Thank you, everyone, for attending. I think I know mostly everyone here, but for those who do not, my name is David Wright. I run the telecom franchise here at Bank of America. Delighted to have with me Liberty Global, of course, Mike Fries, CEO. Always delighted to introduce Mike, who is an ex-competitor of mine, so always welcome. Michael, can you come here? Never come. Have we graduated to Michael in the...
Quite a while, too.
Okay. Mike, thanks so much for coming. If you don't mind, I'll wind you back. It's not far off, 18 months since the full year results and the strategy reset, we might have called it at the time. And you identified the five things at the time that you were planning to do. One of them has been undoubtedly successful, which is the Sunrise spin, where not far off the same share price as we were before, but with a handsome dividend paid to investors. You can probably leave that one where it is. I guess you'd regard that as a success.
Come on, give me a shot here.
Okay.
I got to take a victory lap.
Okay. Listen, why don't we start with that one? I think it was a very successful spin. Like I said, the share price is not far off where it was.
We're up 20% the last 12 months.
If you add those two together, but I assume people know what we're talking about. If not, I'll spend a minute. And you're referencing our year-end call a year ago, right? Where I think the main message was, "Enough is enough." Sense of urgency here on my part, John's part, try to unlock value for shareholders. The first thing we did, or committed to do, and it took us seven months to do it, was to spin off our Swiss subsidiary, which we did on a tax-free basis. In our stock, Sunrise was probably trading at the same multiple as everything else, 5.5 times, as a Swiss company is trading at 8 times, with a roughly 8% dividend yield, tax-free to Swiss shareholders. The dividend yield is tax-free.
You add that stock price into the Liberty stock price for up about 20% over the last 12 months. That is not the end game. That is just one, as you pointed out, one of four or five things we identified as critical tactical steps to try to unlock value. I think it has worked. One thing we did, which is important to point out, is in addition to just saying we are going to spin it off, and let me add that what sets us apart from other telcos, I do not know who you are talking to this week, probably everybody, is we have the ability to do that all day long. We can spin stuff up tax-free everywhere. That might seem like, well, everybody can do that. Not necessarily. It is not simple stuff.
Having successfully done that, I think it gives us credibility for other things we might decide to do. We put EUR 1.5 billion into the asset to deleverage pre-spin. That was also a form of a dividend, really, because that was cash on our balance sheet, which we handed to shareholders by reducing the debt and increasing the equity value of that dividend. I think it has worked. That is an example, just one example, of how we intended to continue to unlock value here. I looked at your questions ahead of time. One of them, "What's the future, Global?" Fair question, but I'll tell you something. If it is $12.40, which is your price target, I am going to be really disappointed. That is up 30%, by the way, and you still have us as underperform. I do not know why. Because we are committed.
I think we have the flexibility, the will to do things that a lot of telcos do not do. We sold those assets to Vodafone 12 times. Some people would never sell assets. We spun off Switzerland. That is like descaling. Who would do that? I think we are in a position, whether it is Liberty Telecom, Liberty Growth, or Liberty Services, we will talk about all three, I imagine, to try to unlock value for sure. That is the main narrative.
What I thought I might do is if we think about, and you've kind of given an indication of the ability to spin assets, etc., I guess with the Sunrise asset, it was kind of in a nice shape. It had a fairly defined strategy. I went to the CMD. It was very comprehensive. I think if we think about some of the other core assets, whether that be Holland, whether that be the U.K., or whether that be Belgium, they're more work in progress. I think we could probably agree on that to begin with. I guess one of the most recent presentations that your management has given is on the, let's call it a reset as well at VodafoneZiggo, right? You've revitalized the strategy there or reset the strategy a little.
I wonder if you could talk to us a little about the genesis of that, what you felt maybe was not working, and the measures you are taking to put in place.
Yeah. This is our joint venture with Vodafone in Holland, relatively big business, roughly equal in size to KPN in everything except B2B. We do not have the same enterprise business they do, but roughly, if you look side by side, we are equivalent businesses on consumer, fixed, and mobile. For seven years, we have been in this joint venture. John likes to say I had two Catholic marriages. That is one of them. We can talk separately about what that might mean down the road. I think it became clear that while we had done pretty well, competed effectively, we were at an inflection point. We brought Stephen in, Stephen van Rooyen, who you may know, ran Sky for, was at Sky for 17 years. I basically said to him, "Clean sheet of paper here.
