Ladies and gentlemen, dear guests, welcome to the Analysts and Investors Conference of United Internet AG. I'm very happy to be able to welcome you personally today, and I would also like to welcome the participants linked in via the webcast. I would like to walk you through the afternoon. First of all, Ralph Dommermuth will speak about the company development of the first half of the year and give you an outlook on the second half of the year. After that, Ralf Hartings will speak in detail about the financials. After our presentation, you will, as usual, have the possibility of asking your questions in a question-and-answer session. Let's start with the presentations. I'm giving the floor to Mr. Dommermuth. You have the floor, Mr. Dommermuth.
Thank you. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I think many of you have just been here in the session before, then this is why I won't so much concentrate on 1&1 , but the other business fields. As announced, I will start with the business areas and the forecast, and Mr. Hartings will give you the results of the first half of the year. Many of you have seen this chart. We have two areas of business: access and applications, which we offer for business and consumer customers, and that leads to our four areas. In the middle, you see our assets. We have 10,700 employees. We generate about 55 million new contracts, 50,000 customers register for the free services. We have 67 million accounts and about 120 data centers and 55 collocations.
We have access to the Telefonica mobile network and our own optical fiber network. We offer our products in a number of outlets. In the consumers area, it's mainly 1&1, and the Drillisch. In the customer business area, we have 1&1 , Versatel. In applications, the consumer brands are GMX, Gmail, and WEB.DE. In the business area, especially with small and medium-sized companies, IONOS is strong with a number of subsidiaries from purchases and mergers in Germany and European areas, and we have minority partners that we cooperate with in our everyday business. Let's start with the access business for consumers. I have said so, 1&1 is the biggest provider and just building their own mobile network.
The turnover has increased by 2.1%, 0.2% of the revenues, other from providing smartphones, for example, by 10.4%. It's important that in the second half, we have been expecting a stronger growth with 4%, so that in the mix, we will deliver the 2% guidance for the service revenue for this year. I think I skipped a chart. Well, let me see if I can move back. Is that possible? Can I move back a chart? Yes, that's the customer contracts revenues. 180,000 customers that we won, 230,000 mobile, and we've lost 50,000 in the mobile broadband lines. We want to compensate this now because we get customers from ADSL that have high cancellation pressures.
We move them to VDSL, where we have no more termination rates. That is how we want to compensate for the losses in the fourth quarters. I've just explained the revenues planned for a percent after the first year, first half. EBITDA in the first half of the year, -4.4, driven by the expenses for the mobile network. If we look at the details, we see a growth of 2.2% in our traditional access business and startup losses in the mobile network of EUR 40.8 million compared to EUR 16.1 in the year before. Business access. Here we are active with the 1&1 Versatel brand, with authorities and customers, business customers.
We have a network with a bit, a bit more over 57,000 km of cable in the 25 largest cities, with about 24,000 access points. The increase of revenue has been 3.3%. You may say that's not much, you invest a lot, such a lot. If you just look at the pure revenue with the optical fiber business, that has developed by 11%, which you don't see in this figure, because in the old business with ISDN access and rental lines, which we replaced by our own, our own lines, we are seeing a drop in turnover. The powerful optical fiber network, which is the business of the future, is growing well, 11% compared mid-year to mid-year before. EBITDA, same development, 3% plus to EUR 77.2 million.
EBITDA margin, just as in the year before, included in that, ramp-up costs to provide towers for 1&1 antennas, which are just build it, build once they are taken over, that is what we are ramping up the services for. Looking at the consumer applications, here we are developing our brands email services, GMX and WEB.DE, Mail.com started once that way, moving to communication centers for the private customer. Personal information management, email addresses, tasks, cloud storage, and online are the key figures here. We differentiate from our American competitors by data protection, the products are pay services, but usually are used as free accounts and then are funded by advertising, which is done by Internet Media. We have 42.26 million accounts. That's a loss of 690.
