Q3 2021 Liberty Global PLC Earnings Call
[music].
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by welcome to Liberty Global's third quarter, 2021 investor call.
This call and the associated webcast.
She of Liberty global and any redistribution retransmission or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the expressed written consent of Liberty global is strictly prohibited.
At this time all participants are in a listen only mode.
Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's website at Liberty Global Dot Com.
After today's formal presentation instructions will be given for a question and answer session.
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Today's presentation May include forward looking statements within the meaning of the private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook and the future growth prospects and other information.
Statements that are not historical fact these forward looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ but charity from those expressed or implied by these statements. These risks include those detailed in their particular filings within the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent filed.
Forms 10-Q, and 10-K as amended.
Liberty Global disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward looking statements to reflect any change in its expectations or in the conditions on which such statement is based.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Mike Fries.
Alright, Thanks, operator, and Hello, everyone. We appreciate you joining our Q3 results call. We've got a lot to share today and I'm sure you've got a lot of questions. Most of my senior team is on the call and I'll get them involved in the Q&A as needed so I'm going to kick it off right on slide four with some key highlights from the quarter.
Which was solid in our view from an operational financial and strategic perspective first of all we remain squarely focused on our three pillars of value creation that we outlined in our Q2 results call and that focus is paying off of course. It begins with the transformation of our European platform into a handful of strong national fixed.
With <unk> capable of delivering long term sustainable growth and those FMC champions are bookended by our ventures portfolio on one side, which is highly strategic and growing in value and our commitment to a levered equity model on the other side supported by free cash flow per share and the growth in a predictable buyback Glenn.
Operationally, we continue to experience strong commercial momentum across the group with third quarter broadband and postpaid mobile additions up sequentially from Q2 and after five months in the U K and 11 months in Switzerland, our newest converge businesses are firing on all cylinders.
Were also feeling very positive about our current dish network superiority and even better about our strategic opportunities for further expansion and upgrade of those networks and then lastly, with just a couple months ago in the fiscal year, we are upgrading our free cash flow guidance all of which we'll talk about in our remarks that follow so before moving on I just wanted to add that we also remain.
Very focused on ESG and Youll find a section in our earnings release covering recent development. This includes our commitment to our net zero targets by 2030 across scopes, one and two and a goal to confirm our ambition for scope three by mid 2020 to those who prioritizes work would know that we have a really good track record here in absolute.
<unk> terms and in relation to our peers and have been recognized as a clear leader in our sector.
They will dive a bit deeper.
And to what we've called our three pillars of value creation on slide five.
If youre looking for a simple way of understanding how we're building this company and what we believe will drive the stock moving forward. As this is it of course it all revolves around our core operating businesses in the U K, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, which I'll share some really key characteristics first Earle FMC champions in their markets.
With significant national scale.
That means they are generally number one or two in every product either chasing the incumbent or leading the way and national scale gives us the ability to shape those markets from a regulatory point of view it gives us the ability to engage with global tech and content suppliers and it gives us the ability to drive innovation and market share.
Each of these operations is also benefiting from the same secular tailwind like unparalleled demand for connectivity, a renewed pricing power, increasing regulatory support for consolidation and investment in the evaluation of infrastructure assets like fiber and towers and I'll talk about our fixed network strategies in a moment, but we do have tower assets in the U K.
And in Belgium that have yet to be monetized in fact, Helena just announced a strategic review of their tower portfolio for that very reason.
The fundamental goal of convergence is to give customers more choice more value and more convenience and that generally leads to reduced churn and higher NPS and more sustainable financial growth and in every FMC combination, we either have or are still realizing material synergies the U K and Switzerland alone are targeting.
Synergy mpv's of around $12 billion, and 75% of that or about $15 per share will accrue to liberty shareholders. When it's realized along the way in each market. We will continue to evaluate ways to reduce the underlying gap between public and private market value of course selling assets at a premium is one way of UPC pool.
