestyle revenues we expect to be stable. We are still suffering a bit at lower captive channels and a bit lower share of our brick-and-mortar sales and also regulatory elements. We remain positive on the segment as such. Last but not least, the brands transformation is going into operations and execution on the TV and Media side.
As already mentioned, waipu.tv with the first campaigns with Deutsche Glasfaser. We have ordered 150,000 units of our remote control. We have a bit of delays on the delivery side because they come from China, but we're doing well. As I said, we've ordered 150,000 units. They are not yet shipped, so might cause a bit of a delay in Q2, but not significantly impacting the numbers. freenet prices will hit the ground by the end of Q2. I think it's a very regular outlook. We had a strong quarter this quarter by 13th of May, shows that once again, we're doing really well. We're very happy about what's going on. Having said that, I'd like to give Ingo a chance to go into more details on the numbers side.
Yeah. Thank you, Christoph. Good morning, everybody, from my side. I stayed with the group view on page 10. I think no surprise, Christoph was talking very positive about the business, and therefore, I think it is not surprising to see these stable figures will represent even increasing on EBITDA and gross profit level. It's a very strong quarter from my point of view, what we show here in group revenues. It is stable. Group revenues is something what you know from the past. It's not so decisive for the quality of our business itself. It is more decisive if it is more in the valuable parts of the business or not.
As you can see here, it is easy to see the gross profit in EBITDA is increasing. Therefore, it is clear that the lost revenue is not of very high value. We are happy here in the gross profit to see this increase. It is EUR 218.2 in the first quarter 2022. It's strongly above what we saw in the first quarter last year. In the EBITDA, also additional element from the SG&A side, which brings us to a group EBITDA of EUR 118 million.
I think it is important to mention here that definitely there is some headwind in the first quarter because in 2021, in Q1 2021, we received short-term money or money from the government for short-term work in an amount of EUR 6.4 million. In the first quarter of 2022, it was only EUR 700,000 . There was a basic headwind of EUR 5.7 million which could be compensated because we did some restructuring in the HR in our system. We have a lower number of FTEs now. This is what you can see. Therefore, it was possible to nearly compensate this effect. Switching to mobile. Yeah, definitely the headline is correct.
I do not see any sign of weakness here. It is definitely the other way around. I think very strong figures. The service revenue and postpaid could be increased again in the first quarter. Therefore, the share of service revenues could be increased to 75.1% of the mobile revenue here. I think we only lost in the hardware revenues, and this is not that relevant in terms of result. In the gross profit, another quarter with an increase, now EUR 166.2 million in the first quarter 2022. Also, if you compare it with the last four quarters, this is the highest level what we reached here.
I think all in, it's a good picture that the EBITDA growth of EUR 5 million is on the one side based on an optimization or an improved gross profit, and on the other side, based on an improved cost base. What I also read in some comments about what I read this morning, therefore, I think it is important to say there is no release of any bad debt provisions part of this result, because, as a reminder, we built these provisions of EUR 5.5 million for bad debt at the end of 2020, and these provisions are still part of the balance sheet, so there's nothing released to gain it here.
Switching to page 12 to the KPIs of the mobile business. Christoph already talked you through the customer numbers. The ARPU is nearly stable. If you look into the digital lifestyle revenues, Christoph, we're already talking about some problems in the first quarter, what we saw from EECC and from the s-shop situation. I think what I added here is the supply chain issues where we also had some difficulties in the first quarter. As Christoph was already very positive here for the second quarter, I can only confirm it from my side.
I think, yes, it was slightly lower in the first quarter, but all signs that we see from the first weeks in the second quarter is that it should be possible to improve the revenues here again in the second quarter. Moving to TV and Media on page 13, there is another increase in revenues. I think we have to separate the media barter deal of EUR 1.5 million here, and therefore there is an increase of revenues from EUR 68 million in Q1 2021 to EUR 73.9 million in the first quarter. This increase is driven by waipu.tv and by the increasing number of customers. On the other hand, in the gross profit, also an increasing figure here from EUR 44 million to EUR 47 million.
If you look into the EBITDA, I think the positive picture here again in the business parts here, what we see is freenet TV, something like zero line. Then we see some cost efficiencies in the B2B business of Media Broadcast. Therefore, an increase here. In waipu.tv, maybe on the first view, a little bit disappointing, the increase of EUR 0.6 million. Christoph already mentioned the marketing campaign, what we started in the first quarter. Therefore, this is something which we brought the result a little bit down here. In gross profit, it is as strong as in the other quarters. Moving to the free cash flow.