You know that we have a seasonal volatility, and that is what many of these lost accounts are accounted for. If you compare it to summer last year, we have 42,000 free accounts less, but at the same time, we have 160,000 more pay accounts because we convert from free to pay accounts. The mobile use has increased by 100,000 customers, and the use of our cloud storage has increased by 600,000 customers. The revenue has seen a drop. 1.1% is what we see in the chart, and 1.0% in the text. One of them is right. I don't know which one. 1.1 is the right figure, so 1.1% loss in revenue driven by the first quarter.
You see that here in the first quarter, we had a drop of 2.2%, and the second quarter, we were on the year-to-year level. Why is that? If we look at the first quarter of 2023 comparing it to 2022, the first quarter 2022 was not affected by the Ukraine war and inflation, and since then, we do see some restriction in the advertisements, and this drop in advertising revenue have dropped to 2.2, and in the quarter two, we've had the same. And in Q3 and four, we are going to see an increase in revenue. We see that already showing up on the horizon.
The result, -1.2%, similar to the drop in turnover. Here in the first quarter, we a strong drop, 10.3, the second half, cost measures have taken place. We have a plus of 6.2 with the same revenue. We do see that the second quarter has a positive trend, that's going to continue in the first. That is just a little dip after the good growth in Corona. That is going to be compensated. Now, looking at the business applications, here we work with IONOS, which is stock listed as well.
They are market leader in many European countries and beyond that, in the US, Canada, Mexico, with a broad product range, targeting for small and medium-sized companies, helping them in digitization, providing websites, e-shops, domains or cloud offers, cloud infrastructure, cloud applications, or applications to generate traffic on the Internet. Besides IONOS, we have a number of different brands, which we have as acquisitions, STRATO, InterNetX, Fasthosts, Arsys in Spain, home.pl in Poland, World4You in Austria, for example. IONOS has seen a good development, 210,000 new customers in the first half of the year to 9.25 million, driven by growth nationally and internationally. From that, we see an increase of 12.5 increase with a good growth here due to the business.
When going IPO, they saw at 1&1 that they see a 12% growth. We seeing this now already. IONOS has great opportunity here by better marketing in existing customers, a higher demand from small and medium-sized companies who want to invest in digitization, but mainly by artificial intelligence, which will make it possible to build website tools that make the design of the website and optimizing the site and generating traffic will be fully automated. Yesterday, we had a board meeting saying Microsoft take $30 for an AI assistant for office. If you build that for your website, it's completely coverable by AI. We have that.
You can take EUR 30 for that as well. I think that is good business coming up, which although we've been doing it for a long time, we are opening a new chapter here now. 11% plus EBITDA, EUR 192 million EBITDA, just a little bit below the year before, due to the fact that we spent more money on advertising in the first half of the year and see a bit of a weak marketing in the aftermarket. All together, 4.4+ in turnover, 490,000 contracts, so nearly 28 million contracts now. EBITDA grown, including the build-up of the mobile phone network. If you take that, the EBITDA would be EUR 24 million better, which is quite good, and if it would have 6%, if I calculate right.
EBIT and depreciations, mainly by the build-up. The EBIT is a minus of EUR 2.1. If we calculate the EUR 32 million, which I see as a different, we would have an EBIT of EUR 44 million, which is quite a nice growth. EPS EUR 0.48. Included in that, the lower EBIT, which leads to EUR 0.04 less, and from our minority participation, we have equity result of -4% and EUR 0.04. Due to the interest that has a worse financial result for EUR 0.12. How is it going to carry on? We confirm our forecast. Until the end of the year, we want to have a revenue of EUR 6.2 billion.
EBITDA is going to end out at the same level as last year, although we have the investment cost for the network. If you'd add that, it would be a nice growth of EBITDA, even an adjusted CapEx at EUR 800 million, driven by the build-up of the mobile network and driven by the extension of the optic fiber network. We are building on hundreds of industrial areas, commercial areas. We are building up the towers, and that is going to be part of the CapEx. I think we are doing quite well, and now I would like to ask Mr. Hartings to present the financial results.