The latest example that multiples in that deal by the way are nine times, EBITDA and 20 times operating free cash flow, but we've also talked about from time to time public listings as a way of unlocking value and we may pursue some of those strategies in 2022.
Now moving to the second pillar, an additional catalyst for closing the gap in our stock is our ventures portfolio, which today is valued at $3 1 billion or about $5 to $6 per share we've talked about the strategic verticals here tech content and infrastructure and we'll continue to provide greater transparency on what we're doing every quarter since our <unk>.
Last call a couple of more of our early stage Tech investments have reached Unicorn status, including plume was just raised capital from Softbank at a $2 $6 billion valuation that's over 10 times, where we initially invested in all in all we generated we believe a 30% IRR on this tech portfolio alone and returned $400 million of capital to the payer.
We're also excited about our infrastructure initiatives, including Atlas edge, which is using our existing property assets to create scalable data center capacity at the edge.
This is a JV with digital bridge and as capitalized for organic and inorganic growth in fact, they just announced the acquisition of 12 data centers from coal.
The third value driver here is our levered equity growth model in many ways. This truly sets us apart from our peers in Europe, we have proven that four to five times leverage with fixed rate low cost debt at the operating company level is both sustainable and accretive this is especially true when you have underlying businesses that generate significant free cash flow.
Over the long term and when you combine this with an unwavering commitment to buyback with excess liquidity. We think you have a winning formula as you've seen and I. Just mentioned today, we raised our free cash flow guidance for 2021 to $1 45 billion. This.
This represents an increase of 36% over 2020 free cash flow, but a 43% increase on a free cash flow per share basis as we calculate it.
Our commitment to buyback 10% of the outstanding shares in 2022, and 2023 should help underpin that sort of value creation story going forward.
Slide six shows some key performance metrics for our fixed and mobile operations in the U K, Switzerland, Belgium and Holland.
Quite a few numbers here so before diving into each I'll just make a few observations first of all you will see that we had stable or growing revenue in the third quarter across the platform. There are lots of factors at work here, including strong broadband in postpaid mobile growth with 260000 net adds in just these four markets.
Combined with generally strong <unk> results and looking at each Opco separately Virgin media delivered its sixth consecutive quarter of net broadband growth in both our newbuild territories, meaning the $2 6 million lightning homes, and our legacy markets, what we call <unk>, perhaps not surprisingly we estimate we continue to get around 50% of all broadband net.
It adds on our footprint.
In the mobile business Oh, two remains the industry leader on churn it which is I think less than 1% per month and that helped generate another good quarter of postpaid mobile growth of 108000.
And financially on an IRS basis, <unk> reported its first quarter of positive revenue growth the new form JV.
Consumer fixed revenue was up 1% helped by customer net adds and the price rise earlier in the year by the way. We expect this sort of growth to continue as we contemplate pricing changes for 2022 on the back of rising CPI and as we start to lap annual best tariff notifications and just to point out.
Youll see on the page or <unk> was a tough comp this quarter for BMO to down 9%, but thats related to the delivery of backhaul contracts in the prior year, which should remain a structural growth driver going forward also a reminder, that our <unk> EBITDA growth, which was two 6% year to date does include our one off cost to capture synergies.
Which are substantial horizon, Charlie I'll get into that more detail in a moment moving to Switzerland quickly summarize UPC is maintaining strong commercial momentum in the face of an increasingly competitive marketplace. We delivered a seventh straight quarter of broadband adds and should again lead the market in postpaid mobile growth revenue has been stable, but EBITDA growth was strong.
As it relates to cost controls and synergies and actually would have been greater than 4%. If you exclude one time cost to capture telling.
Telenet has also had a strong quarter with its eighth consecutive quarter of broadband growth and rising <unk> on the fixed side B to B continues to be a solid performer for telenet with mid single digit revenue growth in Q3 and year to date, we will talk about some of the strategic opportunities in the second but it's good to see stable revenue and EBITDA growth in <unk> year to date.
