Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. This is Carmen Becker speaking, and it's my pleasure to welcome you in the name of the Tele Columbus Management Team to today's conference call following the release of our third quarter results for fiscal year 2025, which ended on the 13th of September. This call is limited to 120 minutes. In case of any follow-up questions, please let me know. I'm here today with Markus Oswald, Chief Executive Officer, and Joachim Lubsczyk, External Interim Chief Financial Officer. Now, I would like to remind you that if any lenders or rating agencies are on the call right now, that this is a public conference call in which only publicly available information will be discussed. I would therefore ask you to refrain from questions containing information not belonging to the public domain. This conference call is intended for capital markets participants only and not for press representatives.
If any journalists are on the line right now, we would highly appreciate it if you are leaving the conference call now. Press representatives are welcome to call my colleague Sebastian Artymiak to discuss any outstanding questions. Having said that, it's my pleasure to hand over to you, Markus. The floor is yours.
Carmen, thank you, and welcome and good morning, everybody on the line. I'm happy to present our Q3 results of Tele Columbus. Just the normal procedure: first of all, some key messages, and then coming to operational update and KPIs. Jochen will then step into the financial performance, and then we have quite a lot of time for your questions and our answers. Okay, let's give you a short update on our key KPIs, performances, operational, and financial-wise. Tele Columbus continues to grow significantly with a year-on-year increase in its customer base on internet by 7.3%, on a quarter-on-quarter increase in revenue near to 11%. Internet net adds near to 9,000, 8,900 in Q3, a slight decline compared to Q2 out of intense internet or IP competition in the German market, and of course, also impacted by our marketing cost management measures.
We have close to 50% of gross adds for products with higher than 500 or higher megabits, which also shows still our positive trending on the IP side. Coming to the financials, and here we see a 4.7% quarter-on-quarter revenue increase. We are now at EUR 107.2 million. We have still TV revenue declined quarter-on-quarter, but we are gaining more momentum on the internet and telephony, and as well on B2B growth to offset that decline. Normalized EBITDA decreased by 5.4% due to the difficult environment of the TV sector, and in addition, positive effects from release of accruals in the area of signal fees where we caught it in the previous year. This comparison Jochen will comment later on.
Reported EBITDA increased to EUR 107.5 million, which is an increase of near to 2% on a year-on-year comparison, but here mainly also driven by operational performance from normalized EBITDA as non-recurring expenses on lower level for EUR 9 million in 2025. CapEx for Q3 2025, excluding leasing, decreased by 48% year-on-year to EUR 27.5 million, mainly driven by lower investments in our network infrastructure, commissions, and CPEs. Cash positions EUR 67.5 million on September 30th, and as always in the last quarter, selective capital allocation focus on operational excellence and network capital to manage our liquidities. Coming now to operational update and KPIs in a more detailed way, I think from the quarterly results calls, other competitors in the German markets delivered in the last two weeks, you are aware of a very dense but overall declining market on the IP sector. Tele Columbus is a little bit the opposite of our competitors.
We are still growing at a lower rate, but compared to our competitors, still growing now 7.3%. Maybe also in the question and answer sessions, I also can comment on some competitor activities, with bundles, with commission rallies which we saw in the market also in quarter three. We commented on that in our Q1 and also Q2 call. This impacts also our marketing money we put into the market. We lowered it because at some points we see here commission rallies with retailers or whatever, which are in our point of view a little bit nonsense because the payback of a product is limited when you pay too much commissions on that side, and this game we do not want to play, which also has an impact on our growth.
Coming to the growth on page eight, we see on the internet side 7.3% growth on the RGU side. Here we highlighted in the brighter blue ones also our FTTH internet subscribers compared to the FTTB and FTTC subscribers. On the revenue side, we clearly can see the 10% or near to 11% revenue growth on a quarter-to-quarter comparison. Page nine, a little bit more deep inside, compared to the main competitor in Germany, we also quote its 250 megabit on a high-tier approach. When we count that in, almost 80% of all our new customers choose 250 or more megabit. What you can see here still on a high level, 46%, 500 and more, 33% on the 250 megabit level. Bundle share is declining a little bit, but compared to the pre-bulk migration process, still highest numbers in the quarters like the quarters before the bulk migration.
