Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Telephone Conference of United Internet AG. This conference will be recorded. During the presentation, your lines will be muted. After the presentation, you'll have opportunity to ask questions. If you need help of an operator during the conference, please press asterisks and zero on your phone. Now we'll have to start the conference.
Thank you, Miss Sanders. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our investors and analysts conference. Ralph Dommermuth and Martin Mildner will take you through the fiscal year 2021 and the highlights and give you a forecast on the business year 2022. After the presentation, the board will be available for you to ask questions, and I'd like to hand over to Mr. Dommermuth.
Oh, sure. Well, thank you, Mr. Gramkow. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our analyst conference on the 2021 fiscal year. I'll start by presenting the company development to you and giving you an outlook on 2022. After that, Mr. Mildner will give you the results for the fiscal year 2021 in detail. At the beginning of the presentation, you can see the segments that our business is broken down into. We distinguish between access and applications segments, and breaking this down again into consumer and business segments. In the center, you can see our assets. About 10,000 employees, our high revenue, our high operational excellence with 67 million accounts that we operate in 17 countries by now. We operate 10 data centers in Europe and the U.S. and in Germany.
We have a powerful network infrastructure with a length of 52,000 km and access to the mobile network capacity of Telefónica. On the next page, you can see the various brands that we address. The most important brand in consumer business is 1&1. Then we have discount market brands through our cooperation with Drillisch. In the business segment, we have 1&1 Versatel. In applications, we have the major mail services, GMX, WEB.DE, mail.com, marketed by United Internet Media. For businesses, our main brand is IONOS. Then in Germany, we have additional brands such as STRATO, United Domains, Sedo, InterNetX, and we22, as well as brands abroad such as World4You in Austria, Arsys in Spain, home.pl in Poland, and Fasthosts in the U.K. In this core business, there are some minority holdings.
Those are companies that we cooperate with and where we usually hold in excess of 25% of an interest and less than 50%. Let's get started with the fiscal year 2021. Our business in the consumer access area is broken down into landline business and mobile phone. For landline business, we work with 1&1 brand, which is stock listed. We have 4.24 million broadband connections. We offer VDSL and FTTH complete packages. Our focus being on voice and IPTV via 1&1 Versatel, the last mile being provided by Deutsche Telekom and city carrier. We have a good network and we keep swapping places as the top brands with Telekom as rated by Connect in the last few years.
In 2021, we were number two again. In 2020, we were number one. For mobile business, we have 11.19 million connections. We have a main brand, 1&1, and then co-brands such as GMX and WEB.DE, and then discount brands with our partners, of course. We have a high customer satisfaction in this business. Over the last few years, we've been well, last year we were proud to come in first in terms of customer satisfaction. This is not only reflected by the Connect survey, but also by other surveys that we are very happy customers. Overall, in the consumer access business, we were able to increase the number of our customer contracts by 600,000- 15.43 million.
The growth is driven by the mobile internet contracts with an additional 670,000 contracts. With broadband connections, ADSL, VDSL, FTTH, we had a slight decrease of 70,000 contracts. Revenue increased by 3.3%. The service revenue, i.e. the value business, increased by 3.6% to EUR 3.128 billion. The other business is usually driven by hardware, which we subsidize initially and then recover these subsidies over the contract period. The EBITDA increased by 18.8%, but we have to see that we have a positive effect through a retrospective price adjustment, which was installed in 2021 but applied to 2020. So it's out of period really.
If you take this into consideration, our operative result increased by 5.3% to EUR 674.6 million. The next slide shows a breakdown again of the result of the consumer access business, because in 1&1 as a stock listed company, we make a distinction between access and 5G. Access refers to our current business, and 5G refers to the buildup of the 5G network. The latter still being with a negative result. It costs EUR 37.9 million in 2021. That is initial cost for the network buildup. The operative business increased by 8.9% with access. You can see that this develops very healthily and that we manage to increase our profit faster than our revenue.
Now let's speak about business access via 1&1 Versatel. As I said, they have a fiber optic network with a length of 52,000 km. We're active in 250 German cities, including 19 of the largest 25 cities. We have 21,000 directly connected locations, those being public authorities or companies that are directly connected to the network. Then we also connect handover points of Deutsche Telekom or city utilities in order for them to handle the last mile. For business access, we were able to increase revenues by 4.3% to EUR 514 million last year. Last year, again, we largely dispense with one-off revenue, so-called RUs.