You tell us what you think about the asset, the market, the opportunity. How do we go out and win? How do we stop ghosting here?" I think he came back with four recommendations, all of which are spot on. Number one, our prices are too high. If you look at our overall ARPU in that market, we are higher than KPN. The front book needs to start matching the market. We have started that already. We are seeing already benefits in churn. Secondly, the way we were working as an organization, not to get into the operating model issues, but there was not a winning culture. It was a little bit stagnant in terms of how we were making decisions, etc., etc. I think he has really opened people's eyes to how a competitive market ought to be managed and run.
He's committed, I think correctly, and we'll debate this happily, to DOCSIS in that marketplace, which is the right answer. I only have to give you one stat. We can get to 8 gig across 7 million homes for 90% less than it costs to do fiber. Just write that down. It's all you need to know. 90% less than it costs to get to, let's say, 8-10 gig on fiber, we can get there on DOCSIS in Holland by 2026, at least launching the 8 gig product by 2026. We were Vodafone, we were all sort of spinning around that subject. We're really saying it's good. He said, "Look, in the Dutch market, people care about speed and price. They don't care about technology." We're already twice as fast as the average. We already have a customer.
Our average customer has twice the speed as the average Dutch customer today. That includes our numbers in it. We are already the best network, highest quality network, fastest network. We can go from one to two by the end of this year, almost 2 gig everywhere, to 4-8 in a relatively quick period of time for 90% less. Let's repeat that and make sure you get it. It costs to build fiber. So EUR 1,000 to EUR 100 or less. Once we commit to that and we stop dilly-dallying around a little bit with M&A and these sorts of things. Lastly, we have some really strong things here. The brands are strong. We have a strong flanker brand. We have a very strong premium brand in mobile and fixed. We have sports, fantastic sports business there that we do not have anywhere else.
We're massively converged. We need to benefit and take advantage of that. We have great loyalty programs with the Ziggo Dome and stuff. We really had all the bits and pieces to drive the more commercial side of things. We're letting go. What that means, and I think we said it on the call, is that means VodafoneZiggo, instead of doing, "It's going to do one of these." This year, we had to reset guidance because when you start to reset prices and things of that nature, there are impacts. We're in it to win it over the long term. I say this all the time. We run these businesses as if we'll own them forever. You have to make decisions that you think are the best for the business over the long term.
That's what we're doing in that marketplace.
If I was.
Oh, it's a highly rational market. I don't know. I see somebody wrote down AltNets, who was in here before me. We don't have that shit. Sorry. We're not broadcasting, right? We don't have that stuff in Holland. There's KPN, and then there's two private equity-led groups that don't even overbuild each other, one of whom has 800,000 homes in areas where we don't have network when we've signed a wholesale deal with them. Highly rational marketplace. They're really a duopoly marketplace, which you don't see in many other places, this country included. A lot of positive characteristics.
Somewhat amusingly, we do have AltNets in the U.K., and it was BTC of.
Okay. Just about that little.
It says AltNets suck, no doubt.
Okay.
We'll come back to it. If I was to challenge you a bit on the VodafoneZiggo strategy, what it does have is quite a lot of leverage. When you have price down, price down comes with a high margin, high operational leverage, which drops through quite heavily to the free cash flow line. I accept that 4.0 is, I don't know, we're saying EUR 100 a home instead of EUR 1,000 a home for.
Yeah, including connection costs.
Give or take.
That's within our existing CapEx envelope.
Is it the right thing for VodafoneZiggo to be paying a dividend?
That is a complicated question because we must have people from the credit side in here as well. That is historically what we have done. We have taken free cash, and we have dividended out to shareholders. If we do not, I mean, it gets caught up in some governance issues. If we do not agree on that, it goes back to last year. We are at an interesting inflection point on leverage. I do not disagree with you. With the reset on EBITDA, the leverage is higher than we would like it. We have to be thoughtful about how we maintain. We did announce on the call, which I think maybe many of you might have listened to, that we have already hired somebody to sell the towers. That will be EUR 600 million-EUR 700 million. We will intend to reduce leverage with those proceeds because we have never sold the towers there.
