Morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the freenet AG conference call of the nine months and Q3 results 2025. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Robin Harries.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q3 earnings call. I'm very pleased with the development of our last quarter and with the opportunities ahead of us, both in mobile and with waipu.tv. In mobile, we see strong opportunities for efficient customer growth through an optimized marketing mix, through optimized web shops, through a reduction in churn, and through the acquisition of MobileZone. And with waipu.tv, we also believe that there is huge potential for further customer growth and even more profitability. I'm very excited about the final sprint of the year and an initiative, RIDGE26, which will mark our transformation into an AI-first telco. There is a lot to do, and we are on it. I am looking forward to it. I would like to thank our entire team for their hard work and their courage to discover new paths. I'm truly enjoying this, and.
We are just getting started. I also want to thank our CFO, Ingo Arnold. Working with him is a real pleasure. We have rolled up our sleeves, and he has been a tremendous support. Let's dive into the presentation and our key messages. We can confirm our 2025 guidance. We are on track. We can show strong key financials. Our most important postpaid and TV service revenues are growing, and our Adjusted EBITDA grew nicely, 1.6% for the first nine months and for the last quarter, even 4%. Waipu.tv has been a driver in our EBITDA, contributes nicely. It's a fantastic product. Not only growing in terms of customers, but also getting more and more profitable. Our free cash flow in the first nine months is growing nicely with 2.8%. Yeah, we are on track in Q3, impacted by the communicated tax one-off, but fully on track.
We are also very pleased with our customer growth. Postpaid net adds has even exceeded our expectations. Waipu.tv growth recovers, and we are here on a strong path, and we will continue. freenet TV is declining, but this was also expected. We are focusing on Waipu.tv by continuing to monetize our user base at freenet TV. We can confirm our 2025 guidance. When you look into our strategic initiatives in the mobile segment, for our organic growth, we are focusing on three pillars. It is optimization of our marketing mix, optimization of our web shops, and reducing churn. In terms of marketing mix, we are shifting budgets. We look at the return on ad spend. We do not do just pure brand marketing. We always connect it with direct performance impact, clear messages. Yeah, we improved the transparency of our campaigns. We improved the reporting.
We really put the money where we see a direct impact. Conversion rates, I mentioned it last time, the conversion rates on our web shops, they are not there yet where we want to have them. They are not great yet, but we are getting better and better, and we see strong improvements in the last quarter. The page speed improved drastically. We have a better user experience. We create kind of urgencies on our websites. All of this helps, and there is still a lot of stuff to do, but we can already see that it is working. The third pillar is that we are working on churn reduction. If you look at the top two reasons why users change their mobile provider, it is either they get a better offer somewhere or because they are not happy about the network connection.
This does not make sense when you look at freenet because we are really offering great deals. We are able to match the most aggressive offers, and we provide all networks. There is obviously no real reason for users to leave us. Therefore, we are working on it. We see huge potential in reducing our churn. We have created or developed more than 50 initiatives to reduce the churn, to bring it down. We are working on it. Yeah, this is, I think, one of our success drivers also for next years. When we look into our customer value management, we also try to use AI wherever we can use it. Yeah, whether you look at the customer service, if you look at dealer sales, if you look at smart pricing.
We try to apply it everywhere, do smart tests, do not do crazy things, but we believe there is huge potential, and we are on it. Yeah, and beside all of these three pillars, of course, we are also constantly trying to improve our other channels. Yeah, we are very happy about our stable retail business with our almost 500 stores, our strong online and offline partners, and we are optimizing this as well. In September, we started our first performance-based brand marketing campaign with Klarmobil. We produced a new TV spot, we changed the website, improved the UX, and there was a clear message. When you look at the TV spot, you can see that there was a clear branding, but also a clear messaging, a clear offer, and this was reflected in the successful numbers. We could increase the visits.
Significantly and also the conversions and sales. This was a very successful campaign. We had the next campaign in October. We see, and also the team see, that it's working. It's driving sales on one hand, and on the other hand, it will also create more brand awareness. Clara Mobile is one of our top brands. Together with freenet, it's important that we increase the unaided brand awareness. Performance-based marketing campaigns will help to reach its goal. We are very happy about the mobile subscriber growth in the first nine months and also the last quarter. Within the first nine months, we could increase our customer base by 190,000 postpaid customers. If you look at our historic data numbers, you can see that this is quite a lot, also the last quarter, very successful. Also when you compare it to last year.