This is something that we want to dispense with unless the customer insists on our doing so. If we adjust for this, then we would have had an EBITDA growth of 6.1%. EBITDA increasing faster than revenue by 7.1% to EUR 160.5 million. There was a one-off charge last year with the transition of the VDSL wholesale contract and the extension of the FTTH component with Deutsche Telekom. This had a negative impact on the results. If we adjust for that, we wind up at 7.1%. Let's move on to the applications business. For consumer applications, our email services are being developed to become command centers for communication information and identity management.
I'm sure this is no news for you. We are building more and more applications around email, cloud storage, online office, the email. We have a good market position, particularly in Germany. That's our strongest market, where we are active with WEB.DE. In Germany alone, we have 35.2 million active accounts, which gives us a 50% market share for private emails. You can see a table below indicating that we address different markets or different applications that we offer. We usually have a very good market position in Germany for all of those. On the next page, you can see our accounts overall.
That's 42.8 million, i.e., more than 35.2 million that we have in Germany because we have international accounts as well, and we see a good growth potential there as well going forward. These are broken down into three accounts, where we added 920,000 and pay accounts, plus 100,000. All together, 1.02 million accounts to now 42.79 million accounts. We want customers to use our clients on a mobile app. We have 27.7 million mobile users, and also the number of cloud storage has increased. 21.8 million of our users store photos, videos, documents in the cloud with us.
Revenues have developed very favorably, +10.8% to EUR 279.1 million last year. The EBITDA increased even more to EUR 122.5 million , but there was a EUR 4.9 million non-cash valuation effect from derivatives. If we adjust for that, we arrive at an operative EBITDA of 16.8%, which I think is a nice value. With the increase of EUR 10.8 million worth of turnover, we show here that we are developing very favorably. Now, business applications. We have been developing from web hoster to service provider of e-business solutions for years now.
You can see the various applications on the graph that we offer to our customers in order to increase their success in the internet or their back office quality. This is something that refers to mid-size and larger customers offering capacity in our data centers that they can use then. We have a good market position. IONOS, that's the company we do this. By and large, is the leading provider in Europe, active in 17 countries. In Germany, Spain, Poland, and Austria, we're number one. In the U.K., in France, we're number two. If we look at the customer contracts, we were able to add 330,000 new contracts, 130,000 abroad to 4.52 million now, and 200,000 in Germany to 4.17 million.
Even though the graph on the side says next to it says 4.26. I'd say that's the correct figure because I add the 4.26 and the 4.52, it gives 8.8. So please bear with us. Sorry about this. We have 4.26 domestic contracts and 4.52 million abroad. Revenues have increased by 12% to EUR 1.06 billion, driven by customer growth as indicated before, but also by up- and cross-selling, and also by the strong growth of Sedo, our subsidiary that we use for domain trading and domain parking. The so-called aftermarket business. We had a strong growth that we observed there. With the EBITDA, we had a slightly negative development.
At the beginning of the year, we indicated that we are planning to increase our investments in the cloud business. Those were EUR 36.8 million that we spent last year compared to the prior year for cloud business and further internationalization. On the next slide, you can see an overview of last year. Bottom line, about one million new customer contracts. Revenue growth 5.2%. Operative EBITDA increased by 3.4% to EUR 1,259 million. That includes EUR 37.9 million initial cost for the 1&1 mobile network and EUR 36.8 million IONOS product sales offensive.
The EBIT is slightly higher than EBITDA, than the operative EBITDA, and the operative growth of the EBIT, 5.6%. This is in line with our forecast. I think we're well established for the next few years. We're in an investment phase. As I said already, we invest a lot of money, but we can increasingly see that we're making progress here, and we're really well on track with our plans. By the end, to conclude, I would like to give you an outlook on 2022. As I said before, business is good. We started the new year well. This allows us to give you more concrete figures. We see EUR 5.85 billion for the year as a target.
We had previously anticipated EUR 5.8 billion EBITDA about on the level of last year. That's due to the fact that we'll have higher start-up costs for the 1&1 mobile network. We expect EUR 70 million costs compared to the EUR 37.9 million last year. With IONOS, we want to invest additionally into marketing. It was called 1&1 Internet in the past. We renamed it now, and we wanna make sure that the brand awareness in the most important European markets increases. What's new this year is that we have increased CapEx expenditures about EUR 800 million-EUR 1 billion. This is particularly driven by the construction of the 1&1 mobile network business.