Here we see a free cash flow in the first quarter of EUR 62.7 million. It is all what we expected. Yes, correct. This equity dividend is part of it. There are some negative tax effects out of the dividend. As a net amount, it is something like I think EUR 4.5 million. All in, I think the change in net working capital is a little bit higher than in 2021, which is based on some higher contract acquisition costs. This is based as we do have more indirect sales, and this is an effect what we can see here. On the other side, tax payments slightly higher, but not really, it does not make me nervous.
The CapEx is higher as announced because we have this renovation in our office in Büdelsdorf, so additional cost. We did some investments into digital radio, so therefore some additional investments. We announced something like EUR 60 million for the whole year, and I would say we are on track here. Leases are fine, interest payments lower than last year because the outstanding debt is lower. All in, I think it's easy to confirm what we guided here for the year, and I think we are fully on track in cash flow terms.
Moving to one special topic, I think not surprising for you because we already announced it, and we also gave you the amount at the beginning of the process. We have the amortization of the mobilcom-debitel brand with which is an or was or is an intangible asset in the balance sheet, which worth EUR 293 million of value. We have to amortize it now over the next 18 months, and we did the first step in the first quarter. There is an effect in the deferred taxes too. All in, there was a negative effect of EUR 40 million.
This slide number 15 is more or less only to show you that we would like to focus for this period on an adjusted group result because this is a normalization of this effect. From my point of view, this makes a lot of sense. Moving to the balance sheet, page 16. Even with the amortization of the brand, we still have an equity ratio of 42.3%, a very, very healthy balance sheet. Our leverage is 1.6, and the bank debt leverage is 0.8. It's all fine. Moving to page 17 to the guidance. I think here also a clarification maybe is necessary. We gave a guidance, and there is no release of any bad debt provisions part of this guidance.
If there would be a reason to release the bad debt provision, this would definitely come on top to the guidance here. Definitely, it's not yet decided. We confirm the guidance what we see here and what we gave at the end of February. In all terms here, I think we are on a very good track. From today's point of view, I do not see any reasons to doubt the guidance what we gave, but it is also, from my point of view, too early today to increase it. I think we have to wait what happens in the second quarter. It is only March figures what we see here.
I think in the mid of the year, we have to think about the guidance, and we have to see if we get more proof on the figures, and then we have to decide to do so. This is all to the figures for now from my side, and therefore, I would ask you to do the Q&A, and I hand back to the operator, please.
The first question is from Ulrich Rathe, Jefferies. Your line is now open.
Yeah, thank you. I have two questions and a clarification, please. The first one is on the ARPU. So that EUR 17.7 was down ever so slightly year-on-year. You have talked in the past about your shift to a value focus, which could lead to some ARPU drift. Now you're guiding stable. Could that mean there is a minus sign in front for the full year? The second question is, freenet's former chairman has publicly criticized management before his recent departure, and his main point seems to be that the management has paid too little attention to innovation with a specific example of an opportunity for cooperation with Tencent. He also suggests that the new supervisory board is malleable and inexperienced. Now, Mr.
Vilanek, as far as I'm aware, you have not responded in public, which is very gentlemanly. It seems quite extraordinary for a chairman to comment in this way on a management team that he supervised for more than a decade. Would you like on this forum here to address this criticism? My clarification is, there was a court ruling, I understand, that would get you into a sort of EUR 12 million fine. Could you confirm and explain whether that is provisioned and how that fits into guidance? Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thanks, Ulrich, for the question. Ingo will go the third one. ARPU, we don't see a change in ARPU. As you well pointed out, it is more a function of acquisition mix. Acquisition mix means with hardware, without hardware, et cetera, et cetera. I think that is more impacting than usage as such or customer quality. Obviously, when you do more online, you have a higher SIM-only share. SIM-only tends to be a little lower because we do not compensate for a subsidized Tencent, et cetera. We don't see a negative impact there, specifically on gross margin. As you can see, gross margin is growing again after a long period of time. On the statement of Mr. Thoma.
Well, first of all, I have to say that we were, and I think that was also pointed out in a statement from the new chairman or from his deputy, actually, in public voice. We were all very surprised about this public statement.