There are property assets that could be worth something that could be monetized. I think, and we in Vodafone agree on that. I think we both recognize, hey, we have to start being thoughtful about leverage in this context.
I've always thought about when I've thought about VodafoneZiggo. I mean, I remember being at the Ziggo IPO, but it always seems to me there's a lot more Liberty DNA in that market than maybe Vodafone DNA. Do you need to resolve governance, or is it we've seen the odd headline? I don't expect you to obviously comment on that. As a joint venture, is the realistic option for this asset in the long term?
No. No. Probably not for this market either. These were just like Vodafone will realize in this country with its recently completed deal. These are not great long-term situations. In the case of VodafoneZiggo, we passed through the IPO. There is a soft put, right? There are things we could do. As partners, we have a good relationship. We talk about these things all the time. Longer term, I think they would agree as well. Something has to give here.
Okay.
They can't buy us because, I don't think they can. You'd have to make your own conclusion on that. They can't absorb the leverage. I don't see how they could without impacting potentially their, maybe it's small enough they wouldn't care. I don't know. You would know better than me.
I guess it's a segue into one of your other strategic proposals, which is the creation of the Benelux Co. We can obviously talk about Telenet as a separate standalone business, but I think one of the theories we always had, and I think I even spoke to Charlie about this on stage a couple of years ago, is that bringing the two assets together under the Benelux Co. could even derive some synergy, specifically fiscal synergy. Am I thinking about that the right way?
Sure. Yeah. I think we said that on that conference call you referenced, which was 15-16 months ago. We said that was one of our strategies. Why? Two countries, contiguous, similar languages, at least Flanders and the Netherlands, rational markets. I think over EUR 3 billion of EBITDA would make us bigger than KPN. There are synergies market to market. It could be an interesting opportunity. For sure, we put that out there. It may still be an interesting opportunity. To achieve that, certain other things have to happen. If I could convince Vodafone to roll their equity into that, that would be great. I can do it.
Yeah. Listen, I mean.
Based on what may or may not happen in Spain, maybe she'll do that. I do not think that's a great outcome for them in Spain when they sell something for EUR 500 million and it gets bought at EUR 7 billion or whatever the number's going to be. You know what I mean? Whereas we could give them. So who knows? But look, they'll make their own decisions. I am not foreshadowing anything here because I can promise you there's nothing to foreshadow at this point. Just theoretically, that would be something they should consider. That is an option. That's an option. I would not hang my hat on it, but it's an option.
Now let's drop that for into Telenet. Again, another asset that I remember IPOing, showing my age as well in this particular one. Great asset. It's quite curious what you guys are potentially doing with Proximus.
Yeah.
Can you talk a little bit more and maybe a bit of education?
Listen, it's curious, and it's also highly encouraging for regulatory people who, God forbid, spend time thinking about regulators around here. I'll just lead into it for a minute. I mean, I've been operating in this part of the world for 30-plus years. Regulators have been on our throats almost that entire time, certainly the last 15 years. For the first time in a very long time, maybe ever, they're slowly starting to step off. Whether that's the Draghi report or Trump or AI sovereignty.
Change in personnel.
Change. Who knows what it is, but you can see it here in this market. I think this government's quite clear. Regulators will not get in the way of growth, and they're acting on that, which is super. I think Europe is doing the same thing, trying to create industrial policy, hopefully righting the wrongs of overregulation in the telecom space, which I'm not going to rehearse because you all know it too well. One example David's referencing in the Belgium market, we compete with Proximus. It's pretty much a duopoly there. We had committed to building fiber across 70% of Flanders, 4 million homes. We were going. We're moving. We've created the Netco. We've separated the businesses. They had a fiber JV with EQT that was falling apart.