And then lastly, the Netherlands remains a steady market that supports pricing upsell across our converged business Vodafone Zain will deliver good postpaid mobile growth with 67000 net adds in the quarter and on the fixed side. The focused operationally is our customer retention with things like speed boost in smart Wi Fi.
Despite a more competitive broadband environment, Vodafone <unk> recorded its 10th straight quarter of total revenue growth largely in that 2% to 3% range and generated two 4% EBITDA growth in the quarter.
Fixed mobile convergence remains a key driver of the growth I, just outlined and we provide some key updates on where we stand with fixed mobile convergence on slide seven.
Youll see that we are now at or approaching 50% convergence across the four markets, which means that one of every two broadband subs is also taking a mobile product from us.
As you know we've been at this for five years now and FMC benefits are rock solid in Belgium, and Holland, we see consistent improvement in NPS and churn and significant cross sell and upsell benefits, we're particularly excited about our two newest FMC markets in the U K the combination of Virgin mobile and <unk> resulted in 43 <unk>.
<unk> of our broadband customers, taking a contract mobile product from US. This is a strong position relative to the market, which stands at 26% and the BT, which is at 36%. After five years. So it's important to point out that only a third of the <unk> mobile base that can use Virgin broadband service are actually subscribing today. So there is a sizeable.
Cross sell opportunity in that direction as well just to give you a better sense of that opportunity in Holland, and Belgium, 80, and 100% of our Sims are using our broadband service.
Might also have noticed that BMO to just launched its first converged product last week called volt and like in other markets volt is leveraging our superior broadband network to give new and existing customers broadband speed boost of up to one gig more mobile data and more value. We're only two five weeks in but vault is off to a great start Lutz will probably address that.
And Sunrise is also leveraging its extensive one gig reach and the best <unk> network in the market by the way.
With this new product called Sunrise we.
The principal is clear the more you buy from US the more benefit you get and the launch was fast and flawless is Andre would say and feedback from the market and customers has been very positive with October sales up 30% and this is really step one for sunrise as we will be launching an even more comprehensive FMC product in mid 2022 with 56% convergence today.
Hey, Sunrise's already the market leader 10 points of heavier Swisscom and Andre has every intention to stay two steps ahead I imagine.
Speaking of staying two steps ahead I'll end my remarks with a quick update on how we're approaching our fixed network strategies in each market and we covered this pretty extensively on the last call. So I'll try not to repeat too many things, but one of the benefits of having fiber rich networks in multiple markets is that we are presented with multiple paths to 10 gig speeds and beyond.
So it's hard to read across from one market to the next that's why it's worth spending a minute on this it's also important remind investors that we are the undisputed speed leader in our operating territories today, and that's pretty clear from the chart on slide eight you.
You'll see the Orange bars show that 95% of our $30 million fixed households in the U K, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, and Holland, who will have access to at least one gig speed at the end of the year in order to put that into context. We showed just beneath these orange bars, the latest estimates of where each of the incumbent telcos in our markets is expected to.
He was their fiber overbuild by year end and you'll see that ranges from 15% of our footprint in Belgium to 25% in the UK to 45% in Holland. So the speed advantage today is real and it's actually reflected in the fact that our average customer is subscribing to a product that is generally two to four times faster than the market.
Now we know that markets are not static right and we've always been on or ahead of the curve when it comes to broadband innovation and so the bottom of the chart summarizes by market three core data points. One what is our current thinking and upgrade technologies to will we seek to enter the wholesale market and three what are we considering around a net <unk>.
Serco model and we know all three of these issues are on top of the mind of investors. So starting with the UK and of our left of course, we already announced our plans to overlay our HFC network and about 93% of total homes with an <unk> PON fiber to the premise solution by 2028 as a reminder, the upgrade costs relative to the doctors for only modestly higher.
Since our UK networks are fully duct it and will only build drops and incur CPE costs for those customers, who want or need a fiber solution.
You might expect we are in the midst of a 50000 home trial in three locations right now with the goal of validating engineering and upgrade costs I'm happy to report that so far everything is checking out and we'll certainly provide more information on that in our fourth quarter results call regarding the wholesale market in the U K, we are still evaluating the opportunity, but our decision to move forward on this fiber to the premise.
