Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Tele2 Q1 Interim Report 2023 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press Star 11 on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press Star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to a speaker today, Kjell Johnsen. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Nadia. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Tele2's report call for the Q1 of 2023. With me here in Kista today, I have Charlotte Hansson, our Group CFO, Hendrik de Groot, our Chief Commercial Officer, and Stefan Trampus, our Head of B2B. Please turn to slide 2, and then we'll take the highlights. I'm pleased to see Tele2's overall growth in Q1, as it is of essence to keep growth momentum while building for the future. On the consumer side, we have taken actions to address the inflationary pressure, and that will contribute to revenues as the year progresses. We are progressing well with our build-out of real 5G, by which we mean services delivered on over higher frequency bands with capacities well beyond the 4G networks.
Marketing coverage based on low band gives a higher number, but the user experience is not the same. This line of thinking is a starting point for our realistic ambition of building the best 5G network in Sweden. Importantly, our IT transformation is progressing well. Once finalized, it will improve every step of the digital journey.
Our go-to-market speed and not least also be crucial to our next step FMC ambitions. In our Q4 call, we said that improving working capital is one of our top priorities for this year. In Q1, we managed to stabilize it, and we are back to a more predictable situation regarding supply chain and handset financing. Moreover, as of February, we are mostly using existing inventories for our 5G rollouts. From a working capital perspective, the effect will come gradually as we invoice these installations through our Net4Mobility joint venture.
2023 will be a year of significant investments to build for the future. We continue to be very CapEx efficient compared to the industry average. Our equity-free cash flow was strong in Q1. We generated SEK 1.9 billion, up some SEK 200 million as compared to Q1 last year. Charlotte will discuss the details later on. Before digging into our financial performance, I'd like to highlight some other important achievements and events during Q1. First, according to the Better Business CX Index, based on mystery shopping, our Tele2 stores were ranked number 1 in service among the top 100 retailers in Sweden, not only within Telecom, but among all retailers. That is quite an achievement. Second, we were ranked number 1 in Sweden and among top 1% globally for gender equality by Equileap.
Third, out of nearly 15,000 companies evaluated globally, Tele2 was one of only 2% to receive a top rating from CDP for our ambitious climate efforts. Finally, Tele2 turned 30 years in March. Forever the challenger that innovates and takes pride in the efforts our predecessors have made to build a great business. Please turn to page 3 for a summary of the Q1 . We're off to a good start this year, Our ambition of being a growing business based on consumer valuation is as relevant as ever before. Like many other companies and industries, we are dealing with the secondary effects of supply chains, energy prices, inflation, and interest rates.
This does take an extra effort, the good news is that from where we stand now, predictability is improving, and that gives us the opportunity to devise the right mix of initiatives to continue delivering and moving towards our ambitions. During the Q1 , end user service revenue grew by 3.6% organically, driven by the Baltics and Sweden B2B, whereas B2C remained stable. Underlying EBITDA declined with a minor 0.4% organically, driven by impressive 30% growth in the Baltics, whereas Sweden declined by 4% as some transformation savings and modest top-line growth were offset by inflation pressures, including the weak Swedish krona and content costs. Energy costs were approximately SEK 10 million high year-over-year in the Q1 . The content cost anomaly is a phasing issue that will disappear as of Q3.
Equity free cash flow improved significantly year-over-year as working capital and normalized tax more than offset increased CapEx and interest. Sweden B2C saw positive net intake for mobile postpaid and fixed broadband. End user service revenue remains stable as continued growth in all core services offset decline in legacy services. During the quarter, B2C has communicated broad-based back book price adjustments that will contribute to revenues going forward. In Sweden B2B, we saw continued solid and broad-based end user service growth and solid net intake of mobile postpaid across segments. In the Baltics, we experienced yet another remarkable quarter, both in terms of top line and bottom line growth. We have also continued rollout of 5G services as quickly as possible across our Baltic markets.
Let's move over to the Swedish consumer segment on slide 5. From an overall market perspective, competitiveness has been modest, but aggressive campaigning has persisted on the mobile side. Mobile post-paid saw continued net intake during a seasonally slow quarter, mostly driven by Comviq, while after declined slightly. In fixed broadband, we see continued good growth driven by volume and a stable after development. In the digital TV, cable, and fiber business, we are slightly down on subscribers, whereas after continues to grow on the back of the new Viaplay infused packages and associated backfill pricing.
Turn to the next slide. Mobile end user service revenue grew slightly driven by postpaid, which more than offset the decline in prepaid due to the registration requirement from February. In fixed broadband, end user service revenues increased by 2%, thanks to the growing customer base.