With the government owning half their equity, not surprisingly, we got a phone call saying, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't overbuild each other. Maybe what we should do is just have one fiber network." You can kind of see this in France a little bit too. We will continue to the deal we have, we hope to announce shortly, will see us essentially using each other's networks. We'll still build quite a bit of fiber. They'll build quite a bit of fiber. We won't overbuild each other, except in one section of the country where we're largely already there. For the vast majority of the country, we won't overbuild each other. We'll use each other's networks, which obviously has the benefit of giving this entity we call Wire, our Netco there, basically 100% market share of wholesale.
Orange is the really primary wholesale customer, and they're ours exclusively. That's kind of what was the final straw when we announced that Orange was going to exclusively use our fiber network because they're already on our HFC network as a wholesaler, whole buyer. I think Proximus realized, "Okay, there's nowhere for us to go." If we get it done and it passes market tests, it'll be a highly rational Netco, one of the most attractive infrastructure assets in Europe, which we've already separated out. That would be an interesting value creation opportunity.
Right. I was going to say that that's one potential second derivative of this particular transaction is that you've isolated a much, much higher value opportunity.
Yeah. I think that's right. I know that's right. Yeah.
Interesting. I guess U.K., possibly the most contentious with quite a few moving parts. Operationally, we've obviously seen some pressure on the ARPU. I think that's a sense of the spin down from the TV customer base. It hasn't helped the EBITDA as much. Still, that's compromised your ability to maybe take price or at least realize some of the price that's being taken in the high inflation period of the U.K. market. How would you categorize the sort of wider performance of VMO2?
Yeah. On the ARPU point, first of all, it's not apples to apples, which I think you've kind of indicated there a little bit. Our ARPU includes video on 50% of our broadband base. Our broadband base is paying us more than other broadband bases. At least Sky would be more comparable. Can't compare us to others, really. By the way, having 50% of our broadband base take video is a great thing. Even though we're obviously slowly losing them, they're sticky, and some will never leave. They really like the innovation that we're delivering in terms of the entertainment platform, and they want a provider that has all the apps on it, etc., etc. I think that's a positive thing. The other thing I'd remind you of is our average broadband speed today is 400 meg. The market sits at 200.
Our customers are getting more for more. They are getting more for more. In that context, we have seen four consecutive quarters of ARPU increases in the fixed business, which is great. One, 2%, not huge, but we've been taking ARPU up. The reason is we did take some price in April, GBP 3.50. Secondly, we've got tools that are really working well to retain customers when they call and when these hyper-personalized tools, the AI-based tools, are starting to work extremely well. I think the ARPU picture looks good for us. The volume picture, not as good, right? Because AltNets are slightly desperate, and they're pricing their products to drive whatever little bit of penetration they can get. I'm not saying it's a last gasp, but it's close to it. We have to suffer that.
We're not going to chase them down. Volume might be different. You're not going to see us chase AltNet pricing. I would imagine ET would say the same thing. Vodafone would say the same thing. Vodafone's already pretty cheap. We're not going to chase AltNet pricing down. We're going to start to use that same AI platform for proactive recontracting, which I think is also going to be a positive. I feel pretty good about the fixed business overall. I think Lutz and the team have really got the secret sauce sorted out. It's not just a retention tool, but also potentially a proactive recontracting tool. That'll serve us really well as we continue through this rough patch of broadband volatility. The ARPU continues to inch up, and that's a positive.
Now, on the mobile side, there's obviously this quite exciting dynamic, which is the spectrum you've taken from the Vodafone-Hutch merger. Obviously, Vodafone and Hutch have presented themselves very much as this creates the best network in the U.K. I'm sure O2 and EE don't just stand back and watch. You've obviously taken some spectrum from them. How should we be thinking maybe a little bit about the CapEx curve or what can you do, do you think, to sort of defend a business more?
I mean, the spectrum's a big one. I think it brings us to roughly 30%, which is great in this new environment. I think we've said publicly we got GBP 700 million we've put into the mobile network. We have been investing for the last couple of years, really, over-indexing on the network quality. It has nothing to do with the fact that when I moved here two years ago, my O2 service wasn't very good. I wasn't the only customer.
There's still room to improve.
