Good morning, ladies, and gentlemen, and welcome to the freenet AG Conference Call on The Q1 2025 Results. At this time, all participant lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will open the floor for your questions. Let me now hand the floor over to Christoph Vilanek, the CEO of freenet AG.
Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining today's call. Highly traditionally, I'm going to start with some qualitative assessment of the last quarter, and Ingo will then go into financial details, followed by, hopefully, an interesting Q&A. Page number one, we believe this is a good start into the year. We called it a sound start with solid key financials. Revenues grew as expected. Adjusted EBITDA on mobile is stable, whereas the TV and media is growing significantly. We'll comment on that in a second. Free cash flow is also in line with the guidance and our internal planning. On the fewer operational KPIs, customer growth in both segments is okay. I think that is definitely the point where everybody was maybe a bit disappointed. I'm not at all disappointed, to be honest, because I think the entire market has seen a little fatigue.
We have all seen uncertainties in German consumption, private consumption during this first quarter, the new elections, the building of the new government staff. I think that all led to uncertainties that we also see, and we have therefore consequently taken out money of the market. I think that was the key. Ingo will explain a bit more. We took out money out of the market with our offers. Obviously, you can see it immediately because it's then expanded over 24 months. That is what we did. We did on purpose take down the numbers a little bit. Going one step deeper, let me start with mobile. You can see that postpaid growth is 53,000 units. It's almost tripled from previous year. We are no doubt expanding and building upon our new tariffs, but also on our new agreements with Telefónica, Vodafone, and NTT.
Still, we are reluctant to overpay. We see very strong performance in MediaMarktSaturn. We see very strong performance in our own retail and all captive channels. The thing that we are missing a bit is on the low price, on the low price SIM only is online, pure online, which would be e.g. Check24. This is where we were reluctant to overpace and not to pay as much as others that obviously defend this piece. We all have seen a couple of tariff changes. The good thing about it is that the changes are at least when we look at our migration data, they are on the upper end of the market. The new offering of DT with EUR 35 with a combined card is not their first SIM, but if you have combined cards, unlimited is a good offer.
Even though EUR 35 is a good upheaval, and we can also offer that to the customers, and that is strengthening the portfolio. We have also seen N26 last week. I think big announcement, but small impact. Tariffs are not attractive. With all my respect for online banking, I think all their customers will have or should have a SIM card yet because otherwise they could not handle the app. Why would you now change to N26? The offer is not a super attractive one. In summary, we could have grown more, but we decided based on the competition on the low-end market that we would not outspend the market and wait a little bit during the course of the year because we think it is enough time to catch up with our guidance that we will have moderate growth.
Even though, or in parallel, and we seldom show funny pictures on branding, but I thought this week or this time it makes sense. We used the time. We did a lot of sports sponsorship. As you can see on the right-hand side, brand familiarity, brand recognition, getting into the relevant set, and also the likelihood of purchase was increasing significantly. This is not impacting net ads overnight, but it is building the interest for the future. This is why I think it is important in periods like this where the market is heavily stagnating that you reposition your brand and you spend a bit more money, smart money, by the way, on these kinds of things. Sponsoring is way cheaper than typically TV media buying. Moving on to the TV segment. On this page, you can see that the subscriber development, Waipu net ads are up by 60,000.
This is internal planning. We have, and I know that everybody will now ask what is the impact of the missing acquisition and the churn out of the Telefónica customer base. We have agreed with Telefónica not to disclose this in detail, but order of magnitude, it's approximately the same number that our net growth. Talking about 50,000 roundabout per quarter. If you would add them, then you would see that that would be a fair comparison to previous year. Overall, we think the 60 is a good number. I compare it always to Magenta. You know that Magenta was doing 37 like for like, as we always compare without their OTT, and they are down from 73. They have halved it. If we clean out the effect from Telefónica, we are almost on, or we are on the same level as previous year.