Bill was not contingent on reselling our network, nor do we assume the creation of an echo or any investment from industrial and financial partners.
Might have picked up we continue to look at those ideas and no decisions have been made moving to the right. You'll also have seen that we just announced our decision to pursue a similar network solution in Ireland, essentially a fiber to the premise overlay of our 1 million HFC homes by 2025.
The Virgin Media, Ireland benefits from similar infrastructure advantages to the UK with access to its own docs on a third of the network and aerial plant on the remainder we expect the total capital cost here to be roughly 200 million euros or about 200 euros per premise, which is only marginally higher than a DOCSIS four solution. It comes with less expensive dropped costs.
Then the U K all in the project will require less than 100 million euros of equity from Liberty Global So from our perspective. This was a cost we could easily absorb that would ensure that Virgin media, Ireland remains a speed leader in the market now in this case, we also announced our intention to open up irons network to wholesale customers and we're excited about this opportunity and while we looked at.
Several structural options given the size of the market and the lack of substantial network expansion. Our current plan is to keep as an integrated company not a net coaster of club continues.
Continuing on Telenet recently announced a non binding agreement with <unk>, a local utility company to build Flanders data network of the future. As a reminder, <unk> is already owns about a third of telling its network, which at least is back to telling that in a fairly complicated structure and when the deal is finalized telling it and fluids will create an echo that they owned together which will up.
Great telling us HFC network with our fiber to the premise overlap because of telling its market share. The necco will start with a very high utilization rates, which would make it attractive to low cost capital and as they indicate largely self funding so John and his team address this extensively on their earnings call last week, if you want to dig in further.
In our view this should be an accretive deal for telenet, it's secured its position as the leading broadband provider in Flanders with an opportunity to expand wholesale revenue and garner an even higher multiple for its taken an echo from industrial or financial partners, and we've talked about Switzerland, a bit publicly but it's looking increasingly clear that we will pursue a hybrid strategy they're optimizing.
Our capital spend to fortify our current advantage over most of the market. This means a blend of doctors for some fiber to the premise build and access to Swisscom fiber network, where and when we need it that'll be the solution. So we shouldnt be at any product disadvantaged anywhere of course. This means we're also unlikely to pursue wholesale revenue or net cost structure here.
And then finally in the Netherlands, Vodafone Hugo maintains a lead in broadband market share over KPN and a strong competitive advantage with giga speed coverage, reaching 80% of the footprint by year end, but we do see fiber overbuild activity accelerating which has prompted management to develop its own fiber response plan. The current approach is focused on a hybrid model.
With an emphasis on DOCSIS and upgrades geared towards capacity rather than pure speed. Let me say there is more work to be done here with management and our partners at Vodafone, but also plenty of time to get it right and I have total confidence in the Vodafone CECO team a year to date, they've outperformed KPN on just about every financial and operating metric and they know.
This customer base in this market extremely well so thats. It from me, obviously, we'd be happy to address any of these topics in Q&A I think simply put it's all about value creation for us and we've been super agile over the last five years exiting half our markets at significant premiums and doubling down in the remaining markets to build national FMC.
Champions each of those FMC platforms are writing secular and company specific tailwind and budgeting solid and stable free cash flow growth over the long term.
Like we've been allocating capital in smart and accretive waves as well prioritizing buybacks as you all know targeting scale, driven FMC mergers like in Switzerland, and Opportunistically pursuing venture investments with above average return potential. So the team is fired up I'm fired up and we're super excited about where we're headed at this point I'll turn it over to you Charlie.
Thanks, Mike.
Starting by highlighting our sustained.
Great.
We achieved stable to positive revenue growth across all markets and consolidated Rebased revenue growth of <unk>, 7%.
This is encouraging given a more normalized third quarter from a cargo perspective.
We will conclude the operation in the UK market in Q3, <unk>. So positive revenue growth of nine 7% on a pro forma basis, driven by increased activity as COVID-19 impacts subsided.