The 50 numbers on three-play are influenced by the bulk migration still, and now we are at 36% three-play. What is also to mention here is that we are now, I think, quite stable, 45% on a penetration level on FTTH RGUs penetration compared to near to 30% on the DOCSIS side or FTTB. Coming to the TV business, still challenging. What we are seeing here, it is not a Tele Columbus, but more or less a market trend. We are a little bit declining. The numbers are much less compared to the bulk migration side. We are still on the 1 million and higher numbers, so 1,061,000 RGUs TV access. On the bulk, similar contracts, quite stable. A small loss on the individual numbers, which is also linked to lower bundle shares.
We will aim for new product portfolios to concentrate again in the next quarters on bundles and bring that number higher. The decline is small, but it is still there. Same on the premium TV side, on the TV side. Coming to the revenues again, and then leading to Jochen, is that now with the momentum on IP and B2B recovering, the quarters we can compensate the losses here. Now coming to the revenue picture and to the financial numbers and handing over.
Thank you, Markus. Also from my side, welcome everybody to this Q3 call. As mentioned, talking about the revenues, since the beginning of the year, we see a revenue growth quarter by quarter reaching EUR 107 million in Q3 2025. This is mainly driven by, as was also mentioned, by the increase in IP sales with a constant decline in the TV access bulk revenues. However, what we can see on this end, the decline is slowing down. We think that this is more or less on a stable level now. It will not grow going forward, but we think that we reached a stable level for this TV access bulk. The impact of the bulk migration of 2024 has now been completely seen in our balance sheets.
In terms of revenue composition, also the usual picture, more than 55% of our revenues are related to internet and partially also telephony revenues, which now make the major chunk of the revenues. TV is continuing to decline, also partially offset by other revenues, which includes wholesale, which are also in relation continue to grow. If you look on the EBITDA, normalized EBITDA average, comparing the first nine months 2024 to the nine months of 2025, we've seen a decline by 5.4%. The normalized EBITDA until September 2025 amounts to EUR 133.9 million. This change is firstly driven by the revenue decline. We saw a decline of EUR 30 million TV sales versus EUR 22 million of internet sales. We have a slightly higher other operating income.
This is mainly driven by own work capitalized, where the company now is really focusing on managing their own work capitalized on a monthly basis versus previous years where we had this a bit backloaded. The direct costs are much higher, sorry, this is driven by the 2024 post-litigation impact of the settlement of EUR 6.7 million related to signal fees. Personnel costs compared to previous year are slightly higher, driven by an increase in personnel, in staff. However, the company initiated a voluntary leaver program in 2025. It is expected that these costs going forward will decline, with the full impact only being seen from Q2 2026 onwards.
Marketing costs in the first nine months 2025 have been lower compared to previous year because the company started to focus more on cash preservation, where marketing, of course, is a relatively high amount of the overall OPEX, which also is reflected then, as we can see later on the slower we have seen already by Markus's presentation on the lower IP growth compared to the respective quarter in 2024. Moving forward, on the CapEx side, CapEx, here the trend continues for 2025. Company reduced CapEx compared to Q3 2024 by almost 50%. This stems mainly out of reduced network and infrastructure investment, as well as lower end customer-related CapEx. Compared to the previous quarter, we see lower IP growth, hence we need lower CPEs to be submitted to the customers.
IT and operations, so other CapEx are slightly behind, partially because of phasing, partially because also of cost reduction measures. Looking on the main KPIs, again, for the whole year, we see a relatively small decline in revenues from EUR 325 million in the previous nine months to EUR 317 million in the nine months 2025. The reported EBITDA versus the normalized EBITDA grows, but this is mainly driven due to lower non-recurring expenses. As you remember, the company has invested quite a lot in the transformation program, which are expenses which do not show up this year. CapEx, we already walked you through, declining overall. The operational cash flow is lower than in the comparison period.
However, this is mainly driven by an impact out of 2023, where the direct debits were not collected end of 2023, but several days later, beginning of January 2024. While you have to get a like-for-like comparison, you have to reduce the operational cash flow nine months 2024 by roughly EUR 30 million. If you deduct this, then you only see by EUR 8 million lower cash flow, which is driven mainly by working capital and operation impacts. Markus, please.
