Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and I would like to welcome you to Orange Polska conference call, summarizing Q2 and H1 of 2023. My name is Leszek Iwaszko, and I'm in charge of investor relations. At this time, all participant lines are in a listen-only mode. The format of the call will be a presentation by the management team, followed by the Q&A session. Speakers for today will be Julien Ducarroz, the CEO of Orange Polska, and CFO, Jacek Kunicki. Now I will pass the line to Julien to begin the presentation.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome everyone, on our conference summarizing second quarter and the first half of 2023. Let me start with the key messages on page five. I'm pleased to say that our performance in Q2 maintained its good momentum. Our commercial performance was solid, given market condition and our focus on value. I'm especially pleased that ARPU dynamics has improved in Q2 in all key services. This is our special focus. We have further intensified our value strategy in the recent weeks. Our financial results in Q2 were very good across the board. Once again, thanks to excellent performance of our core business, we managed to mitigate inflation impact on our operating costs. Let me highlight particularly strong ICT revenues this quarter, which were boosted by a few project in the public sector for digitalization of health institution.
This is a good demonstration of our wide portfolio, our competencies, and diversification of our revenue. Our green agenda moved forward as planned, as we now source majority of our energy needs from our wind. Our CO2 emission reduction has accelerated. As you know, in June, telecom regulator finally announced long-awaited 5G auction in C-band spectrum. Obtaining the license will be a milestone for our business and will unlock new growth potential that we will benefit from in many years to come. Let's look at the next slide. Our performance in H1 has demonstrated that we continue to successfully execute our .Grow strategy. Our financial results were excellent. Revenue increased more than 6%. Apart from consistent, around 5% growth of revenue from core telecom services, it is worth to mention impressive more than 20% growth in ICT and equipment.
Equipment reflect shift in the customer demand to more expensive model and our attractive financing offer. In ICT, we were pleased to finally see some rebound in the demand from public sector. I already mentioned eHealth projects supporting us in Q2. More than 4% EBITDAaL growth is a remarkable achievement. It is, despite the environment, is challenging due to high inflation. Importantly, growth was generated by direct margin. This is healthy structure of growth, confirming our strong fundamentals. I'm pleased to say that on the back of the strong H1 result, we have upgraded our full- year guidance for revenue and EBITDAaL. H1 eCapEx were in line with our plans. It reflect higher year-on-year level of investment and very high proceed from disposal of assets, which were also very good in Q2.
I am confident that 2023 will be the third consecutive years of growth into our strategic plan. Let's look at our commercial activity on page seven. Our commercial performance in Q2 reflected continued solid customer demand, our focus on value, and intensive market competition. Growth of convergent customer maintained its solid, steady level from previous few quarters. It confirmed that customers appreciate the quality of our multi-service offer. In fibre, we continue to generate healthy growth of customer, reflecting that the landscape on the broadband market has changed over the past year. Larger number of players is a natural consequence of market development, largely in the open model, but we are also benefiting from that through our stake in FiberCo. In mobile, Q2 net addition were better than in Q1 on the back of our recent commercial action.
On the slide, you see comparison with Q2 of the previous year, where growth of mobile customer was exceptionally high due to the demand from Ukrainians. I am especially pleased that growth dynamic at ARPU improved this quarter in all key services. It's now growing faster in convergence, fixed broadband, and mobile. In growth, is now more than 4%. It is a consequence of getting not only in convergence, also in mobile. Please note, average cost to only tariff impact this incremental mobile services and contribute to convergence of we have as well, a higher share of fibre in our base and an increased popularity, speed, which drives up the ARPU. We have seen a 4% point increase of the higher speed tariff plan. As value initiative are increasing customer base. On top of that, we launched new initiative recently.