I'm happy to disclose a bit more detail in this closed shop here. Mr. Thoma and myself, we have been working extremely tight and in a very personal relationship up until September last year, so over 12 years. In September, we had very different opinions on personnel decisions. One was concerning his son who was partly employed upon his pressure on me for eight months in the last year. Then after eight months, I said that we had not seen any output, and I would stop that contract because I found it compliant as long as there is an impact and an outcome of the job.
I decided not to do it, and I gave this in a written form to his son, which is the formal sort of the way you do these things. I made a note on this. This was on first of October at 9:39 A.M., and I had a call 20 minutes later from Mr. Thoma, where he shouted and screamed on me five minutes, and ever since then we have not spoken. As simple as that, he was annoyed about my decision there, which I think was just a rational decision. That an old man like him may take this so personal is also related to the way he did business in the nineties, which back then was appropriate, but it is not appropriate anymore.
I think that was actually the occasion that I can remember, and I have made a note on all this and documented it properly. That's the first point. The second point is I think it is a totally unacceptable statement on new board. First of all, I mean, the three board members on the capital side that have been prolonged. Mr. Tüngler is around for 10 years, same as Mr. Weidinger. I wouldn't know why they would suddenly now change their minds and their attitude when Mr. Thoma is gone. I think it's the opposite, referring to my example that I made before, Mr. Thoma had a very 20th century way of looking on things compared to today's standards.
We have added three people that I think with no doubt at all are coming in with a fresh mind. Mrs. Lopatta is a university professor on governance, compliance and ESG. From this standpoint, it is very unprofessional to comment as he did, but I think he was just annoyed by the changes. On the Tencent topic, I remember that we had a conversation on Tencent once, and this was Mr. Thoma was of the strong opinion that Tencent could deliver content for our TV platforms, mainly e-gaming. We said, for sure we would do that, but why would we do that with Tencent. There is a couple of companies in Europe doing the same thing.
This contact that he referred to is a pure invention of his mind. He never spoke himself to Tencent. This was a contact of a contact of a contact. I made clear that we had back then also contact with people like Tencent through our daughter company, freenet digital . All in all, this was also the reason I was not publicly doing a statement. I'm very sorry that this long-term relationship ended like this. I think I have to say in a way, it proves that you need to have an age limit for these kind of people in these roles. Ingo, do you wanna say something about the EUR 12 million?
Yeah. I think it's correct that we do expect a EUR 12 million fine, Ulrich. It will happen. But we still wait on a written confirmation. We do expect it, and yes, we definitely provisioned it. There will be no negative effect on EBITDA out of this. We do expect it in the next days to get it. Then definitely it has to be paid during the year.
Thank you very much.
Mm-hmm.
The next question is from Joshua Mills, BNP Paribas Exane. Your line is now open.
Hi, guys. Two questions from my side. I guess the kind of bigger picture one, if I look at your postpaid net adds slowdown compared to the rest of the market and also the DT results this morning. Now, I understand that there's some impact from the new German telecommunications law, but it looks like DT has been losing partner brands, postpaid subs. Your subs are a bit weaker but still positive. My question is, has there been a shift in who you're selling contracts on behalf of? I would suspect that you may be selling a bit more on Vodafone and perhaps even the Telefónica side than DT. It'd be great to hear your views on that.
You know, more broadly, I think the market is concerned that Vodafone's sluggish commercial performance results in them either being more aggressive on price or perhaps working more aggressively with you going forward. A sense of your view of where market competition is and how it's impacting your business would be much appreciated. The second question, just a clarification, and forgive my naivety here, but the bad debt or the lower bad debt expense that you took this quarter, is that simply missed payments which come in the quarter or are there any assumptions which you have to make with your auditors? I just want to understand whether this is actually a genuine underlying reduction in missed payments, which we should think about as being lower going forwards, or there's any other points to consider. Thanks very much.
Yeah. Thank you, Josh. If I look at the acquisition mix during the first quarter, the DT and Vodafone were both on the strong end. For us on our side, if we have taken it back a little bit than it was on Telefónica. Why is that? Because DT as well as Vodafone are very supportive. We have very, very positive language between the companies. For many years with DT, it was tough, but now with Srini Gopalan and his team, they were the ones that said, "You should have also 5G contracts under your name. We are happy to support you." We are talking with DT on a midterm agreement in terms of a volume bonus, and terms.
The same goes for Vodafone. We see that Vodafone has some commercial issues from our point of view. This is the trouble in Vodafone is that the full technical and process integration with the cable business is not working properly. They are not really able to do conversion products in a reasonable way. There is also some people claim that this is the leave of Hannes Ametsreiter has some relation there.
