Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us on Bezeq's 2024 Q1 earnings call. I am Tobi Fischbein, CFO of the Bezeq Group. Joining us from the senior management team, we have Mr. Tomer Raved, Bezeq's chairman, Mr. Nir David, Bezeq's new Fixed Line CEO. Welcome, Nir. Ilan Sigal, CEO of Pelephone and yes. And before we start, I would like to direct your attention to the safe harbor statement on slide 2 of our 2024 investor presentation, which also applies to any statement made during today's call. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded. After presenting our quarterly results, we will have a Q&A session. With that said, let me now turn the call over to Tomer for his opening remarks.
Recording in progress.
After his introduction, I will continue the presentation of our group financial highlights, followed by Nir, who will discuss Bezeq Fixed Line results, and Ilan, who will cover the results from Pelephone and yes. Tomer?
Hey, guys. Thanks for joining, and great to see familiar faces. We continue to see strong execution in strategic growth across all our drivers, with 80% year-over-year growth in our fiber subscribers and 30% growth in 5G subs. We actually also saw 6% growth in our broadband ARPU, which is very consistent with our expectations. Our core revenue grew 2.1% to 2 billion ILS, driven mostly by higher revenue in the Fixed Line business and also at Pelephone, despite the war. The war did impact, in a non-material way, our results, mostly coming from areas of roaming and the areas of conflict where we don't charge. The core revenue has represented 90% of total group revenue in Q1.
This is the new term we are using, and this excludes revenues from interconnect fee that Pelephone, the legacy ISP business at Bezeq International, and the legacy and discontinued telephony. These are the second financial statement that we are publishing during the war, which, as mentioned, does not have a material impact on the group. We did see a slight decrease in EBITDA, mainly due to the reasons I mentioned, both from roaming and the non-billing customers at the line of conflict, notwithstanding that, the quarterly results met our expectations. On the following slide, we see the highlights of the quarter.
I want to point out the strong free cash flow growth, which grew by almost 36% year-over-year, and the significant decrease of net debt by 11%, which led to two rating agencies upgrading our credit rating to A A. The next slide shows our KPIs. You can see the business, the Bezeq Fixed Line business actually grew by 70,000 fiber net adds in Q1 alone, showing improvement from the previous quarter and the business sector really coming back to market following the volatile Q4 with the conflict. The retail broadband ARPU is growing nicely, increasing to ILS 127. And on the mobile side, we continue to see growth in 5G subs plan, reaching over 1.1 million subscribers as of today, or actually 43% of total subs on our track to reach our target of 80%.
Moving to slide 6, which really demonstrates the slide you're familiar with, our roadmap and our main thesis and compass. It shows the evolution of all our businesses and the roadmap for the midterm. We are on target to reach the completion of our fiber rollout next year, currently with 30% take up on our path to the target of 40% take up. And we're probably gonna reach beyond the 2.5 million households we targeted for the year, and complete the fiber rollout by end of next year, even before. Even at this time, Bezeq is currently and continue to be an island of stability, despite all the major local and global events. We talked a lot about the past four years with COVID, macro aspects, Russia, Ukraine, and especially the local conflict now in Israel.
We continue to deliver strong results, consistent results, and as I mentioned, island of stability for the country and for our investors. Our execution on our strategy continued to be successful, and we will remain focused on both revenue growth and profitability growth and free cash flow. Turn the call back to Tobi. Thank you, to discuss the financial statement in more detail.
Thank you, Tomer. Slide 7 shows a 2.3% decline in reported revenues for the Q1 of 2024, mainly as a result of the second tranche of the Ministry of Communications telephony reform as of July 2023, and the decrease in telephone interconnect revenues and other regulatory reform as of June 2023. The adjusted EBITDA was slightly lower by 2%, and the adjusted net profit decreased 6.9% in the Q1 of the year. The growth of 36% in free cash flow stems primarily from timing differences in working capital and CapEx. In the next slide, we show our operational metrics. I would like to highlight the 6% increase in our retail broadband ARPU in the quarter, along with a continued increase in cellular and 5G subscribers.
