Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the United Internet Quarterly Statement Q3 2022 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today, Stephan Gramkow. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to our Q3 and nine months, 2022 results conference call. My name is Stephan Gramkow from Investor Relations, and here with me today are our CFO, Martin Mildner, and my colleague, Dominic Grossman. Martin will first take you through the development of the first nine months and the financials, and we are happy to answer any questions afterwards. Martin, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Stefan. First of all, it's a pleasure for me to welcome you, all of you, to our nine months results analysis investor webcast. As always, before I will start with the details of our financial results, I'd like to highlight already at the beginning of this presentation that we look back to a very successful nine months of the year 2022, given the difficult market conditions with respect to the high inflation, the Ukraine crisis, the ongoing supply chain issues, and last but not least, the overall current negative sentiment from our point of view in the global economy. Keeping all of the elements in mind, we see again that our United Internet group has a more than robust and resilient business model, which give us the opportunity to grow even under these difficult market conditions.
As always, before we go into each segment of our group, let me start on slide three of our presentation with an overview of the most important KPIs of the United Internet Group as of 30 of September 2022, which means the figures for the first nine months of our financial year. First of all, we were able to increase our customer contract bases in the first nine months by 430,000 contracts, which leads to a total number of 27.11 million customer contracts. Our revenues for the first nine months reached EUR 4,384.3 million, which leads to an increase of 5.2% compared to the revenues of the first nine months of 2021.
Our EBITDA, so the earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortization for the first nine months amounts to EUR 983.3 million, and therefore our EBITDA is 3.3% above the EBITDA for the first nine months of 2021. Our EBIT increased by 3.4% from EUR 601.5 million- EUR 622 million. As you can see from the explanations below this table, our EBITDA as well as our EBIT are influenced by three main cost drivers. The first two drivers have been announced already in our first guidance for the year 2022 and last December of 2021. We are investing in the rollout of our Open RAN network, not only through CapEx, but some of these investments are also OpEx related.
Furthermore, we announced that we are also investing in the brand awareness of Ionos. Last but not least, due to the Ukraine crisis, we, as more or less all other competitors and companies in Germany, are facing a strong increase of the electricity costs, where we had higher costs of EUR 16.3 million in the first nine months of this year. Our EBT of EUR 569.1 million, but also consequently our EPS, so our earnings per share, are influenced by two facts, which have been explained in one of the first bullet points below the table. On the one hand, the financial results was influenced by subsequent variation of financial derivatives, which reduced our EBT by EUR -7.1 million .
On the other hand, the negative results of the investment in Tele Columbus in the amount of EUR -22.5 million were included for the full nine months of this year. While the negative results of Tele Columbus in the first nine months of last year were only added for five months, which was due to the fact that the investment was still to be accounted as an investment to be sold in the first month of 2021 due to our investment together with Morgan Stanley Infrastructure in Tele Columbus. These described EBT effects also have an impact, of course, on the EPS of EUR 0.12 per share.
This means that our EPS in the first nine months of 2022 will be EUR 1.59 per share, and EUR 8.9 per share is the key figure of operating EPS before our purchase price allocations, taking into account, which is important for us, as you know, how we are looking at the EPS. I would now switch over to our segment Access, and we'll start with Consumer Access, which is, as you probably know, related to the business of 1&1. In fact, that Markus Huhn, the CFO from 1&1, had his webcast already this morning before our webcast. I'd like to focus only on some key elements. Therefore, let us start with the development of our customer contracts, which you can see on slide four for 1&1.
During the first nine months, there were an increase of 330,000 mobile internet contracts. Coming from 11.19 million contracts at the end of last year, up to 11.52 million contracts at the end of September this year. On the other hand, we saw a decrease of 110,000 broadband connections in the first nine months of 2022, coming from 4.24 million contracts at the end of last year, and now 4.13 million contracts at the end of September 2022.
As we already discussed in our analyst call for the first half of this year, we like to highlight again that the legal regulations in the telecommunication law in Germany, in connection with the revised possibility for the customers to be able to terminate now their contracts after the first period, now already with a one-month period instead, as before, of a full year period. We see a higher churn of -150,000 contracts in mobile and -80,000 contracts in broadband connections.