I cannot judge on this, and I cannot comment on this, but we see that also when we have this contract on DSL with them and later on cable DSL or internet access, which we have signed, and all these things are really in trouble because of their internal difficulties. Our point of view is that Vodafone has some heavy-duty work to do process-wise and technically internally. I think commercially, the mistake is not or the trouble is not on the commercial side as such. It's not about being even more aggressive on conditions because we have been aggressive, but backend seems to be the problem. We do not expect them to kind of like pressure us or give us some trouble.
It's more the opposite. They are very supportive, and the same goes for DT. Our relationship to TEF has also performed well in network performance. I would say they are strong themselves and we are not trying to compete with them too much because then it's just a matter of effort, and a matter of over-investing. I guess this year will be more a DT Vodafone year for us.
Morning, Josh. To your question about bad debt. Yeah, I'm aware of the situation that it is a little bit difficult to follow the bad debt figures or to guide them. It was difficult for us here too, because we had in the last two years two big effects. On the one hand, we were more quality-oriented in gaining customers. We saw lower bad debt ratios because the quality of our customer base was increasing. On the other hand, we saw out of the pandemic that the payment behavior of the customers was much better. It was even difficult during that time to clearly find out what is based on what effect.
What we saw in the first quarter now, this EUR 6.3 million, I think from my point of view, this could be the new normal. I'm not 100% sure, to be quite open here. What I do expect from today's point of view is something like EUR 25 million of bad debt in 2022. From today's point of view, I would say this is the new normal. But also definitely we need some more quarters as a confirmation. I think this is the best guess what I do have today.
Thanks. Just to be clear, I mean, it's based on what you're seeing, but there's not been any change in the actual cash flow for the quarter. Is that right? Or have I missed something there?
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
This is right, yeah.
Yeah. The second, just to come back on the first question. Could you maybe, as a third party, give us an insight into any of the conversations you've had with the new Vodafone management team? I don't know whether that's too early yet, but I'd assume the current contract terms roll over. I'd be very interested in whether you've had any new discussions or have a sense of what their view of using mobile resellers like yourselves is compared to Ametsreiter.
I mean, our colleague, Rickmann von Platen, who is in charge of handling the business with the network operators, has already met new management or the new CEO. I think that alone is already positive because we have seen other management coming in and not meeting us at an early stage. I think it's only officially starting by first of July. That indicates, A, that internally they know that they have a they need to have a positive relationship with us because of their maybe internal challenges that they face.
Anna Dimitrova, who was in charge of our relationship on their side for the past couple of years, will remain in the management and is holding a strong position in strategy. We will have a meeting, I think, the first week of June, where we wanna talk even extending relationship, even in other fields. Anything I can say is extremely positive and encouraging.
Great. Thank you.
The next question is from Titus Krahn, Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks very much for both the presentation and taking my questions. I have two topics I would like to quickly discuss, if it's fine. The first topic is waipu.tv, and the question is maybe a bit more strategic on the business. I remember in the last quarter you mentioned appetite to invest the remaining 20% of free cash flow, which are not paid out as dividends. Meanwhile, consistent EBITDA growth in the waipu.tv segment shows quite a clear advantage from gaining scale, and you see some competitors, maybe in difficulties. Do you actually see the internet TV market as an opportunity maybe for acquisitions going ahead to further boost your scale and with potential for overall consolidation?
Maybe staying at the waipu.tv segment, you mentioned your new agreement with a set-top box provider, and I think has been reported that this should be Roku TV. Can you give any details on how such a structure of such a deal would look like and what you could expect for customer net adds? Quickly as a second topic maybe on your planned DSL tariffs to be launched potentially in Q2. Can you give us any more indication or color on the contracts? You mentioned fixed mobile bundling. Just a question, how does this normally work? Can you bundle contracts of different providers and theoretically mix and match, or do those wholesale providers need to be the same, e.g., DT mobile and DT fixed? Thank you.
Well, first on the IPTV market, I mean, there was some time ago still a third player in Germany, Imagine. For sure we have talked to them back then when they said that they would go out of the market. At the end of the day, we have decided not to do an, let's say, acquisition because we felt that the only thing available is the customers, and we could acquire the customers through the market for lower money than buying the company, and doing the transfer. The same actually goes to Zattoo. I have had a couple of meetings with the shareholders of Zattoo, questioning whether they would be ready to sell their German entity, because, you know, they're Swiss-based and they have a strong position in Switzerland.