It's driven by 1&1 Versatel, where we want to extend the fiber optic network to additional coverage areas, largely business parks. We want to connect the 5G antennas to the network. All this has to be built and invested, as well as the various data centers that we need for the mobile network. Well, thank you very much for your attention. I would like to give the floor to my colleague, Mr. Mildner, who will give the figures in detail to you.
Thank you, Mr. Dommermuth. Ladies and gentlemen, analysts and investors, I'd like to welcome you to this webcast for the fiscal year 2021 for United Internet. Mr. Dommermuth has given you the main figures as of now. We're gonna show you the four segments development on a consolidated basis. With respect to our free cash flow and our financial figures. I'd like to start with a brief summary of what Mr. Dommermuth has already told you. On group level, the customer contracts of the consolidated group in 2021 were increased by more than 1 million- 26.8 million contracts.
In addition, our ad-financed free accounts were increased by 920,000 accounts, and that ends up at the end of December 2021 to over 40.23 million. Our revenues in the group, as Mr. Dommermuth has just said, were increased by 5.2% to EUR 5.646 billion. The EBITDA in 2021 is EUR 1.303 billion. Mr. Dommermuth had already mentioned that the EBITDA in 2021 and in 2020 was affected by one-off special effects and by off-period payments. In particular, for the better comparability, we have got the adjusted EBITDA, and we also showed the operative EBITDA which excludes these effects and allocates them to the respective years, 2021.
For better comparability, unconsolidated, it was increased by 34.9%, as I said. This also considers if the special effects are considered, the comparative operative EBITDA was grown by 3.4% to EUR 125.9 million. The same applies for the following KPIs. EBIT was EUR 829 million, which is an unconsolidated increase of 44%. The operative EBIT, as Mr. Ralph Dommermuth had said, increased by 5.6%. Our EPS, that means the profit per share of United Internet is 2.23 EUR, which is an increase of 43.9%. The operative EPS was 2.10 EUR compared to 1.87 EUR in the year before.
The other important figure is the operating EPS before PPA purchase price allocation to our shares. The EPS in the business year 2021 was at 2.51 EUR per share. On the next chart, you can see that's chart 32, the free cash flow of 2021. In the overview, you have seen the bridge. Our free cash flow at the end of the year 2021 after IFRS 16 is EUR 600.8 million or 495 according to IFRS 15 when after the leasing payments have been allocated to the cash flow. IFRS 15 free cash flow after leasing payments of the fiscal year 2021 was at 336 million, so roughly about a hundred million, yes.
On page 42, we have given you the gap from the EBITDA to the free cash flow, which I would like to highlight a little bit on. The CapEx that you see here, which is the investment, was in 2021, EUR 286.8 million compared to the CapEx of the year before in the fiscal year was EUR 447 million. We need to consider that here in the CapEx of the year before, 2021, there was a one-off payment of EUR 165 million to Telefónica Deutschland for the extension of the MBA MVNO contract. If you reduce this and make it comparable, CapEx in this year, in 2021 with EUR 7 million above the year of 2020.
In addition, the free cash flow of 2021 was also affected by a one-off payment of EUR 213.4 million, which in the second quarter was paid to 1&1 AG to Deutsche Telekom AG for the renewal of the FTTH contract. This is a one-off payment which doesn't affect the results of United Internet. This is an active accrual position and that means it is in down payments and spread out over the course of years of the FTTH contract over the coming years. Still it has an effect on the free cash flow of 2021.
The working capital compared to the year before has improved by EUR 34.6 million, increasing the cash flow, which is mainly due to a legal change in the telecommunication law. Mr. Huhn has mentioned this in the previous conference, which means now that telecommunication companies are from January 2021 cannot pay the gross invoice, but the VAT will be subject to the reverse charge proceedings and paid to the financial offices and taxes. As this is always in the month afterwards, we have EUR 100 million higher passive VAT tax now, which is deferred at this point in time, and that takes this respective effect. I will now move to chart 33, looking at our balance sheet positions as of December 2021 for United Internet.
I'd like to start with the assets. I'd like to mention here that on page 23, for better overview, the short-term and long-term assets have been summarized. If you look at that in the balance sheets, you see that separation between short-term and long-term. The intangible assets have only changed a little bit, which add to EUR 3.439 billion. The takeover 2022, for example, have increased by 3.627 billion. The increase of the assets is an increase of the assets and a reduction on the assets up for sale.
The increase by EUR 99.5 million to now EUR 433 million, 443 million to the end of the year was done by the transfer in the first half of the year by purchasing Tele Columbus AG. The IFRS accounting principles say that our 29.9 participation due to the Morgan Stanley in takeover offer had to be rebooked to non-material assets held for sale. This was done in 2020. As you can see at the bottom, in 2021, this asset was taken out of the booking and again booked to the financial assets.