If you have a look on page five of our presentation at the revenues of the segment consumer access for the first nine months of this year, we can consider that the most relevant service revenues increased by 2.2% to entirely EUR 2,933.6 million, and are therefore in line with the announced outlook of 1&1. The low margin hardware revenues increased in the first nine months by 0.4% to EUR 546.9 million. On slide six, you can see that the EBITDA of consumer access increased in the first nine months by 7.4% to EUR 552 million. The EBITDA is already, as already explained, influenced by higher electricity costs of EUR 0.7 million.
This results to an operative EBITDA margin of 18.8% in the first nine months of this year, compared to a margin of 17.8% in the first nine months of last year. I'd like to state again that the EBITDA also includes initial cost of EUR 26.1 million for the rollout of the mobile network. Page seven shows the EBITDA of 1&1 separated into the two new reporting segments. On the one hand, the segment Consumer Access, and on the other hand, the new segment, 1&1 mobile phone net. In fact, the mobile network segment includes so far only the initial cost for the 5G rollout in the amount of EUR 26.1 million.
The pure consumer access segment shows even a better operative EBITDA for the first nine months of EUR 578.1 million, which represents an increase of 7.4% compared to last year. I'm now coming to our segment Business Access, which is related to the business of Versatel. On slide eight, it is shown that the revenues were growing by 4.2% in the first nine months of this year. Coming to slide nine, where you can see that the EBITDA on the segment Business Access was declining by 4.5% to EUR 113.5 million with a 28.5% EBITDA margin. However, and as shown on slide nine as well, the EBITDA is impacted by higher electricity costs, as well as some one-time migration costs in the total of roughly EUR 3 million.
The EBITDA was also impacted with an amount of EUR 7.3 million, which are linked to upfront costs on the Versatel side for the rollout of the mobile network of 1&1. If you adjust these three cost positions, you will end up on a EBITDA growth rate of 4.1% compared to the first nine months of last year. I'd like to come now to the segment applications, and we start, as always, with the segment consumer applications, which represent, as you know, our Mail & Media business, especially with the strong brands Web.de and GMX. Within consumer applications, we count more than 42.55 million customer accounts, where approximately 40 million are free accounts and 2.52 million are paid accounts.
Of these 42.55 million accounts, more than 28.1 million accounts are linked to mobile usage, which could increase in the first months by 400,000 accounts. Also, the cloud storage usage accounts could be increased by 500,000 accounts, so that now more than 22.3 million accounts are linked to the cloud storage. On slide 12, you can see the development of the revenues of our segment consumer applications. Maybe as you remember from our first quarter results, we started really good into the first three months of 2022, with an increase of the revenues by 7.5%.
As you know, from mid of February onwards and during the entire second quarter of 2022, we saw a very high level of restraint in the advertising market, which was leading to a reduced revenue growth on the Mail & Media side of only 1.5% in the second quarter. Now, in the third quarter of 2022, we see some kind of recovery, especially in the advertising market and therefore also some better performance in our business with a revenue growth of now 3% in the third quarter.
Over the entire first nine months of 2022, this leads to a revenue growth of, in total, 3.9% and a total revenue of EUR 208 million compared to EUR 200.1 million in the first nine months of 2021. I think even this really bad environment, we are still having a good development on the revenue side. Furthermore, you see it on the next page, the EBITDA was increasing by 3.9% from EUR 80.5 million in 2021 to EUR 80.3 million in 2022, which results in an EBITDA margin of 14.2%. Within this EBITDA, we have also included higher electricity costs of EUR 2.4 million, which are in this EBITDA included, as I said.
Let us now come to our last segment, business applications, which represent the business of Ionos. On page 14, you can see that Ionos increased its customer contracts in the first nine months by 160,000 contracts. They have now 8.94 million contracts in total. Nearly half of it comes from domestic business, so 4.34 million contracts, and a little bit more than the half is coming from abroad business, so from the international business, 4.6 million contracts. If you then take a look on the revenue side of Ionos, we see a strong growth rate of 18.7% and total revenues of EUR 919.7 million for the first nine months of 2022.