Well, thank you very much, Mr. Dommermuth. Well, welcome again to our financials for the first half of the year of 2023. I'll present to you the first, the most important KPIs at group level. Our fee-based customer contracts, compared to the 13th of June 2022, increased by 910,000. The advertising-financed free accounts were 240,000 below last year's figures. That's largely due to the conversion of 160,000 accounts to pay accounts. Revenues increased by 4.4%, as indicated, to EUR 3.028 billion. Our EBITDA, despite an additional EUR 24.7 million higher expenses for the rollout of the 1&1 mobile network, increased by 1.9% to EUR 670.1 million.
The EBIT, due to higher depreciation and amortization in connection with network rollouts, was EUR 8.8 million or 2.1% below last year's figures and wound up at EUR 408.5 million. This is compared to planned cost reductions in this year. Let's speak about the cash flow first. In order to better harmonize EBITDA and cash flow, we adjusted the payout of interest from cash flow and show it in the cash flow from operating activities like other competitors, such as Vodafone do. The cash flow from operating activities, due to the decrease of group earnings, decreased from EUR 522 to EUR 512 million.
The net cash provided by operating activities decreased from EUR 440 million, roundabout, where we had phasing effects from Q4 2021 that we disregarded here to the tune of EUR 97.2 million. It decreased to EUR 237 million, and this was due to payments to telecom that were made in Q3. The cash flow from investing activities decreased due to higher CapEx. The cash flow from financing activities that is much better, is due to the increase, largely in particular to the borrowing. I'll speak about the bridge from EBITDA to free cash flow on the next slide.
We start with the EBITDA of EUR 670.1 million, which we have to reduce in the first step by the one-off effects, EUR 1.6 million, IPO cost of IONOS and other effects, totaling EUR 6 million. The strongly increased CapEx at EUR 299.2 million due to the investment in the network at 1&1. The tax at EUR 124.5 million, as well as a contingent payment to Deutsche Telekom of EUR 276.5 million, including the working capital and others, of -EUR 26 million.
We arrive at a free cash flow of minus EUR 62.1 million, or EUR 127.5 million after an extra EUR 65.4 million worth of leasing payments. Now, let's speak about balance sheets. The balance sheet sum in the group increased in 2023 from EUR 10.4 billion to EUR 10.77 billion. The main drivers on the asset side were the increase of property, plant, and equipment of EUR 120 million due to the increased investments in the 5G mobile network and the increase in inventories and deferred expenses due to line rentals and pre-services. Contingent contract is the buzzword here.
The largest drivers on liabilities was the increase in of the equity by EUR 110 million from the increase of the group results from the first half of the year and the increase of liabilities to banks by about EUR 250 million. The equity ratio decreased by 1 percentage point to 50.2%. The liabilities to bank, net liabilities, were EUR 2.394 billion. That takes me to the end of my presentation. Thanking you for your attention, now, of course, we're happy to take your questions or comments. Thank you.
Well, thank you very much. We'll start our question-and-answer session now. Please use the microphones, and we will get started with the session now.
Well, thank you very much for the information. I'm with the Citigroup. I have three questions, if I may. The first one is, in the fourth quarter, you see a potential of EUR 140 million-EUR 150 million worth of EBITDA potential for the next few years in consumer business. With the background of the advertising business, affected by the Ukrainian war, is that the same, or has the outlook been darkened a bit? The other question is, Tele Columbus financing requirements. Can you give us an update on where we stand here? The question to Mr. Harting: Where is your focus right now within the group? Is it possibly consumer access to drive business access, or is it something else? What, what's your focus right now?