On Slide 9, we see an 11% decrease in our net debt to ILS 4.7 billion, the lowest debt level since 2010, which has resulted in improved coverage ratios, and our net debt to EBITDA ratio decreased further from 1.6 times to 1.4 times. Both domestic credit rating agencies recently upgraded our credit rating to AA, with stable outlook. This is a major achievement, especially amidst a challenging macro background, further reflecting Bezeq's resilience.
... We also continue to pay dividends and recently upgraded our payout ratio to 70%, which shows careful management of our capital structure. Turning to the next slide, for the full year 2024, we reiterate our full year guidance given last quarter. I will now turn the call over to Nir, who will share more detailed results from our Fixed Line operations. Nir?
Thank you, Tobi. I'm proud to present the Fixed Line reports for the first time as a CEO. It is a great honor to be leading Bezeq in this exciting time, and I'm sure that we will continue to growth and strengthen our position as the leader of the telecom market in Israel. On the next slide, we note the 2% growth in Fixed Line core revenues due to higher revenues from broadband services, transmissions, and data communications. Fiber take-up continue to grow in both retail and also subscribers, and broadband retail ARPU grew 5.8% to ILS 127. We also recently signed an agreement to enter to electricity supply sector. We expect to launch this service very soon.
On the following slide, we show an increase of 1.6% adjusted net profit due to the decrease in the financing expenses. We also saw a 58% increase in free cash flow, mainly due to timing difference in working capital. Turning to the next slide, in the Q1 of 2024, we saw, again, significant growth in both: in broadband revenues, driving by increase in fiber take-ups, which also result in continued growth in broadband retail ARPU. Moving to the next slide, we show the take-up trends. Q1, so 40,000 retail net adds, up 8,000 from the last quarter. As today, we have a total retail fiber take-up of 424,000.
I would like to note that fiber subscriber recently present 40% of total retail subscribers, and so a wholesale take-up increase of 117% on a year-over-year base. Slide 15 shows continued fiber deployment with an increased focus on take-up. As of this quarter, we have now more than 650,000 active subscribers on Bezeq fiber networks and over 2.2 million homes passed, resulting in the continued growth of our take-up rate, reaching approximately 30% today. The next slide show continued revenue growth in the Q1 of 2024 in transmission and data communication, offset by a decrease in traffic revenues from ISP companies. Cloud and digital revenues were stable in the quarter, but telephony revenue declined due to the second decrease in MOC traffic tariff.
That said, telephony revenues were only 30% of total Fixed Line revenues in Q1 2024. The operating expenses slide shows a decrease in salary due to the credit received from the National Insurance Institute of employees on military reserve duty. There was also a one-time grant in the previous quarter following the public sector wage agreement. Operating expenses were positively impact by lower materials and subcontractor expenses and lower interconnect fees. In summary, Fixed Line operations saw solid result with the continued increase in the company's growth drivers, both residential broadband and a business sector. With that, I will turn the call to Ilan to discuss Pelephone and yes.
Thank you, Nir, and good luck.
Thank you.
Moving to slide 18, Pelephone posted stable service revenues despite the impact of the war on roaming revenues, driven by higher 5G subscriber plans and postpaid subscribers. This is our third consecutive quarter with an increase in equipment revenues. Adjusted EBITDA rose 1.6% to ILS 185 million. Moving to the next slide, here we show 5G subscriber plans, reached over 1.1 million subscribers today. Subscribers on 5G plans amounted to 43% of total subscribers and 50% of postpaid subscribers. On slide 20, we recorded a 1.6% increase in adjusted EBITDA, following the rise in revenues from 5G subscriber plans and postpaid subscriber growth. A decrease in adjusted net profit reflects the decline in roaming revenues and a lower interest income from Bezeq. The next slide shows the Q1 key operating metrics.