Very important, and I think we've shared that as well with you. So far, we are selling CTV advertising on the smaller and the so-called fast channels only. This represents about 16% of our current usage. We have tested with ProSiebenSat.1 to market their viewership on our Waipu.tv base separate from their own. It was a successful test. After the test, they said that they would want to take that technology and deploy it on our viewership, but they want to do the ad sales themselves. We have now finally signed a deal with them. It's up and running. Technically now, it was up and running in April. By now, mid-May, we see the first revenues coming in.
I think that is a, I think it's a breakthrough, even though the first couple of months, it will not have a huge impact, but I think it proves the concept, and we are quite sure that RTL and some others will join into the same logic in the near future. It is great since we can now market almost 30% of the usage as own inventory to the advertising market. On Freenet TV, we had a churn of - 20, which is in line with what we have seen before. When they're still waiting for like seven, eight years, waiting kind of like for the stop-loss line, it's not going to happen, but the shrinking is decreasing. I think that is very much in line with what we've told you before. What is the progress on Waipu.tv? Looking at hardware, it's not really our style.
Still, this time, I wanted to share with you. The one thing, this is a new form factor. It looks basically like an Apple TV from a form factor and size. It was a result of a lot of research which we've done and a lot of questionnaires with our customer base. People feel that the Wi-Fi connectivity would be better if this is a separate device which is visible, not behind and not hidden behind the TV set. Yes, it's partially true, but more important is the psychological element. Also, people asked us whether we could put an LED so that you can see whether it's on or off. It's really see that old learnings and legacy attitude is kind of like non-deletable. Nevertheless, now you can do faster zapping. The remote control is illuminated. There's a lot of other stuff.
Most importantly, the welcome screen is now finally fully owned by us. We can do the tiles with DAZN, with Netflix, with Sky, with our own archive, et cetera., et cetera. So far, all the older generations, we had to take the Android kind of menu, and this now is a separate one which we can fully manipulate. We will in the future also customize based on the individual usage of our customers. Overall, we think that the shift to IPTV is continuing. You also have seen and heard from Vodafone that they have switched off a lot of stuff, but those people are now watching without paying. I think this situation will remain for the next couple of months.
Sooner or later, Vodafone will have to react, and we expect then that this will be the second wave of impact of the name cost and privilege. I'm also already coming to my last chart. We've told you before that Media Broadcast, we are trying to leverage Media Broadcast core competence. One is the field service, and that is a great one. They are servicing today the DAB and the DVB-T antennas. Those people are obviously, since they do maintenance and incident resolutions, they're not busy all day. We have started to find other customers for the same field service. We have like ETA cost, as we say in German, existing cost that we deploy now in an extended way. We have three customers on the electric charging infrastructure in Q1. We have another three now coming in Q2. We have 18 qualified leads.
To give you a flavor today, these kinds of charging boxes is about 150,000 in Germany, and it's supposed to grow to over 1,000,000. The majority will be in private garages with private companies. That is exactly the field where we think we can be successfully supplying service, construction, maintenance, and incident management. Still a small piece, but I think it's growing, and we're quite happy that we have found a new field that is definitely creating an opportunity. We are not in a defense, but in an offense there, which is great. Having said that, I'd like to hand over to Ingo.
Yeah. Thank you, Christoph. Good morning, everybody. I start with the group overview on page 11 of the presentation. I think revenues increasing, and it's based on both product-oriented segments. It looks quite fine.
On the gross profit side, an increase of EUR 6.5 million and an increase of the gross margin to 39.1%. Also fine. I think maybe a little bit disappointing from an outside view is the development of the adjusted EBITDA, which is shrinking from EUR 127 million- EUR 126 million. I think you have to put into consideration, and it is a little bit linked to what Christoph presented before. We spent EUR 4 million additional on marketing in the mobile segment on the brand marketing side. I think it was our intention to do so. Therefore, I think we missed a little bit here to increase the adjusted EBITDA, but this is an effect for the first quarter. We did some front-loading here in marketing. I think from my point of view, the adjusted EBITDA is still fine.