Total end user service revenue for digital TV remained flat in the quarter as a 2% growth in digital TV was offset by a continued decline in the legacy DTT TV business. Let's jump to B2B on slide 7. We continue to execute on our strategy, all segments are contributing to yet another solid end user service revenue growth. Our growth areas continue to perform well and offset decline in legacy services. Mobile net intake amounted to 12,000 RGUs, with continued contributions across segments. Mobile ARPU remains stable. End user service revenue increased by 5% in the quarter, including a positive one-off deal of SEK 8 million related to fixed business. Adjusted for this, end user service revenue grew by 4%.
The macroeconomic situation, which we continuously follow closely, is affecting some of our customer groups more than others, but so far, without any significant impact on our business. Let's move over to slide 8 for Sweden overview. Looking at the combined Swedish operations, end user service revenue increased 1%, driven by solid performance within B2B. International roaming had a positive year-over-year effect of SEK 15 million. Underlying EBITDA declined by 4% compared to last year, as inflation and content costs exceeded end user service revenue and transformation benefits ahead of price increases. Cash conversion remains strong at 53%, however, impacted by an increasing CapEx run rate as we are rolling out real 5G and Remote PHY at a high pace as planned and communicated. Let's continue with the Baltics on slide 10.
Across our Baltic markets, the number of mobile postpaid customers continued to increase, whereas the number of prepaid customers fell in line with normal Q1 seasonality. We have continued to see organic ARPU growth across markets during the quarter, resulting from our more for more strategy, price adjustments, and to some extent, prepaid to postpaid migration. Looking at Baltics, financials on the next page. ARPU and volume growth in mobile postpaid led to organic end user service revenue growth across markets, resulting in 12% end user service revenue growth for the Baltics as a whole. Our strong top line combined with successful cost control has outpaced increased personnel costs and slightly increasing energy costs, leading to a 13% organic growth in underlying EBITDA.
We continue to see a high cash conversion, thanks to strong underlying EBITDA, while impacted by significantly increasing CapEx run rate due to ongoing 5G rollouts. With that, I hand over to Charlotte, who will go through the financial overview. Please.
Thank you, Kjell, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to, yes, the page 13 in the presentation, and I'll start off with a few comments on the group results. In Q1, total revenue grew by 3% organically, whereas end user service revenue grew by 4%, as previously mentioned, driven by the Baltics and Sweden B2B. Our underlying EBITDA grew by 1% organically. The strong organic growth in the Baltics and the continued transformation savings were offset by general inflation pressure and higher content costs. Associated companies and joint ventures show a decrease compared to Q1 2022, as this no longer includes results from the divested T-Mobile Netherlands. Net interest and other financial items decreased somewhat to 230 million SEK compared to Q1 2022.
The higher financing costs for outstanding debts were more than offset by lower costs for other financial items, as Q1 2022 was impacted by the exchange rate losses from hedges related to the T-Mobile Netherlands transaction. Let's look at the cash flow on slide 14. CapEx paid was higher in Q1 compared to last year, mainly due to higher network investments. Working capital ended slightly positive this quarter, mostly due to lower inventory levels, and we continue to have working capital as one of our top priorities for this year. As we said in Q4, we expect this to take a few quarters to come back to a more normalized level. Taxes paid declined year-on-year, mainly as last year was negatively impacted by timing of final tax payments related to 2020.
All in all, our equity free cash flow for Q1 ended at a strong SEK 1.1 billion, some SEK 200 million above last year's level. Over the last 12 months, we have generated SEK 3.7 billion of equity free cash flow from continuing operations, corresponding to SEK 5.3 per share. Please move to slide 15 to go through the capital structure. At the end of March, economic net debt amounted to SEK 24.6 billion, representing a reduction of SEK 1.1 billion compared to year-end 2022. That was explained by our strong cash flow in Q1. Leverage stood at 2.4x at the end of March, which is slightly below the lower end of our target range of 2.5x-3x.
However, pro forma adjusted for the first tranche of the proposed ordinary dividend, leverage would have been 2.7x . As mentioned in the full year results, the board has proposed an ordinary dividend of SEK 6.8 per share for 2022 to be paid in 2 tranches of SEK 3.4 each in May and October this year. Let's go to slide 16 for an update of the progress of the business transformation program. During Q1, we continued to execute on the final stages of the business transformation program and made improvements primarily within networks and legacy IT. This led to an annual run rate savings of SEK 925 million by the end of March.
The P&L effect of this was SEK 215 million in the quarter, with a net effect of SEK 75 million compared to Q1 2022. We are now continuing our efforts to complete the program to achieve the SEK 1 billion of run rate savings by Q2 as previously communicated. With that, I will hand over to Kjell to go through our key priorities going forward.
Thank you very much, Charlotte, and thank you for correcting my slight mistake in the very beginning of my presentation. I misread the number for active cash flow. I said 1.9. The correct number is of course 1.1, which still is an increase of SEK 200 million compared to the Q1 of last year. Apologies for misreading that. In summary, our main objective is to keep our sustainable growth momentum. In order to do that, we need to continue building 5G at pace, finalize our digital transformation, and get back to the typical streamlined Tele2 operating model after the external shocks that we went through in 2021 and 2022. These things are falling into place this year. When it comes to 5G, we are building for the future by rolling out real 5G and Remote PHY.