We saw a continuing increase in postpaid subscribers, including 5G subscriber plans, and decline in prepaid subscribers due to the impact of the war. ARPU rose ILS 1 compared to the previous quarter, despite the impact of the war on roaming revenues. Turning to yes on the next slide, revenues decreased 4.3% to ILS 315 million , mainly due to the non-billing of customers in the line of conflict, as well as a change in the subscriber mix, moving from premium to discount. yes is the largest IP operator in Israel, with 422,000 customers today. We continue to grow in fiber subscribers and reached 50,000 as of today. In addition, we have approximately 150,000 subscribers with international streaming services through agreements with yes.
The Q1 financial highlights slide shows a 4.3% decline in revenues and a lower Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net profit, which were impacted by the revenue decline. Lastly, free cash flow was affected by timing differences in working capital. On the next slide, we show yes Q1 key operational metrics. We saw continued growth in IP-based TV subscribers, up 18.4%. As of today, 75% of yes subscribers were watching TV through IP. We also saw continued growth in fiber subscribers, up to 230% sequentially. With that, let me now turn the call back to Tobi.
Thanks, Ilan. Moving on to Bezeq International, we saw a general trend of increased ICT activity, offsetting most of the decrease in consumer ISP revenues. Our focus continues to be on growth in the ICT market, with emphasis on cyber integration, public cloud, and data centers. On the next slide, we see that revenues decreased 7.4%, mostly due to lower consumer ISP revenues, due to the Ministry of Communications regulatory reform for unified Internet service. Free cash flow was positively impacted by the payments for employee retirement in the corresponding quarter. Turning to the last slide, I want to reiterate that we had a strong quarter despite the ongoing war in Israel, and we remain focused on executing our strategy with our key growth drivers: robust fiber take-up in Bezeq and yes, consistent growth in 5G subscriber plans in Pelephone.
Our core revenues grew to ILS 2 billion in the quarter, driven by the stronger fixed-line revenues. Finally, I would also like to mention that we will be hosting our first-ever Capital Markets Day on 1st July , here in Israel. We invite the investment community in Israel and abroad to participate. I look forward to seeing you there. With that, I will open the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand virtually. As you hear your name, please be sure to unmute your mic and ask your question. For the benefit of the people in the room, please introduce yourself and share the name of the company you represent. We will address questions as we see the hands raised. I will now pause to poll for questions. First question from David Kaplan. Hi, David.
Hi, I am from Psagot, an equity analyst here. I'll start out with a question on the 5G infrastructure and your investments you're making in 5G for now. Are you also moving over, as some of your competitors talked about, to a new core network? And if you are, or what kind of 5G investments are you making in 2024, or are those going to also spill over into 2025? That's the first one for now.
Hi, David. Thank you for the question. First, a month ago, we announced our 5G standalone core that we are going to launch in a few weeks. We also showed our capabilities of slicing operation and the new 5G core, so it will be ready, I believe, in a few weeks. About the CapEx and investments, like in previous years, CapEx will stay stable and continue the rollout of 4G and 5G in the next year. So the CapEx will stay stable in the next years with the 5G standalone core.
Sorry, you said you're also going to be investing in 4G over the next-
Oh, uh-
- few years?
4G, we... The 4G is about the new frequencies that we need to deploy, like 700, and that will help customers in 4G and 5G also. So, we're deploying 700 for 4G and 5G, and a frequency of 3,500 for 5G.
Okay, thanks. Then a quick question on the Fixed Line, where you are now with your rollout of that fiber network. First of all, when is that project going to be finished? I think it's supposed to be completed in the middle of next year, the middle of 2025. And secondly, at what point of time—at what point in time will we see the copper network end of life?