That is not done at EUR 124 million, but it is higher because at Tele Columbus AG, we do not only get our 29.9% share, but in addition, also our share in the takeover, in the transfer, Kublai GmbH, increasing that to 40%. Kublai GmbH now after the takeover holds about 49.8% of the Tele Columbus AG. We have 40% of Kublai and Morgan Stanley the other 60%. At the same time, you may remember that Kublai AG has increased their capital share by EUR 475 million to refund Tele Columbus, and for further funding of the operative business, and 40% of that has been taken over by us, and that corresponds to our share in Kublai GmbH.
That means our balance sheet asset in Kublai GmbH is now in the fiscal year 2024 at EUR 344 million. Moving on to the positions of liabilities is roughly the same. It is increased to EUR 825.7 million corresponding to our customer growth. In the increase of stores going to 280, 589 and to the FTTH customers paid for Deutsche Telekom at the height of EUR 102 million and EUR 213 million. That increase occurred. Positions here, income tax and claims and other assets are mainly unchanged and ending up at EUR 197.3 million at the end of the year.
Assets held for sale and cash and equivalents is EUR 110 million, slightly dropped by EUR 20 million compared to the year before. Now I'll move to chart 44, looking at the debt and equity. First of all, we look at our equity development. The equity has increased from EUR 4.911 billion by about EUR 11 million-E UR 4.923 billion. At the same time, it needs to be considered that the equity quota has increased by EUR 440 million compared opposite to the EK, the equity quota at the end of the year 2021 as at 50.9%.
The equity ratio is mainly due to two major transfers in 2021, which, based on the capital of United Internet AG, and by that, compared proportionally to the balance sheet sums. The United Internet has changed their share in IONOS Group to 75.1% by now, and for that on assessment basis of EUR 5 million enterprise value, which is an equity value of EUR 3.7 million, a purchase price of EUR 310 million, as a sales party. In addition, United Internet in 2021 has changed their shares at 1&1 from 75 to 3.22% to a total of 78.32%. For that, United Internet sales paid about EUR 76 million.
As in IONOS Group and 1&1 have already been covered in our consolidated annual statement. This means that this is not an increase of the values on the active side, on the asset side, but only by a reduction of the capital reserves, with a respective drop of the equity ratio. The liabilities to banks have developed from EUR 1.466 billion- EUR 1.822 billion at the end of 2021. Respectively, the net bank debt have increased from EUR 1.33 billion- EUR 1.721 billion. Due to the good result, our leverage is still below 1.5x EBITDA.
The increase of the liabilities was due to a credit taken by of EUR 750 million in 2021 with periods of three to six years with an average interest of only 0.79%. At the same time, in 2020 the credits came due of EUR 200 million, and they have been paid back as scheduled. At the end of the year, the non-used credit framework was about EUR 850 million. Due to the change of the other balance situations on the balance sheet, as the time is already proceeding, I don't want to go into the details as these are all in line with the development of our operative work. If you have questions, we are happy to answer these in the Q&A session after the presentation.
That leads me to the end of my presentation here, and I'd like to hand over back to Mr. Dommermuth.
Well, thank you, Mr. Dommermuth. Thank you, Mr. Mildner. Let's continue with the Q&A session. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press zero one on your phone keyboard. You will then be given the opportunity of asking a question one after the other. If you want to retract your question, please press zero two. If you listen via loudspeaker, please ask your question via the telephone headset. Thank you very much, and please hold for the first question. The first question is from Jonas Blum, Warburg Research. You have the floor.
Well, thank you very much. I have three questions. First of all, concerning IONOS and its strength, can you say something about its strong growth in the cloud business and the other business sections?
The process for IONOS have probably dulled a bit due to the current environment. Would the shareholders be willing to dispense with some of the share dividend payments? A question, do you have visibility for 2022? How much CapEx you can spend? Can we hear a qualitative statement on the CapEx beyond 2022?
Well, let's get started with the IONOS growth in quarter four. We can't give you any further breakdown because the various business segments, cloud or hosting, productivity, and aftermarket are not published separately. Concerning the IPO prospects, at the beginning of last year, we said that in the spring of 2022, we want to be ready for an IPO to then go for the IPO at some appropriate time in 2022 or 2023.