Let's look in greater detail on the next slide. Value strategy is a key factor to grow ARPU and protect our profitability in time of high cost inflation. We have several levels to implement it. Let's review the key one. We have actively pushed the more for more strategy in Poland since 2018. On the slide, you see some two example of the increase of price point since we launched .Grow strategic plan in mid-2021. They are always accompanied with additional benefit for the customer, more data, more content, and new services like cyber protection. Recently, we have completed, complemented our value strategy with two additional elements. Firstly, if the customer does not want to renew loyalty contract, the price automatically go up by PLN 10 a month.
We introduced it to a newly signed contract in September of last year. It will give us increasing benefit in the future. Secondly, in June this year, we have implemented CPI clauses. We decided to apply it to customer, where the CPI clauses end up on out of a loyalty contract. It affected a very limited number of customers. The number will grow in time. This specific mechanism is a kind of insurance policy for us in case of inflation was to stay longer. On the green, on the next. When presenting our full, we strongly reduce our CO2 in Scope 1 and 2 due to high level of contracted wind energy. After H1, this is happening. With almost 75% share of renewable energy, this emission dropped by 65% versus H1 last year.
We are on track to reach our strategic goal in 2025. It is important to note that we not only cut it because we have more wind in the mix, but we also continue to optimize our consumption. It dropped another 3% year-on-year in H1. It all greatly contribute to much lower growth of energy costs this year and make our business cleaner and more friendly to the environment. One of our PPA in is a short term, we are now actively looking for new opportunities to track more renewable energy for the future. We are also increasing our focus on Scope 3 CO2 emission. This emission are largely enhanced, this is a more difficult task for the Scope 3. The first energy used by customer to power home and mobile devices.
Given the country energy mix based strongly on fossil fuels, we are working to support our customer in their energy saving efforts. For example, we have introduced more energy efficient mode to home devices. Secondly, energy products for the devices we sell. Here, our main action are related to increasing circularity in our business model, starting from set-top boxes and modems, where we recycle already 90% of them. We are also looking into increasing buyback of handsets that we sell. That's all for me for now, and I hand the floor to Jacek.
Thanks, Julian. Good morning, everyone. Let's start the financial review on slide 11 with highlights of our performance. Our financial results in Q2 were strong across the board, with good growth of revenues, profitability and cash generation. The top line expanded by 5.5% year-on-year, with growth coming from all key business areas, including core telecom services, ICT and equipment. This drove our EBITDA to +3% year-on-year. Good profitability of revenues had more than offset the impact of inflation on indirect costs. Our net income in H1 improved by close to 40% year-on-year, thanks to solid EBITDA, proceeds from sale of real estate, and lower financial expenses. CapEx is on the low side this year, reflecting high proceeds from asset disposal and more evenly spread investments throughout the year.
Finally, cash flow generation strongly improved in Q2, thanks to working capital reduction, and this is at a very solid level after H1. As Julien mentioned, on the back of these results, we are now more positive on the full- year goals for revenues and EBITDA. Let's review our performance in more detail, starting with the top line. We're very satisfied with the revenue performance in Q2. The key drivers of the 5.5% year-on-year dynamics are largely consistent with previous quarters. Firstly, core telecom services continued their solid pace of growth, benefiting from simultaneous expansion of their customer bases and outputs. This is the main driver of our profitability. Secondly, IT/IS area had a particularly strong quarter, benefiting from a rebound in the demand from the public sector.
Wholesale revenues have increased by 14% year-over-year as we continue to capitalize on the demand for our infrastructure. Finally, equipment revenues rose by another 15%, reflecting the shift of customer demand for higher value handsets and also our value strategy, a trend that was already clearly visible in the first quarter of the year. The expansion of our core business was a key driver for operating profitability. Let's look at this on slide 13. Our EBITDA in Q2 increased by a solid 3.1% year-on-year. This growth has solid foundations, as it results from excellent performance of our core business. The direct margin expanded by more than 6% or PLN 100 million year-on-year in the second quarter, translating the good revenue growth into profits. This is critical for us in the time of high inflation.