This leads to higher absolute CapEx levels, but Tele2 continues to be very capital efficient at a CapEx to sales level. When it comes to sustainability, I mentioned a couple of impressive recognitions in my initial remarks, which again demonstrates our leadership in this field. Among our many ongoing activities to make the world a better place, we will, for instance, continue to expand our circular economy solutions to meet increasing customer demands. With that, I'll hand it over to you for your questions, we can get the focus on the things that are particularly of interest to each and every one of you. Operator, please.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, to ask a question, you need to press Star 1 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press Star 1 1 again. Please stand by. We will compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question. The first question comes through line of Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good morning, everyone. I just had a question. It doesn't feel long since you gave your guidance for the full year anyway, but I had a couple questions on how things may have evolved since then. First question is just on your views on how the Swedish consumer pricing environment has developed versus your expectations when you set guidance. It seems fairly encouraging, you know, the size and scale of Telia's price rises and also Telenor raising its Vimla brand mobile prices, but keen to get your take on that. Secondly, obviously you've direct guided directionally that you'd have some EBITDA headwinds early on in the year, but nonetheless, EBITDA missed consensus.
Just wanted to get your sense of how the cost inflation you're experiencing compares to what you anticipated when you set guidance. Specifically, you suggested that the range of EBITDA growth guidance for the full year was predicated on where energy prices averaged out, i.e., if they stay low, then you can hit the higher end of guidance. Is that still the case, or are there more factors to take into account now? Thank you.
I will start, and probably Hendrik will also fill in on especially on pricing. Looking at our EBITDA, we are very clear that we will have a stronger EBITDA in the second half than in the first half. We are in a little bit of a phasing thing here at Tele2. If you look at last year, we made a big effort to introduce an innovation in the Swedish market, where we combined linear and streaming through the Viaplay agreement. That took a lot of effort on our side, and many of our TV customers were affected by that. Since many of them also are broadband customers, we didn't want to rock the boat too much.
In a way, we did a bit less on pricing last year than we would have liked to do, not to have too many initiatives at once. This year, we will be back to the normal pricing routine, and it has already started. There's the other effect that we actually had a unusually low content cost in the Q1 and Q2 of last year, which is something we have been very open about, and that's normalized. When we come back after the summer, we will back into the rights facing again, and it will be more like for like. We are very confident about the EBITDA guiding for the year for sure. We see the opportunity to do pricing. I would agree with some of the observations you are making there.
I'd stop at saying that we are very confident about the EBITDA guidance. On the pricing, I will hand it over to, Hendrik to fill more in.
Thanks, Kjell. Thanks, Kjell. Yes, Andrew. On consumer pricing, what we've seen is, the overall consumer climate and confidence index stabilized after it had quite a significant drop in the last year. Helped of course also by some waiting energy prices and stabilization there. We see in the telecoms market, clearly that we have good buoyancy in terms of moving to pricing. Also noted by yourself in terms of the price announcement that have already been made. In February, we have implemented the answer financing fee, which of course you could also see as a pricing move. That's already effective. As of February, the price announcements that we've that we normally do, we have already done in Q4 and Q1 on all of our products.
They will take, they will be implemented and be in the numbers in Q2 and Q3. Quite a bit of it will be in the Q2 . To what Kjell was saying in terms of the normality of cycles, just I wanted to repeat, and I've also said it a couple of times, we had a bit of an unusual year last year in terms of the regular more for more pricing approach, where we had IT transformation and new portfolio launch on mobile, which sort of kept our pricing ability, you know, lower than regular. Also we have had the Viaplay move, which kept our pricing ability on the broadband side a bit, you know, lower than regular.
This all will be compensated and, you know, for this year we see a price movement which is quite significant, than it, you know, first last year. To take effect from the Q2 .
Thank you. Can I just follow up on or just, could you tell from the cost inflation side just, is cost inflation taken any different direction than you expected at the start of the year? You're also conscious that CapEx in the quarters was high, and there's obviously a phasing effect there. But is there any cost inflation surprises or meaningful cost inflation surprises so far that you've seen versus when you set guidance?