This still continues to be our plan. We are ready. We could go public at short notice. The preparatory work has made good progress. Right now, I think this is not advisable due to the general capital market situation. There are no new considerations, though, and we haven't spoken about any other option yet. We expect that we will be able to g o public sometime this year or next year.
Concerning the situation with Versatel, we said that we see about EUR 800 million-EUR 1 billion this year. We said with 1&1, we see about EUR 400 million. Well, IONOS and other companies need money for software and hardware, so that you can expect about EUR 400 million for Versatel. Mr. Mildner nods his head, so that's good. Then next year, this CapEx might increase. It depends on the development of new business parts and development speed of the 1&1 network. We wouldn't want to make a final decision at this point yet.
Thank you very much.
The next question is by Ulrich Rathe, Jefferies. Your line is open.
Thank you. My first question is the inflation. Operating data centers are very energy consuming, especially companies in countries where energy costs are low. So we've got a big flow in this direction. How did you calculate that in your guidance? We're not sure what's gonna happen next, and I'd be interested to know the assumptions that you have taken for your calculations. The second question is a bit on the guidance of the turnover was pushed up a little. What was the main driver for that? Coming back to the first question of Mr. Blum, if you can detail what happened at IONOS in the third quarter. The Sedo business is very volatile. Apparently, it was in the past, and you point out that this was strong in the last quarter.
Could you give us a percentage, perhaps, roughly, to that aspect so that we have an impression of what's going on in the business that is carrying on quarter by quarter?
Yes. Let me start with the first two questions. Yes, inflation is a topic for us. It's on the agenda. The point is that energy and power costs, electricity and fuel costs that we have for company cars all together, at least at this point in time, do not play major roles. There's EUR 40 million altogether per year, and these 40 million are going to grow. Our MBA payments, for example, that we purchase with Telefónica or connecting networks with telecoms and city carriers. There is a fixed price which is independent of the energy costs. In our own mobile network, that is going to have an effect on us.
Here, EUR 40 million are not going to suffice in the future, and of course, that has to be considered in our planning. The turnover guidance had been increased because in the past year we came out a little bit better than we had forecast in December or we saw in December. In December, we gave a forecast based on the figures known until then. December altogether turned out better than planned, and there is the new year that started a bit better than before as well. That allowed us to improve the turnover forecast or outlook. Concerning the Sedo business, I'd like to ask Mr. Mildner to comment on that.
Yes. Sedo business is the following the fourth quarter of IONOS. Of course, that was a very good quarter. It was a kind of year-end rally.
Looking at the whole year, and you can take that from the business report, which is listed as Sedo. From the 12% growth, they participated with 5.2% so that in normal business we had 6.8% growth, which is exactly what we had planned for the long run. In a number of discussions, we have pointed out that we are looking at a long-term, nearly two-digit growth, and we are moving towards that. Of course, Sedo business is a more volatile business than the subscriber business of IONOS. On the other hand, we have to say that that business in the long term is always going to be a part of the IONOS group, and that is why we're happy it is going well as it is.
We are observing that very clearly and closely because it is so volatile. For the last year, for example, we are positive, and for the coming year, we see no change on the horizon.
There are no further questions for the moment in the German channel, so I'll move to the English channel now. Just a second, please.
The first question of the English channel is from Joshua Mills, BNP Paribas Exane. Your line is now open.
Hi, guys. Thank you for the questions.
Two for me. One is I'd just be interested to know United Internet's thoughts about the advantage of keeping 1&1 listed as a separate entity. What is the advantage for that? I see that you've just taken the company up by another just over 3% in the last year. Yeah, a lot of the business is now being done for the network build, both at the Versatel level and the 1&1 level. When you bought out or did the reverse takeover of 1&1, I think you gave a three-year commitment to keep it listed, which is now expired. Just your latest thoughts about whether you'd consider buying in the minorities with the share price at this level, that would be helpful.
Then secondly, a question to Mr. Dommermuth. You know, just before Christmas, we saw you increase your stake in United Internet by another 8%. I'd just be interested if you'd share with us, as other investors, why now? What's your rationale? What opportunities do you think for United Internet Group aren't being appreciated by the market? Thank you.
Yeah. Well, thank you very much for the question. Last year, we were offered a package of 1&1 shares, and we purchased it. I think we would do the same in the future. If we find the price to be attractive, then I'd always plead in favor of going for the package because I believe that 1&1 is undervalued today and has many opportunities. That's why it certainly makes sense to look at in detail appropriate offers. We do not plan to become active in the sense of delisting. We're quite happy with the capital market access of 1&1, and it allows us to take additional steps that we're not concretely planning now, but there's more flexibility then. We wouldn't want to forego this option right now. You're right, we are no longer tied.