The key element here is profitability of the core telecom services, which is increasingly benefiting from ARPU growth as a result of our value approach. Other important contributors are also wholesale services and equipment, with the latter delivering a particularly high margin in both quarters of this year. Indirect costs have increased 9% year-on-year, and there are two main elements of this. First, close to half of this increase in quarter two was due to certain non-recurring developments that decreased the comparable cost base in the second quarter of last year, of 2022. Secondly, as expected, our costs were affected by inflation, mainly coming from indexation of rental contracts and rise of prices of various external services. After the first half of the year, the EBITDA is higher by more than 4% year-over-year.
We're now confident that it will grow for the full year, marking the 3rd consecutive year of growth of EBITDA, throughout the strategic plan of Orange .Grow. Over to net income on slide 14. The net income for the 1st semester exceeded half a billion zloty, an increase almost 40% year-over-year. There were three key drivers for performance. First, the solid growth of EBITDA, which we have already discussed. Secondly, more than 60% higher gain of sale, on sale of assets, as we are optimizing our real estate portfolio. Not only does this bring cash in and profit, but it also frees up capital for CapEx and reduces our recurring operating costs of running those properties going forward. Finally, 30% less net finance costs.
The other key contributor were foreign exchange on the euro-dominated long-term leasing contracts, this is a result of the strengthening of the Polish zloty. Our interest payments were flat year-over-year, as slightly higher costs was compensated by the lower amount of debt. I'm very pleased that 2023 is another consecutive year in which growing operating profitability is translating into a solid bottom line improvement. We made major progress here in the two years, we intend to continue this. Switching over to CapEx on slide 15. Our economic CapEx in H1 was slightly lower year-on-year and was in line with our full- year plans. Higher level of investment spending was more than offset by strong proceeds sale of our properties that we no longer use. Higher CapEx spend largely reflects more evenly phased spending versus the one that we've observed last year.
In 2023, we do not expect such an accumulation of CapEx in quarter four as it happened in 2022. In the structure of CapEx, not surprisingly, mobile is gaining its share. We announced a refocus of CapEx from fibre to mobile in the .Grow plan. We have been actively preparing the network for the 5G technology already ahead of the auction. Together with the round of renewal projects that we do alongside the 5G rollout, we have already spent more than PLN 500 million on this. Much more will obviously be spent in the next three years after we receive. This demonstrates that we are already quite advanced in this capital, and we are well prepared to launch the 5G technology services. Over to cash on page 16.
We're satisfied with our cash, it was [audio distortion] PLN 420 million, slightly than last year, practically for one reason, I mean, more than PLN 300 million higher payments for CapEx from 2022, which was more back-end loaded, which we do not this year. It improved in the second quarter that payment. A quarter ago, I mentioned that we plan to extend the securitization of receivables related to sale of and in installments. The first step in this direction in Q2, we plan more by the year end. Our balance sheet remains very sound, with financial leverage at 1.1x at the end of June, it does not yet include the dividend that we paid last week. This is our assets in current turbulent times and before the start of the 5G auction.
Our effective cost of the existing financing space is just over 3%. It's because around 90% is hedged against interest rate movements at today's cost of debt that we see in the balance sheet. Important part of this hedge is due in H1 of next year, but more than 50% is hedged all the way until 2026. You can see this structure on the bottom right-hand side of the slide. Of course, any new financing we may be drawing will reflect current interest rates, market interest rates environment. This is all from me. Thank you for your attention, and I hand the floor back to Julien for the conclusions.
Thank you, Jacek. On our last slide summary, page 18, let me briefly summarize our key focus for the next months. Our H1 performance demonstrated that we are well executing our .Grow strategy. We deliver what we promise. We are able to grow and meet or even exceed our objective, despite a challenging macro environment and intensive competition. We maintain focus on relentless execution of our commercial strategy based on value and as well, our cost transformation initiative. The most important development for us and the entire industry in H2 will be 5G auction. We are looking forward to it. In the meantime, we are preparing our network for the rollout, which we will start as soon as we receive the new license.