Well, thank you very much. You're right. I anticipated about EUR 140 million EBITDA for next year for the portals, and I can still see them, but you can't see them. How come? Well, we changed our report from. What do we call it now? From controlling to accounting view, and when we spoke about this, we were still in the controlling view, and the accounting view shows about EUR 20 million. That means if I spoke, I saw growth from EUR 120 million-EUR 140 million potential of a growth. We're now talking about a growth from EUR 100 million-EUR 220 million, but that has no impact on the cash.
It's just a question of how we show the figures between IONOS and the portals. That's the difference, but I still see the growth, and I think, you'll see an extra EBITDA of 20% next year. That is largely due to our good progress with pay accounts. We're getting a lot of pay accounts, and we have a price increase with pay accounts that is well accepted by the customers, and that is why nothing much has to happen before we achieve this. If you ask me a year from now, where is that now? I won't be say it's the advertising market, unless it completely collapses.
We don't expect the advertising market to explode again. We expect in today's environment that we see a growth of 20%. With Tele Columbus, I'm not so well aware of the topic as the Tele Columbus management. It's true that Tele Columbus has to be refinanced. I think their credit lines run out in a year, in a year's time. We deal with it in the supervisory board. We discuss it at the level of the shareholders of how to best do this. I can't give you anything detailed yet.
There was the question directed at me, where my focus is. I think the entire board is focused on driving all our units as best we can. I'm the CFO now. That involves, of course, the financials. We are planning a lot of investment going forward. That needs to be financed, of course, and that is one of the focus areas that keep me busy. The question of how to finance these investments and how we can best do this going forward.
Welcome from Redburn. Just following up on that financing point, Ralf, just wanted to talk about the balance sheet a bit. I think you have a covenant at 3.5 times net debt to EBITDA. Obviously, that was set some time ago when interest rates were a lot lower. Just curious to know where, where you think, you know, it's, it's, sensible to take leverage at this point of the interest rate cycle? You know, how much more y eah, I think you're just around about two times, just under at the moment. Where, where do you think, you know, where are you comfortable running leverage, in this environment? Thank you.
Yeah. I think our net debt is at EUR 2.3 billion, which is a leverage of 1.8 EBITDA, I would say that's quite a comfortable situation that we are in, I do think that all effort will be made to get an investment grade and stay as it is defined. If I look at the plans, I think we'll be able to manage to deliver that. This is why we try to get the cost of the money minimized. I think what we can say is that we can go up to 2.5 times, that would keep us comfortable with the investments for the mobile network and the optical fiber building.
We see the factor going up to a 2.5, but we have to say that we have good funding opportunities with the special infrastructure funding, which we could do with Versatel, for example, and we haven't been making use of that so far. This funding can be structured. This year, we have 1&1 Versatel with over 300 commercial areas that we are accessing. Next year, more and even more after that, and this is something that we have to calculate again and again to see what the return on the invest is for these. If the interests explode in the future, we will be able to build less. I don't see that coming up. Currently, we expect fundings which are not expensive, and we'll be able to stay in that framework.
You said is 2.5x sort of self-imposed ceiling, clearly, that's probably your covenant level, or is that where you see leverage heading in the midterm?
I don't think it is a self limitation as a ceiling. It's the plans that we looked at, and that would lead us to that figure. That's it. This is just analyzing the plans that we have.
Thank you very much. It's Adam Fox-Rumley from HSBC. I had a question on Versatel, where you're obviously spending a lot more CapEx this year and next year. Presumably, your plans are well worked out, and you've got good visibility about where you're going. Are you already at the stage where you might be talking to customers who are prospectively within your network, your new network reach, or is that something that will come once the business once you actually get there? I guess the sales cycle time on that kind of business is quite extended, so I wondered if you're already out there with that view. Thanks.