We're no longer committed. We could take this step. The takeover by Drillisch no longer commits us to any contractual agreements one way or the other. We're free to act. We can purchase or sell as many shares as we like. You asked about my private purchase last year. That was driven by the fact that I think that United Internet is favorably valued. I think everybody who buys a share believes that, otherwise they wouldn't do it. That was an idea that I've had for a while because our share has long been below its historic peak. That made me consider this purchase, particularly because the financing, the interest situation was very favorable.
That painted a good picture to me, and I could go back to holding more than 50% like it was at the beginning of the, or when the company was first established. Maybe that was also, to an extent, an emotional thing, but the main reason is I believe that the share is well, it's favorably quoted. I think it's a good long-term investment, as we will see over the next few years, and I still enjoy this work. I find it's a nice thing to say that I own more than 50% of the company. Those were the motivations.
Great. Thank you.
The next question is from Stéphane Beyazian, ODDO BHF. Your line is now open.
Yes, thank you. Couple of questions if I can. The first one is on the marketing spending at IONOS. Can you just help me understand if the EUR 30 million for 2022 is coming on top of the EUR 40 million, and so that your marketing budget will overall increase by EUR 70 million versus the 2020 level, and we should be assuming that this will continue also in the coming years, or whether these are still sort of one-off marketing spending? In addition to that, if we look at the contract added in 2022, in 2021, sorry, it's not totally different to the levels in 2020. Can you share some color on how effective you think the marketing spending is?
Because it seems to me that perhaps the accelerated revenue growth is more coming from Sedo than perhaps directly the web hosting division. Finally, I have a third one, if I can, regarding IONOS. I was just wondering if, following the collapse of the U.S. web hosters valuation, you have any appetite for a tie-up with another large player in the web hosting industry, which may help you to get a global scale and some synergies, whether you have any interest for such a transaction. Thank you.
Thank you for that question. Let me start with marketing budgets of IONOS. Last year we invested, but not only into marketing. We said that we wanted to invest into the cloud section. I'll have to look at the wording here. Just a minute, please. I can't seem to find it. I had it somewhere. Here it is. Product and sales offensive in the cloud business and further investments. That was about for the internationalization, sorry. In that we have extended our work in the Eastern European countries, and we took smaller steps there. The idea was to invest in the cloud business as such. In the product development, we have hired lots of new developers, and we have a broader portfolio as of today, and we're going to broaden that further.
This investment as such in the product and the sales offices, this was the EUR 36.8 million, and this is why they can't be on a one-to-one basis be applied to the marketing business. The marketing—it is part of the marketing, but the marketing budget is a smaller one, and the budget is not only EUR 40 million. IONOS has a three-figure marketing budget, and that is increased by EUR 30 million now in order to allow to put more work into the branding. We want to increase the awareness of IONOS in the target group of the businesses, the freelance workers in our most important markets. You asked on the activity of the marketing at IONOS. We are quite positive here in this respect.
We are progressing well, and we can see that in the customer growth with 330,000 contracts in 2021. That is a good growth. From my recalling, it is more than the growth in 2020. You also asked whether there is a certain appetite to take over another bigger player. We have no considerations in that respect at the moment. We are concentrating on our business, offering optimization opportunities and expansion to us, and we would rather stay focused on that management-wise. Of course, that doesn't mean that if there is an opportunity, we might take a look at it, but at the moment there's nothing to announce in this respect. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Jakob Bluestone, Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I actually had a follow-up from that last question, previously. I guess my question is just, I mean, you mentioned on the potential IPO of IONOS, the current state of equity markets. I just wanted to understand how committed are you to actually doing an IPO versus looking at alternatives, so, you know, maybe something in private markets or something, given, you know, the de-rating of some of the peers. I'm just sort of interested in are you know, very focused on this path or would you consider other models? Thank you.
No, we're 100% committed to the IPO. That is the agreement that we've made with Warburg Pincus. That's the agreement we have with management. As you know, we're planning not to decrease our shares in the context of the IPO. We still want to remain committed and invested. If you think of alternatives, what could they be? Should Warburg Pincus sell their share to other private equity companies? That's not in our interest at all. We're still planning to go public and are quite optimistic that this will happen sometime in the periods envisaged that goes from the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2023. We're only through the first two months of the two-year time span, so we're quite optimistic that this will make sense and will happen.