To finish, as you know, I will be leaving Orange Polska at the end of August to take over leadership of Orange Romania. I'm very proud that I was part of this organization in the past three years. We have successfully developed and implemented the growth strategy that is approving, that is proving resilient for external headwinds. We have strong core business and capital to adapt to rapidly changing environment. We put green and social responsibility to the core of our strategy. I'm particularly pleased that we were in a position to return to sustainable dividend payment. I'm happy as well that my successor will be Liudmila Climoc . We are currently working on a smooth transition and over on the 1st of September.
Let me as well conclude a big thank you to all of you on the call for the interesting and challenging discussion we had over the last three years. Now, we finish our presentation, and we open the floor for question.
Thank you. We will be now moving into the Q&A session. If you dialed in via the phone and would like to ask a question, please press star two on your keypad and wait for your name to be called. You may also ask a voice question using the web platform. Once again, if you would like a question, please press star two on the keypad or press the question button on the web platform. The first question is coming from Dmitry Vlasov from WOOD & Company. Dmitry, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yeah, one, thank you very much for the presentation and congratulations on the results. I have two questions from my company this time. The first one is on the CapEx. What should be the total CapEx related to replacement of remaining lead- covered cables in your network? That's the first question. The second one, is new Gen AI as an opportunity to accelerate automation and cost optimization.
Thank you for your question. On the lead cable, let's be clear on this. For us, it's a very tiny part of our cable, is less than 1% on which they are in the ground. Since 1993, that was stopped and replaced by copper, and then later on, fibre, which is now the all what we are developing. At time, those cable are being removed, and most of them are in a secure and closed area, being duct or concrete infrastructure. For us, this is part of the natural change of our network, and we are complying to all law in place. The second question on AI.
Yes, certainly, this is something we are embracing largely in the company, and I would say that it's part of our digital transformation of the company, which AI came on top of what we were doing already since the Orange.one plan, and we accelerated in the .Grow around automatization, robotization of our processes and now generate AI. We certainly see for our very good ICTs, where we know we are a partner for the digital transformation. Certainly, a new wave of growth coming in the ICT business, where Orange and its affiliate BlueSoft see an opportunity to step into this GenAI revolution.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. next question coming from the line of Dominik Niszcz from Trigon. Dominik, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Dominik from Trigon here. 2 questions from me. The first I would like to ask about your fibre clients. There was a slowdown in terms of new additions of clients in the second quarter. Do you attribute it to more aggressive offer of Play and UPC, and maybe to more competitive pressure from other players? What do you expect in the upcoming quarters? Do you expect to return to, like, this 50,000 clients or it's kind of beginning of some slowdown here?
Yeah, thank you for your question. Confirm the number that we have seen a slowdown compared to last year. It's a mix of drivers that I will describe. The first one, and I mentioned in my comment, this is, as you know, if we compare to last year, I would say the open market model of infrastructure is more present than it used to be a few years back. There is, if we look at the topology of the new build, which is a fishing pool in which you convert into a growth side of fibre, there is much more open infrastructure coming from the completion of the previous POPC, you know, the infra players that continue to build.
Us, you're very well known that we switch our model as of last year to an open model as well when it come to a new build. We are, I would say, fishing in the same pond as the rest of the market, so naturally there has been a slowdown. You mentioned as well, Play and UPC, and we know, and you know, on the market that for them, it was their official, I would say, rebranding, or I would say, to continue on to the Play. They made a good offer, both on their mobile subscriber and as well on their fixed of [audio distortion] UPC to get the second leg, so either the mobile or the fixed.
You probably notice as well that our new commercial is more on. We do agree that there's been a slowdown, equally, as you know, that on, on value. At the same time, we continue to push for it, and I think our latest commercial is showing that we want to keep our leadership in this area. That in the future, the market is more open. As well, we have a stake in FiberCo, so when there is a connection coming from a third party on our own infrastructure, we have the ability to it. I think it's part of the plan, and we are very happy with the growth of ARPU.
As you know, the game of volume and value is an unstable equilibrium that we have to maintain. I think that's what we've done on H1, and we to work on H2.