We can see that the initiatives, the things that we changed, that they are working. We also are very happy about the renewal of our, about the five-year renewal of our strong partnership with Media Saturn. It's an important channel for us. Yeah, next steps. We will keep doing what we have started in the last quarter. Looks promising. Besides this, there's also one big thing that's coming. At the moment when you look at our, I mean, the strongest brand that we have is freenet, and we do advertising with freenet. There you can see our strongest product, mobile phones, mobile plans. At the moment, it's on the domain freenet-mobilephone.de. If you, for example, go to freenet.de, you can find the news and email portal. This is not ideal.
Yeah, so you cannot do marketing efficiently with freenet if people or if users then search on Google and end up on freenet.de, where they do not find the offers that you do advertising for. This is something that we changed. We made the decision to change it, and this will be in place beginning of next year. We will do advertising for mobile phones and mobile plans on freenet.de. We will also start marketing campaigns, performance-based marketing campaigns for freenet.de. This will increase the conversion. This will be much more efficient than in the past. Yeah, we believe that this will be a nice potential for next year to really increase numbers for freenet and increase the unaided brand awareness for freenet as well. Besides this, one big thing is you heard about it. We already disclosed that.
We bought MobileZone. This is a strategic acquisition. MobileZone is a really strong company. It's a sales machine. Every year, they generate over, they close over one million contracts. It's one of our strongest competitors. They are very successful, have many nice brands like SpieleHandy, DeinHandy. Yeah, we acquired them. Yesterday, there was also news that the antitrust approved the acquisition. We are in the process of closing the deal. This will give us even more sales power. Consolidation in the market, I think it's healthy. Makes a lot of sense if you look at allocating resources about the offerings. Yeah, it makes us even stronger. I think it's also good for the entire industry, for our partners. We have really healthy relationships to Vodafone, Telefónica, Deutsche Telekom, also to 1&1.
Yeah, we believe that this makes us even stronger and that will enable us to further support them. Waipu.tv, I mentioned it. We believe it's a fantastic company. We could show in Q3 subscriber growth again, and also nice profitability. For us, it's important that we have a company that's not only growing, but also getting more and more profitable. I think we proved both of this with Waipu.tv. We're happy about it. It's developing as expected. We also believe that in Q4, we will see even stronger growth and that we are on track to reach our guidance for 2025 here. Waipu.tv has just started a new campaign, which is promising. They offer a startup package with a TV stick and a no-fridge product for just not so much money. It's an entry product which will help for people to.
Experience IPTV and this great product. Afterwards, we believe that there will be upselling opportunities. Besides this, we also started to do marketing with bundles where we bundle mobile plans together with waipu.tv. All of this, we believe, really makes a lot of sense and will bring us or lead us into the right direction. Yeah, with this, I hand over to Ingo.
Yeah, thank you, Robin. I start as normal with the group financials. I think we are, and Robin already commented, I think from my side, there is nothing to add. We are really happy with what we generated during the first nine months of the year 2025. We are totally on track to reach our guidance. In terms of revenues, you see in the quarter a slight decrease of revenues.
I think the main reason, and we will, I think you will hear the name of the company, The Cloud, more often than in the years when we owned the company. Today. I think it is important to show the deviations, what we do have. On the group level, but also on the mobile level. Here, I think what we lost here in revenues with the sale of The Cloud is something like EUR 10 million. Without it, also in Q3, there would be a small increase of revenues. All in, it's a confirmation of the guidance where we promised moderate growth. For the gross profit, I think much more positive than the revenue development. We see an increase of the gross profit in the quarter by even 7%. On a nine-year base, 4.3%. It is definitely driven by the IPTV.
I think we are so happy that this is the first year where we do not only generate growth in the base of waipu.tv, but where it is also possible to make the business much, much more profitable. You see the effects here even more on a group level. Moving to the Adjusted EBITDA. Strong quarter, nearly EUR 138 million. Which brings us to EUR 395 million up to the end of September. I think I did the calculation in August. I do the calculation again, what is necessary to reach the full-year guidance. I think it is relatively clear that from 395, you need a quarter, and you need an EBITDA of something between EUR 125 million-EUR 145 million to reach the guidance. Compared to the performance in the third quarter, I think this looks totally doable.