Breaking down the revenue mix of the UK joint venture mobile revenue was broadly flat year on year with a seven 4% year on year increase in handset revenue fueled by an increased upgrade activity following mobile hardware launches from Samsung and Apple.
This was offset by lower service revenue due to the continued impact of a change in the distribution channel mix.
Consumer fixed revenue increased by 1% year on year supported by strong volumes. Despite a continued modest two 1% year on year decline in fixed line customer.
<unk> revenue was affected by the phasing of installation activity for high capacity data services within wholesale.
In Belgium, Telenet delivered growth of 4% driven by continued broadband and <unk> growth and remains well on track to deliver 1% revenue growth in line with full year guidance.
And Sunrise UPC saw revenue slow sequentially to flat in the third quarter year on year on a rebased basis predominantly driven by an increase in mobile service revenue, which was partly offset by less handset revenue and lower consumer fixed mainly from declining basic video subscribers as the market environment remained competitive.
Vodafone continued on that trend of strong financial growth with total revenue up one 9% driven by growth in mobile b to B and stable trends in fixed revenue. This represented its 10th quarter of consecutive revenue growth.
Moving to a rebased adjusted EBITDA the group returned to growth of 1% in Q3.
As with prior quarters, we continue to highlight cost to capture with Opex to Switzerland.
<unk> EBITDA declined by 6%, although FRS pro forma transaction adjusted basis, including cost to capture $15 million.
As flagged with increased activity levels EBITDA growth slowed relative to the strong first half with a slowdown being driven by increased sales and marketing expenses ahead of the peak Q4 trading period.
Higher programming costs.
In addition increased investments in digital product development also contributed.
Telenet reported a small <unk>, 4% decline in EBITDA as Q3 based on a tougher comparison to the previous year, a more marketing spend related to the new FMC tariffs coupled with some seasonality in the operating expense now. Despite this telenet has increased guidance for the full year. So the upper end of its 1% to 2% adjusted EBITDA.
Growth rates.
Sunrise UPC grew three 3%, including $3 million of course, the catch up strong adjusted EBITDA trends benefited from low cost to capture in the quarter positive phasing of costs, including marketing spend and early synergy execution as we highlighted in the second quarter.
And in the Netherlands, a two 4% increase was posted with a strong continued EBITDA growth being driven by top line growth, while keeping cost crude levels under control in the post lockdown period.
Turning to the next slide you should note that as of Q3, we cease to use the term operating free cash flow.
And place of this will be referring to the term adjusted EBITDA less purely additions.
Now this chubb effectively hold per se, meaning its operating free cash flow and if it doesn't really impact any previously reported amounts nor does it impact our forward looking statements.
Now at a group level adjusted EBITDA less peony additions grew six 3% despite $28 million of Costa capture weighing on the Q3 performance.
This strong trend is driven by the EBITDA growth and tight capex discipline and of course that we talked about earlier and it does benefit from some timing impacts which will rebound in Q4.
Well, Jimmy <unk> Shaw <unk> pro forma transaction adjusted EBITDA less purely additions declined by 14% driven primarily by a step up in Capex as a joint venture continues to invest in <unk> and fixed infrastructure and of course, the capture of $28 million.
Capex will remain elevated in the fourth quarter as well in line with the broader PPE guidance at the joint venture.
So that declined by 4% during the quarter driven by higher investments whilst in the Swiss market. We grew 15% despite $27 million cost to capture this being driven by continued capex discipline and the adjusted EBITDA growth, we talked about earlier.
Vodafone Zig <unk> saw a 9% growth in adjusted EBITDA less peony additions again due to favorable capex timing in the quarter.
Turning to free cash flow as of Q3 year to date, we've achieved adjusted free cash flow of just over $1 billion.
Driven by growth year to date in the adjusted EBITDA LSP the additions.
In addition, this quarter, we decided to upgrade our full year free cash flow guidance from $1, three 5 billion to $1 $45 billion.