I'll take that. Like what I mentioned in the beginning, David, and thanks for your question. So we are currently around 2.1 million households. We continue at the same pace, and actually at a faster pace, of rolling out our fiber across the country. We're gonna finish the fiber project according to our schedule, sometime next year, as expected, even slightly sooner than expected. But the CapEx around fiber, as previously mentioned, will continue to stay elevated this year and also through next year at slightly lower CapEx, but still, you know, completing the coverage. This year, we expect to surpass our target that we gave, 2.5 million households, of fiber.
Regarding the copper retirement of the copper network, we've seen, and you all saw, some formal chatter from the regulators around copper retirement, which has a variety of elements, and this is something that will happen over the course of the next few years. Both the element of deploying new copper, but also retirement of the network. It is a multi-year project, which we did not underwrite for in our projections, important to note, yet, but it is a process that started. It will have both OpEx , positive OpEx implication and CapEx savings, in the coming years, and again, we did not underwrite for that.
Okay, great. I've got a couple more questions, but I'll get back in line.
Thank you, David. Next question from Tavy Rosner. Hi, Tavy.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Hope you are well. First question is on telephony. I'm wondering, what was the impact of the war on revenues? I think you mentioned in the press release that households that were displaced are not being charged. I'm just wondering to get a sense of what kind of proportion of revenue that, that accounts for. And I, I think more generally speaking, down the road, I think once we pricing the decrease in, in pricing, where do you see telephony revenues kind of stabilizing? What kind of run rate we should be looking at?
I'll take, I'll take that, Tavy. We did not specify the amount of the impact of not billing, you know, those customers of ours, both from Bezeq and yes, you know, in the south of the country, near Gaza and in the north of the country, people that have to leave their homes. It's not material. It's not necessarily related to telephony. Some of it is also related to internet revenues. So there is an impact which is, let's say, single digit in millions of ILS, in the quarter for Bezeq and for yes. Of course, for yes is a big, no more representative, but still not meaningful. But that's one of the explanations to the decline in the ARPU of yes. We...
As for the second question, we have not given specific guidance on where the telephony revenues are going, but it's gonna be reasonable to expect for this to continue coming down. I would say that we still have one more quarter, which is now Q2, where it's a challenging comparison versus Q2 of last year, because it was before the second tranche of the tariff reduction. But after that, we will have apples to apples comparisons going forward. There are no further tranches there on telephony, so we will see some continued erosion until a certain point where we're probably keeping some customers and revenues because people still need, you know, Fixed Line telephony and will continue needing it for the long term. But again, it's not an area where we are investing any specific efforts.
Thanks, Tobi. Second one, we saw last week, the Ministry of Communications mention potentially examining the removal of structural separation. That's part of their agenda for 2024. And I'm just wondering, to get your thoughts. Obviously, everyone here has been through a different cycle of discussions throughout the past decade. So, I'm wondering if you see any potential here, or it's just, you know, noise and something that the MOC feels they have to mention, but practically speaking, it's unlikely to happen. I mean, any color would be helpful.
Sure. I'll take that. And we actually also provided an update in chapter 8 of our report, which will be published in English very soon. But you know, some history. So for more than five or six years now, the MOC has not discussed or mentioned anything around removal of structural separation. You all know our position, and we reiterated why we think the time and the terms were set to remove this unnecessary structural separation, specifically between Bezeq and yes. We have been having discussions with various regulators, including the Minister of Communications, for quite some time. And as you noted, that's the first time a formal notice around that was issued by the MOC. They specifically said that it's part of their work plan for 2024 to evaluate the need for structural separation.
Specifically to your question, Tavi, we cannot put timeline or chances of when and if it's gonna happen, but we are putting effort and informal dialogue with the regulators, and also as published, with the support of both companies, unions and management, to try and progress the project. So I think the only new element, and the update we provided also in writing and here on the call, is the fact that the MOC did issue a note that includes the fact that it will be evaluated this year.
Great. Thank you. I'll get back to the queue.
Thank you, Tavy. Next question from Liran Lublin from IBI. Hi, Liran.
Hi, guys. How are you?