As always, we like to note that this high growth rate is also driven by our aftermarket business. The aftermarket business is an important part of the hosting and cloud business because every business of our customers is starting with a domain registration. We always like to point out for years that on the one hand, the aftermarket business, compared to our core business, is not a subscription model. This recurring revenue is secured by a long-term contract. On the other hand, the margin of the aftermarket business is different from the core business. Nevertheless, even without the strong growth of our aftermarket business, our core business, so mainly our hosting and cloud business, we're able to increase its revenues by 7.7%.
With respect to the EBITDA of Ionos, we see also an increase of the EBITDA by 3.1% to EUR 249.8 million in the first nine months of this year compared to the first nine months of last year, where the EBITDA was EUR 242.2 million. As I already highlighted earlier, this lower growth rate was intentionally driven mainly by the growth initiative of Ionos with respect to the brand awareness campaign, as well as due to higher energy costs of EUR 11.9 million in 2022. Even with this kind of additional growth initiatives and additional unexpected costs, Ionos still remain very attractive as a high EBITDA margin of 27.2%. Please be aware that these are the reported EBITDA margins.
To compare these margins with competitors, you have always to keep in mind that the competitors are reporting adjusted EBITDA margins, which we are not doing here. On slide 17, we summarize a few more KPIs as of 30 September of 2022. On this slide, you can see again on the upper table of our KPIs for our group revenues, our EBITDA, and in the lower table, again, the development of our customer contract. Furthermore, and not mentioned so far, I like to draw your attention to the CapEx, which is 71% higher compared to the first nine months of the last year, 2021. This strong increase of our CapEx was already announced in 2021, where we anticipated a total CapEx in a range between EUR 800 million and EUR 1 billion for the entire year.
At the end of September, we concretized that the CapEx will end up in the range of EUR 700 million at the end of this year due to a shift of plant investment in the rollout of the mobile network from this year to the next and the following years. Secondly, I like to mention our free cash flow in the first nine months of this year, which is EUR -38.4 million. Due to a phasing effect, which I already explained in the last analyst call for the earlier quarters, there was a cash payment of roughly EUR 100 million made in the year 2022 in the first quarter, which is, from an economic point of view, allocated to the year 2021.
If you allocate this payment not into the year 2022 but to 2021, our operative cash flow amounts to EUR 58.8 million. Last but not least, you can see on the lower table that we increased our bank liabilities from EUR 1.7126 billion at the end of December 2021 by 8.6% to a total net bank liabilities of EUR 1.8597 billion as of the end of September 2022, which is mainly driven by repayment of two bank facilities which did not refinance so far and our investment in the rollout of the mobile network. Our equity ratio improved by 1.3 percentage points to a ratio of 52.2%.
On page 18, we illustrated our free cash flow bridge from our EBITDA to the free cash flow after leasing and after the explained phasing effect of the payment, which was made in 2022, but has to be allocated to the year 2021. On page 19, we are coming now to our last topic before we happily answer your potential additional questions. Let us come to the outlook for the financials of the entire year 2022. Even with the tough economic environment, which we all, not only as companies, but also each individual have to face in 2022, we are still convinced that our guidance, which we gave already in December last year, is still valid.
Therefore, we are pleased to be able to confirm this guidance again. Not only with respect to our guidance of the total revenues of our group of approximately EUR 5.85 billion, but also with respect to the slightly increased expectation of our EBITDA for the entire year of approximately EUR 1.72 billion. It is really important to understand, and therefore I'd like to highlight this again, our guidance on the EBITDA includes already our investment of 1&1 Versatel in the amount of approximately EUR 60 million for the rollout of the mobile network and the investment of Ionos in the amount of approximately EUR 30 million for the brand awareness campaign. But it also includes the additional anticipated energy costs of approximately EUR 20 million for the entire year 2022.