And this is on the back of generating new underlying efficiencies along with disciplined and focused capex spend.
This new target represents an uplift to 36% versus 2020 and it is also supported by refined shareholder distribution guidance at <unk> by 2021.
To give an update on our buyback activity you can see on the next slide we have repurchased over $1 $1 billion worth of stock. We are firmly in position to achieve our $1 $4 billion buyback target that we announced last quarter by the end of the year.
Our ventures portfolio has a fair market value of $3 $1 billion and we continue to see some valuation uplifts during the quarter relating to the closing of the Atlas edge deal and without.
<unk> portfolio.
This has been largely offset by a full and fair market values at ITV and skills.
Finally, our balance sheet position remained strong with total liquidity of $5 3 billion.
And you should note that our debt maturity still remain very long around seven years or longer on every opco.
So in conclusion, turning to the guidance as we mentioned, we're upgrading free cash flow guidance to $1 5 billion.
And we've refined the guidance terna and <unk> and also give a new guidance for 2021 in the UK for flat to positive adjusted EBITDA growth before cost of capture.
On cash distributions to shareholders benefit Zika is now guiding to above 600 million euros and the UK joint venture for at least 300 million pounds.
And finally to conclude we continue to see FMC execution, driving operating momentum across our markets and our network strategy is evolving in Belgium.
We're upgrading our full year 'twenty, one adjusted free cash flow guidance to $1 45 billion.
And reaffirming our commitment to a multi year buyback framework.
And with that operator over to questions. Thanks.
Thank you.
The question and answer session will be conducted electronically.
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Well pause for just a moment to give everyone an opportunity to join the queue.
We will take our first question from Jeffrey <unk> from pivotal research. Please go ahead.
Okay.
Good morning, I had a couple on the U K I wanted to focus on the continued strong U K data results.
I think you said seven quarters in a row of positive growth in both sort of lightning footprint.
Rest.
I assume most of that is related to the fact that you are offering four times the speed of BT.
Can you talk about the success you've had in upselling consumers to higher priced higher.
Speed packages and then can you also talk about how youre doing in the 20% of your footprint that is.
Overbuilt by fiber to the home.
Sure Luke.
Jeff how are you by the way we are pretty convinced that that strange sound, we're getting as BT plugging into our call every time, we talk about the U K. So.
Eight years here Eric.
Yes.
Yeah.
Do you want to take those two.
Yeah. So.
We don't really see a material impact.
The fiber overbuild from.
Openreach yet.
Obviously, we measure that carefully, but we don't see that.
Our our fixed broadband churn it's on them all time low.
And.
So.
So far so good for itself, but obviously, we do everything.
Keep our customers happier and happier and.
I mean, a couple of drivers here.
No.
Now with our 243% of our customers are having fixed and mobile from ourself and we'd note that the lowest the children.
Dramatically and the.
If you said the average speed.
At the moment is 202 mbps.
The U K.
Our customers are at four times higher than the UK average.
We.
Our cross and upsell into our base, we are only at the beginning.
I have to say so we are building the machine at the moment collect the data from the customer usage and have a dynamic product bundling based on our data to cross and upsell channel going forward. So I think watch that space.
<unk>.
So.
Quick answer.
No no material impact yet.
More opportunity on cross and upsell in the future.
Sure I understand an all time low.
Because of convergence and because all saw substantially better service.
We drove complaints down by 92%.
And we know where we want to be.
Thank you.
We will now take our next question from Maurice Patrick from Barclays.
Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks for taking the question.
Just your thoughts on pricing in the U K in general.
In the U K.
BT confirm today, though.
And by CPI plus.
So that could be an 8% price increase on <unk> next year.
Just your thoughts in terms of your desire to put some of that sort of magnitude of price increase and just linked to it.
When you launch your vote.
The UK converged tariff often the first thing that happens with existing customers take it and it can be quite dilutive to Walter just thoughts in terms of how dilutive using all of these near term before it becomes accretive. Thank you.
I'm going to ask it I'll, let Luis answer the first question because we generally don't talk about our price increases in advance of announcing them to our customers I will just say that historically.