Good.
My question is, it's more of a high-level question. The company's been showing remarkable stability and growth in core business. When I look at the stock performance, there's obviously a risk premium building up, and we're aware of what's been happening, you know, I mean, here in Israel. But do you see any other major risks down the road that we should be aware of, or how do you look at it?
Yeah, I have a question, so I can take it. Thank you, Liran. First, we don't comment on stock price, but we do feel the macro trend on one hand, in the impact of the geopolitical arena on Israel economy, on one hand. On the other hand, the business is very resilient, and most of these impacts, as mentioned before, does not impact the results, nor the interest that we, and the conversation we've been having with you guys and with the global community. To be honest, we're actually getting more demand for these type of interactions, face-to-face, globally with investors. But the macro definitely impacts the Israeli stock market directly, and as a result, also the Bezeq stock. Again, less comment on price and trends.
In terms of risks, you know, we mitigated, as you noted, and you can see a lot of the significant risk that were around the company by adapting and changing the structure and the strategy over the past few years across all the different line of businesses. So there are always risks, but there isn't one specific major risk I can call out, given the resiliency and given the business trend, and given the trajectory, both on our declining CapEx, that you know, and the end of the fiber project, end of satellite project, and very, very healthy balance sheet, that really prepares us almost for every rainy day.
And that allows us to, A, invest, flexible, really a lot of operational and financial leverage, and continue to increase our pools, transition to 5G, which also lead to stability on 5G and really transition to the IPTV, which eventually will lead us to retire from the satellite. So the trends and this risk were identified, most of them, there are always, black swans in this world, but we've proven, and we pro-- and I think we proved to the market, over the past five years or even more than that, that the business can face, most of them, and from some of them, it actually benefits.
So, we don't see specific risk that could materially impact the business, but we are very transparent regarding also the war impact, even though are not material, they definitely have a slight impact on the results.
Okay, thanks. And, one more question, it's, it's for Ilan. I was wondering if, if you can give some color on the, on the impact of, the, the announcement of the MOC, about the, sports events that are no longer obligated to, to, to be given to, to customers for free. Does that have any impact on, on yes?
Not now. First of all, it will take time. We need to see, because it's still just an announcement, but it's a good thing, it's a good trend because customers will... That don't want sports at all, will can have a package without sports, and probably will be a different price than packages with sports. So when it will be separated, first of all, the sports events probably will be on the public channels. And second, it will help customers to decide what kind of package they want, with sports or without sports. And in that case, for us, for yes also, we will know and everybody will understand what's the price of the sports packages that will be the price of it.
All right.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Liran. Next question from Sabina, from Leader. Hi, Sabina.
Hi, guys. First of all, congratulations on the good quarter, considering all the impacts that you're dealing with. Specifically, I wanted to ask regarding Pelephone results. I think Pelephone was the only company that actually showed an increase in the ARPU, quarter to quarter, and I was wondering, where is it coming from? Is it a trend, or is it something specific for the quarter?
Hi, Sabina. Thank you for the question. First of all, it's a hard work that we are doing for the previous years and quarters, and it's mainly coming from the subscribers growth, general growth, and the transfer of customers from 4G packages to 5G packages. Also, we see a slide on roaming that people are starting to travel more than they travel in the fourth quarter of 2022, 2023. So with those three things, the ARPU on Q1 is better from Q4.
Okay, thank you. And another question is regarding the Fixed Line. Can you please give us some color regarding the infrastructure, ARPU, the retail ARPU? It went up from ILS 125 to ILS 127 in this quarter. But on the other hand, I, we saw a more significant decrease in Bezeq international revenue, so I suppose we have a higher migration of ISP clients to Bezek. And also I saw a bit weaker data of Be routers growth. So can you just give us some color of the breakdown of the ARPU growth? How much was coming from ISP? How much came from fiber customers? What are the dynamics there? And another question also here, and that will be my last one.