With respect to our CapEx guidance, I'd like to recall that we slightly concretized our CapEx to EUR 700 million, mainly driven by the phasing shift of our planned investment into the network from 2022 to 2023 and the following years. Thank you very much again for your time to join our nine months call, and I'm now looking forward to your questions during our Q&A session. The operator, you take over the lead again.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Once again, please press star one and one if you would like to ask a question. We will now take your first question. One moment, please. Your first question is from Jakob Bluestone from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to stay on the topic of energy costs, which you highlighted, up EUR 20 million this year. Most of that is Ionos. It may be something you'll discuss more at the CMD. At the current energy prices, can you give us a sort of rough feel for how big an increase in energy costs should we expect next year, and what sort of energy hedging do you have within Ionos? Thank you.
Hi, Jakob. Thank you very much for your question. I'm not quite sure what the energy cost will be for next week. I have to double-check this. For next year, I would assume that we are still a little bit dependent on the decision of the government regarding the gas price plans in Germany. There are still some open issues what kind of categories they will have and what kind of company we will be, where we falling under the umbrella of the different pockets they are discussing currently regarding the deduction of the energy prices. However, we hedged already more than 50% of our energy costs for the next year only for the entire group.
Within Ionos, especially because you're referring to Ionos, there's some kind of differences. For example, for the Strato group, we hedged already 100%, and for Ionos more or less 50% for the remaining part. In fact, as I said, the gas price plans will have, from our point of view, positive effect. Therefore it's really hard to say where we will end up. As I said, the hedging is quite good and we are still looking forward to the decision of the government regarding the gas price plans.
Fantastic. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now go to our next question. One moment, please. Your next question comes from Stéphane Beyazian from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Oh, thank you. I've got two regarding Ionos, if that's possible. The first one is, do you think you've reached the commercial traction that you wanted, which could allow you to cut a little bit on marketing in 2023? Or you think that, you know, you're doing well on revenue growth and therefore it would make sense to maintain the current level of marketing activity? My second question is, do you think there is any room in the market at Ionos to be, I mean, it's different entities in different markets obviously, but do you think overall in the web hosting industry, there's a little bit of room to be raising some prices? Do you observe anything in the market regarding that? Thank you.
Stéphane, also thanks for your question. Regarding your first question of the commercial traction and how the marketing activities impact the business. As you know, that brand awareness activities or marketing and brand awareness do not have always a direct impact, but a long-term impact. You know that we started with a marketing campaign for Ionos first in U.K. with Owen Teague. What we can see there already is that we really see a shift in, for example, in the Google search, that more people are looking for Ionos directly than for hosting or for web services or for whatever. I will not tell you too much in front of the capital markets day next week.
What we can really show is that this improvement will lead, of course, as you see, to good results on the revenue growth. What we can see is that the brand campaigns are working and that we have really good results in advertising or in searching through so Google directly with Ionos save us a lot of money if we will look for SEO and SEA, and therefore we are quite happy. The second part of the question mainly relates to the question, how long do we have to make this investment? I would say maybe we will stay with these kind of marketing activities also over a longer period.
What we have to see is that over the time, of course, the revenue is from our point of view, increasing. This will lead to a percentage and to a ratio that will decrease even if we stay with the number of marketing activities. Therefore we see two things. Maybe we will not invest so heavily in the marketing over the next years as we are doing it today, but even if we would do it will from a ratio perspective decrease due to higher revenue. Therefore we are really happy at the moment that we started this marketing activities and the brand awareness and that we see a lot of attraction. Maybe just one more comment and this question will come.
We announced that we will have EUR 30 million in total in marketing activities, and that we did not spend nearly half of it this time. The campaigns are really back-end loaded. In the next weeks we will show a lot of advertising in the television and in other campaigns. Therefore we assume that we will spend also EUR 30 million this year for Ionos and the marketing activities in which we announce also.