I'm even more convinced now than I was in August to reach it. Moving to the mobile business, yes, definitely, the revenue looks a little bit disappointing. On the one hand, again, here there's the reason from the missing revenues of The Cloud in the full quarter. If you would add the EUR 10.3 million, the difference would be much smaller. On the other hand, and this is something we already commented after Q2, we had some no-frills, some prepaid revenues where we could not generate any profit. To make administration easier, we cut some, and we terminated some of these contracts. This makes a lot of sense from our side. It has a few negative effects on revenue, but as you see, moving to gross profit, this does not have any profit effects. The gross profit in Q3 is slightly decreasing.
Also here, it was something like 3.5 million, which was missing from The Cloud. If you would add it, I would say it is something like a stable development Q3 to Q3. The Q3 2024 was a strong one. All in, there is an increase in gross profit to EUR 527 million. Moving to the Adjusted EBITDA, also here, we are near to what we had last year. It is a stable development. Making the same math, what I did on the group level, what we can see here is that we need an EBITDA of something like between EUR 100 million-EUR 120 million in the fourth quarter, and then we would reach the guidance. Maybe a small comment to marketing spendings because we discussed it intensively after the second quarter. The good news is that.
Even with all the campaigns what Robin was talking about and all the action and the big growth in the customer base, it was possible to decrease the marketing spendings in Q3. I think in the first half of the year, we spent something like EUR 6 million more in 2025 than in 2024. In Q3, we spent less than last year. I think we have some long-running contracts with some brand marketing partners, which does not make that much sense. I think it is not easy to terminate these contracts. Some of them are still running. I think there will be a full saving effect from stopping these contracts in 2026. Also in Q3 and in Q4, we will see something comparable. Marketing spendings are down. I think the results are still affected from the negative first-half spendings, what we saw.
Moving to some KPIs. In the mobile business. Yeah, Robin already commented. I'm really surprised how strong we are. In terms of postpaid net adds. I think we discussed during the year to reach something like 200,000 net adds for the full year time. I think definitely it will be far above 200,000 what we will reach. I think it is still a surprising quarter as ever, the fourth quarter because of Black Week and so on. I think we are more than on track here to grow the postpaid customer base. Where we are not that good on track, but I think this is a market problem what the whole market does have is still that the RPU is decreasing. What we see at the moment with the growth, what we generate, it is possible to overcompensate the RPU effect.
I'm positive and optimistic that this will also continue in the next quarter. I think it is, yeah, it is a pity and it is market-driven. I think we discussed it already in the other quarters. It's not a freenet problem. The market is slightly aggressive still. We hope we can come back to a more rational behavior in the mobile market here. We are not that unhappy that there will be a CEO change at Telefónica because we saw them very aggressive in the last quarters. I think this could help to repair the market here. We are basically optimistic for the following quarters. This is clearly shown on this chart here. At the moment, the negative trend for the RPU is continuing, but clear message, service revenues are slightly increasing. It's possible for us to compensate it.
Digital lifestyle revenues, the last picture here on this chart. I think you all know that we were behind plans at the beginning of the year. We could close the gap now. We are totally on track compared to last year. Yeah, I'm even positive for the fourth quarter to see a slight increase here. Moving to the successful TV business. Revenues and all financials are mainly driven by the positive waipu.tv developments. What we do see in revenues is in the quarter, even an increase by 10%. For the full year, an increase by 7.5%. I think the fourth quarter was here a little bit influenced by a media barter deal. What is a media barter deal? It is that we have these deals, these contracts with the private channels.
Therefore, we get, at the end of the day, we get some marketing place, some channel place there for free. We have to show it in our figures. On the one hand, you see it on the revenue, but on the other hand, you see it on the marketing cost. At the end of the day, these marketing campaigns are for free, but you show it on every level here. Therefore, we made it clear, or we tried to make it clear, and we wanted to make it clear because especially the development in revenues and in gross profit is slightly exaggerated from these deals. We want to have positive figures, but we want to have honest figures. Therefore, we mentioned it here that there is an effect of EUR 5 million, even, in revenues and in gross profit.