Tomer mentioned that you might accelerate or reach the goal of 2.5 million households even earlier than you previously projected. So I want to just regarding the potential developments of the fund that incentivizes the deployment of the fiber networks in the rural areas. So are you deploying there also? And maybe we can see similar cancellation of the payment that we saw last year.
Uh, I-
I'm sorry, I don't know the term in English for the fund.
Universal Fund.
Universal Fund, exactly.
Thank you, Sabina. I'll take the first question. We've seen a decent growth in ARPU as we've seen before. If you remember, we've guided this metric to go over ILS 140 after having guided in the past to go over ILS 130, and we are not far from there. You know, the main driver for that is the upgrade of subscribers to fiber, plus the acquisition of new subscribers, which were known basic subscribers right on fiber. So economically, that brings us an important contribution, which is more significant than, you know, some slide that we may have on the copper side, and you obviously saw that. So that's on the ARPU side.
As for the shift from subscribers, ISP subscribers that were at Bezeq International over to Bezeq or, you know, elsewhere, that has slowed down. Naturally, this started, I re-remind you, in April of 2022. It has been two years already, so a lot of subscribers have already moved away from Bezeq International. Revenues have declined there, but at the same time, we got some of those revenues at Bezeq Fixed Line. Plus, we were able, and we are able to reduce costs significantly at Bezeq International, since the consumer segment there is not a strategic area for us to focus on, and think that overall for the group is really a good move. I wouldn't expect a lot of any acceleration there going forward.
As for your question on the B-routers and, you know, additional Wi-Fi enhancers, I would say that we are really satisfied with the level of penetration that we have with this equipment in the customer, you know, household. And we even see that with fiber, the amount of customers having at least, you know, one piece of our equipment is even greater, and that provides more stickiness and less churn. I'll let my colleagues comment on the fund.
To your question about the fund and about rollout, we decided, not just hope, we decided to accelerate fiber rollout, so we will pass 2.5 million households this year as part of the attractive ROI we're getting on the rollout, on the cost per passing versus the take-up. So we continue to focus our CapEx effort there. As I mentioned before, the fiber rollout altogether will end sometime next year. Our take-up currently at 30%, guiding to growth to 40% or more in the midterm.
On the Universal Fund, which obviously have implication to the entire market, we similar to last year, that the process that the regulators are doing to evaluate what type of rural areas still remain, Bezeq always evaluate in good faith to, to help and try, you know, to help that effort and take on more specific areas, if relevant. It's small areas, but similar to last year, sometime in Q3, we hope to understand whether there will be Universal Fund withdrawal or not by the regulator, which again, hopefully and obviously has an impact on EBITDA, positive impact on EBITDA and on the market altogether.
I would, I would just add, Sabina, that from a reporting perspective, we are still making a provision every quarter, you know, on all the group companies for the fund, the same we did in Q1 of last year. Then, if there is a change, we will of course consider and make the reversal of the provision, as we did last year.
Yep.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question from Andre, from UBS. Hi, Andre. Good to see you.
Hi, everyone. Andre here from UBS. Thank you for the presentation and for taking the time to answer my questions. I had two, one basically building up on Sabina's question. So because you spoke about the ARPU in the retail market and retail broadband specifically. I'm just wondering because I think it's obvious that in terms of the wholesale ARPUs on broadband, that growth is below the retail. So if you can comment on, you know, what you expect in this market, you know, this year, or in this KPI, specifically this year, and how you see wholesale ARPU in broadband developing, you know, over the midterm, what considerations are there going into that? And then, second question, which is a bit more higher level.
Again, if you can, maybe comment a bit on, just the, you know, fiber build of your competitors. You know, how you expect that to evolve going forward, because obviously, you know, there is probably a certain point where, you know, overbuild is going to slow down a bit. There might be some, you know, new wholesale deals, et cetera. And then, also specifically just in terms of, the fiber upgrades of your cable competitor, how do you expect those to progress? So just a general high-level question on the structure of the infrastructure market in terms of fiber in Israel. Thank you.