Yeah. It's also on me, and it's a pleasure to announce that Tele Columbus was able to gain Tim, Tim Rhoenisch, as the new CFO for Tele Columbus. Tim will start 1st of January, so you will be able to hear from him and meet him in the Q4 or in the year call with me next year. Highly qualified finance expert. Last year, he spent his time on the commerce and ventures segment by ProSiebenSat.1. And he also was in the role of a CFO by Verivox, that comparison web page in Germany. Yeah, happy that he will join the team. I was able to meet him several times and really glad that he comes on board. Jochen will be his wingman some weeks in the overlap, that we will have a perfect fit here for starting 2026. Good.
That's from our side, the pure data, the columns, the figures, and the graphs and slides. Now happy to answer your questions on the call, Jochen and me.
Thank you very much. To ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Polo Tang from UBS. Your round is open, Polo.
Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. Just have three different questions. The first one is, can you talk about changes in terms of German legislation that would make it easier for Deutsche Telekom to access MDUs and apartment blocks? What do you make of the proposals, and what do you see as the impact on Tele Columbus? My second question is just on your footprint of 2.2 million homes passed, how many of those homes have you contracted to upgrade to fiber? I mean, looking at your KPI sheet, I think it looks as if it's just under 400,000, meaning you still need to contract the bulk of your footprint to fiber. Is this correct? My third question is, can you talk through the competitive dynamics in the German broadband market?
We had comments from Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom that front-book pricing has increased in recent weeks. What's your perspective? Also, in your remarks earlier, you referenced certain operators being aggressive with commissions. Can you expand on who these competitors are? Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Polo, for your question. I start with the German legislation. I would say let's wait and see what the outcome of the talks and concerning legislation is. I think different opinions here in the German market, what is with existing already subscribed FTTH contracts. It has its advantages for Tele Columbus, and it has also potential downsides. At the end, I would say it is too early to comment on possible outcomes because it's very open. That is also what we heard out of Berlin talks with ANGA, our association, where we are engaged in and personal talks to politicians. It has a bright side and a darker side of the sun, I would say, here, because when we come up for a corporate decommissioning, which is the DSL side, very positive what talks are. Also here, the outcome is completely open.
I would comment it more coming the next Q call because then it will be more clarity on that side. Polo, on the question on the homes passed, beziehungsweise on the home side, which we have under contract of FTTH, that was your question. Maybe there is a misunderstanding of the figures. Not having now all the columns in my mind, but what I know is that right now we have something around 225, I think was the number I showed before, which are already upgraded. Let me look at the page. I think on the internet side, that was a number which are running. 215 it is. There are still more to come at the end of the year because they will already be then upgraded.
I think there are something around 300,000 and a little bit more households in contracts already signed, and some are still in the pipeline and a lot. Compared to my number I have in mind still to address or in talks with housing association is 1.X. The rest of compared to our complete footprint, I think you mentioned in your questions that only 100,000 are left, and this is not true. I think it's 1 million or whatever, which we still 1.5 million or whatever, which we still have to address and are in talks with housing association for upgrades. Maybe later on, you can ask that question, and we can provide you the exact data and waterfall on that. Yeah?
The question is on German broadband market and competitors.
Yeah. Yeah. What we saw on the market is, and this is competitors. When I look on the competitor side, it is Vodafone, it is 1&1, it is Deutsche Telekom, and it's also Freenet and so on, which I am looking for on the competitor side acting German wide. Here the comparison or the market pressure we saw. What you also mentioned in your analytic reports and your colleagues is there was in the past a tiny price increase, what we also saw, but it is really limited. It was, I think, on the Telekom side, Vodafone as well as EUR 1 or whatever.
What we see on what is playing on the commission sides, paying to sales agents, what we hear out of MediaMarktSaturn, what we saw with bundle offers compared also with mobile offers, what we see online and Verivox or whatever sites, the pressure of competitors, commissioning, paying money, cashbacks for customers, for new subscribers are really intense, more intense. What we identified in the last year, there was an offensive approach for the TV side, of course, because of bulk migration, and this is now linked again back to the internet side. This was my comment related to market pressure.
Okay. Thanks.
This is not only specific to Deutsche Telekom, it is the whole market.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Ryan Flew from PVTL Point. Your round is open, Ryan. Please go ahead.