We definitely confirm the guidance for the full year of EUR 520 million-EUR 540 million to the range. Moving to the mobile segment, what we can see here on the revenue side, we see an increase, but I think we have to be consistent here. The increase is based on the hardware revenues, which are low margin, and so therefore not that important for us. The increase of hardware revenues was done because we sold some more packages on the postpaid side, some more bundles on the postpaid side. I think this is also linked to what Christoph said. We did not that much SIM only on the discount side. We did more bundles on the higher end of the market. I think this is not translated into service revenue now and into RPU now because this is too early that we changed here.
Therefore, yeah, we see a slight, very slight decrease of the service revenues, which are high margin. I think what is also very positive, if we translate it into gross profit, we do see an increase here in the gross profit. Even with a slight decrease in service revenues, we could increase the gross profit. I think this is what we try to teach you since years, is that our gross profit is not directly linked to the RPU. Here, it is a difference to a normal mobile network operator. We are different here. I think this is proof of what we told you more than once. On the adjusted EBITDA side, I think the same comment what I did on the group level, we spent additional EUR 4 million on marketing in the first quarter here.
Without this, the gross profit would be also translated into the EBITDA. I think we are still bold here to confirm the guidance for the end of the year. Moving to the KPI side, I think it is just math here. If you lose in the RPU 1.8%, and if you gain customers by 0.7%, there should be a decrease of the service revenues. This is what we already saw. I think we are happy that we are able with the new network operator contracts, what we have, that we are able to increase the customer base further and with much more pace than in the beginning of 2024. Digital lifestyle revenues, we had on the supplier side of the accessories, we had to change because one of the suppliers got bankruptcy.
I think we have some phasing here, but definitely, there will be a catch-up in Q2 in the DLS digital lifestyle revenues. Moving to TV, I think all what we see is that Waipu.tv is growing. We see the higher revenues based on more subscribers at Waipu.tv. We see a higher gross profit based on the higher number of customers at Waipu.tv. All in the media segment, we still see a margin of something like 60%. In the adjusted EBITDA, most of the gross profit is arriving. There is also an increase by EUR 2.3 million in the adjusted EBITDA. I think, yeah, on the SG&A side, there are some headwinds because we have more personnel now at Waipu.tv also to handle the customer base. We have not yet started to decrease the marketing spendings here.
We will do during the year, but we had another campaign which was already planned for the first quarter. I think also here, we confirm the guidance for the full year. Moving to the free cash flow, I think all in better than consensus here, better than what we expected. It was a very good quarter on the free cash flow side. Change in networking capital negative. This is typical because you have some deferred payments from the Christmas business, but it is better than last year. Here for the full year, we guided EUR 45 million. I think this is something what I would still guide today. On the taxes side, only minus EUR 8.2 million in the first quarter. We guided for the full year, minus EUR 50 million.
I think we already announced with the publication of the guidance that there will be, that we have to release some tax provisions expected in Q3. I would still stick to the - 50 for the full year here. CapEx is EUR 8.6 million at the end of the first quarter. I think, yeah, maybe it is phasing, but in CapEx, I think it will be even difficult to spend the EUR 55 million we guided for the full year. Definitely, here could be a chance. On the lease side, EUR 15 million normal pace, what we see. On the interest payment side, I think this is based on the interest payment dates from the commissionary notes. We also here stick to the EUR 23 million for the full year. I think we are fully in line with the guidance here.
So this from my side to the financials. I would hand over to the moderator again to start the Q&A session, please. Hello? Can you hear the moderator?
[Foreign language]
Yeah. I'm sorry for the delay. We will start with the Q&A session now. Ladies, and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to withdraw your question, please press three and star. Please press nine and star to register for a question. We're starting with the first questioner. It is Ulrich Rathe from Bernstein. Over to you.
Thank you very much. I have three questions, please. The first one is you reiterated the guidance for the RPU stable, right? ±1%, whatever it may be.