Broadly, I think they are in line with expectations. I think in all fairness, the wage agreement in Sweden came in slightly above but not very much above, so slightly above maybe what we had thought, but within the range of expectations for most people. The other elements, yes, of course there are combinations of inflation and the weak Swedish krona, which to some extent we see when we do installations with foreign crews for 5G rollout. That plays into that one. That's something we are spending quite a bit of energy on. Of course the general inflation is something that we just need to absorb through the pricing moves we do. There's nothing unusual about that. The numbers of course are a little bit higher in Sweden than elsewhere temporarily at least for inflation.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now we'll go and take our next question. Please stand by. The next question comes from line of Ondrej Cabejšek from UBS. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi, everyone. Good morning. Thank you for the presentation. I had one follow-up question on the cost side, specifically on content and then one on working capital, please. In terms of the content cost, I'd just like to understand better, please, the mechanism of, you know, the pricing from Viaplay to you having been increased, and then how do you pass that on to the consumer? Do you do that? Is it mandatory? Is it something that comes with a lag? If you could explain that mechanism please, because obviously you highlighted that the price increases on TV last year were quite material and it may be, you know, difficult to do the same again this year. Just curious how you're basically offsetting that.
You shall mention that this is an anomaly in terms of costs. I would just like to understand that comment, in terms of why, you know, costs were significantly lower last year, why they're an anomaly, you know, Q1 and Q2, because I guess the cost base started to kick in, you know, when you started offering these or selling these products, which was kind of mid last year. Is there anything that's just different relative to, you know, last year, for example, in terms of the content costs in particular? That's one question, please. Second one, just following up on the working capital comments from Charlotte.
Obviously you outlined very helpfully at the full year results the three sources of kind of working capital drag and how they should, you know, unwind as time goes. I'm just curious about the two that you've got more, I guess, control over in terms of the inventories that you already touched upon, and then the Net4Mobility agreement that should also improve your working capital. If you can give us an update on those two and potentially, you know, where you expect these items to land for the full year. Thank you very much.
I guess we can all chip in on this. I can start a little bit with the content. I think it's important to remember that when we set up this was the first time this kind of arrangement had been set up in Sweden. It was an innovation, and we spent quite a bit of time with Viaplay in a relationship built on a huge amount of trust. We actually had an unusually low content cost in the first two quarters, which was built into the agreement, would be then paid back in again. The content cost you saw in Q3 and Q4 is comparable to the content cost you're seeing going forward and the way we do rev shares.
What was unusual was that while we were setting this agreement, putting this agreement into place, there was a time when we had, sort of almost a grace period, and that is something that causes this one-off anomaly Q1, Q2 this year. Maybe Hendrik, maybe I'm not precise enough on this, Hendrik, if you want to add something to it.
Yeah, Ondrej. As Kjell was saying, the first of all, the cost, you know, the cost is, has been now fully materialized basically in the numbers. Of course, on a year-on-year comparison, you will see it coming together from the Q3 and Q4 of the second half of the year onward. The way the cost structure, and I think I've also said, talked about that before. The way the cost structure is built that there's no fixed cost in there. You know, we have a variable cost towards the numbers of consumers.
Of course, the way we've implemented that with the price rise, it makes sure that we do these, that we run this business of course at the margin. That has been sort of been implemented. It is fair to say that of course, a lot of the pricing of that has happened throughout last year, but not all of it. We still have a little bit of a long tail and some customers in binding promotions that when they come out throughout the year, they will be priced. The majority of the pricing move for this year will sit on the mobile and broadband categories. I hope that sort of answers your question a little bit.
Maybe one just quick follow-up. Just because there was a recent price increase from Viaplay to you on, like, a wholesale basis. How is that going to be offset? Is that like a mandatory pass-through so that you cannot, like, margin squeeze them? Or what is the?
No, that's not what's happening here. There's no price increase Q1, Q2 this year versus Q3, Q4 last year. The main thing is that actually we had a lower cost to Viaplay in Q1, Q2 of last year. There's nothing happening specifically in Q1, Q2 compared to what we did in the second half of last year. Just to, so that you don't think that there is a price increase from Viaplay from January first. This is not what is happening here. Then on your working capital, just quickly from my side. Yes, we are working on improving it, and there is still scope for improvement.
I would also caution in full transparency that the working capital level we had at the end of 2021 was exceptionally low because we had almost no handsets. We were not, we had not really started with the 5G. Let's understand that what we are working towards in a good operating mode is to get down from where we were, but not all the way to that point, because that basically would mean that we run the business without almost any stock in at all.
Yeah. I think I can add to that as well, because the things that we pointed out in Q4 were three different areas that we said that we were going to work specifically on, and that was the inventory that could be divided into devices, and also the national mobility 5G rollout. We can see that we are making progress in this in both these areas. The third one was the handset financing. You might recall that in Q4, we actually stopped the invoicing of that because we were renegotiating our terms with the bank. We also I think we communicated that we did that successfully, and then we started the handset financing invoicing at the beginning of this year. That is something, an impact that will come gradually during the, as we said, 36 months, and that's still viable.
Two and a half years to go?
Yeah.