Yeah. That's my point. It's a beloved brand. We have a great customer base, loyal. We have to deliver. That message has been given to the management team loud and clear. They have invested a ton, not just in network, but also in products and innovation, right? Giffgaff now has a broadband product. We can tackle that sector of the market really effectively. There are lots of offers, and we are going to invest meaningfully in the O2 brand. You will see that coming out. O2 is a great brand. We want to get that brand better positioned than it has been the last few years. The MVNOs have done what AltNets have done, right? They are taking all the share because it is low cost. Consumers, in the end, I think, remain relatively loyal to great brands and great quality of service and quality of network.
That's what we'll focus on.
Big mergers have often, during the integration stage, there does tend to be a bit of a churn pool out there. Is there an opportunity to go maybe and grab a little?
Potentially. Yeah. I mean, I think I'm sure they've had 18 months to work on not having that happen, but let's see. You're right. T
hat can be an issue.
They've had a long time. Okay. Now on to the network infrastructure in the U.K. We've obviously got the Coax network and the plans to overbuild fiber now. We've then got Next Fiber. And Next Fiber more recently sort of guided down a little bit on the ambition or maybe just slowed the ambition. Can you talk about why that was the case?
I think we've been quite straight up about the fact that our partner has decided to revisit some of the strategic decisions of the prior leadership team, which is their prerogative, by the way. Like I said on the call, if the tables were turned, I would ask for the same thing. Every new management team needs a shot at rethinking what's happened. We'll give them that time, and we'll react when they come back with what their position is. Clearly, one of the things that they were reacting to was the Netco conversations we were having, the Next Fiber structure, all these things. We have agreed to pause that, which I think in this room, I would say, is highly unfortunate. I understand it, and we'll support it.
Because not only was Nova going to help deliver VMO2, help create a currency for consolidation, but it was going to raise capital, really accretive prices.
You had some good interest.
To accelerate fiber rollout and get us into wholesale. It was like five things, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We will wait to see what they think long term about this market, number one, and about the asset, number two. We are kind of on hold. In that context, Next Fiber is a pretty significant commitment of capital. We are happy to make that investment. We just made a big road of big check. They have got two, will have it in the year, 2.2-2.3 million homes. VMO2 is penetrating those homes. These are greenfield homes. The VMO2 network reaches, let's say, 16-17 million homes today with HFC and some fiber through the upgrade. Then these 2.2 million homes that Next Fiber has been building with our French partner.
Just in the last six months, they really started to accelerate the penetration of that greenfield territory, which I think is helpful, but it has been a little slower than we thought. Also, important to remember that VMO2 is providing quite a bit of services and value to Next Fiber in the form of construction services, IT, etc. Next Fiber is a super asset-light platform. The decision to put capital is easier for us when money is coming both directions. Not as easy for our French partner. We are at an inflection point here, but I think we are good through the year end, and we will see how the bigger questions I just addressed with Telefónica sort themselves out.
I mean, I think what confused me a little, and I cover Telefónica, is I agree with what you've said. The Netco concept had so many obvious advantages. What I don't quite understand is why they would want to pause that.
I think it, look, I mean, this isn't Chatham House rules, I imagine, so.
You know.
I can, let me surmise it. I'll give you my sense of it. I think there's a couple of things at play there. Number one is the guy who took Enrique's role, who's the number two now in the company. His CEO comes from the defense industry, brand new to the telecom sector, but it's not rocket science. He'll figure it out. He's a very smart guy. What he brought in as his number two, the individual who was running Spain, who kind of oversaw this fragmentation and complication in the Spanish market and longs to control and become again the leading player in that market. So control, clarity, consolidation, these are things that he thinks about.
Perhaps looking at this market and seeing Nova and AltNets, he just said, "Let's maybe we need to hang on to this stuff, keep more control over it." It is not a well-thought-out position. I do not know if that is the ending position. That is what I suspect. The second thing is, and this is not speaking out of school because I do think many European telcos, not me, think this way, which is this is a big moment for Europe. I do not know how many of you are American or English or European. It is a big moment for Europe where telecom may just be an important player in not just data sovereignty, AI gigafactories, but defense. I think therefore, when you look at each of the markets, that changes how you financially engineer things.