Well, if I got you right, we are acquiring where we are already present, that is on-net and in-net. Once we build up new areas, of course, we do a pre-marketing there. We are accessing commercial areas. We are not accessing private homes, we have got quite a quick return, much quicker, for example, than we would have in private customer business, but the mechanism is the same. First, we start with an analysis of the commercial area, what is the existing infrastructure? What customers are there? What's the industries? How big are the companies?
That allows us to analyze whether a commercial area would pay off or not, and once we have seen that it would, we start with pre-marketing, and once that pre-marketing signals the thresholds that we set ourselves, we start to build up, and then, of course, we start to talk to the customers, and then we will do the access. Just like we would do in normal business, but here the APOs are higher, and that gives us a better and faster return, and that's what makes the business interesting. Of course, it's interesting to sell in one building to several customers. Once we are there, of course, then we have great.
return. The second best is that we sell near net, just a couple of yards away from where the main line is, and the third less is the new, completely new commercial areas, starting with a few customers, paying for all the cost, and that's why that is only the third option. Still, looking at what's usually done in the industry, that has a half of the time for the return. I think we need half the time that we would need for private customers, and that's why we're happy to invest there, because we do see the cases that in a couple of years, that will lead us to generate high income, and the building effort will be 100% presentation in the German commercial areas, and then there will be less building work to be done.
The interesting or the point is that we have to have high invest at the moment, but only where we have customers. If we don't have customers, we don't build, and we clearly look at not what is just the idea of being sold, but what is there in six months time, in 12 months time. We've got KPIs for that, and that's what the company has to move in, and that's what it sticks to. That means we have quite a good model to schedule this.
Hi there. Can I ask two follow-up questions? Firstly, on Tele Columbus. You've spoken a bit about the, your shareholder relationship, but I think you also have a wholesale agreement with them. I just wondered if you could provide any update on that. Do you plan to start retailing Tele Columbus lines? Is that relationship, is that decision linked in any way to your, the decision to invest more equity capital with Tele Columbus? Second question, coming back to Versatel. Can you give us any indication of, of when you expect Versatel to start generating positive cash flow? I mean, it's difficult. We don't have a lot of visibility over, over Versatel, but any indication you can give as to where free cash flows can ultimately go for the Versatel business would be really helpful.
Yeah. Yes, concerning Tele Columbus, we have a wholesale agreement with them, but that's a small part of our business. The question of whether we will invest equity tomorrow does not depend on the wholesale agreement. That's an agreement by 1&1. The shareholder of Tele Columbus is United Internet. We see that as completely separate. Concerning the cash flow with 1&1 Versatel, 1&1 Versatel, even today, has a positive cash flow. If you look at the core business of 1&1 Versatel. If 1&1 Versatel today sold on-net and near-net, doing business in its core core business and limited itself to that, then the cash flow would be positive. The high investments come from new business parks and from the buildup of new antennas.
The core business is already positive in terms of the cash flow. Now, let me say, put it in extreme terms. If it was very difficult tomorrow to acquire money, or if it was too expensive, then the Versatel core business would not be a drain on the group, but it would make a positive contribution to the cash flow, just like IONOS and 1&1 and GMX with the e.com, et cetera. In terms of cash flow, with the exception of our expansion, which is ongoing, we have nothing that leads to a negative cash flow.
I take your point about the core business and the, the wider business, but taking the, the wider business as a whole, you know, when, when does that get to positive cash flow? Can you say anything?
I can tell you exactly. I'd have to refer to my business plan, but I'd say in about 10 years. We have a number of years of investment ahead of us. Luckily, we see some opportunities for a number of years to build business parks, to develop business parks throughout Germany. But maybe it's not 10 years, maybe it's only 4-five years. I, I won't give you a wrong figure, and I will provide the figure to you subsequently. We'll check it in our business plan and let you know subsequently. The investment phase is still pretty long, but due to the ever-increasing income, the income will at one stage be high enough to generate a positive cash flow despite our investments.