Given what happened in the first quarter, which represents really the whole base, right? It does not reflect the incremental customer growth. You really have to bring the RPU up across the base for the rest of the year a little bit. The question is, what gives you the confidence that this is still possible? What measures will be behind that? It seems to me that the competition in the low end remains pretty hot. You are referring there to the fourth quarter, but the situation is largely unchanged. What gives you the confidence that the RPU can recover for the whole base? Second question is on the brand advertising. Just to confirm, this will go away in the second quarter. This was strictly a timing effect related to the timing of these sports events where you saw an opportunity to increase brand advertising.
Just a clarification on this issue. In your prepared remarks, you said you're repositioning the brand. What exactly are you repositioning it towards? That was not clear to me. The last question, if I may, is the comments, Ingo, on OpEx in TV were a little bit unclear to me. What exactly happened there in the first quarter, and what are the moving parts for the remainder of the year with regards to OpEx in the TV business? Thank you very much.
Yeah, Ulrich, thank you for the questions. What makes us positive on the RPU is basically the new cohorts that we can see in Q1. As Ingo said, we have a higher proportion of bundles, and that typically are also higher RPUs. Second is we're running into a big wave of renewals.
Also on the renewal, we're not losing RPU, but we're trying to step up a little bit with bigger data packages. I think the unknown, and you're definitely right, is when is a big cohort coming in on the lower end of the market. Honestly, we are in the middle already of the second quarter, and we see that this is still okay-ish, but it's not a big wave. The dilution by low-end offers is in the first and second quarter lower than one would believe. At the end of the day, also the agreements with the network operators allow us, if we have higher RPUs, we need less volume. We are balancing the two, and this is what makes us confident that based on current statistics, RPU will remain on the known level.
On the marketing spending, I mean, that will not totally go down immediately. I think for the second quarter, we spend the same money. As always, it's our style to review done like early summer. There's always a summer pause, and we decide on how much we spend in autumn. That's basically the logic. Your question on repositioning is that right now, marketing is much more brand-only, and we have now assisted the sponsoring piece, which is pure awareness with higher spend on social media where we're telling a story. It's a freenet is your competent partner, but we don't take ourselves too serious. We're basically easing your life.
That is a repositioning because we come from a freenet verticals, Dieter Bohlen, Pushy, they have everything you need to choose to a, "You know us, you can trust us, you have to like us." That is what we would call a repositioning, which always takes a little while. Ingo, I think you take the OpEx one.
Yeah. I think what I tried to explain, Ulrich, is that we see the increase of EUR 5 million in the gross profit, and only half of it is arriving in the EBITDA. Therefore, the SG&A was increased in the first quarter compared to the first quarter last year. One reason is that, especially at Waipu, we increased the number of employees. So there we have higher personnel costs. On the other hand, what we announced for the year is that we will decrease the marketing spendings at Waipu.
This has not started during the first quarter because some campaigns were already set up at the end of last year. I think the effect from lower marketing spendings will be seen in the following quarters, not in the first quarter. Therefore, I think you have a mix of higher cost here from different items, but all is steered from our side, and it is only a phasing question where we what we could change during the year whenever it will be necessary. Therefore, we confirm the guidance here.
Very clear. Thank you for the answers.
Next up is Mathieu Robilliard from Barclays. Over to you.
Good morning, and thank you for the presentation. I had two questions. First, on mobile, I mean, the usual question about the competitive environment, how is it changing Q1? How is it in Q2?
I also wanted to relate that to some comments from one of your peers saying that there was an operator in the market that was starting to give MVNO deals to OTTs such as Revolut and others, and that was qualified as stupid at the time. I won't comment on that, but do you see a risk here that we see less and less discipline in terms of signing MVNO deals with new entrants? On the pay TV market, and sorry if you touched this at the beginning of the presentation, I missed it, but I wanted to understand a bit more the volume dynamics. I think we are all aware that the change in the cable law is something that should continue to fuel Net Adds growth.