At the end of the day, it did not materialize for a couple of reasons. The strategic decision that is always staying in my mind is whether at this stage it's still more beneficial if there is more players in order to push the category as such versus doing acquisitions and basically bringing it down to DT, Vodafone and us. At this stage, I'm still positive on or I think it is more positive for us if some more players are coming in. Osillium is gaining momentum. It's an Austria-based pure B2B provider. So I think I don't see big consolidation opportunities, but you can be sure that we are looking at it.
I also spoke in a number of meetings with international players. Some of you might know it's a Spanish company listed, Agile Content. They have recently taken over the entire cable business from the local provider in the northern part of Spain. I like the model. I like the model to offer cable operators to take over their full TV operations. I think that is midterm the strategic opportunity. There is so many small companies even in Germany, organized in the so-called Breko.
It's local operators, local fiber companies, local cable companies, and they all still run their own TV operations, and they will not be able to scale neither towards the content providers nor to the relevant international players such as Netflix, Disney, et cetera, et cetera. I think there will be, in general, a consolidation of service providers, and I think we are in a great position to take benefit of it. We have also hired two people in EXARING, which is the company that runs waipu.tv, to really address these things. We have now a solution where more or less within four weeks, we can provide a TV solution for any operator who wants to still continue to do billing and customer ownership.
It's an API-based solution. We are able to hook up with any of those within four to six weeks. I think that is a big benefit. At the end of the day, our target and our goal is to become the owner of the customers, maybe in parallel to an operator, but to own the customer and also to do CRM, et cetera. I think that the opportunities are increasing and scaling, and we're seeing more momentum. But it's still at an early stage because maybe I can give you an example. We spoke to an Austrian operator, and then they told us that they need to own the tech stack. We said, "Well, you don't need to own it.
You need to control the relationship to the customer. You see that these people that come from a very technical standpoint or infrastructure origination, they are still very keen on handling the technology piece, and more and more examples of people that outsource it will also drive the opinion of these people and maybe change their minds. You mentioned Roku. I will not comment on whether it's Roku or not, but one of these people, they have showed up with EXARING and said, "We'd like to have your app integrated." We said, we're happy to do so, but it's some effort. We charge them for doing the technical integration with them.
In fact, if people like Roku would ask us to integrate, I think it's also a sign of quality and market acceptance by the experts. I think that is the most important signal. Depending on who it will be at the very end, it will also have an impact on net adds. It's too early to say. The integration will take three to four months. By the end of the year, we will be on the platform, and it will have an impact in 2023. On the DSL question, well, I mean, the things that we are ready to disclose is, yes, it will be the same platform as Funk & Flex. So basically a pure app-based. We will offer a switch of the provisioning.
We will not include a modem. The modem or router would be extra. It's a very simple product. The goal is it's a seamless access product. At the end of the day, end consumers might not even realize whether the signal goes through a cable, through copper, or through fiber. That's the philosophy of the product. There are some other features which are, we think at least will be unique, very much fitting the current taste of the market. Having said that, basically, we are independent. The contracts are made so that we are independent in choosing the partner per consumer, and we could even switch. We could acquire a customer on, let's say, a 5G fixed mobile access.
If a month later fiber would be available, then we could switch the customer, and we would not need to ask the provider. This is the way it's done. We're trying to be really as flexible as possible. We are working and talking, as we disclosed, certainly with Vodafone and Telefónica on the one hand, but with all the fiber providers on the other side. Even Deutsche Telekom was ready to talk to us on the topic, same as United Internet. Flexible service provider platform with a full wholesale access across all dimensions is the recipe.
Thank you for very comprehensive replies.
The next question is from Steve Malcolm, Redburn. Your line is now open.
Yeah, thanks, guys. I'll go for three, if that's okay. First of all, can I just ask about your ambitions to sell energy products? You mentioned it as a slight drag in Q1. I guess the energy market is very different now to the one that you were looking at when you sort of, you know, decided you wanted to try and sell this to your consumers. Is there any risk around selling energy with these very elevated wholesale prices right now? That's question one. Secondly, just on the mobile business, I guess the sort of snapshot EBITDA can be a little bit misleading 'cause you're dealing with contract cost, amortization and acquisitions. Your contract costs were up quite a lot in Q1 versus last, I think EUR 50 million, and your net adds were down.