On the Adjusted EBITDA level. You see that. We have an increase compared to last year. Waipu.tv EBITDA year to date is something like EUR 25 million. So it's a. Perfect. Confirmation that the business can not only grow, but that the business can also generate EBITDA. I think this is, and I think we discussed it earlier times, that we expect something between EUR 30 million and EUR 35 million of EBITDA from the business. Yeah. I think we are totally on track here. We have lower marketing spendings. This is something what we discussed earlier together. This definitely helps. In the fourth quarter. Yeah, I think we need some marketing campaigns. We want to generate some growth in the fourth quarter. I think we are also on an EBITDA level. We are very optimistic to reach the goals what we do have.
Last page from my side is the free cash flow bridge. I think most of you should not be surprised that we have the negative tax effect. I think we, to be honest, we expected for years, and now we really got it. We had to pay something like EUR 20 million for the period 2015 to 2018. I think we are not at the end of the road here because we also took legal action because I think we had a, we built the provision years ago. We took legal action now. The legal proceedings will take years to find an end. We paid the EUR 20 million now because we have high interest rates to pay here in the meantime. I think there are good chances to win the case. For now, we paid the EUR 20 million. I think let's wait and see.
I think. I do not expect a decision as long as I am here CFO. I will be quite open. There is a good chance to get the money back. For now, the tax expenses are higher as expected. On the other hand, change in networking capital. It is a negative of EUR 32 million. I think those of you who are familiar with our working capital figures know that EUR 26 million out of it is a liability or a reduction of a liability where we have to pay a monthly fee to Media Saturn. Out of it, it is more or less stable. The CapEx figure, EUR 26.8 million. It is near to what we saw last year. Lease payments, it is easy to calculate, EUR 45 million. No surprises. Interest payments, EUR 15 million. I am quite fine here.
I'm also fine with the free cash flow for the guidance for the full year. Because what do I expect from change in net working capital? Maybe some more investments in the fourth quarter into the business. I expect something like EUR 45 million for the full year. I expect EUR 60 million for taxes, EUR 35 million for CapEx. Lease is easy to calculate, something like EUR 60 million. And interest payments nearly to EUR 20 million. This is also the sum, is the same what we expected or what we forecasted at the beginning of the year. I think at the end of the day, no surprises for all of us. Therefore, I think the guidance could be reached. Therefore, the overview from my side for the financials. I would hand over to the operator again to start the Q&A session.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to withdraw your question, press three and star on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from [Zofia Rakiewicz], Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Good morning, everyone. I have three questions, please. The first one is on the guidance. What are the main four key drivers that could push results to the low or high end of the guided range? The second one is on mobile. Can you please give us more color on your net adds mix? How many come from the lower end of the market, and how do you perceive quality of your customer base in general? The last one is on the marketing.
I'm just wondering, can you compete effectively in Q4 without a big marketing increase for both waipu.tv and mobile because we are heading towards Black Friday and Christmas? Thank you.
Yeah. Good morning, Zofia. Thanks for your questions. From my side, for the guidance. I think if I would have a clear plan where we would end, I would already have told you. I think there's good chances to end on an EBITDA level between EUR 520 million and EUR 540 million. I think it is correct that we have to look. I think the question to the guidance is linked to your last question about the marketing spendings. I think we want to grow the business. Therefore, if we see chances, especially during Black Week, to increase our customer base in both segments, then we have to decide what we would like to invest.
It is difficult to say from today's point of view. I cannot, and this is something I think we have not published, a guidance which narrows our bands because it is still open. I think we will watch the market, and if there will be chances to grow and to have a profitable growth, we will use the chances. I think this is the main reason why we are not more concrete on the guidance now because, as typical during Black Week and during Christmas business, there could be so many chances. We do not want to miss chances and opportunities. Therefore, I think it is still open. Basically, I would not expect a big increase in marketing expenses compared to last year because also last year we had the Black Week and we had a Christmas business where we were.
Last year, we were very aggressive. I would even expect that even with a strong and growth-oriented philosophy in the fourth quarter, I would expect marketing expenses to be lower than last year.