The investment phase is like 10 years, but the cash flow will be positive in something like five years, we can look up the exact figures according to the business plan. Could you make a clarification on Versatel? In your turnover makes, do you have IRUs where you have revenue that you book today that will be paid going forward, or is it all- leases that are paid per quarter for fiber optic, probably. The second question refers to the bigger picture. United Internet is a holding company to some extent. Could you say something about M&A outlooks? How you see this, particularly the two topics of potential consolidation and minority holdings in 1&1. Is there any news in that context? Well, when do we see a positive cash flow?
That is in 2028 for Versatel. All right, five years weren't all that far off. Okay. No, we are not planning any IRUs. That was a thing of the past. We purchased Versatel, and with the old companies, IRUs were commonplace, and we had it for a while, but this has been completely banned for a few years in our company. No more IRUs. The outlook? I can't tell you anything about this. The hosting market might continue to consolidate, but I told you earlier that I'm so far optimistic vis-à-vis the IONOS business, that I'd be more on the buyer side than the seller side today.
You might say that I'm over-enthusiastic with my business, but I think we're looking at a very bright future here, and I wouldn't get out of this business now. That would be wrong now, I think. I don't see that we would leave hosting over the next few years. I can't see that. You should never say never, but it's nothing that we're foreseeing. The minority shareholding of 1&1, that actually itches me as well when I see the 1&1 share price, but I'd say it's unfair towards the shareholders. If we bought back a lot, there'd be very little free float left.
Yeah, we could do that and optimize, but I'd say it's a bit unfair because the shareholders, we didn't ask them when we decided to build our own network, and I'd say it's a bit unfair to say, "Okay, the share price went down, and now we optimize." Financially, you might have a different answer, but as an entrepreneur, I'd say our objective is to reward our shareholders and to see that they say at some stage, "Well, it's a good investment," not that they say, "Okay, we invested at the wrong moment because we were pushed out of the share at some point out of the investment.
Can I just come back to Russell's question on Tele Columbus? I appreciate that you're, you know, you're not directly running the company. You're a large shareholder, 40%, and, you know, it looks like it needs a lot of money, like, you know, high hundreds of millions of EUR given its current leverage and EBITDA trajectory. I mean, are you willing to be diluted? Is the current sort of 40% economic interest something that you want, you're very keen to retain, or are you open-minded on all outcomes for Tele Columbus? Could you give us an idea, just, you know, your broad thinking on the stake and, you know, how you look at it? Be great. Thank you.
Well, I think we're at the very beginning of this process. The facts aren't yet on the table. What a financing scheme could look like, whether additional capital will be necessary or not, how much capital will be needed, because over the next few years, we will migrate from cable to fiber optic, requiring a lot of investment. We have to take a closer look at that. We haven't taken the decision yet. In principle, the idea was that when we took over Tele Columbus, we spoke of a corridor somewhere between 25% and 49%. We wanted to acquire, because that has something to do with the voting rights, and I don't think there's any change in that corridor. We're at 40% now.
It depends a bit on the conditions, whether we stay at 40%, whether we go beyond that, or whether we say, "Oh, 30% will be enough as well." We'll have to see. We will remain somewhere between these 25% and 49%. We certainly don't want to take over the company, because then we also would have to consolidate the debt. We certainly don't want to do that. Certainly, certainly, the upper limit is 49.9%. We only. We don't want to drop below 25.1%, because that would limit our rights in terms of governance. In between that or inside that corridor, we'll have to see what is optimal for us. I don't see any other question. There's one here in the front.
Thank you for the presentation. I'd have some questions. Simon Stippig , Warburg Research. The first question would be on Versatel. Here, you said, when we were in the one-on-one meeting, you said that the fiber optic cables are built now to connect the antennas. I'd be interested in the number of cable being in the ground without the antenna, and they're not active yet, and the service not provided by your partners and in Versatel. How important do you see the build-up speed compared to your competitors, mainly? A brief point on the consumer applications.