I was wondering, and I know that you said in the past that it does not happen overnight, but are you seeing here an increased pool of customers coming to you from previous cable contracts? Is there an acceleration? Is it changing at all? That was my question.
Matthieu, good questions. When on the competitive environment, I think I made a comment at the beginning. I see DT, I mean, it sounded like a big revolution when they came up with EUR 35, and you cannot take advantage of it unless you are a customer with more SIM cards anyway.
I think DT clearly says, "We have a network, and it's so robust and so strong and so big, so we can afford even to give more data than others just because capacity is there." I think they did it smarter than others because with EUR 35, you're not going into the low-end market, and they won't get the people that are and also with hiding it behind a second SIM card, they're not getting the trash that also when we started with Funk, we also had these trash people that suddenly had 5 terabytes a month, which was misusage because they used it for other purposes than you would assume. I think that's one trend that we see, but I think DT is very smart in doing it. They do it carefully.
Even on German television, when you see their ads, they're not even mentioning the price, which is new in the market. Typically, always SIM card prices or tariff prices would be either shown or talked about. I think that is a strong signal that they do it smart, and they don't want to waste. Vodafone is struggling. On the one hand side, they're getting more and more load from 1&1, which for sure is some challenge for them. I think the Revolut thing and the N26 comes from One Global, which is a virtual MVNO from the U.K., and they're working with Vodafone. As I also mentioned at the beginning, I mean, the Revolut thing, I would take them serious, but they're not in Germany really.
N26 is a German national player, but I mean, I quite ironically stated that all the people that are working with an app and having their depots and accounts with N26 and use an app for that, they obviously have a phone and a SIM card. Otherwise, it would not work. Those people have not waited for an offer of 5 GB for EUR 13.99. Yeah, I am not seeing any move. We are doing ongoingly, we monitor daily how many calls do we get about pricing, how many calls we get about cancellation of contracts, termination of contracts. We always ask a reason. We cannot see a change there. That is a quantitative indicator, but it is the best one that we have. Why is Vodafone indirectly offering it? You need to ask the guys there.
I mean, we took the opportunity and went back to Düsseldorf and said, "If you're giving it to everybody else, you need to declare that we are, as your biggest and most important partner, we can rely on a preferred partnership." We took it as an arbitrage and negotiation point, even though their answer was also, "It's not so big and don't worry." We said, "We are not worried, but we want to take a benefit from what you've done." That is the old game. We've always taken—I think we were always happy when new entrants came in. Typically, it helped us to renegotiate and to improve our position. Thirdly, on the pay TV market, the interesting thing is that, I mean, right now we have basically four players. Two that are kind of visible, that is Waipu.tv and Magenta TV, so Deutsche Telekom and freenet.
Less visible is O2 with their own product, and also less visible is 1&1, United Internet with their product. They both, I would say, take it as a collateral product and not as a strategic product. DT and ourselves, we are quite frustrated about the handling of those people that have resigned or are not officially holding a contract with the cable operators, Tele Columbus and Vodafone. All means, according to the reports, we see that 4.5 million households should now go for a different access technology, but if we look at the net adds on our side, they do not arrive yet. We know for sure that Vodafone is not in a position to switch off those customers. They cannot identify them.
Easy to understand in a house with 10 lease apartments, when they need to go into the house, they need to understand what the switchboard is, where the switchboard is. Then they need to find out which line is going into which flat. All this is a huge problem. It's expensive, and they're not doing it. Deutsche Telekom, as far as we know, is filing on court against this behavior because those people are paying. We have also heard that the TV companies are also not happy about it because very soon they will not be counted on advertising reach. We think that there is an intermediate period which might take another six months before those customers will get into a position that they need to choose and switch or then sign a contract with Vodafone.
This is why we took the consequences and said, "We will prove to the market, we will prove to the capital market, also to you that Waipu.tv is a strong contributor on EBITDA during the course of the year." If we do a bit less volume, we would not worry because the most important also there is these days to have strong cohorts that really watch TV. Let me give one more indicator on saying what I said right at the beginning, we see a little fatigue across the board. We have done an Easter offer together with Netflix, a really, really attractive package, and we have sold less than we thought. 18 months ago, such an attractive combination with Netflix would have been a turbo booster, and now it was a super booster, but not a turbo one.