Thank you, Andre, for the question. I'll take the first one.
Okay, sure.
On ARPU, we don't give specific guidance for the year on ARPU. I said before, answering to Sabina, that we have that midterm ambition of seeing this metric going over ILS 140, and we are on track. It doesn't mean that every quarter, necessarily, this will, you know, grow in the same manner, but the driver for this to grow is there. You know, we are moving. We have moved 40% of our subscriber base, retail subscriber base over to fiber already. It means that we still have a long way to go. I mean, it's a great accomplishment, but we still have a long way to go, and great potential, and we've seen that through this process, we've grown ARPU significantly.
It was 3 years ago, at around ILS 100, now it's at ILS 127. So again, without specifying what's going to happen in the next 2 or 3 quarters, we expect this figure to continue increasing. As for the wholesale ARPU, although we don't disclose this metric, I mean, it's something that you can actually calculate, but I want to remind everyone that we have an IRU deal with Partner, which becomes more and more, you know, representative of the revenues on the fiber side of wholesale. We still have other, you know, wholesale customers there on fiber, and we still have some of them on copper, which are transitioning, you know, gradually their subscriber base over to fiber, you know, in many cases with us, and in some cases, to some other networks.
I think that with that, we can touch on the second question, which deals with, you know, the overbuild question, I guess, that you're asking about.
One comment on wholesale from the regulatory perspective. What we've seen formally published by the regulator, which is actually very consistent, Andre, with what you see in Europe, and was also published in Q1. But the European commissioners, the focus on wholesale rates regulation is being reduced, especially in Israel, where there's fair, regulatory, and competitive market on wholesale rates, and more focused on the passive rates, which we voluntarily reduced and announced in Q1. And currently, the wholesale price, there is no change. Obviously, it's continuing to be evaluated, but with less focus over time. On the market specifically, I think it's became clear of how the market is evolving from an infrastructure and overbuilder perspective.
And I'm, you know, quoting some of the competitors' remarks, but we've seen lower pace of rollout by Partner, who basically nearly completed their rollout of fiber, and it became a very efficient two-infrastructure market, with Bezeq being leading the way and going to cover the vast majority of the country, except for these rural areas that I've mentioned before, which are gonna be covered by the Universal Fund, similar to the RDOF or BEAD Act in the U.S. And then the other infrastructure player, which is also almost a nationwide infrastructure, is IBC, who also commented they will surpass and planning to surpass the 2 million household mark, in the coming year. So we basically have a two infrastructure market. Not really, like, we don't expect, and we don't see other overbuilders to your point.
We will see efficient wholesale market, which really came to testimony with the IRU deal or partner, and also the IRU deal that other competitors, the likes of HOT, as you mentioned, and Cellcom on IBC, the other infrastructure, reminding you that both HOT and Cellcom are large shareholders of the other infrastructure, IBC.
Okay. Is that okay? Okay, so we have a follow-up from David Kaplan. David?
Hi. Yeah, just a couple more questions. I'll try and make them quick. Also following up on Andre and Sabina's questions about ARPU, but this time on the mobile side. Could you talk a little bit about the resiliency that we're seeing there, that Sabina talked about, in mobile ARPU? How much of that is coming from upgrades of customers to 5G? Obviously, it seems to have mitigated almost entirely the loss of roaming revenues. Is that the right way to think about it?
Yes, David, we have. We showed 60,000 of our customers this quarter, which transferred from 4G to 5G plans. Also, we also grew 11,000 customers in Pelephone. And so now we have 2.61 million customers. So the trends are: 5G, the transfer from 4G to 5G, and the growth, the growth in Pelephone at all. And also, as I mentioned, the Q1 is better on roaming services revenues than the last quarter of 2023. So those combined, making the output go higher.