For those handsets.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Now we'll go and take our next question. The next question comes from line of Andreas Joelsson from Danske Bank. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thanks a lot, good morning, everyone. Two questions from my side. First of all, on the mobile ASPU in the consumer side, which is down slightly from last year, and you still have had this unlimited offering, which comes at a quite high ARPU level or ASPU level. You have stated that you have had good traction on that, and you have some roaming coming back. I just want to understand a little bit more why we don't see a larger year-on-year impact on the mobile ASPU in the consumer side. Secondly, just to follow up on TV. Obviously, the service revenue trends have improved, but you're still in sort of flattish mode despite this innovative solution and offering that you have. What's the next step to turn the TV side into service revenue growth? Thanks.
Great. I'll take that one, Andreas. If you look at the mobile ASPU, yeah, it has a flattish character at the moment, and our mobile ASPU of course consists of a number of components. One, the postpaid and the prepaid side, and secondly, of course, if you look into the mobile ASPU, we have two brands in the market, Tele2 and Comviq. I just want to be clear that when we are talking about the unlimited portfolio that we've launched, and that has a good traction in terms of tier mix, we're talking about the Tele2 mobile part of our total mobile postpaid business, right?
In that sense, we're still seeing, you know, the same sort of traction that we were talking about before in the Q1 with a little bit of, you know, more careful consumers we have seen. You know, we have had a slightly less volume, a lower volume on the unlimited tier mix. However, we're still 50%-plus, so it is, you know, it's just a slightly lower tier mix number.
That, that has also been compounded a little bit by an inflow on the lower tiered part of portfolio from the prepaid registration, as in particular senior, we've seen some seniors that found it still, although we've had a very easy digital journey, found it still quite cumbersome and opted for a pre-to-post move, and they would then come in on Tele2 on the lower tier. That's, that's a little bit of a composition what's, you know, what's happening there. We've also seen at the same time, you know, a strong continuation on our Comviq growth. That's sort of how the composite numbers and then sort of adds up. Our unlimited portfolio is still absolutely doing what it should be doing in the market.
On TV, what we of course said is that we are aiming for stabilized portfolio with the Viaplay move, which I think we're doing. In particular on DTV, you can see that we're actually generating, you know, even a low level of growth. What we of course still are facing is a declining DTT business, and that will remain to be there. The offset against that is for us to continue to, you know, to drive our momentum in our DTV business. There will be of course a level of pricing coming in as we go on, you know, as we go forward. Secondly, as you know, we're working very much on an aggregation play. Viaplay, of course, has been a first step in that journey.
That's, you know, that's basically a continuation of the strategy we've sort of started with Viaplay, basically.
Very clear. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Now we're going to take the next question. Just give us a moment. The next question comes from the line of Nicholas Lee from Societe Generale. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi there. Morning, everybody. Could I ask, just going back to Andreas' point on the consumer mobile, please Kjell, you mentioned aggressive campaigning. Could you just help us with what you meant by that and whether it's. It doesn't sound as if it's too material, but just sort of set our minds at rest there. Secondly, on the bank book price increases in broadband, please, could you give us a bit of detail on the scope of those? You know, how many subs that might affect and how quickly? What. Could at all, could you give us an idea roughly of the boost to revenue within couple of quarters or some at least guide towards what you would, what you might expect? Thank you.
I can take it. Yeah. Yeah. Nicholas, it's Hendrik. When we talk about, you know, what we've seen in the market, largely, you know, I think it, you know, we're quite happy what we've seen. Of course, you know, Q4 was last year was sort of quite a busy quarter as it normally is with a lot of promotions and et cetera. This quarter we have gone through back to that normality and a bit more. I think we've seen good, you know, price announcements and moves from all of the operators in the market. I think we are seeing a very good stability on our fixed products in the market as well at large, but also in terms of consumer behavior. We're seeing good tier mix development, et cetera.
Where we do see still, quite a level of what we call BTL below the line, I would say aggression. To your point, it's very targeted. It's not ATL overall market driven. You know, basically through some channels, right? For example, telemarketing, where there's a lot of, you know, there's some level of calling going on with sort of quite aggressive offers. This could be, you know, sell-off of devices. We've seen that device market is a little bit down from, you know, from its normal beat, right? We're minus 10% in Sweden in the Q1 on t-total device sales, so maybe some stock sell-offs that will happen. We have seen a level of aggression or campaigning on family offers and some deeper discounting on unlimited tiers from some other operators.
That sort of is the composition of basically what we're, you know, what we've been seeing on the sort of mobile campaigning. On the broadband back book pricing, we have, as you know, a more for more approach that we, the company has been working with for, you know, the last number of years. In the more for more approach, we typically don't take the total base because some of our customers, of course, are in binding contracts that we don't price, but we do have a substantial base, and we can't share the details of that we will be pricing and we will also be pricing to a more significant level that we normally do to offset, you know, some of the inflationary pressures.
I would say the price adjustment will be, you know, 30%-40% higher than we would normally do.
That's great. Thanks, Hendrik. Cheers.