Coming to your second question regarding whether there is room in the market for price increases. Ionos always did some price increases in compared to 1&1, for example. They are a little bit more, there's a little bit more room for them for increasing the prices. We will do this really carefully, and we will see how this impacts the churn rates and also the activity of new customers. Of course, I would say in this kind of market, there's a little bit more room than, for example, in the telecommunication market.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now go to our next question. One moment please. Your next question comes from the line of Nizla Naizer from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I have a couple of questions. The first is on Versatel. Could you kind of remind us, what the main drivers of growth are here, and how much of the annual CapEx is sort of allocated to Versatel, in the outlook that you've given us? The second question is, going into next year, do you expect a change to your financing costs on the back of increasing rates? Some color as to how to think about that would be great. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks a lot for your questions. Regarding, I will start with the second question because it's a little bit easier and a little bit faster. You maybe remember that we took a facility last year in the amount of EUR 750 million with a fixed rate of 0.69%. I think this was really a good move. Of course, the development of interest rates, you can see not only in the U.S., but they are also increasing in the European Union. Therefore we have really to face also that there may be increasing interest rates over the next years, also due to our investment. I think this is a little bit also the situation which everybody is facing.
Currently we are feeling really good with our current facility lines. We will of course also look for possibilities from the EU regarding facilities to financing a 5G rollout where you have maybe better conditions than proper loans. Therefore of course, nobody can deny that the interest rates will increase over the years. Currently, I think we were lucky that we entered into the EUR 750 million last year and which gives us some room. Regarding the first question, I think the drivers for growth on Versatel is from my point of view, one of the most hidden champions in our group. Yeah.
In Versatel has really now the chance, due to also the agreement with 1&1, that they are now obliged to build up the network for 1&1, that they have to connect over the next year 12,000 antennas or antenna sites. Therefore you really have a very good way to approach new customer groups because of so many homes passed and so new ways how you can reach homes. But the interesting question is how you structure your sales process. Yeah, so you know that we are currently only looking for really big B2B customers like a bank who likes to have 1,000 branches connected with fiber. Now we have really the possibility to go also to small SME customers, to SoHo customers, but also to B2C customers.
Our product on the Versatel side is, of course, not the right product for somebody who has only a flat in a housing association or in a single house. We see really a good momentum there that we can reach them, that we connect these buildings, and we are now looking for possibilities through wholesale contracts and through other corporations to offer them also products which are not coming from Versatel.
Versatel is the company who connects the houses and then to have corporations, of course, with 1&1, but also with other players, hopefully, where products then can be offered to the customers, where the customer can make their own decision, what kind of product and service provider they will like to take. For Versatel, this is really a chance to enter into this kind of wholesale market and additional investment possibilities to really increase their footprint due to the possibilities now to have more homes passed than before.
Great. Just a question on how much of the CapEx is sort of allocated to Versatel?
Oh, sorry. I missed this question. Sorry.
No worries.
I would start with the EUR 801 million because this was what we envisaged last year, what we will spend as a CapEx. You can make an easy math. 1&1 was saying that they like to invest roughly EUR 400 million into their rollout. Ionos is investing every year around EUR 100 million. Mail & Media is investing between EUR 20 million and EUR 30 million, something like this. The normal investment of Versatel is generally, and as we always said, EUR 150 million. If you do the math between, you will come up with roughly EUR 250 million of Versatel into new investments. This is, of course, for the rollout of the 5G network.
It's not only the connection of the antenna sites, but you know from 1&1 that Versatel is also responsible to build up more than 450 edge data centers, the core data centers. Therefore, most of the investments are going into the rollout of the EUR 250 million. But also for connecting additional customers in B2C clusters, for example, in business parks. You can say EUR 250 million + EUR 150 million is allocated to Versatel. Now due to the slightly phasing effect that we reduced the CapEx from EUR 800 million- EUR 1 billion - EUR 700 million, approximately. I would assume that Versatel has a little bit more, maybe EUR 200 million, in fact, that Versatel has some pre-investment to make, even with the phasing effect on the 1&1 side.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now go to our next question. One moment, please. Your next question comes from the line of Martin Hammerschmidt from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. If I can come back to the Versatel margins, maybe. I think historically they have been around 30%, and with 1&1 revenues sort of coming in gradually over the next few years. How should we think about the margin profile, or the change in margin profile? Do those sort of 1&1 revenues come with higher margins than the current 30%, or should that be rather stable? Then the second question is on the 1&1 stake. I think Mr. Dommermuth maybe a year ago was asked about potentially taking out the minorities. He suggested that the share price was maybe a bit still too high, and it would be more interesting level at EUR 18. Now, 1&1 is quite below that at EUR 14. Could you maybe share with us your latest thinking of how you think about sort of those minorities? Thank you.