Yeah. Related to your question regarding the mix, we have different brands. We have brands like MegaZim or Dr. Zim, HappyZim, where we have aggressive offers. We have Klarmobil, it's something in between. We have our premium brand, which is freenet. At the moment, freenet is not ready yet. I mentioned this. Yeah. It does not make so much sense to do advertising with freenet if it's not on the freenet.de domain. Yeah. Therefore, we do not invest into brand marketing campaigns. We rather focus our activities on the other brands, like Klarmobil and the other brands where we have better conversions.
This is what we are doing at the moment. Therefore, it will be, I think, relatively similar to the last quarter. If we look into the next year, I mentioned that we want to scale the performance-based brand marketing investments for freenet as well. This is an opportunity for us because with freenet, this is our premium brand, we will be able to also sell for healthier prices with higher RPUs. We will focus on mobile phones. We will position freenet as a premium brand. I think this is a nice opportunity for us next year. Yeah. Ideally, we have freenet as our premium brand for mobile phones with nice brand marketing campaigns, but based on performance. We want to sell.
We have Klarmobil, our brand for mobile plans for good prices that make a lot of sense. We still have our more aggressive brands like Dr.SIM, HappySIM, MegaSIM, where we try to get users in a more aggressive environment and compete against those brands who think they can be more aggressive.
Thank you.
The next question is from Ulrich Rathe , Bernstein. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah, thanks very much. I have two questions, please, if I may. The first one is on the service revenue situation. I think you highlighted that this is owing to the market backdrop at this point in time and that it's not necessarily a big concern from a Nigeria perspective at this point. Could you talk about how you see this unfolding?
I mean, what's your base case here for the market backdrop and the service revenue performance in 2026? Related to that, this sort of slight compression on the service revenues, how does this affect your gross margin? I mean, that's ultimately a question how the cost to the MNO hosts scales with service revenue performance. My second question is on the Media Saturn renewal economics. That's more a technicality, I suppose, but you talked about this EUR 5 million incremental barter deal in the third quarter. Is that related to the renewal? Should we add that to the renewal? Have you agreed to a different cost compared to the prior contract with Media Saturn in the current renewal? Could you explain the economics of that and how the EUR 5 million sort of fits into this? Thank you.
Hi. This is Robin.
Thanks for the question. Regarding the service revenue, I mean, when you look into the Q3 numbers, you can see the RPU, but you can also see strong mobile growth. Overall, the effect of both is positive. We expect that. Also, if we look into the future. As I just said, we want to do also more marketing with freenet. We believe there's a fair chance to sell products with higher prices to increase the RPU. This might have a positive effect as well. Yeah. That's it. I mean, the market is a competition, and the market was tough in the last month. I think it was driven by Telefónica. There are some changes. They announced that there will be some changes. Hopefully, this will be healthy for the market, for the industry. Yeah, we are prepared.
We have many opportunities to grow our subscribers, our marketing channels, our websites through performance marketing, through performance-based marketing too. Not lose so many users by optimizing our churn. There is really a lot of potential for us to grow. Therefore, it also will put us in a situation that we will hopefully also be able to sell for better prices, which are more healthy for us. Therefore, we are quite confident.
Yeah. From my side, good morning, Ulrich. I think you also asked what effect the service revenue has on our MNO contracts. Yeah, definitely, this is very relevant. I think in earlier times, when I started in the business, all were only focused on growth of customers. This changed during the years. The contracts we have with the MNOs are mainly based on revenue, on service revenue.
Yeah, it is important to generate service revenues. I can only confirm what Robin said. I think there are, and I work in this company for a long time, I never saw so many initiatives here to increase the number of customers. Therefore, if we could combine it with the stabilization of the RPU, I think, and you asked about 2026, I'm not afraid of 2026. I think I'm more afraid of the fourth quarter now because this will be difficult. This is what we saw during the year. With all the initiatives, what we saw, what we see, and what we have here, we are much, much more optimistic for 2026 in terms of service revenue than based on 2025. You asked about Media Saturn. One of 5 million EUR. I think this is.
Is it linked to the contract or is it not linked to the contract? My official answer is it's not linked to the contract. I think it's definitely only a one-off. It is not by accident that the one-off happens in the same year when we renewed the contract. This is something that will not happen again in the next years and has not happened again in the last years. Therefore, it's a typical one-off. It is not typical. I think we have other payments that we do pay or that we do grant to Media Saturn, but this is definitely a one-off.