Is that just a reflection of the change in regulations that they need to run a bit harder? As we think through the course of the year, you know, how should we think about this cash contract cost developing? I guess the sort of knock on impact on margins as they come through. Then finally, just on TV media EBITDA, obviously the Q1 mix, and you called out a bit, was a bit different to the mix we saw last year with a big contribution from B2B and less from waipu.tv. Can you just help us understand, you know, how that contribution sort of evolves through the year, you know, as you expect the waipu.tv marketing costs to sort of fade a bit, less contribution from B2B, you know, to get to the overall guidance? That'd be very helpful. Thanks a lot.
Yeah, thanks for your questions. I will take the one on energy. I think it's much less important than it sounds. What we're doing there is typically we do commission-based acquisition of a low six digit number of contracts a year. You are perfectly right. In the first quarter, this was almost impossible due to the changes of pricing. We are extending that commission-based service now into a couple of other things. To give you a flavor, I mean, this company is 38 people. I think it's EUR 10 million in revenues, and EBITDA contribution is below EUR 500,000. It is something which we inherited, which we do continue. I mean, I'm spending on this business maybe an hour a quarter.
Yeah, about your question about the contract acquisition cost, yes, you are correct. The activation figure in the first quarter 2022 is higher, but this is only based on the structure of the gross adds was what we gained. It's not basically more expensive, but there is an accounting difference doing acquisitions on indirect or direct channels. This is the only reason here. I think what you also can see in the cash flow statement is that the contract acquisition cost in the first quarter was something in the balance. The same what we activated was also amortized. I think we are in a balance now.
What we saw last year was another picture because then there was the pandemic and so on. At the moment, I think we are in a balance here, and I do expect no changes. As Christoph was talking about, MediaMarktSaturn and about the better performance, what we see at the moment and what we do expect for the rest of the year, I expect something like a comparable balance for the rest of the year here. Your question about TV EBITDA, yeah, I think it was, let me say, a special situation that the B2B EBITDA was that good in the first quarter. There were some special effects.
I think what is clear in the freenet TV, you have only a few people, you have only low cost out of marketing, so SG&A is very small. In the B2B business you have high SG&A costs and so on and so on. therefore you have a lot of possibilities to get more efficient. there were some initiatives during 2021, and I think what we saw in the first quarter here were some fruits, what we could get out of it. I think already in 2021 we were performing well during the year. the effect, what we saw in the first quarter here now, it's something what I do not expect to see, that it be possible to repeat it during the quarters. Definitely a slightly positive EBITDA is something what I expect in comparison to last year from the B2B business of Media Broadcast.
Sorry. On the contract, you're basically saying that there was more indirect in Q1 this year than last year, but we're now at a sort of normal indirect-direct distribution level for the rest of the year as you see it.
Yeah.
That's okay. Thank you.
Yeah. Welcome.
The next question is from Martin Hammerschmidt, Citigroup. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. On the EBITDA guidance, I mean, you made some comments earlier in the presentation, and I mean, you are trending ahead in terms of I think EBITDA and free cash flow. It's a bit obviously early with market uncertainty, but where do you see the greatest risk that would prevent you from upgrading the guidance with first half results? And also in that context, I mean, we've seen Deutsche Telekom yesterday announcing a salary increase of around 2%-3%. Can you just basically update us on where you stand? I think in the past you mentioned 2.5%-3%. Just wanted to check if that's still the case and when it would come into effect.
The second question is on waipu.tv. I mean, you've signed new contracts with Deutsche Glasfaser. I think a couple of days ago I saw on LinkedIn about Roku, if I'm not mistaken. You also mentioned a couple of other potential partnerships in the pipeline. Telefónica Deutschland signs up waipu.tv in some of its fixed bundles. I think for the switchover campaign, Deutsche Glasfaser, you said you should start to see some acceleration in the fourth quarter. Now, the reason I'm asking is that, the current expectation, I mean, the market is assuming that in 2023 we'll see a slowdown in net adds compared to 2022. Just wanted to get your thoughts on if you expect a better trend than that.
The very last question is on the Digital Life Style revenue. Trends were a bit weaker. You highlighted supply chain issues as the reason. As those sales are important, an important driver to your 2025 EBITDA guidance, in your conversations with consumers, do you see or expect a slower take-up of these extra services than originally envisaged, in particular because consumer wallets might start to get squeezed, and they might cut back on those services first? Thank you.