Martin, thanks a lot for your questions. Regarding the margin development of Versatel, of course, there's a slight decrease in the margin at the moment due to the high investments for the 1&1 rollout. I would assume for the longer run that we are going again back more into the margin region where we are coming from. Of course, the same as for 1&1. At the moment you have clearly not only for the rollout cost on the CapEx side, but also on the OpEx side. There's a mix between both. I would assume that the rollout leads in a phasing effect to a slightly lower margin than before. Over the years, it would, from my point of view, grow again in the same region as before.
On the second question regarding the minority of 1&1, of course, this is always a question I hear in every call or meeting with investors and with analysts. We always said that the governance structure from 1&1 is important for us and we are currently having 79% in 1&1, and of course, it would be great to simplify our United Internet structure, but we always said that we have a lot of priorities in front of us. We always said that the rollout of the 5G network is the highest priority. Therefore, currently, we are not thinking about changing the shareholder position in a short run.
Clearly, we always said that in the long run we have to think about it, but it's always also depending on the on the shareholders, whether they like to sell or not for these kind of prices. Yeah, of course, it's better to acquire shares with a price of EUR 14 than with a price of EUR 20, but you always have to see the other side, who's willing to sell. Currently, we are really focusing on the 5G rollout. You know that we have there a lot of things to do. First things first, and then we will think about the governance structure.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now go to our next question. One moment, please. Your next question comes from the line of Yemi Falana from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one's on Versatel. It appears that trends at Versatel are somewhat suppressed by some delays in the 1&1 network rollout. How do you think about the revenue growth ramp into next year? Is there a kind of per site revenue ramp that you could maybe give us some color on, as we think about the 1&1 network rollout accelerating? Then secondly, on the consumer application side, I think the strong growth that you delivered there was somewhat unexpected and is somewhat at odds with the advertising weakness we're beginning to see across Europe, proceeding amongst others. What kind of run rate are you seeing as you've kind of entered the fourth quarter of this year, and do you expect any weakness into next year?
Any color there would be really helpful. Cheers.
Yeah, cheers also from my side. Maybe starting with Versatel, of course, the effect of the phasing from the 1&1 network from this year into the next year will lead to the situation at Versatel that their revenue will not increase like we expected this year due to the postponing of the rollout or of the phasing of the rollout, I would say. Of course, this will lead to a little bit higher revenue income than in the next year. But I would not say that this is the revenue ramp. It's really a phasing effect. Of course, the revenue growth will continue on the Versatel side more and more, but it's not a question of weeks or months.
It's more a steady going over months and years, I would say, yeah. Of course, currently, Versatel is facing a little bit the situation that they expected revenues from 1&1, which are not coming due to the phasing effect. Of course, they would step in in the next year. On your second question on the consumer application side, I think this was the reason why we shown in our presentation the development of every quarter. Yeah, the first quarter was very good, second quarter was a mess, and the third quarter is now going a little bit up again. It's really hard to say what is our expectation for the fourth quarter.
We see the advertisers how they are booking. We are convinced that there is an increase in the activities, but whether this leads to 4%,5%,6%,7% in consumer applications, it's too early to estimate at the moment. The good thing is, in the e-commerce business, I think all of the warehouses are full. The e-commerce companies are more or less also have a problem to get their warehouses a little bit more empty and therefore maybe have more need for advertising also. We think at least that the development is getting better and that we going more up than down in the next quarter, but also the quarters afterwards.
Yeah, of course, what happens in the next years, it is really difficult to answer. What we are doing within consumer applications is clearly to work on new business models, how we can monetize more our databases, and how we can getting more independent from the advertising business. This is where we are working on, and this is where we see a lot of possibilities to improve.
Of course, we do not see this already in this year, and hopefully the development in the next year will be again better as this year. We also have to face that we had a really good year, 2021 in the business, yeah. We are not shrinking our business. We are still increasing our business, so therefore it is not the best situation. Keeping in mind that 2021 was really, really great, we still are happy about the development in 2022, even if we thought it could be much better.
Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take our next question. One moment, please. Your next question comes from the line of Usman Ghazi from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hello, gentlemen. Thank you for the opportunity. I've got some questions for you. First question was just a clarification on the comment that was made earlier on, you know, the price cap proposed by the government, where it's not clear where a company like United Internet would be categorized. I just want to understand, I mean, is it because United is in the same spot as telephones and what have you, so that's an issue? Or is it that you don't know where telephone companies in general will fall within the government framework? So that was the first question. Then the second question was on Ionos, and it was following GoDaddy's results.
The last set of results, they mentioned that we're seeing uneven demand patterns in Europe, particularly in the U.K. and Germany, that was resulting in weakness in their revenue trend going into Q4. I just wanted to, you know, just explore that with you, that you know, are you seeing any such kind of macro-driven weakness in spending going into Q4? Thank you.
Usman, it was really hard to understand. The line was not really good.
Okay.
Let me summarize what we understood. The first question was, when I heard it correctly, it was on the energy cap and Martin's earlier comments on that it's not 100% clear in which pocket United Internet is falling, and which kind of obligations, restrictions are coming with these pockets we might be able to use, this energy cap. Tell me if this is correct.
Yeah. Specifically, because some of your other telecom peers are not saying this is uncertain, as in they're including the full benefits. I was wondering if you see this as a United Internet issue because part of your operations are telecoms and you're not a network operator, which is why this could be an issue, or is it something else?
Usman, I think the telecom is maybe anticipating that they are a big company and that they are falling in the pocket where they can get everything. We are also a big company, but we are not anticipating that we are allocated to big companies. Therefore, as long as the law is not in place, I think it's for us not the right time to speak about anticipation, what kind of things could happen. Yeah. As soon as the law will be in place, we have a clear view on it, what we can achieve there. So far, we are a little bit hesitant to speak about something which is not signed so far from the government side. Yeah. Please apologize not to give you a better answer, but we would not really like to anticipate this.
Okay.
Then the second question, I think, and correct me, was on Ionos and whether the current macro environment with regards to commerce and especially e-commerce is impacting Ionos' business. If this-
I think, yeah, like specifically, I guess, I mean, GoDaddy, you know, at their results kind of mentioned that they were seeing uneven demand in Europe, particularly in the U.K. and Germany, which was causing some, you know, low visibility on their ability to project revenue trends into Q4 and were causing weakness.
Yeah. Okay. No, we are not seeing this, yeah, because, I mean, our business is not set up or Ionos business is not set up in a way that we rely on revenue cuts also for shops and even more for our hosting packages. I mean, this is why we are not that dependent on commerce. Yeah. It's more a question of to be present, to show what you are offering. And this is why this is not linked to commerce, but more a question of becoming more efficient. Yeah. We are also aware that everyone tried to save some money. To digitalize your business is actually something which is a good idea. This is why we are not that concerned and we think that our business is really robust and not that much linked to the macro environment, yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now go to our next question. One moment, please. Your next question comes to the line of Jerry Dellis from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Was really interested, please, in an update on the fiber expansion plan at Tele Columbus. We observe that Tele Columbus bonds are now yielding close to 20%. So it'd be useful, please, if you could clarify what the funding plan is, how it might need to evolve, and also, you know, your level of commitment to the project at this point. Thank you.
As you know, the Tele Columbus is not a company within our group, and we only owns 40%, so therefore I have to be a little bit careful what I'm saying, but I can give you a clear view from us as a shareholder. Yeah. What Tele Columbus is looking for is a momentum in the market where they have a really good traction to go to the home associations, to the housing associations, to drive the housing associations for fiber and to turn cable into fiber or telephone lines into the fiber. We see a really good momentum there. We see really good successful projects in Tele Columbus.