Okay, thank you. Yeah, actually, we saw this healthy revenues, as you mentioned on slide 12, that are also growing through this idea.
Yeah.
Compensate—
Yeah
The retail side. On the second question is about agreements for an indefinite period. We have a lot of clients still on this agreement. They are lagging in terms of ARPU growth, I guess. They pay much lower fees than your average client. We understand that you introduced this price hikes after two-year contracts expiry, but it was only starting from the year 2022. The question is: What's your current strategy to move this group to higher tariffs? Do you expect that this group is getting smaller in the next quarters?
I mean, our strategy is through our portfolio, while those customers might have some of them a lower ARPU coming from the back, as you know, the market and Orange has started more for more, and what as well we said was the market prepared to increase the prices. Those who joined way back are obviously on a lower one. Equally, what we have been doing in our more for more strategy was to offer more content, more data, and lately, the cybersecurity. I do expect that in the future, and this is what we are working on, that those customers, especially if they will upgrade their handset, will come back and we contact them regularly to upgrade.
Once they have upgraded or make a new contract, they will have the clauses included, and their tariff will be higher. I think the demonstration on the ARPU growth is showing that the machine is working, but it's a machine that will take time to unfold on the total base. It's not over the night that we have done this increase. Unless we continue at this pace, we will be very satisfied in term of growth, because this is going in our direct margin, and I think this is a sustainable growth that we have put the company back on since the double strategic plan.
Yeah, even if you look at the free to go base, the base that is outside the loyalty contract, it is a rolling base. You always have this base including some clients that are out of loyalty con, while clients that have stayed on their own, having to renew their contract with us. 'Cause if you look on the current offering that we have, you know, the PLN 55 PLN tariff plan, it includes 30 GB of data. If you were to compare this to a plan, I don't know, four, five, six years ago, it was probably, you know, 10 GB of data, maybe 7 GB of data. This is, you know, of the average consumption and the speed and the use means that it's no longer for customers, and they will want to.
It's a natural tendency that they need to be able to have, well, the value that they need. This is the point in touch. They will also switch to the current market pricing for the value that they want, the value that this is being sold at. This free to go base is naturally evolving because of the handset, but also because of the, you know, growing needs of the customers for data, for content, for security, and for other features that are part of our offering.
Okay. Great. Thank you for your answers.
Next, questions will be coming from the line of Paweł Puchalski from Santander. Paweł, your line is open.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes. Please go ahead.
Okay. Congrats on the results and on ARPUs, first of all. Well, my question, number one would be on working capital. It was quite erratic in first half of 2023. What should we expect at working capital in second half? Strong positive, strong negative, neutral? That'd be the question number one. Shall I ask all the three questions or?
Yeah, go ahead. Shoot, Paweł.
Okay. The other question would be, you mentioned 5G auction and 5G rollout. Assuming auction is finalized till December 2023, what would be your eCapEx, including 5G rollout in years 2024, 2025? That would be the second question. The third question, while we all appreciate upgrade of your top line and EBITDA guidance, in my opinion, much more important would be info on dividends. Would you say that if Orange Polska net debt-to- EBITDA ratio is at or below 1.5x at year end 2025, sorry, 2023, you would increase your 2024 dividend per share?
Thank you, Paweł, for those questions. I will start with the working capital one. Here, I wouldn't call it the working erratic, so we will have a, you know, different definition of this. If the absolute number of the working capital, rather from the balance sheet perspective, and you take a look at more than Q1, Q2, but also the H2 of last year, it was actually built up working capital, because we have started to sell more handsets, more valuable handsets, and we are making very good revenues and profits on the sale of those. We sell those in most for a 36-month installment contracts, while other payment conditions to buyers without a long-term installment plan. That requires working capital.
This is why working capital is on an elevated level, if you were to ask me, you know, to judge the balance sheet position. We have improved this in quarter two by extending the scope of the factoring. We're working to make sure that we further reduce it in H2. In short, the plan is to further reduce working capital in the second half of the year. You know, it really does result from very healthy growth of the business that is delivering solid profits. Going to the 5G CapEx plan.