Thank you. That's very clear.
The next question is from Polo Tang, UBS. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. My first question is for Mr. Dommermuth. There's been a lot of talk about 4-to-3 mobile consolidation in other European markets. Do you believe that 4-to-3 mobile consolidation could happen again in the German market in the longer term? And would you be open to selling 1&1 in the longer term, or is ownership of 1&1 strategic? My second question is really just about share buybacks. You know, you've mentioned earlier about United Internet being a good longer term investment and how it's undervalued. You obviously had a EUR 160 million share buyback program that you announced in August 2021. It was then suspended in September.
Just given the current levels of the United Internet share price, would you consider reinstating the buyback? My third question is really just about working capital. There was a EUR 134 million drag or outflow in 2021 in terms of working capital, but how should we think about working capital for 2022? Thank you.
Let me start with the 4-to-3 scenario, a possible 3-to-4 scenario. In Germany, you're not going to be surprised if I don't see this. I am fighting for four suppliers in Germany. That's why we have been trying for years to build up the fourth network. That is an effort that we'll be making for many years. May it be right or wrong, we think that with our virtualized Open RAN, we have an excellent network, very future-oriented, a low cost in operation and which will by edge computing be allowing real-time application with big opportunities. As of today, we are very competitive already. We have talked about the last year, 665,000 new mobile customers, and we think that we'll be more competitive with our own network.
That is why I don't have any plans to sell 1&1. If that were the case, we wouldn't need to make that effort. Looking at the share buyback last year, in the third quarter we had the share buyback, and we bought back by the stock market that is allowed by our provisions, and very few shares were offered. In September, we could do that share buyback package, and that was a privileged opportunity for us. It wasn't a direct United Internet reinvestment, but a portfolio business. Our biggest part of the business where we could invest and where we were offered a larger block, and that made sense for us to quicker get to our target. Maybe I can answer the third question on the working capital.
I think that was increased compared to 2020. That's a structural change due to the Telecommunication Act, which was changed where the VAT has to be paid by us now. By that payment, which is always one month after when it occurred. That is a structural effect now, and that's going to level out over the years. Only compared to the year before, this is visible now because what would have happened otherwise, we would have invoiced 100% to our providers. With that, the working capital would be reduced by that. Now we wouldn't have to put it on the balance sheet. What happened now, it is not paid to the provider.
This is about EUR 120 million, and these EUR 120 million are on our balance sheet at the end of the year and are only paid on the tenth of the following month. That is in January. This wouldn't have happened. Last year, it would have been paid directly in December. Now it is only paid in January. That is why for one time we have this peak in comparison to the next year. In the following year, that is going to level off, and it's not gonna be visible anymore.
Thank you.
The next question is from Adam Fox-Rumley, HSBC. Your line is now open.
Thank you very much. I had a couple of follow-ups, please. First, in your presentation, you mentioned that CapEx was basically flat year-on-year when you were adjusting out the exceptional. But I think that Versatel started doing some work for 1&1. Was that incremental CapEx spend at Versatel this year, or was it just a reallocation of spend there? Second, also on CapEx, I wonder if you could say a little bit more about what the moving parts might be that would cause you to spend EUR 800 million rather than EUR 1 billion, however you'd like to address that. Finally, just on IONOS, you mentioned a little bit about your targets for increased marketing spend.
Just if you can say anything more about how you'd like to measure that, and the success of that. I know that I'm now seeing IONOS adverts on the TV in the U.K. Thank you very much.
I'll start with the last question, and Mr. Mildner will then answer the first two questions.
We measure brand awareness. We have regular surveys among our target groups. We have other effects, direct orders. With branding campaigns, that is not a big thing, less than with measures that are directly targeted at driving sales. It also happens, we can see that as well. We can also see that we have better trend brand values, that we have better effects in churn. The main KPI is brand awareness and subsidiary effects are additional contracts, add more contracts, lose fewer contracts.
What's becoming more important to show in the struggle for talent that this is a renowned company that is well-known because that also plays a role in HR recruitment, that people would like to talk about their employer in their social environment and can be proud of being with a well-known company. Well, I would like to answer the other two questions. The first one referring to the CapEx and whether with Versatel in the CapEx of 2021 there are incremental costs for the 5G buildup. Well, the CapEx that we showed with about EUR 290 million compared to last year is roundabout flat, a little bit more than in 2020. If you adjust for the Telefónica payment and the MVNO contract.