Do you see this as a strategically important area for United Internet? I also saw that you have taken a loan of EUR 240 million in the first half of the year 2023. Could you explain on the conditions, terms, maturity, and interest costs, and the long-term perspective capital allocation, medium to long term? How do you see that with respect to your shareholders? Do you want to buy back shares, pay out dividends? Maybe that's not a topic as yet, in the long term, that would be interesting to know.
Yes, let me start with the last point. We pay dividends as of today, EUR 0.50. We've paid more in the past. I think as soon as we are more clear on the future costs of the network, building frequency purchasing, we can rethink that and consider would be a good debt for the company and say, what range do we have for the payouts? For that, we need a clearer picture on how we can purchase more frequencies.
We can calculate the cost of the antenna co- today for national roaming since last night, on the long run as well, but we've got one unknown variable, which is the purchase of the frequencies. Moving forward, Mr. Hartings is going to answer the pre-last question. How much optical fiber have we built? I think for the end of the year, it's 1,500, and unfortunately, they are not at the 1,000 sites that we have. I think we are at 1,100 at the moment, so that is, sites that are relocated, which will only be connected 2024, 2025, with the towercos built up on different sites, and we built the fiber to make good for some time.
Some of them are disconnected or elsewhere, and perspectively, in one, two years' time, we will be able to connect them. That's the plan. The speed of the building, I think, is in the market that we are at the moment, where we have the land-grabbing phase. It's important. Just to give you an impression, we have 70 commercial areas last year, and this year we're gonna have 300, and over the next year, we're gonna have 700.
We are wrapping things up there, we have to be able to market them as well, because I do think, and this is a good thing, we don't have to have a certain amount to scale the business, but we are doing as much as is economically feasible and that we can cover at reasonable prices and how much of it can be marketed by our team. We are increasing capacities, and yes, I would like to have more. I always want more, no question, but to be realistic, we have to do what we're doing at the moment, and we're increasing that. We're taking a big step this year from 70 to, I think it's 308 this year. Next year, we're going to pass the 700 mark, and you asked how important is the consumer application business.
Maybe I'll be able to tell you that in a better way in two, three years down the line. That's a business that we've been having for many years, which is profitable, which needs little capital. Next year, 20% result that we expect. From strategic importance, it's gonna be a question whether we will be able to get eSIMs into the applications. You have to see that today, there's many users of our applications, using them every day, and an eSIM can be has to be activated by an app, and our eSIM can be activated from mail.com, WEB.DE account directly. We've got your address, we've got your bank data in many cases, so that by pushing a button, you can swap to our mobile network.
Whether that is gonna work well or not, is something that we have to try out, but I do see great opportunities there, and I see this in the Far East, how simply from a shopping application, they can do the SIM card and clear it, activate it. Not saying I want an eSIM when you get a letter, and with that letter, you get a digit to type in, a password, and you download from the shop. No. You're in the on the net, and you just hit your button, and then the whole thing goes automatically. How many mobile users do we have in GMX and Web.de? 27 million.
Take 25 million of these in Germany, that is something 25 million applications where I can switch which I can switch on the hit of a button. I want to try that. If that works well, the portals, if they're gonna get more important strategically, if it's not working, then they are, they make profit, quote, unquote, but they don't have so much synergies in the group. They are then, more panned out in other areas, and the other portals have synergies.
The main synergy is that by the portals, we sell some cards as of today, a couple of thousand every month, and if we can have the directly ease them to be activated directly from the portal, that is our dream, so to say. The final question was about the new credit. It was a loan that we had with a duration of three, five, and seven years that we could choose from, a margin of roughly 1.5%, and basically no governance around it. That's a very classical instrument that we use there. Okay?
Are there any other further questions? I can't see any other questions right now. Let me thank you for your interest and your participation. I hereby conclude this conference. I would like to invite you to a piece of cake and a coffee in the foyer. Thank you very much!