Yeah. Maybe on the first one, EBITDA, I think what Ingo indicated is, yes, I think we are. Right now we're feeling we are more on the upper end of the span. The question whether we will exceed it is something where we need more evidence. I think he was trying to be positive without overpromising. I mean, we are definitely on the upper end. If you look at the downside, what are the potential downside risks we have, the inflation and the personnel cost. Yes, it is a huge topic. We have higher fluctuation than we have seen the last two years, mainly.
I'm still not sure whether this is just something, it's kind of a compensation effect of high stability of two years or whether it's more, but that goes for any of the companies. We have introduced a minimum wage in freenet of 28,600 EUR for anybody, which is a hit on the personnel cost, an increase, but within the limitation, within the budget so far. I think there is a risk of that we need to pay more and need to spend more for the recruiting. That's still, that would be still this year on a level which we will certainly not be a downward risk on the EBITDA. Yeah.
The thing that we have more in mind is any increase that we do this year obviously has impact on next year and also on the expectation of the employees on how the midterm increases work. We also have in Media Broadcast discussions with ver.di, so with the works council and the trade unions on increasing the wages every year. I think this is more the things that we have. At the same time, personnel cost is approximately EUR 200 million. Even if you assume 10% increase, we are still on the level which within the span of the EBITDA guidance. I don't want to present myself too optimistic or too positive, but I don't see a risk that we will not make the upper end of it. Yeah.
Maybe if I may add that we did a restructuring last year, and so I think we were not expecting what is happening now, but therefore there is something like a buffer for us. This is an advantage what we do have during the year.
On the waipu.tv, I think it's almost the same answer in a different context. Yeah. All the indicators that we are seeing right now and the potential cooperations, they may all take a little longer, and the impact might be later. I think everything you said is correct. For me, it's too early to estimate, but I cannot see any reason why next year net adds should not be better than this year. This year we will definitely be higher than what we have promised or expected at the early stage. I said to you, I mean, we are crossing the 800,000 these days. So I see no reason why this curve should be different next year. It's more the opposite.
We should accelerate. Maybe we are a bit reluctant to state it because we have had business plans of 2015 when we acquired the company, and the trajectory was a bit always delayed. Now we are not ready to believe yet that now it's suddenly kickstarting. All the indicators are positive, and I would not see any reason why we should not see a further increase and a progressive net add number for the next three to four years.
The question about digital lifestyle. I think there is no structural problem what we see. I think we were all talking about the problems, what we do have at the moment. We already mentioned that there's an uplift in April, we are positive here for the rest of the year. This is the thing what I can repeat. I think we only have to deliver now, but we are very optimistic.
Great. Thanks very much.
The next question is from Adam Fox-Rumley from HSBC. Your line is now open.
Thank you very much for the presentation and for the answers so far. I just have two quick questions on waipu.tv, if I could. First, I just wondered if you could talk a little bit about the balance between investment and growth and in the short term, I mean, do you feel like you're marketing for brand awareness at this point and then, growth can be more self-sustaining? Or do you think the level of investment that you need in marketing at this point then kind of needs to continue in order to drive those acquisitions? The second question is a bit around the Deutsche Glasfaser deal, but also the other ones that you've been talking about as potentials. Those are new since you've issued the long-term guidance.
I guess I'd be interested to know whether or not those were in your original plans or do they count as additive, essentially? Thanks.
Well, I think that the philosophy that we have been deploying on the waipu.tv business in the course of the last five years was we started, and we were very optimistic, and we thought that we could have an exponential growth on day one. Then we have learned things, and most of you have listened to our statements there. We have learned that people have kind of erotic relationship to the remote control. People are much more reluctant to change technology. We have thought long about doing our own stick. We have tested it.
Overall, we have pushed the company and the executive team there to become a profitable company and to be very reasonable about acquisition costs about ATL spending, et cetera, et cetera. We have always encouraged them to do little testing here and there in order to not miss the starting point of a trend. I think this remains valid. They have decided to take the opportunity to do some typical TV ads and we have seen that it worked.
We need to have a higher brand awareness and brand recognition because we know that there is a point where MagentaTV will push even harder, and at a certain stage, Vodafone will be ready to cannibalize their own cable business with an own IP offer. We feel that it's now time to spend more money. Once again, we're talking about numbers that we will be covered within the guidance. We have had a long discussion yesterday about what we could do and how we would invest. I think what the executive team showed to us is very reasonable, but it will be covered by the good numbers that we get on other ends this year.