Hi guys. Thanks for taking the call. Just a couple for me, and it sort of all relates to cutting costs on the liquidity preservation point. I guess first on the CapEx, if we go back to the business plan at the end of sort of 2023, I appreciate it's a long time ago, but obviously the CapEx projections each year were significantly higher than kind of where you are year to date. If we sort of look at the marketing spend, you've cut this year, and it's fair to say you've definitely grown faster than the market, but it has declined, as you noted. What is the plan to sort of drive that EBITDA growth from here, or I guess how confident are you in being able to push that forward without being able to invest in the estate?
Thanks, Ryan, for the question. I mean, the clear focus of management has to be that we hardly manage liquidity. The impact of this liquidity management, of course, is also the cost reduction, of which this also refers to OPEX and CapEx, where we reduce marketing and invest in deployment CapEx. This most likely will have an impact on the growth plan. However, the market overall has changed since then, and we are currently in the process of developing a multi-year business plan, which we cannot comment at this point in time.
Got it. One more from me, if I may. Previously, there's been talks of significant asset disposals. Is there any update you can provide on that?
There has been a disposal of some parts of the network sold to a competitor after quite intense review of these network parts. There was a decision to dispose it because it was not in a way of profitability, which it should have been, and we did not believe that we can develop this network while we decided to dispose it.
What were the proceeds from that? Sorry, is that after quarter end, or is that included in the cash flow reported today?
It was roughly EUR 5.5 million proceeds.
Got it. That's all from me. Thank you.
Our next question comes from James Ratzer from New Street Research. Your line is open, James. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Can I just ask, I mean, a few questions, so quick follow-ups from the ones that have just been raised. Joachim, you just mentioned the EUR 5.5 million proceeds. Is that in Q3 already, or is that due to come in Q4, and how many homes were actually sold? To follow up on Polo's question about the competitive activity in the market that you were flagging, have you seen that continue into kind of October and November as well? I suppose the kind of question I'd like to ask is about liquidity going forward. I mean, you mentioned you are working on a plan at the moment. My understanding is the current bond documents do allow various options to raise more senior debt, potentially lease financing.
I think you've got options to raise up to about EUR 320 million of new financing. I mean, do you plan to be able to use those facilities and to be able to re-increase CapEx and investment next year? It'd be good to kind of just get a little bit of thinking on that going forward. Thank you.
Thanks, Markus. Thanks for your questions. I will pull the first two questions and then hand over to Jochen. On the network sale, it was more than 100,000 households which we sold, and the money which we get is partially Q3, and the other part will follow in Q4. That is on that side. Of course, we see continuous momentum October, November. Now we have the Black Friday week on some deals from the competitors. I think that was what I also mentioned. I think it was in the Q1 call or in the call beginning of the year that I expected for 2026 a very intense year of competition on the IP side. Look at the curve which we showed before. Nevertheless, the growth rates of our competitors, we are slowing down.
On the other side, competitors are declining, and that leads to more on the background coming commission-paid cashbacks and so on, which we see in the market. The momentum, what we saw in Q3, follows also October, November. No big differences on that side.
Regarding your question regarding financing, as mentioned before, the main focus of the company right now is the preservation of liquidity. The company is in constant discussions on all operational and financial topics with its main shareholders, MSI. In these discussions, we're also, yeah, investigating options. However, it's not progress in a way that this can be shared with the public.
Joachim, thank you. Can I ask a quick follow-up on that? One of the initiatives is cost savings and personnel cost reductions. You said the full benefit of that will be seen in Q2 next year. Just if we look at those cost plans you do know about, what would be the annualized EBITDA run rate uplift between Q3 and Q2 from those new cost initiatives?
In terms of personal costs, we are talking about a rough impact of EUR 10-15 million on a run rate, which we will see, as you already mentioned, also from Q2 2026 onwards.
Great. The benefits, so that's a €10 million-€15 million EBITDA uplift that's not yet in the Q3 numbers you've just reported.
Yeah.
Great. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Our next question comes from Tomas Moreno from Bain Capital. Your line is open, Tomas. Please go ahead.
Hi. Yeah, just a couple of questions from my side. One is a follow-up to James's question. If that 10-15 million reduction in employee cost will only be seen from Q2 2026 onwards, where did the reduction in employee cost in Q3 come from if it was not from those measures? I think that's the first one. For Q4 2025, should we expect any relevant increase in the direct costs for the quarter? Thanks.