Right. But given the realities, I imagine Q2 is gonna look a lot more like Q4 did, as opposed to Q1. We had a little bit of a lull there where we saw travel come back, but Q2 is probably gonna look pretty weak again. That aside, a question now just on the subscriber numbers for, on the Fixed Line side. So the retail, we saw retail subscribers at Bezeq reduced by about 9,000, but you also mentioned in your report that yes had increased almost 9,000 subs. Now, I assume it's not exactly one for one there, and I am also guessing, though, that copper, legacy copper customers of Bezeq are kind of low-hanging fruit for all of the players in the market. So how much...
How tough is the competition for those customers to move them over to fiber? What is Bezeq doing in order to mitigate losing those legacy customers to some of the other players? And how long or kind of, you know, where do you see that going in terms of, in terms of, benefits that might need to be offered in order to get people to stay with Bezeq?
I'll start, David. Thank you for the question. I'll start, you know, on the fact that we've been extremely focused on fiber and, you know, growing our fiber numbers. We've became now number one in the market. I think everyone now sees this in this quarter, and we plan to continue leading the market. From an economic standpoint, now, the acquisition of new customers, which are, is a significant share of the, of the customers on our fiber network, again, not, not the majority, obviously, but more than we expected, you know, brings us a much more value, you know, than those legacy customers, copper customers, that that are not churning for, for any reason, over. Are not, you know, shifting over to fiber.
Having said that, and, you know, Nir mentioned this several times, we plan also to focus on keeping and, you know, maintaining our market share on retail. In addition to that, we, as an infrastructure company, we benefit from the fact that we can, you know, work with our competitors, and even when they take some of these customers from our legacy copper network, we still benefit, in some cases, from revenues through the wholesale market. And the same happens also on the fiber wholesale market.
Okay, and then just one last question, this one on the financials, on the working capital. It was quite strong this quarter. I assume some of that had to do with timing. What do you see, how does that play out over the rest of the year, and how is that going to impact Free Cash Flow for the rest of this year?
So you're right, you're right. You know, most of it is, you know, timing differences. We got a, you know, reimbursement from the tax authorities in March. Last year, we got it in April. That, you know, it's about ILS 70 million-ILS 80 million difference. The increase in free cash flow was even higher than that, which, you know, reflects very strong performance across the group, despite the war. But again, I wouldn't, just, you know, multiply by four, you know, the quarterly free cash flow figure, but we are very satisfied with that and our ability, you know, to manage our finances, in the way that even the rating agencies, have appreciated it and, upgraded us after five years. That's not a minor thing.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Okay, if we still have more time for one more question, Liran Lublin?
Yeah.
Liran.
Hi, I'll make it quick. Just another question on fiber rollout. You mentioned that you will probably be ahead of your plans and roll out the fiber network faster than you projected. How should we think about CapEx in that matter? Maybe should we think of CapEx shifting from 2025 to 2024? I know you haven't changed your estimates for the year, but looking forward, rolling out fiber costs money and...
Yeah. So thank you for the question. We are, as you said, you know, advancing our rollout plans, and we see that we are being very efficient in deployment. So we are able actually to bring forward part of the end of the deployment phase of 2025 into 2024. It's not a significant or a material increase in the homes passed that we plan to reach, but as Thomas said before, we will surpass the 2.5 figure. And in terms of CapEx increase, again, it's not gonna be material, a couple dozen million ILS.
Yes, we will save that money in 2025, plus, you know, we will be able, you know, to create more opportunities for our customers to shift over to fiber and even to grow our market share in those areas where we plan now to accelerate the deployment. And last of all the motivations, you know, we will be able to start a bit earlier with some of our, you know, cost rationalization plans that we have in mind as we get to the end of this very big project.
Thank you.
You're welcome. If there are no further questions at this time, I would like to thank you all for taking the time to join us today. Should you have any follow-up questions, please feel free to contact our Investor Relations department. We look forward to speaking to you at our Capital Markets Day on July first. Thank you.