Yep.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from the line of Keval Khiroya from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you for taking the questions. I have two, please. Firstly, are you putting through price increases in the B2B back book, and how does that compare to what you may have done last year? Secondly, given the moving parts with content, price action, and rates as well, would you be able to comment at all on when you think you can return back to stable EBITDA domestically? Should we view that as Q2 or more Q3? Thank you.
Maybe Stefan?
Yeah. I will take. Hello, Keval. Thanks for your questions on the B2B part. We are constantly evaluating if we need to do any adjustments in order to safeguard our margins. I think we're working on a broad scale of different things. Pricing is one of them, also optimization of our portfolio as well, as we do migrations from old services to new services, et cetera. Looking on the pricing part, we can do certain things instantly. Of course, just like in the B2C market, some of our customers are in contracts, we can't do all at once. When possible, we do it.
If we look what we've done in, in Q1, for instance, we have done several price increases across the board on different products. Of course, the B2B portfolio and the contract setup is a much complexer thing and a larger, broader portfolio with lots of moving parts. We have a price increase, fixed voice subscriptions, data and services, handsets, ATP, service agreements on UC, and also on our hybrid solutions, hybrid cloud solutions based on index clauses that we have in a, in a contract. This is something that we're doing constantly and validating. I think one part of the good traction that we have on the end user service revenue is this methodology that we have.
When it comes to your question on the EBITDA, like I said, we are very confident about delivering on the guidance on EBITDA, and we do expect that the Swedish EBITDA numbers will look better later in the year. We don't guide on specific EBITDA for components of the group.
That's very clear. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. Just give us a moment. The next question comes from a line of Titus Krahn from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good morning, everyone. Thanks a lot for the presentation, for answering our questions and taking mine as well. Just a very, very quick follow-up and then two real questions, if I may. The follow-up is just on the comment on the SEK 10 million energy headwind that you had this quarter. Does that apply to the full group or is it just on Sweden, the SEK 10 million? Just on my questions on the Baltics very briefly, just because EBITDA trends in Lithuania and Latvia have been quite strong, but Estonia is much more difficult, which rather appears consistent with also softer result for Elisa yesterday. Maybe could you help us understand what is the main driver of difference within the Baltics? Are those cost headwinds higher on a structural basis in Estonia?
Just on a very different note, you published a quite encouraging press release earlier this week highlighting the potential to reduce energy consumption in mobile networks by, I think, 30%-40% with the help of AI. I believe that's quite a topical subject, of course. Could you maybe elaborate a bit more on when you expect those technologies to actually be applied to your network at a larger scale? Maybe staying at the subject of automation, where do you see most opportunities for Tele2 to pursue that topic, those efficiencies, and which parts you think are top of your agenda going ahead?
That was quite a few questions. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, Charlotte, I think the energy impact was SEK 8 million. Okay. That's for the whole group. It's, it's basically not a date number. I can give a shot at the Lithuania, Estonia thing. I mean, clearly, Lithuania, we are number one. We have much bigger scale. In a very, in a relatively small operation, you are a bit more exposed to disruptions than you are in the bigger format. That we see different impact in Lithuania and Estonia is basically normal.
We are number one in Lithuania and number three in Estonia. A strong number three, but still a number three. And also, of course, it would be natural that there is some correlation between the trend that Elisa sees in Estonia and the trend that we see. I don't think I will develop it very much more than that.
Yeah, the release talked about a theoretical potential for saving energy. Clearly, when a mobile network, a typical mobile network is up and beaming, then it's at a quite high activity level all the time. It's not so that it accurately reflects the number of users who are busy on that cell. One of the advantages with 5G will be with our new systems, is that they have a better ability to work with differentiated loads. In 4G, you don't really have that, but what you can do is that you can, through software, try to optimize this partially. What this does is, if you look in the grand scheme of things, consumers will be using more data as we progress.
Of course, that gives us a little bit of a cushion. It reduces the growth that would otherwise happen. The usage of power per byte will of course then, go down. I don't know if that was clear.
Yes, very clear. Thanks for answering all three questions, and sorry for that, but very clear and very helpful. Thank you.
Oh, okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes from line of Peter Nielsen from ABG Sundal Collier. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you very much for the opportunity. Two questions please. Firstly, Kjell, I mean, the Swedish consumer market in general, and for Tele2 has been sluggish for some time. What do you think will help the market sort of to reignite growth? Is that exclusively the price increases, which you have talked about sort of, comprehensively here today? Secondly, just a question and clarification on the content cost. When you speak about higher content cost, you speak about Viaplay. Is that the only source of higher content cost, Kjell? Just to be clear. Thank you very much.
Well, price increases come in one shape or form. Yes, they will be with us. They will be a part of it. It, you know, it's important to see the whole picture. This is not only about the headline number that we have out there. The industry has had a tendency to be very aggressive in trying to hold on to customers through, save desks and different kinds of initiatives, of course, trying to be very smart below the line. I think we see some indications that the industry is learning that this is not a great way of creating value. For us, we've been working on a more for more platform. We will probably evolve that. You heard, Stefan talking about within B2B, there is some indexation.