On your first question, the FTE reduction program already started mid of this year. Already there are some impacts that have been visible already in this year. The full impact starting from Q2 2026 will be this €10-€15 million on an annualized basis. You see some of the impacts already now, but the full impact will only be visible when all of the employees will have left our P&L at the end in Q2 2026. On the increase in direct cost, I am not aware of any special increase we are expecting for Q4 2025.
Our next question comes from Christoph Stefan from Tikehau Capital. Your line is open, Christoph. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Many thanks for taking my question. Maybe just one follow-up on the cost saving. I mean, you said like EUR 10-15 million would be recognized from Q2 next year. I think previously you guided for a total cost saving of more like EUR 30 million. I mean, is that still the plan? I think that was one. Maybe another just follow-up on the disposal. I mean, the 100,000 of lost effective connections, are they already in your KPI, on your KPI sheet in Q3? Maybe just on your net add evolution. I mean, now you have like 9,000 or so in the quarter. I think you had like 20,000 or so in the past. If we just think about gross adds versus churn, I mean, what has been there as a key driver for that reduction in net adds?
Was it more gross adds or was it more churn? Thanks.
I was just talking about the cost saving impact from the FTE measures. Of course, there are other cost initiatives across the whole P&L, as you can imagine. The net adds?
I think the most impact on the reduction was not the churn. It was, I think, maybe one or two thousand churners more, and the rest is more on the gross add side. Like I said, when the competition is here and we are deciding not to spend an extra promotion in a market or whatever, this leads to lower net sales and out of it, lower gross adds. It is more on the gross add side than on the churn side.
Great. Thanks. Just to confirm, I mean, the sold connections, I mean, they have already gone out of your statistics.
Sorry. Yeah. The connections will be out. I think from the reporting side, we see them going out in December, out of our numbers. We will see that number in the next reporting or Q call that we will go here down on our homes connected side. Yes. It will be in Q4.
Maybe just.
End of Q4.
End of Q4. Okay. Thanks. Maybe just to confirm, those were non-upgraded connections, or they were two-way upgraded?
No, it's mainly non-two-way upgraded. Exactly.
Okay. Great. Thanks.
Our next question comes from Jax Chrismusky from CIC. Your line is open, Jax. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the presentation. My questions were the same as Ryan, so they've already been addressed. Thanks.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Jan Frederik Dreher from Fountain Square Asset Management. Your line is open, Jan. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for taking my questions. Could you provide an update on the net cost of the split, please?
Yeah. The company has been working hard on the net cost of the split. Legally, the separation has been done. There are some operational works which need to be finalized, mainly in the accounting sector, to update the systems on this. We expect to have this closed by the latest of Q1 2026.
All right. Thank you. Can you comment on the SERFCO sale as well?
Sorry, I didn't get this. On the SERFCO sale?
Could there be a potential sale of the SERFCO, and is there already a valuation?
At the moment, we're not pursuing this path, although given the existing market dynamics.
All right. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Lee Hope from Sona Asset Management. Your line is open, Lee. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thank you. You provided the EBITDA bridge for the nine months. I'm just trying to bridge 3Q24 normalized EBITDA to 3Q25. For 3Q24, am I right in thinking there is an accrual release in that quarter and also some exceptional signal fees?
Yeah. Nine months 2024 normalized EBITDA, you have roughly EUR 10 million extraordinary positive impact.
Okay. That would roughly.
If you took those out, you'd be roughly EUR 38 million in Q3 2024. Is that right? I think it spreads across the whole nine months, not only on Q3 2024.
Okay. Looking at the report, it looks like it's in 3Q there.
Are you referring to the presentation now, or?
I'm talking about the release you put out in 3Q 2024. I think specifically then, you said the accrual release was EUR 7 million in the quarter.
Yeah. The accrual retreat, but the EUR 10 million I just mentioned spreads out across more than one quarter.
Got it. Okay. EUR 7 million. Okay. EUR 7 million is exceptional in 3Q 2024. We should be looking at roughly EUR 49 million 3Q 2025 against roughly EUR 41 million 3Q 2025. Okay. Thank you.