As you remember, when we presented the growth strategy two years indicated that the CapEx for 5G rollout, but also together with renewal project that we need to have on the radio access network, should peak in the year 2023, 2024, at the level of roughly PLN 400 million to PLN 0.5 billion yearly. That was obviously, this was delayed because the 5G auction was delayed, this shifts to 2024 and 2025. Okay. Nonetheless, you know, we reiterate the CapEx estimates provided in the strategic plan guidance, that is definitely, you know, confirmed for the years 2021- 2024.
On the other hand, what I think we should note is we've been actively preparing the network for the 5G rollout, for the RAN renewal. From 2021, if you are to look at the CapEx spending until the end of this year, so the CapEx 2021, 2022 and full year 2023, we will have spent close to PLN 700 million on this already, within, you know, by the end of this year. What we estimate that we will spend another, let's say, PLN 1.1 billion over the next three years for the project of 5G rollout plus the RAN renewal.
I think this will peak in the year 2024, 2025, as we wish to launch those services as quickly as possible and to roll them out to ensure the, you know, the coverage and the quality with a much lower amount in 2026. I think this demonstrates that we're already quite advanced in this CapEx cycle, while we have kept eCapEx at the low end of our guidance right now. We did guide for PLN 1.7 billion-PLN 1.9 billion on average guidance during the .Grow plan, we are significantly at the low end. I think, you know, regarding the CapEx going forward, we stick to the usual practice of guiding in February for the exact CapEx of the next year.
I will not, you know, guide right now exactly what will be the CapEx for 2024. I think, you know, regarding the dividends, I would say, first of all, we're happy to have been able to first reinstate the dividend and then to have been able to increase it this year, from last year to this year by 40%. I think that really underscore our long-term commitment to remunerate our shareholders. That's my first point. In detail, we always make a decision about the dividend in February, when we summarize the previous year's results, and we recommend the dividend to be paid out of those results.
Obviously, we will need to wait until February for the decision regarding the management's recommendation on this. It's not an exact topic of, you know, for today. Our policy remains unchanged. The PLN 0.35 gross per share that was paid this year out of last year's result remains the floor. We will always look for the financial projections regarding our ability to deliver operating profitability and organic cash flow going forward. I think this is important, and that's why we're happy to be making progress on this year after year, to be able to deliver growth. We will take a look at it again in February when analyzing the decision.
Obviously, the second item is the structure of our balance sheet with the long-term leverage corridor that we wish to have between 1.7x to 2.2x net debt-to- EBITDA. We can clearly see that right now we are below this level. We are ahead of the 5G auction, and we always need to take a look at the at least two -, three-year horizon to have the longer term vision of where this leverage might be at. These will be the key metrics that we will take a look at when deciding the dividend. I repeat, we are committed to share, you know, the good results with our shareholders.
We are happy to have been able to first reinstate and then increase the dividend that was paid this year out of last year's result. You know the mechanisms, you know the logic that we follow. Now, I think we need to patiently wait for the outcome of the auction, patiently wait for us to deliver the results of this year, to give you the guidance for next year, and then to make a decision about the specific, you know, the dividend decision that we will take and communicate in February of next year. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
You're welcome. Next, questions will be coming from the line of Nora Nagy from Erste Bank. Nora, your line is open.
Thank you. Hi, thanks for the presentation. I have two questions from my side, please. Firstly, on the guidance, we saw a pretty solid first half performance for both revenues and EBITDA, your upgraded guidance reflects some slowdown of the trends in second half. What are the drivers behind it? Secondly, could you please share with us the outlook for the IT segment, apart from AI, what we've just heard a couple of minutes ago? Can we also expect further public IT projects to come this year? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for those questions, Nora. I will take the first one. I will let Julien comment on the last question. I think regarding the guidance, in short, we can clearly see that when we started the year, we had a lot of uncertainty, you know, vis-a-vis, first, what will be the inflation impact? How stable or unstable will be the economy and the hard landing? How will the business sector perform? Some of those fears have materialized, like inflation, but we've been really good and successful at outgrowing this inflation by good commercial activity that is visible in the direct margin. The upgrade of the guidance that we wanted to make was to reflect this and to let you know that we are clearly aiming for growth of revenues and for growth of the EBITDA.