Of course, we always said from the beginning that if we are partnering up with Morgan Stanley that we are clearly engaged in this business, that we are clearly believing in Tele Columbus. Therefore, there is no change at all in our strategy. As you know from our announcements in 2022, where we announced the investment into Tele Columbus, we always said that there are two steps to funding the business. The first step was a capital increase into Tele Columbus in 2021, where Tele Columbus was able to reduce their leverage dramatically. Some money for expansion was also part of the capital increase.
We always said that we committed together with Morgan Stanley to do additional funding, and we announced EUR 75 million. This is still valid. We did not change this. We think that Tele Columbus makes good progress to be really successful, especially the housing associations and also to gain new housing associations, not only to switch the current approximately 2.4 million customers into fiber over the years, but also to get new customers on board. Yeah. Therefore, I think it's always in infrastructure models, it's a longer way. We still clearly believe in this business, and there is no change since the investment together with Morgan Stanley.
Thank you for that. Could I just clarify at what point in the project, additional funding requirements might kick in?
Look, Tele Columbus has its own. It's still listed and has its own analysis clause, at least with the lenders. I think it's clear that they have two bigger financial tranches which are becoming due in 2024 and 2026. This is where we have to think about refinancing, and we also think about additional capital, as I said, with the EUR 75 million. There is no change in this plan so far.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. We will now take your next question. One moment, please. Your question comes from the line of Joshua Mills, BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the questions. Two for me on M&A. Firstly, I think in August we saw these reports of a potential interest in selling consumer applications and a EUR 1.5 billion price tag at the time. Can you just update us on your thoughts around the consumer apps business, whether you see it as a core part of United Internet any longer or not? You know, if you were to sell it, where you might look to redeploy proceeds? Secondly, on the 1&1 side and the network build. Now clearly there's been some disappointing delays here and net add momentum remains slightly weaker than we'd expected.
In the event that you were to consider merging this business with a competitor in the market, do you think the regulator would allow that kind of deal to go through given that you were created as a remedy taker initially? In that scenario, how would you see the opportunity for that to strengthen your network proposition and 5G rollout targets, et cetera? Thanks.
Oh, difficult questions from BNP Paribas. No, just kidding. Regarding your first question, revenue from Mail & Media or the consumer app, consumer application business. I can only repeat what I said before, yeah, and what Mr. Dommermuth also said in the half year results. First of all, we think that there is such a huge potential in the business which we are so far did not monetize. Yeah, I said this earlier in this call also. We think that this is more or less a unique asset, if you're looking what kind of databases you are owning in this asset.
Yeah, we have more than 40 million active email accounts, and if you look in your personal email accounts, you know what kind of information are inside of these email accounts. Maybe this information is more information than Google ever will get from you. We did not find a way how to monetize it. Why we did not find a way so far because I think we were not enough focused on this business because it's always our smallest business. It's always a business which is refinancing their business itself, and it does not hurt. It does not make problems. We didn't, we were not concentrated enough to really focus on this business.
This is what we said last year we'd like to change, and we made a project together with a consulting firm, what kind of growth initiatives they can imagine and what we can imagine. It is clear that there's potential in this company and in this business. The main question is who should leverage this initiatives. Are we the best owner or are other the best owners? It is already our obligation as a board member always to think about all alternatives. Yeah. Should we invest in the company? Are we the best owner? Should somebody else invest into the company?
As we said, we made some calls this year to see whether there are some investors who could be interested. In fact of the leak, we clearly decided that we will stop this process. We do not like leaks, and we do not like to be approached in this way. So far we are clearly focusing ourselves to see how we will go on with this business. Therefore from the M&A perspective, we do not see any movement in this business so far. Therefore there are no real news and therefore also the question regarding the proceeds is not the question we are asking ourselves at the moment.
On the question of the 1&1 network building and the delay and the question of a merger with a competitor, I think we stepped in as a fourth network operator through the European Union. We think that from a market perspective, it is good to have four operators in the market, and this is the same view as the European Commission will have. Therefore we are not thinking about any merger with any competitor at the moment.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Stephan Gramkow for closing remarks.
Thank you, Sharon. Thank you, everyone for attending, our today's call. Please do not hesitate to contact, Dominic or myself or Ellie for any follow up questions. Have a nice day. Stay safe and goodbye. Thanks.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.