If your bias, if your industrial bias is control and maybe industrial military, I mean, I do not think I am speaking out of school because I think that is just where it is. Then you have a different lens on things. I think that could be also part of what is happening. Who knows? Look, thankfully, they are going through a review. I think they have hired Bain or BCG, and they are doing the work, and we will all wait and find out what it has to say.
I guess the challenge is, though, it's difficult for either party to exit.
We have the IPO, right? Not clear. Next summer, we have the soft put. I would be surprised. Surprised is too strong a word. I would say in the next 24 months, we have to decide if we're each in this together the way we used to be or we're doing something different. I think he would say the same thing if he were sitting here. He'd say, "Yeah, we need to get clarity on this point.
Saying the U.K. market right now, we've got a cloud was here before. I do not know how many AltNets there are. Let's call it somewhere between 90-100. There are a couple of big ones out there. Now, of course, what you have, and if I understand this right, with VMO2 is you have a much easier route to fiber because the quality of ducting is very good. I think you previously quoted GBP 100, give or take.
Right. For upgrade, yeah.
That's a very credible economic route to building fiber and all the benefits it begins. Of course, there is an opportunity, and I think you've addressed this with Netco even as the vehicle to maybe consider consolidating the market to some extent. The small guys are all fine and good. I think it's a lot of hard work to do that. There are a couple of big guys. Now, CityFibre's out there right now. The refinancing is still maybe not quite over the line. I think Greg has given a slightly different message recently on why that might be the case. You've got a lot of customers. They've got a lot of network. Is that ever something that we can think about?
You should assume in typical Liberty fashion, we are whiteboarding everything. There is not a transaction, a combination, an opportunity that we are not thinking about, including that one. We have to be, right? Because with or without our partners, we have to be thinking about all of these options because it is a really important moment for this market. This is a market-shaping moment. This next 12-24 months will be market-shaping and critical. Slightly shy of existential, but really important. We want to be part of that conversation and thinking about those things. There is not a transaction, not a large AltNet that we either do not have an ongoing conversation with or have not already been talking to. Do not know what will happen, if anything will happen.
Here's the good news, though, from our point of view, which is what I care about most, is we have the second biggest network in this market. We control 19 million homes. 40% of them are already fiber. The rest can be fiber pretty cheaply. Over the long haul, we're going nowhere. 6 million broadband subs. We are here to stay. We have all the tools we need to penetrate, grow, RPU, converge customers that CityFibre doesn't. These guys, Netomnia, love those guys. Community Fibre, terrific. They will never scale, right? They're not really hoping to scale. They're hoping to survive and make money, which some of them will. We're not going anywhere. It's just a question of what role do we play in this consolidation and rationalization.
I will tell you, I think, again, do not publish this, but I was on the phone with Jonathan Reynolds, Secretary of State for Business and Trade, just the other day. They get it. Government gets it. Not a good moment for the U.K. right now if fiber customers lose service, if fiber investors lose money. They are anxious to see us and others get involved here. We will. We will.
Okay. Interesting. Let's go back to the top co and some of the strategy. You've got this ventures portfolio. I think it's tricky from our side. You talked about POs and valuations. I very simply take the number that you put on the spreadsheet.
Yeah. It is not our numbers. Deloitte's number.
Right. It is interesting to understand the businesses. Now, each of them has got their own, I guess, timeline to some kind of monetization potential, whatever that might be. Is there a better play on ventures? Could you do something different with ventures?
Yes. I will remind you, and again, just to take people back to their level set here, it's EUR 3.3 billion of assets that we've accumulated in tech, media, content, sports, infrastructure. Six deals, not even seven. Six investments represent 70% of that. Six, not 65, of which there are probably 65 different little, if I had to say, "Here's the whole portfolio," Deloitte would have it. There are 65 things. Six account for 70%. When I get the, "Oh, it's too complex. I don't know how to do the work." Six, which I think you can do the work on. Three of them in infrastructure. Next Fiber, you've already referenced. Pretty easy to model that, understand that. We own 5% of a company called Edge ConneX, which is a massive global data center business that EQT and others own that we're happy to own the 5%.