Thank you. Ingo, can I just sort of follow on this comment which you put into a sub-clause, that maybe you're afraid of Q4? Could you just, just for clarity, explain what you meant by you're afraid of Q4? Thank you.
Yeah.
I think what we see at the moment is that the service revenues are growing, and we are happy that they are growing, but they are only growing by a small euro effect. Can I be 100% sure that in the fourth quarter, it is EUR +3 million or EUR -3 million? No, I cannot be 100% sure because the effect, the positive effect, is not that big that I do have a lot of headroom. I do expect a stable service revenue for the fourth quarter to make it very clear here and to clarify it. Thank you for your question. What I do expect for 2026 is that we are not only seeing a stable service revenue but a growing service revenue.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
The next question is from [Sirihay], Citi.
Please go ahead with your question.
Hello. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I just have a question on this redefinition that you put through on the Adjusted EBITDA. I think now your Adjusted EBITDA is including the IP sales and restructuring. I'm wondering if you can talk us through the thinking behind that. Also, it seems as the adjustment led to around a EUR 10 million uplift on your 2014 EBITDA. You decided not to change the full-year guidance 2025. I want to understand the thinking behind that as well. Finally, just on the free cash flow bridge, you have kept the free cash flow guidance on the sheet unchanged. It seems that the CapEx guidance is now reduced from EUR 55 million to EUR 35 million. I want to check if that is a sustainable reduction on CapEx. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks for your questions. I think what is the reason why we started to report an Adjusted EBITDA at the beginning of 2025 or in 2024? What we saw were from the sale of the IP addresses. We saw very positive effects, and it was the idea to show an Adjusted EBITDA, which is really based on the ongoing business. Then this year, we had a similar effect from the sale of these IP accounts. In addition, we had the sale of The Cloud. This was also a positive effect in the EBITDA, which we wanted to correct. I think we were very open here, and we were very transparent and corrected the EUR 25 million of positive effects this year. On the other hand, what we saw were that, and you all know, that we reduced the number of board members here, and we.
Saw a. The restructuring, the amount of EUR 6 million is more or less only the payments, the severance payments, what we had to do to the leaving board members here. This is definitely also a one-off. In the thinking, what I was describing before, to only show the ongoing business. Therefore, we decided that we use the Adjusted EBITDA to correct the EBITDA by the effects in both directions. Therefore, I think we changed it. You had a question about the full-year guidance. Yes, you are correct that there was a, with starting putting all the effects on the adjustment list, we had also to adjust the year 2024. You asked if, therefore, the guidance should be increased. My answer is that we do not guide a delta to the year before.
What we guide is an absolute EBITDA amount for the year. We calculated the EBITDA for the year, which was from the beginning something between EUR 520 million and EUR 540 million. With a change of EUR 24 million, we do not change our guidance. Your question to the cash flow bridge. Yes, you are correct. To reach the full amount of the bridge and to have a comparable amount to what we forecasted at the beginning of the year, we had to reduce the CapEx compared to what we forecasted at the beginning of the year. I think we expected, especially from the radio business, from the digital radio business, we expected more spendings during the year. This has not happened. It was not necessary during the year, and it will not be possible to catch up here in the fourth quarter. From my point of view, the EUR 35 million, what I.
Said is I think this is a strong figure, and I do not see any big risks here.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Florian Treisch , Kepler Cheuvreux . Please go ahead with your question.
Good morning, gentlemen. I have two questions. The first one is for Robin. Robin, I mean, in the Q2, sorry, in the Q2 call, you made very clear that you want to change the marketing strategy, the customer journey. I mean, this is what you have underpinned today with the presentation. My question would be a bit, when do you really expect it's called first tangible impact? I mean, you mentioned in the presentation that there are first positive signs, but to really make a difference, is it fair to assume that this will only happen over the course of 2026?
How relevant is the closing of the MobileZone transaction to support that journey? The second question is on waipu.tv. I mean, you have seen an improving momentum in Q3. The first question would be, how much of that is driven by lower headwinds from the O2 shift? You flagged high confidence and a good finish to the year. Can you also quantify your expectations here? Do you expect this momentum to stay as strong as in Q4 entering 2026? Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks for your question. Regarding the impact, we could already experience the impact in Q3. In Q3, we only did one campaign. It was a short campaign. It was two weeks. Brand campaign. I mean, it's just like one month out of three months. Therefore, the impact is not so big.