There are no actual cash out costs, and that is something that has to do with the 5G buildup. Versatel has ordered these services and will get them, but this will only be effective in 2022 and subsequent years. CapEx 2021 is really comparable to prior years. There are no unusual or extraordinary CapEx payments for the buildup. The second question was what are the drivers for CapEx being either EUR 800 million or EUR 1 billion worth of investment? In our ad hoc information in mid-December, we said that we can't indicate a rough value or an exact value because back in December already we had problems with supplies and questions surrounding availability of chips, of computer chips. What about the supply chains?
I'd say this will continue this year due to the Ukrainian crisis or even the Ukrainian war. This question will be quite up to date. I'd say this is why we indicated EUR 800 million-EUR 1 billion. But we will try to get all the orders we've placed for 2022 in 2022, and we stick to our statement from December that we will have investments ranging from EUR 800 million-E UR 1 billion. But right now it doesn't look like this will have an effect on our buildup plan that we have.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Usman Ghazi, Berenberg. Your line is now open.
Hello. Thank you for the opportunity. I just have two kind of clarification on earlier questions and then I have two of my own, please. Just on IONOS, am I right that it was said that the growth in recurring revenues was close to 6.8%, and then Sedo is what's pushing the growth to double- digit? That because you don't see the Sedo performance as being kind of a one-off, you do think that IONOS in total can continue to, you know, is well on its way to kind of continuing to grow in double digit kind of territory. That was kind of my first kind of question on clarification.
The second clarification was just on the CapEx for 2023. I don't know if I heard correctly, but was it said that CapEx for 2023 will be higher than 2022? I don't know if that comment was being made for Versatel or for the group as a whole. If I could just get a clarification there, please. My kind of, you know, the kind of two questions I had on my own were just on IONOS. You know, I think in the last quarter it was mentioned that, you know, ideally you would like to have IONOS with a EBITDA margin that's beginning with a three. Now, you know, with the marketing for this year that margin will be slightly below, you know, 30%.
You know, I mean, do you have a view on what a good baseline margin should be at this company, going forward? Or will it always be a trade-off between growth and margin? My final question was just on payments. I mean, for GoDaddy had a capital markets day very recently. You know, payments, you know, after the acquisition of Poynt, you know, is something that they're talking up as an opportunity for hosting companies. I mean, this is an area where 1&1, also with our IONOS, it seems like they're not as active. Therefore, I just wanted to get your view on, you know, payments as an opportunity for IONOS going forward. Thank you.
Well, as far as the growth of IONOS is concerned, that was your first question. You are quite right. We had 6.8% without Sedo business in last year, and we want to increase that growth rate this year and on the path to a double-digit growth. That is quite right. The margin in the next years is going to grow. We want to have that. That marketing budget should not be increased every year because I think that's a good thing about the branding budget, that you can keep that on level if you don't increase your footprint. By that, from the same or equal branding budget, we will be able to deliver better margins. But I think altogether, we're going to see a better margin situation altogether, because in the cloud business, we are deficitary as of today.
We are investing strongly there, using a lot in order to do new developments to extend our product range. Of course, our business plans foresee that this section of the business will be profitable at one point in time. Altogether, we are gonna see margins that are beyond 30% in terms of EBITDA. We are planning medium-term increases here. Okay, I'll take over the more strategic questions in the end, whether we are looking at payments or opportunity companies. We do, and Mr. Dommermuth has explained this earlier. Of course, we are looking at many, many different products and product extensions for our customers. Of course, payments is something that everybody talks about. Of course, we are probably not be a payment service provider in the sense that we do become a financial company.
What can be considered is all the topics around embedded banking, where with partners, we would offer reasonable products and product features, especially in e-commerce, in the web range. That is something that we will look into detail, which I could already look at, Shopify will look at, and we are close to that. As of today, we have good payment solutions on offer, which we already have. Our product range here, of course, is going to be in line with the market. We are observing that very closely. The other question that was open was the CapEx 2023 being higher than the CapEx 2022. We normally don't give a long-term forecast and goals. We concentrate on the current year, usually. In that respect, I wouldn't like to give you a concrete answer to 2023 now.
We said that we assume that the CapEx spending on the Versatel side will probably be a bit higher because we are in the build-up phase, but we don't publish precise and concrete figures as yet.
Thank you very much.
There are no further questions. I would like to give the floor back for final words.
Well, thank you very much, Ms. Sanders. We would like to thank you for your participation for your questions. Thanks to the board members for their answers. For further questions, contact myself or Mr. Usman. Otherwise, stay safe and see you next time. Goodbye.