We'd like to get out of the 5%, but we're in it, and it's growing. We have this business called Atlas Edge, which we own with Digital Bridge, which is another infrastructure partner that's building, acquiring, and growing data centers across Europe. Those three assets, EUR 1 billion, EUR 2 billion, EUR 3 billion in value. The other EUR 1 billion, EUR 2 billion, EUR 3 billion is three content assets. Our stake in ITV, which is highly liquid, and let's see what we do with that. Our stake in TelevisaUnivision, which we put $100 million in. We mark it $350 million, which is the largest Spanish-language content creator and platform on the planet based out of Mexico City and Miami. Our stake in Formula E, which I think could return the fund if we keep doing it right. One deal. I appreciate that there's a lot of stuff in there. The tech portfolio, $400 million.
Sure, I wouldn't spend one minute thinking about all these little deals we've done. AI, cyber, cloud, it's complicated. Some of them actually help us out quite a bit in our operating companies. Yeah, there maybe we bring a partner in. Maybe we think about, "Hey, do we really need to be doing $5 million, $10 million investments in these B round?" Maybe not. It served a purpose. It made us smart. Sure. Gave us access to technologies and stuff we didn't have. Maybe that's something we could. The infrastructure stuff is really those three assets. Some early stage renewable energy and we're building, heck, we have 10, I don't know, 20,000 already scoped to build charging stations across the U.K. where we have infrastructure, right? We have power. We have everything. That's a business we think could be a pretty interesting business.
Infrastructure, media content, 70% of it in these six deals, which there's a story there. Maybe we need to make that story clear for people, which I appreciate.
Is it even a sort of spend story? Does that make it clear?
Yeah, some of these assets, we're spinning is not simple. You have to have what they call an active trader business, and you have to have certain other tax elements of it. Yes, Formula E could be spun with something. Could be sold, could be merged, could be we have EUR 400 million-plus in that business. We own 70% of it. It is not Formula One. I am not going to want anyone to walk out of here saying Formula E and Formula One are the same. They are trading at $22 billion. I do not need to be the same. I just need to be a little better. What I will tell you is that this champion, it is not easy to own a global championship. There are not very many of them. We have a 15-year exclusive on electric racing, and we are going to extend that.
The things that make me excited about that, number one is the car. I don't know if you've ever been to a race. This Gen 3 Evo car racing this year is faster than F1 cars 0 to 60, 30% faster, 1.8 seconds. It is incredibly quick around the track. In Monaco, we had 190 overtakes in one race. I think Formula One had two.
One or three.
On a good day. It is incredibly exciting racing. We have a new car coming out after next season, so 18 months from now, the Gen 4 car, which will double power. I mean, there is just nowhere to go but up with the technology of these cars. Look to feel, even the sound. The racing is becoming incredibly exciting. We have 400 million fans racing in all the great cities in the world. It is really, to me, a great ground floor opportunity that I am excited to own. I think rising tides, right?
Yeah, sure. I'm going to return to my, I guess, sort of first question with my final question. It is, what is the future of Liberty Global, right? We've talked about there was the spin of Sunrise. We've talked about assets, and you've outlined essentially routes to strategic reset in Holland. We've obviously got this opportunity in Belgium, and there's the potential to realize value there. The U.K. feels a little bit more on hold right now. Are we in a situation where we could be looking two to three years down the line at do all assets spin off and you go home? Is that what we're thinking? I mean, what's the?
I don't know because I don't control those outcomes in those two big cases. I think you could map scenarios like that. I mean, why is Sunrise trading so well? There's nothing—I love Sunrise. I'm a big shareholder. Trust me. I share the company. I have great respect for the business and André. It's not a high-growth business, right? I mean, if any of your investors are following it, it's a modest growth with nice free cash flow profile and slightly delevered into the mid-fours or something like that, low-fours. Generating nice free cash, of which 70% we hand to shareholders. In Switzerland, that seems to be, and in Europe, that seems to be a winning formula. It doesn't strike me as a difficult formula to replicate necessarily.
Now, in Holland, we might have been on that path, but Stephen has opened our eyes to the fact that if you want to be on that path long-term, you need to allow me to reset here. It'll be back to that path. It's generating free cash this year. It's a free cash flow generator. This market still generates lots of free cash. It could be more free cash once we get through the mobile build, once we finish the fiber build. If free cash is your metric, and I think it is the right metric for this sector, it's something we are absolutely focusing on that perhaps some of these businesses will be more highly valued if they were isolated and into different investor groups. My shareholders, and many of you are here, I hope, I think I understand the challenge. We're a complex story.