If you just isolate this campaign and if you look at the visit uplift, it was very strong. The conversion rates were very strong. We improved the user experience on the website for Klarmobil and also the sales numbers. This was a very successful campaign. We just started the second test in October. Also, again, a small test. That's how we do it. Yeah. First, we shoot with bullets and then with cannonballs. At the moment, we are still in the stage of shooting with bullets. We do small tests, but they are already very promising. Yeah, also for the plan for next year, we then scale the investments. They are performance-based. That means that it's not that we are burning money. If we scale the investments, this will also lead directly to more sales. Positive impact.
Yeah, at the moment, we just do the first test with Klarmobil. As I mentioned, we are preparing the freenet.de domain. It will be done beginning of next year. We will also scale freenet together with Klarmobil. Most of the impact will come next year. Also this year, but also for Q4, I mean, if you improve the conversion rates on the website, you will see directly a positive impact because visits are rather going up. End of the year, we have some nice campaigns. At the moment, it is a little bit, but most of it you will see over the course of next year. This was your first question. Then you asked for MobileZone. I mean, MobileZone, it is still not closed. I have not checked their conversion rates.
Their return on ad spend, how they do it. If you look at top-line numbers, you can see that they are very successful. They have strong brands. SpieleHandy is a strong brand. DeinHandy is a strong brand. I think they do a very good job. They have good performance. Yes, after closing, we will look into how we can benefit from it. I'm sure that there are synergies. If you look at allocating resources, if you look at positioning of brands and all that stuff, this will be, I think, healthy for us and for the market. Regarding waipu.tv, there was still impact by the end of the partnership with O2. O2, old O2 users are churning. Even though we are growing, and if you look into Q4, we anticipate that there will be much stronger growth than in Q3.
This will, I think, be a strong quarter. I mentioned that they just started a campaign for the strong starter, a package. We have some campaigns where we bundle it together with mobile plans. This also makes a lot of sense. There is a Black Week. We're quite confident that we will see a nice subscriber uplift in Q4.
Great. Thank you very much.
Welcome.
For the moment, the last question is from Simon Stippig, Warburg Research. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Good morning, team. Thank you very much for an opportunity to ask questions. First one would be, I wonder about your long-term guidance 2028 or your long-term aspiration 2028 because certainly, by your acquisition of MobileZone and Germany segment, you should get a bump in growth. You also mentioned the marketing contracts longer term. You.
Could cancel in 2026, as I understood it. Additionally, you expect from your campaigns quite some growth in the next year and beyond, hopefully. On your presentation, you kept your longer-term aspiration 2028 unchanged. Can we deduct anything from that, or will you review that in due course? Secondly, tied to that is the financing of the transaction. You mentioned you will, or you will debt finance it. You have a bridge loan in place. You will receive around EUR 150 million in H1 2026 from the Teconomy sale of your stake. Will you then lever up a little bit from your 0.5 times net debt to EBITDA currently, or do you intend to use that cash for financing the transaction? Lastly, I saw until the end of October, you bought back EUR 60 million in shares.
Will you continue to buy back shares until the end of the year, and then you stop, or will you continue to purchase back shares until you have fulfilled the full volume of your EUR 100 million?
Yeah. Thanks a lot for your questions. I think. Yeah. I think maybe in all levels, the long-term guidance could be different. This is normal during the years. I think what is important for us at the moment is that we stick to the whole amounts, to the EUR 600 million of EBITDA, for example. We stick to the guidance 2028. I think. Earlier or later, yeah, we have to recalculate the levers and have to decide if it could be even more than EUR 600 million or if there could be changes between the levers and between the effects.
From our point of view, the most important thing is at the moment that we stick to the guidance. Yeah, definitely, we will recalculate it during 2026. We, yeah, maybe, I think we have not decided when we give an update to the guidance 2028. I do expect it for 2026, whenever in 2026. I think all your points are correct. I think this does not change the big picture for now, or this does not make it less probable that we reach the guidance. It makes it even more easier to reach the guidance. Therefore, I think during 2026, we have to think about it internally. We have to have our discussions, and then we will come back to you and to the market, definitely. You asked about financing of the transaction. We.