I think probably we'll see a bit more of indexation going into B2C going forward. I think that can be a good tool. When it will be, that's a different discussion. The components that we work with may be changing a bit over time. Wanna add something, Hendrik?
Is the content cost?
Yeah, maybe.
Sorry.
Yeah, I will take that afterwards.
Yeah, maybe.
Thank you.
Just there's a couple of things. Peter, the, you know, pricing, as Kjell said, of course, is an element of, you know, of the business model. And yes, you know, we will be strongly looking at moving to a price indexation, which we believe is a way fairer way of approaching the consumer market. But more importantly, you know, we are of course moving forward and onward, you know. The level of digitalization of society and of consumers is increasing every day. The usage of mobile applications and also the intensity of the mobile applications, even with, you know, AI and virtual reality, is increasing and the need to be connected.
With that also comes the, you know, the trajectory we set in, for example, on, you know, on the mobile side by moving to unlimited, to an increasingly unlimited portfolio and making it available to, you know, an increasing share of the market. I think there's a lot that's just the start of a, you know, of a new chapter as far as I'm concerned, in terms of what we will do with consumers and what innovations and changes we can bring. The same actually is also for, you know, for home connectivity, right? You know, there's a lot happening in the home. It's a huge hub.
Whereby, you know, whereas we over the last period of time got used to, you know, speeds of 100 megabit to be sufficient to have a whole household fully, you know, connected. I feel that over the next period of time, we're moving to, you know, different speed levels and also different type of service levels across that. You know, we have a clear roadmap for ourselves to move the Swedish market to, way more to, the 1 gigabit benchmark, and some of the tier mix changes are already happening as we speak. Yes, it is about pricing, but it's not only about pricing. It's a lot about innovation at the same time.
Then you get the content.
Yeah, you are the master of content. Peter, just.
Yeah.
Can you just remind me the content, question?
Yeah. The question was when you speak about content costs, you directly obviously refer to Viaplay. Is Viaplay the only source of higher content cost, or are you also seeing it elsewhere?
Viaplay, of course, is, let's say from a year-on-year basis is of course the big change in the portfolio, right? However, it is, of course, in the total content cost is one of those elements that, of course, also has a level of inflation built within in terms of the other content we have. Where we have contracts coming out of, you know, coming out of contract, we will have a level of, you know, price inflation in some categories of the content. There's also price inflation, you know, in the content cost to an extent, yes.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Yeah.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from line of Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you very much for taking my questions as well. I just wanted to have a follow-up, Kjell, you, when we talked about the ability to lower the energy consumption on the new 5G networks. Have you sort of also taken into account the deep sleep modes in the new equipment, or have you used that already before in the 4G networks? Would that be a differentiator when it comes to energy consumption, would be a follow-up on that one. Just the question I have then, CapEx, you came into the year with a fairly high level of CapEx, especially in Sweden. How should we see that going towards the end of the year on a quarter-over-quarter basis?
Should we see it falling as share of revenue as you come closer to peak levels of CapEx spending or? Would be good to know. Thank you.
Well, let me start with the last one. I have been very keen that we should move at speed for building 5G. Ideally, I probably would have wanted to build even more last year, but supply chain was what it was, and I'm not gonna repeat that whole story. That's why we're coming into the year with a high CapEx number. It will be relatively high in the Q2 also. Of course, we are in the process of throttling this so that it comes to a production level, say, for, from the summer and onwards, that is compatible with where we want to be. I'd rather have that issue than having a rollout that stutters and goes slowly. That's where we are on that.
You should expect, of course, that we, in the second half, will then have a lower production volume, specifically on 5G than we have seen now. I mean, at least as reflected in the financial books. You may know that what you see in our CapEx books does not necessarily reflect 100% where we stand technically, because you have site acquisition, civil works, installation, then invoicing through Net4Mobility. It is relatively complex web to have there. We love to have it because it makes us CapEx efficient to share these costs. Then we take the extra work that involves. Now on energy consumption, I am not the biggest expert on this, but I think we can say as a general rule that when 4G was developed, it wasn't really developed to have an advanced power fluctuation mechanism built into it.
What we're trying to do is an attempt to improve on that. 5G has been more developed to be, to try to optimize energy. Let's be clear that whatever we now build of 5G, the consumption is growing relatively fast, so the usage per byte will go down, but our energy consumption over time will be going up.
Yep. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The next question comes from line of Adam Fox-Rumley from HSBC. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you very much. I have one follow-up on that CapEx question actually, which was to ask about your level of comfort with the current mid-term guidance and the kind of step down, once you've passed the peak. Did the unlimited portfolio that you're increasingly putting weight on place more demands on medium-term capacity planning, for example? Or are you confident that, you know, really the weight of the work has been done in the build-out of the network, and the network sites? The second question is a quick one. I wondered if you could just give us an update on the spectrum auction. Are we still expecting that in September? Are you waiting for any more details from the PTS? Thank you very much.