It's okay, but it also shows that penetration is high with all these kind of packages. RTL Plus is claiming that they have six or seven million users. I mean, three-quarters of it are bundled free of charge within Magenta, and Joyn is still fighting to get paid customers. Back in good old Germany, we have deal seekers. We are a country of, yeah, catching the best offer type of people. Right now, we are not running behind them. We're waiting for the good ones and attracting the good ones, and we are reluctant to overspend.
That's very helpful. If I may follow- up just very quickly on the points on mobile, I just wanted to confirm that I understand well.
You've just renegotiated recently your wholesale contracts, but what you say is that if there's a newcomer that has a slightly better or different contract, you can change the terms of the wholesale contract with the wholesaler that is providing the service to this newcomer. Did I get this right?
Yes, you got this right. I mean, I think it would not be fair to say we can change the prices, but within these contracts, you have all kind of elements of marketing funds, of revenue, ref shares within certain tariff plans, access to packages, etc., etc. We take any opportunity to go back and say, "We are not feeling treated super well here. Can we have that? Can we have that?" That might be very specific for a segment. It might, in some cases, be specific to a specific plan.
It is always room to maneuver, and it is not a big renegotiation. It is like tweaking here, tweaking there, and trying to get some money out of them.
Great. Thank you so much.
Vodafone is in a—sorry. Vodafone is in a troubled position. I mean, they are—I think Marcel does a great job, but he has a really big job, so he is happy for our support and is more willing to pay for it than he might have been two years ago.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Simon Stipik from Arbor Research.
Good morning, team. Thanks for the opportunity. Three quick ones from my side. First of all, in regard to the share buyback, have you bought back any shares first?
On the last conference call, we talked about that 20% of your free cash flow would translate to EUR 60 million, not up to EUR 100 million in volume. Is there any news about your intention if a volume of closer to EUR 100 million is in the cards? Secondly, in regard to Media Broadcast, you mentioned top-line decline in the segment. Could you go into more detail here? Third, in the media and TV segment, could you quantify your marketing spend for Waipu.tv during Q1?
Simon, good morning. You started with your question about share buyback. I think we have not yet started. I think we would be ready to start, but I think whenever there is an official start, there will be also a publication. I think you will be aware of the start.
I think, yeah, we announced that we would like to do up to EUR 100 million. I think the first EUR 60 million is easy to calculate because this is 20% of the free cash flow of last year, but we would like to have some room for maneuver. If we have a good free cash flow development during the year, it could be possible that we spend even more because the leverage is already low. I think I will not guarantee any amount, but I can confirm what we published, that we will invest up to EUR 100 million, but it is not yet decided what the correct or the final amount will be there. I think the marketing spend of Waipu.tv, I think we do not exactly quantify it, but I think it is more than what we invested in the first quarter last year.
This is something what I can say is not that much more, but it's slightly more. I think during the year, as you know, in the second half of 2024, we increased the investments in marketing there. I think we have to—starting with the second quarter last year, we increased it. I think we have to wait and see. My expectation would be that already in the second quarter, the marketing spend will be lower than last year.
As your third question was on Media Broadcast, my comment on kind of an expected decrease, I think you all know also from our last CMD that we foresee a slowdown in revenues and EBITDA with Media Broadcast. That's basically threefold, I'd say. One is that the terrestrial and consumer paying are going down, as you can see the 20,000 churn in the first quarter.
The second is also that we had to accept a couple of discounts over the years with carriage fees with the public television stations. That is all part of the budget. That is all part of the three-year outlook, but it is going down. Also, we see silent impact of digitization for extra services that we have done over the last years with the public channels, all kinds of CDN services, etc., etc. All those are slowly going away, but not unplanned or unforeseen. It is no surprise for us, but this is why it is even more important to identify new fields of work. One is the one of the field service.