Our next question is a follow-up question from Christoph Stefan from Tikehau Capital. Your line is open, Christoph. Please go ahead. Christoph, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Sorry, I wasn't good. Yeah. Sorry, I had another question just on working capital. I mean, I think your working capital year to date was still negative. I mean, do you expect that to kind of reverse in Q4?
We are working hard as part of our liquidity exercises on measures which will positively improve the net working capital. This ranges from inventory management over receivables management, where we put a main focus currently on.
Thanks. I mean, I guess given this phasing that you had at the beginning of the year, I mean, should there be any—I mean, would you expect that there is any reason why working capital cannot be stable kind of year- over- year? Or at least in line with kind of the—yeah. Okay. Thanks.
Our next question is a follow-up question from James Ratzer from New Street Research. Your line is open, James.
Yes. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. For follow-up questions, I was going to ask one more, which is going back to the pipeline you show in your KPI sheet of the contracted homes. Markus, you were mentioning you show 1.546 million of homes left to address. How many of those homes do you think have another competitor that has done level four internal wiring?
I just have to—why do you refer to already overbuilding us, or what do you refer to? Because right now, there is no competitor despite the DSL cable in the building, and because we are the provider of the household.
I'm intrigued. You provide a very nice breakdown of the 2.4 million that's your own network two-way upgraded. I can break that down into 215,000 where you have already deployed the FTTH, and then you show 2.19 million of other homes, and then you break them down. You give a very helpful breakdown of the status of every premise in your footprint. I suppose I'm really interested in to what extent Deutsche Telekom or maybe other fiber challengers are winning some of the contracts to upgrade level four. Presumably, on the way you disclose it, if they are winning some of those contracts, they would be winning them in the segment called left to address, which is 1,546.
I was wondering, of those 1.546 million, how many of you are you aware of where Deutsche Telekom or another competitor has already done the level four wiring so you would never be able to get in to be able to do FTTH?
I think there are definitely, by that number, I would say a number about 10% or whatever, where informations are there that there might be a potential overbuilding. Nevertheless, in our pipeline, also already signed contracts, there are contracts of competitors where we signed contracts. It is more out of a gain and loss. Where we gain contracts and where we lose contracts metrics, James, like we mentioned before, we are not aware of hundreds of thousands overbuilding by competitors. I think what you see in the pipeline, beginning with the big numbers, 200,000 already done, 300,000-400,000 signed, and so on and so on. In that bucket, 1.5 million is also the smaller it gets on the housing association side.
You also have in that bucket houses in where you have only owners of apartments, and then it's managed by a management company, and it stands for 20 households in that building, just for an example. Here, we don't have and no competitor have one-on-one information what will happen with this premise in five years. What we know is that there is no big churn or whatever on our side from competitors on the FTTH side on that premises. Nevertheless, there might be some overbuilding or future building by competitors in that numbers, but the data is I don't have now data available to say I can do the same waterfall on the competition side.
Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. More than welcome.
Our next question comes from John Eves Gilbert from RBC. Your line is open, John. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Good morning. I wanted to touch upon KPIs dynamics in Q3 compared to previous quarters. As far as your broadband customer base is concerned, it has continued to increase, but at a slightly lower rate. Your retention rates, which you used to comment upon as a target, have slightly continued to decline, now at 45%. Could you give us an update on any progress you might have made on disconnecting the roughly 30% of your previous customers, which are no longer billed, but who still receive the TV signals? My second question is on the TV, on the individual TV customers. Upon the change in German regulation, you presented to us the strategy of benefiting from a higher base of individual customers to upsell additional TV services on an individual basis.
However, the TV customer base, has the TV customer base continued to decline, the individual TV customer base. I would like to understand how you intend to address that going forward. Thank you.
Yeah. Progressing on the blocking side or disconnecting side of potential users, we are in an ongoing process. Like I said before, this is now the normal DNA of Tele Columbus that we are doing this disconnecting stuff. In some cases, we will find new customers. On the other side, we are just disconnecting customers. When referring to the decline of our TV individual basis, I must say it is now in the last quarter 10,000. The teams are now working on an adapted TV strategy to bring that number even down or bring it into not from red to green numbers. It is not on a quarterly basis or what we are expecting.