The answer to question number 2 is yes and yes. There will be more information coming later. That the regulator will be coming with more information around that. We expect it to happen. We expect to participate, and that's pretty much what we can say at this point. On CapEx, I just wanna be clear that we clearly will be at the top end of expectations on CapEx. I think it is a good thing. I'd rather get the installations done this year and next year to build the best 5G network in Sweden. We are building, as you know, in the higher spectrum.
When we talk about our coverage, we are talking about coverage based on high spectrum and the kind of download speeds that you expect from 5G. We will of course also be using 700, which is a great thing for coverage and gives good speeds, but not the speeds that people have been thinking about in their minds when they think about 5G. CapEx will be at a high level. I think it's a good thing. In terms of where we are, if you look at it from a CapEx's trades perspective, we are in a good spot compared to pretty much anyone in Europe. I think that's a good way to look at it.
Okay, thanks very much.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our last question. The last question comes from the line of Siyi He of Citi. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hello. Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have 2 questions on mobile and one clarification, please. The first question is, you mentioned that you have done price changes in consumers across the board. Just wondering if you can remind us what you have done on the consumer mobile side, apart from the handset financing. It seems that you haven't raised prices on Comviq brand for some time. I was wondering that given that your competitors are raising low-end challenger brand prices, whether that's giving yourself a confidence that you can also think about the pricing strategy with Comviq. The second question is on the B2B side, B2B mobile has been growing about 10% for the last 4 quarters. It seems supported by the base growth.
Q1, we see a slight moderation in the ads. I wonder if you can talk about the market competition in the B2B mobile and whether this Q1 is just a simply a seasonality thing? Finally, the clarification is on the wage inflation. Could you remind us, once you agree with the union, is that a 1-year or 2-year agreement on the inflation? Thank you.
Take the last one first. Yes, there is collective bargaining, and there's also collective bargaining at the industry level after the central agreement has come into place. In Sweden, they place a lot of attention to this mark, as they call it. That one has been set now for 4.1% this year and 3.3% next year, if I remember correctly. And that's a very strong indicator on where things probably will end up. There's negotiation to be done, but it's pretty much like that. It's effective from first of April. You have it basically for the spreadsheet, approximately where these things will land. We do have clarity on this. You had two questions, one on B2C and one on B2B. I don't know who wants to start.
Yeah, I can start take the question on the B2B volume development. I mean, we are continuously trying to find a balance between the value and volume. I think you can see that happening in the mobile revenue growth. If you look at the ARPU growth, it varies a little bit between the quarters. During the last two years, it has been between SEK 10,000 and SEK 32,000 if you look quarter by quarter. It's really our large deals that can swing this up and down between the quarters. Especially in this quarter, we had two unusual events, that was we moved two larger deliveries that were intended for Q1 forward to coming quarters.
We also had a cleanup of some legacy subscriptions. Adjusted for this, I would say we would be on par with the average for the last three quarters. Hope that answers your question.
And Siyi, on the mobile, on the consumer side, mobile pricing, as we've been discussing, yes, we are putting that pricing into play. Last year, as you noted, was indeed a year that we didn't do that much pricing. One, because we had the IT migration and new portfolio introduction on Tele2 Mobile, and also on Comviq. We were just running out of a pricing move that we had done in 2021. Yes, 2022 was sort of seasonably low, let's say, in terms of pricing. That's base room for pricing, and that is in our consideration to happen in the Q2 and Q3 .
That's very good. Thank you.
Thank you. Dear speakers, there are no further questions. I would like now to hand the conference over to Kjell Johnsen for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, operator. And thank you to all of you for taking the time to listen to us and to ask us questions and have this discussion together. I'd like to just briefly say that I'm very pleased that we are able to keep the growth momentum. I think it's absolutely fundamental for this industry to be able to keep the growth momentum, so that we can be, take the relevance that we have in the market out into our P&L also. For that purpose, it is important to build 5G relatively fast. I'd like to do it relatively fast.
We have X amount of base stations in our sort of model network that we're gonna build through Net4Mobility, and most of that we wanna get done this year, next year, and some of it, of course, in 25. That is an investment into the future, and I reiterate that we have an absolutely realistic ambition of building the best 5G network in Sweden. That's kind of at the ambition level. Lastly, since numbers and profits are of course very important, we will be finished with this phasing issue that we have now related to how we importantly restructured our TV business last year.
When we come back from the summer holiday, we will be in correct phasing again. Give us this quarter and the next, and then we will be into a, It will be easier to see like for like year-over-year in terms of where we are. We expect a stronger EBITDA in the second half than in the first half. With that, thank you very much for your attention and have a great day.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.