Just look at the things we've talked about today. It's not simple. We're trying to simplify it with this Liberty Telecom, Liberty Growth, Liberty Services, which is another hidden asset. Within the Liberty Telecom bit, which is EUR 22 billion of revenue, EUR 8 billion of EBITDA, it's still a lot of work to do. We're going to drive commercial momentum. We're going to deal with all the things we've talked about today around churn and pricing. We have to find ways to unlock value.
Can I ask you?
That is the goal.
One last little question. I'm asking it to all the telcos we have here, which is, and I had this conversation with you once where you talked about how, I mean, U.S. broadband is what, $70-$80 right now? If you want 500 meg fiber these days, you're paying $80-$90, right? In Europe, you're paying EUR 20-EUR 30. The industry has not, I don't think, has done a great job at valuing itself to the consumer. I'm talking primarily B2C here. There is still so much of the consumer market that looks at the industry as a priced utility, essentially. I think COVID was a great opportunity for the industry to go out to the consumer and say, "Hey, here we are. Look, we've kept you working. We've kept you educated, connectivity to your family, etc." I think the industry dropped the ball.
Yeah. I do not disagree. I mean, I think keeping the love was, I remember saying something, "How do we bottle this magic?" Because there was some magic in COVID. Difficult to do when you have, in this market, AltNets selling fiber for GBP 15. In Belgium, where Digi rocks up and sells mobile for GBP 5. It is difficult to do when regulators, coming back to them, have created an environment where all that matters is consumer price. Now, it seems they are moving off that pivot, that pedestal a little bit. That has been the nature of it. When you have that kind of dynamic, that pricing dynamic, that competitive dynamic, stuff falls through the cracks. You cannot invest as much as you want. Your innovation slows down. It makes it more difficult to hold on to that.
Now, what we're investing in with AI, we can talk about, but we can't. What we're investing in with our networks, if you get it right, you can win the day. Because these AltNets aren't going to win the day. They're not going to have the same capabilities that we have. That's what we're doing. We're investing in consumer brand, consumer loyalty, consumer experience, which you hear from all the telcos, but we're all doing it. AI is going to be a game changer for our industry. I mean, everybody will, if you're an automotive analyst or if you're a, no matter what industry you follow, I'm sure everyone's saying the same thing. Why wouldn't they? In our case, in the telecom industry, it is so easy. You get 1%, 2%, 3% of OpEx. So easy. We're finding it already. I was with Telenet yesterday.
I can give you this stat. Do not publish it. With what they are doing on their consumer-facing, mostly acquisition, but also retention tools, they expect that they will reduce human interactions by 50% in 36 months. In shops and on phones. 50%, which means maybe 50% fewer humans. I do not know. Power consumption, optimizing network build and design, proactive maintenance, call centers. These are small numbers multiplied by big numbers that equal big numbers. I think it is going to be a game changer for our industry. We are not even to the cool stuff yet. I mean, the interesting stuff, so hyper-personalization and agentic AI. I mean, all the stuff you read about. We are not even talking about that stuff.
I think we're going to look back on this period where I say, "Hey, good news, EUR 300 million of savings." We're going to say, "Wow, that was so rudimentary. That was so early days." Remember those days when we were thinking about that? I think it's got nowhere to go but up. I really feel like it's a game changer for our industry in particular. By the way, we're also building the digital railways that make it work. I tell every regulator when I see them, "Don't forget, none of it works without really fast, low-latency connectivity, whether it's mobile or fixed." There is this virtuous circle that I think politicians and regulators are starting to see that they just didn't think about.
Whether it's Trump and data and AI sovereignty and military self-sufficiency, or whether it's just growth and the need for growth and the lack of productivity, or Europe feeling isolated, which you ought to feel isolated in some ways from an economic point of view. All these things are kind of conspiring together to hopefully give us a moment here.
Brilliant. Great time, everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mike.
Thank you.
Have a good.