I think when I look or remember our plans not to give any updates on it, it is in the 30-something, around 30,000 of declining, which we or 40,000 we expect during this year, which is not the big turning point on upsell for internet. There is an influence. Sorry, there is a background noise from your line. Maybe it is better to bring you to mute. Okay. Thanks. I would say it does not turn the needle on our internet growth path. I think it is more what we can do in the future on the TV side to bring us back on a stable or growth path even. Referring to Jochen, what is our growth path on IP compared to our liquidity preservation measures? I think this will impact the future of Tele Columbus more than the bundle share or the TV upsell share.
Thank you. Coming back on your internet KPIs growth, if I refer to the couple of previous quarters, in Q2, you added 13,000. In Q1, if I'm not mistaken, it was 6, but plus 8 adjusted for the price hike, so it was 14. It was around the 20,000 per quarter in the H2 2024. Now you're running below 10,000. Is that due to your pause on marketing spends, or is that also just a slowdown of the more competition in the market and less liquidity available in the market to continue to add internet customers?
It refers to both points. It is, on the one side, an influence. Three points I would address here. Compared to last year, the accelerator of TV bulk migration is in this year less or not there anymore. When you look at the bundle share, which we are also dropping a little bit because on the TV, we sold the individual contracts on the TV side last year and on the, in German words, the Huckepack. With that, the bundle share was over or sometimes near to 50%. This is now in 2025, not there anymore. Our own liquidity measures, so also the lower marketing budget, also leads to lower gross adds or net sales and gross adds.
Compared these two points with the high competitive market, like I referred to on cash or commissions or cashbacks or other promos of competitors, this leads to that near to 9,000 or gross adds, which we performed still growing, but less growing to compared quarters. I think the combination out of these three elements brings us to these numbers. Of course, different liquidity perspective will bring also other growth rates.
Thank you. If I may just add a last one in relation to your customer growth. If I refer to your customer-related CapEx in Q3, it was pretty much in line with Q2 and Q1, despite, as you said, less effort or less volume in terms of gross adds. Any reason? Was there additional cost per new subscriber in Q3?
No. I mean, we see a, I think it's in line with, there was no big change of cost per customer acquisition.
Yeah. We'll follow up on that. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Ryan Flew from PVTL Point. Your line is open, Ryan. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking the follow-up. Just to come back on this as we talk about liquidity preservation and CapEx, can you just remind us what your minimum cash balance you need to operate the business is in kind of light of everything you know now and kind of CapEx expectations for the full year 2025? I guess what sort of the minimum CapEx you need to maintain the status away from kind of growth?
On the liquidity question, we have two main covenants in our loan agreements. One is at EUR 35 million, and the other one is at EUR 20 million. We must not drop below EUR 35 million in terms of liquidity management, which we will achieve. On the CapEx question going forward, as mentioned, the company is currently working on a midterm plan, which we cannot disclose at this point in time. For the 2025 questions, we stick to the guidance provided in the last call.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Tomas Moreno from Bain Capital. Your line is open, Tomas. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Just as a follow-up on my previous question on cost, in Q3, if you exclude the positive benefit which you had last year, if you take that off, you actually grew 18% year- on- year. If I try to project Q4 growth, I just really wanted to understand if Q4 25 growth, I just really wanted to understand if next quarter we should expect any relevant increase in the cost base year- on- year beyond the sort of normal course of operations, or if last year you saw a particularly positive benefit, which this year should reverse, like happened this quarter. It would be great to get more clarity on that. Thanks.
No, I said, I mean, we provided a guidance, and we firmly believe that we can hold this guidance for 2025. No extraordinary cost impacts are expected here.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Charlotte Peet from Schroders. Your line is open, Charlotte. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Good morning. I just wondered if you could give us any kind of guidance in terms of the timeline around this new business plan and when you might be able to give some more information.
We can't do at this point in time.
It won't be something that comes out in line with the full year results then?
Yeah. Somewhere in Q1, we will be able to share information on this.
Okay. Thanks.
We currently have no further questions. It's right to hand back to Markus for some closing remarks.
Yeah. Thanks for attending our call. Thanks for your questions. As usual, follow-ups refer to Sebastian Artymiak or Carmen on that side. That's for this year leaves me to because it's coming the Christmas season. Next Monday, we start with 1st of December. Have a wonderful Christmas time and happy to hear from you and see you again live next year. Thanks for attending. Bye.
This concludes today's call. We thank everyone for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.