You know, that then you may, you may compare it to H1 or to Q2 or to Q1, which was quite spectacular in terms of also the non-recurring nature of some benefits in Q1. The overall message that we want to send you through this guidance is that we are confident to achieve growth of revenues and growth of operating profitability. This is what we wish to share with you today, that the growth is out of the question. It's being confirmed by good trends and good outlook for the second quarter of the year. You always find challenges that lie ahead.
You will always find revenue lines or parts of the business which are not fully recurring, like equipment sales or like ICT sales, which are not in nature, a subscription based services. You know, you might call us being a bit cautious, but the message, underlying message that we wanted to give is we're clearly aiming for growth of both top line and the operating profitability. Julien, on the—
Yes. On the ICT, so, as I commented, so first of all, very strong result in H1.
Supported as well by some special project. We mentioned eHealth, but we had other as well project. Now, as Jacek said, this is not a subscription-based model. We are sometime dependent on either public fund or special project, so this is very hard to forecast. Nevertheless, the track record that we have in ICT is showing that we have constantly deliver double-digit growth in this area, and we don't see that slowing down. The need of digitalization is very much present on the market. As I mentioned, I do see and share with the leadership in our ICT company, that GenAI is a clearly a new wave of growth, and we see a lot of demand from our client.
First, we have an assessment, and potentially later on to develop a solution. This is something we are building, we are training, we are hiring people with those skill. As you might have seen in the last month, there was a Computerworld publication for the ranking of the IT and ICT domain in Poland, and all our affiliate has been ranked in the top of those table. However, what you see as well on this market, it's a very fragmented market, that the leader is having a few percent market share.
This is as well an area that we are continuously looking, as we stated in our strategy, that we are open for M&A still on ICT, as well as we are in the, in the cable, small cable operator. This is two area that obviously our P&L and balance sheet is allowing us to look at. We are looking currently, and we will update you once we have a conclusion. Clearly, as we stated in .Grow, this is one of the strongest engine of growth we have in our plan. We see we did the right choices in the past to acquire BlueSoft Craftware.
We do wish to grow them, but as well, to look for additional opportunity if they are relevant and sustainable for our business.
Thanks very much.
Our next question will be coming from the line of Rohit Modi from Citi , please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. Most of my questions have been answered. Maybe just follow up on the fibre market? As you mentioned, there has been a lot of overbuild in the fibre market. Does that change your CapEx envelope, you know, CapEx targets for both for group and as well as FiberCo in future? Secondly, does the overlap also open opportunities to co-invest in the areas where you don't have fibre? Also, is there an opportunity for M&A in the fibre space? Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you for your question. I think, I mean, for me, the point I made on the fibre is not so much the overlap, but it's more if we look at the new build that is coming on the competition, but as well company such as obviously, which investment and by vehicle are in a low competition area. The overbuild is not the main issue. You were a second point on, so there was the overbuild of the—t he second part of the question?
Question, CapEx guidance. The CapEx guidance that we have, both for this year is intact. We confirm it. The same for the long-term guidance of the .Grow, which was 1.7x to 1.9x on average, between 2021 to 2024. We confirm it, after, you know, two years, it was clear that we are heading for the lower end of the guidance. It's also clear, taking into account the guidance that we have for this year, that, well, because the 5G auction was delayed, we will be heading for the lower end of the long-term guidance. This is absolutely secure from my perspective. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. It appears we have no further questions on the line. Thank you very much for the call, and enjoy the rest of the summer, and see you back in October. Bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye. Have a nice day.