At the end of the day, the ARPU in waipu.tv is also going up. Advertising sales is doing really well. We will have more than EUR 6 million in advertising sales only this year, and we know that if we double the numbers of users, this number will double as well. I think we will continue to do this reasonably. We will continue to invest reasonably in ATL and trying to keep SACs low.
We are ready to invest, and we would also be ready to discuss with you if this would have an impact at a later stage, and we will see that speeding up acquisition numbers would impact the bottom line. We would be ready to do so because we would have proof of concept that it pays back. I think that is ultimately the answer. Where we presented, I think a rational scenario for the next five years back in November. As I said, we think we will refresh these numbers in November again or in December when we talk about Q3, and give you much more detail.
I think we are right now, the indications show that we will go above the plan, let's say, the regular scenario. We think we can upscale much faster and we think that 2025 will be much higher than what we have thought and explained in November. It's too early to give all details. I think you digest that we are very positive and we think we're gonna go faster and steeper. We also see that we also doing tests now to cannibalize ourselves with DVB-T, because gross margin on IP is now higher than on DVB-T. That is really focus of our growth story.
Great. Thank you very much.
The next question is from Polo Tang, UBS. Your line is now open.
Thanks for taking the questions. I have two. The first question is just around MediaMarktSaturn. Can you remind us when your exclusive distribution agreement with MediaMarktSaturn expires? I think from memory, it's 2023. Do you expect the renewal process to be straightforward, or is there scope to improve your economics, given that the MediaMarktSaturn channel's been challenged in recent years amid the pandemic? Can you maybe remind us whether the deal with MediaMarktSaturn is a fixed annual fee or whether it varies with subscribers or revenues? My second question is really just around your stake in Triconomy. How strategic is that stake? Thanks.
Well, let me start with the second one. I mean, it is a strategic stake because it gives us the opportunity to discuss with senior management independent from our day-to-day business on what their plans are, how the future is going, how they operate services and solutions, as they call the category. I think that's definitely worth being at the table and influencing the discussion. I think what they generally do is they do a great job in like cleaning out the house, improving the IT. They have only this month launched the fully integrated multi-channel system in one of their key countries. That shows immediate positive impact. In general terms, I'm very positive about the company.
It will remain an omni-channel, brick-and-mortar based business, which has its limitations in margin. But I think the team does a great job there. This also indicates that we are not envisioning an increase of our stake, but we consider it a strategic one, and we will hold it for the upcoming years. On the contract, yes, you're right. The contract is. There is, let's say, to put it very correctly, they would now be in a position to cancel the contract or to terminate the contract with a 12 month notice period. We are in that phase of the contract, where the renewal is basically an annual one.
I think I can disclose that both parties have indicated to each other that we would like to extend the contract for another couple of years. Everything that has been said at the negotiation table was extremely positive and it ended with a mutual agreement that we're working on the fine print at this very moment. Still not signed, still a couple of open questions, I would personally, having done these negotiations for 15 or 20, almost 20 years, to me, it looks more like a formality.
We will also, we have also agreed that we need a bit more flexibility on both ends, on what we are selling, can we include conversion products from our side? Are we, how would they support this? How will we, in future, work with them with the new formats? Can we integrate their? I mean, my guesswork and my indications is, I see no changes in the numbers and the volume that we cooperate even better, they were now working online. We are providing affiliate services to them. We are providing a couple of new products to them also outside pure mobile. A couple of our DLS products are now integrated in their platform as well.
We are testing even kind of shop in shop logic with them. I think there's a lot going on, and I have no doubt that we will continue with them for another whatever five years.
Yeah. From my side, Paulo, because I read your note in the morning, and maybe it helps if I give a clarification to your comment or speculation about our position, other provisions. Definitely what you speculate, release of other provisions does not have anything to do with the bad debt provisions what we build. On the other side, it is basically not a release. It is, I would call it a usage of a release here, the reduction in other provisions. It is a usage for HR topics, where these provisions were built in 2021, and now they have been used because the money has to be paid out to the people. No EBITDA effect from this situation here in the other provisions.
Great. Thanks for the clarification.
Yeah.
There are no further questions. I would like to hand back to the gentlemen for some closing remarks.
Yeah. Thanks to all of you for this good discussion. Thanks for your questions. We wish you all the best and hope to speak soon.