Use a bridge loan, which has a duration of 12 + 6 + 6 months. We are not in a hurry to refinance it at the moment. We do also have some promissory notes due in November. What I would expect for the first quarter is a transaction with promissory notes where we refinance our debt. Yeah, there is the chance that we partly repay the debt by the EUR 150 million what we could get from Teconomy. We hope that we will get it during the first half of the year. This will only change the volume of promissory notes what we would do. At the end of the day, there will be a slight up on the leverage. This is what I would expect.
If we spend EUR 230 million on the one hand and if we do get EUR 150 million on the other, there is a slight increase. I think this will not change the world. Concerning the share buyback, yes, you are correct. We spend something like EUR 59 million at the moment, so nearly EUR 60 million. We announced during the year that we will pay at least the EUR 60 million, which was the cash overhang from 2024. We spend it now. I think we will look into the cash flow development until the end of the year. If there will be some room, then we would invest more. If there is no room, we would stop the program at EUR 60 million. I think this is not clear. We have no final decision. We will decide based on the cash development in the fourth quarter. I think.
We have done the EUR 60 million. From today's point of view, I would not expect any additional share buybacks during the year.
Okay. Great. Thank you. Maybe, if I can, one follow-up on the bridge loan. Could you tell me the conditions of the bridge loan, like what you're paying there and interest cost?
I think they are relatively lower than what we pay in other instruments at the moment. It is difficult to say what the margin on a bridge loan is because I think this is typical for a bridge loan that in the first six months, you pay much lower rates than an average market rate. If you use it for longer, then it's getting more expensive. I think the main information is that at the moment, it's much cheaper than what we pay on our outstanding promissory notes. Okay. Great.
Thank you very much.
The last question is from Dhruv Ashar, UBS. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi. Thanks very much for taking the questions. It's just a couple on waipu.tv. It is clear that you're expecting acceleration into Q4 of around 180,000 net adds to meet the 2.2 million guidance for the end of the year. One bigger picture question is just how do you see the competitive environment in the IPTV market? Perhaps more specifically, if a large part of the growth you expect is going to be driven by the lower ARPU entry-level products or the bundling with Klarmobil, how do you weigh up the balance between financials or ARPUs and volume in that unit going forward? Thanks very much.
Thanks for your question. The competitive environment. We believe that the product is superior. Yeah.
When you look into rating reviews, when you test the product, it is really a fantastic product that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I think it is one of the best, maybe the best product in the market. Also, when you look at growth rates, I think it is outgrowing competition. It is really strong. Yeah. Therefore, I am not afraid of any competition in the German market. I believe if we do our job, there is no reason why we should not grow. In terms of the offers, at the moment, it is a startup package. There is also a clear path for upselling. Yeah. That means that we want to make it easier for people to switch from the old world to the new world, yeah, to experience a product, make it easy. Therefore, it is also a product where you do not have all the channels.
It's something where you can get to know the product. Then later, after a certain time, we will show you the entire world, the entire product. You can experience it. If you like it, you would have to pay more. I mean, I think it's normal for advertising, for promotions, that you go out with reduced pricing. That's the same in the mobile world. You need smart upselling. I think we are quite good in it. There are also convincing arguments why you should do the upselling. Therefore, yeah, this is something that we have been doing throughout the year. There were always promotions and campaigns. Nevertheless, you can see that profitability went up quite nicely. This is something that we believe will also happen during the course of next year. We will further grow the customer base.
We will further grow profitability and generate more EBITDA. There we are fully on track and absolutely convinced about the product and do not fear any competition in the market.
Thanks very much.
If there are no further questions from the audience, I would like to hand back for closing remarks.
Yeah, thanks for attending our earnings call. As we said, we are very pleased about the quarter. We are confident about the outlook for 2025. We are excited about 2026. Many, many initiatives. We have a very motivated team, open mindset. They show a lot of courage. They want to explore new opportunities. It is a lot of fun. It is a very good vibe, good spirit here. I am very confident that we will keep delivering. Therefore, thanks for your time. Yeah, looking forward to the next quarter.