I thought we should show it and share it with you because sooner or later you will ask the question, "If the EBITDA goes down or DVB-T goes down, what are you doing with your 200 people out there?" What we are doing is we are doing service. We are doing also service, by the way, for United Internet Mobile Network. We do active and passive infrastructure service. We are now doing this with the electric charging field, and we have also yet identified a few other people that need field organizations. This is why we feel comfortable that even though EBITDA revenue will go down, we stick to the plan because we have alternative sources of revenue and capacity.
Okay. Thank you.
Today, obviously, supposedly is the last conference call after such a long time as CEO, so I wanted to thank you for the many informative comments that were quite helpful and wish you all the best for your next challenge.
Yeah. Thank you very much. I'll do a little thank you at the end.
We're not yet done.
The next question comes from Drew Basha from UBS.
Hi. Thanks very much for taking the questions. I just have two, one on mobile and one on Waipu.tv. Starting off with mobile, I think you've been, yeah, echoing comments from all the other German operators in terms of seeing increased competition. Is freenet not a net beneficiary of this increased competition as other operators try and use freenet and additional channels to support their acquisition? That's on mobile.
Secondly, on Waipu.tv, thank you for giving us some color in terms of the quantum of the TEFD impact per quarter. In terms of net ad trends going forward, should we expect Waipu.tv net ads to actually accelerate again in Q4 this year as you start to lap the O2 drag? How confident are you in reaching your 2.3 million Waipu.tv customer target by the end of 2025, and also the 3.5 million target by 2028? Thanks very much.
Yeah. Thank you very much. I think the first one is definitely right. We typically are taking a benefit of more—it is more on gross margin level, not on volume, because we cannot invent new customers, but we are all fishing in the same pot. Typically what happens is that we do a volume shift between the three network operators.
By doing so, we arbitrage and take a benefit. You are definitely right with your assumption. Second one on Waipu, yeah, I think the strong step will be Q4. Summer is always a bit weak. There is no real big event this year. On top, I think the change in the Bundesliga rights distribution between Sky and DAZN might help in fall. Also, RTL is taking a couple of games. I think we can take a benefit there. We will have an extra push, but I strongly believe that Q4 will be the key one. I personally believe in the 2.3, and I also believe in the 3.5. It is just a matter of taking a breath now and then stepping up.
Thanks very much.
At the moment, there are no further questions.
Okay. Let me thank all of you.
I do not know how many of you have been around as long as I have, sixteen years. I counted this morning. It is my sixty-third analyst quarterly call, including the full year results, obviously. I remember the very first one. I had no idea how this would work. We did not even have a presentation. I will not mention who it was. No, I can mention who it was. Thomas Kalowitz, back then from Kepler, called me right after the call and said, "Anybody else would have a presentation?" I asked back then my CFO and said, "Why do not we have a presentation?" He said, "Yeah, because we do not like it." Thomas traveled to Hamburg and showed me presentations of others. I was not even aware that the others would publish them. We started. 62 times I had a presentation.
For me, it was always fun to do so, to talk to you, maybe have a bit of a different style than others, but I enjoyed it doing with Joachim back then and now many years with Ingo. I thank all of you for the trust, for the support, for the critical comments, and also at least some of you I've met personally, and I think I enjoyed the relation and you hopefully did the same, enjoyed the relationship. I always enjoyed the constructive interaction. I think it was a great journey. You contributed heavily to it. When you wrote critical comments, it was creating ambition on our side. When you are very positive, it created anxiety because we had to fulfill the step-ups. I think you are kind of the fuel that a team like ours here with Bene, with Tim, and all the others.
You are the fuel that drives us working every day. Thanks for that. I wish you all the best. I wish you the right stock picks, successful share performance. And whatever you are paid up on, I wish you success. Carry fees, whatever it is. Thank you very much for this long period. I am looking forward maybe to speak to some of you in a different environment, not in the near but in the further future. All the best. Thank you.
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