We have not used CPI as a measure we've essentially just launched a fixed price increase.
More or less approximates what our peers are doing I will leave it at that our mobile business does your CPI, but we're going to leave that for now we're not going to put any I put out any.
Information about what we may or may not do but history should be a good guide there you want to reference the second question on bolt.
Yes.
So the way we have structured.
Walter when you migrate onto it being existing customer you get the next higher speed tier and you get the next higher data bundles.
Therefore, the that's very little likelihood that customers will.
Kris the op Ya.
Yes.
So.
We are not planning with that curve, you're referring to and we don't see that happening as we speak.
Thank you.
We will now take our next question from Arco that tiny from J P. Morgan.
Hi, good afternoon, thanks for taking the question.
It's a two part question just linked to Mike Your comments earlier on your fixed network structure and how it differs by market.
I guess, just starting with the UK I Wonder if you could maybe elaborate on your thoughts around wholesale you said you were evaluating options I guess, what I'm really trying to understand is where the wholesale in any way determines the future scale of project lightning or were those completely discrete decisions.
What you do in terms of the future ambitions, it's kind of unfortunate lining our independent wholesale. So just if you could kind of test where you are in that thinking.
You might want to comment on any timing related issues and then the second but it's just a really quick one.
Interesting.
Ventures, Youll going into Germany with.
In Korea.
You know that market really well just very keen to untangle thoughts of why to go into Germany at the fiber play out.
What the key attractions al.
And whether you could wait until the markets too thanks a lot.
Sure on the year on the wholesale question in the U K I mean, there's nothing to update on at this point.
And I'd, just remind everybody that the decision to.
Upgrade our existing HFC plant was not based upon any wholesale arrangement. So our view is it's accretive either way but of course, if there were wholesale that would be even more accretive. So it shouldnt be an overhang. It's only upside if we were to do something in wholesale on the existing footprint and expansion of the network beyond the current footprint.
With additional fiber builds perhaps that there we are still doing work and we have not yet made a determination as to how fast or how far we would take that that might be more <unk>.
Dependent on our wholesale outcome, we're still doing the work if you will lightning in and of itself. However continues to roll along so.
Four of 500000 homes, we might be a little more aggressive next year either way. So we're continuing to build out in a measured at a measured pace without wholesalers want to do something more dramatic I think everybody on the call would appreciate it that we would be looking at the financial implications of that kind of build out or would want to know there are additional revenue sources.
Partners financing sources, so more work to be done there nothing to announce at the bigger.
Uh huh.
A bigger expansion in that I think more likely would come with the <unk>.
Clearer announcement around where we are in wholesale.
Charlie you want to take the venture deal in Germany.
Yeah.
I think that.
So how we feel about Germany as a new opportunity I think we definitely feel that.
We have a lot of scale a lot of efficiencies from our core network builds across Europe.
Which make us a more attractive in a lower cost builder of fiber in Germany than perhaps a standalone start and I think we've got an interesting platform to start building and we'll see how it goes.
Reminder, that that market has little to no fiber and our objective is to look for.
Areas, where there's essentially no competition.
So it's a very targeted I'd say small.
Initiatives to begin with and we'll see how it how it unfolds.
Great. Thanks, a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alright.
A question for me.
Okay.
Charlie I just wanted to congratulate too obviously been out for 300 million dividend next year.
It looked like carve out to be conservative payment.
What do you think.
Wide number for next year, so think about dividend progression.
I know I'm, asking you about the future, but it would be helpful to kind of seven plus 300.
Normalized run rate thanks very much.
Well look I think it's a bit early for us to give guidance about next year, so I'm going to pause on that but as a general principle as you know our intention with our partners is to leverage the JV to five times and given what I would expect we'd all degrees plus with some pretty significant EBITDA growth as the synergies come through that will obviously allow us to recap and distributed capital.
It back in the core business.
The other kind of aspect of the phasing of the underlying free cash flow will be how fast we accelerate the cost to capture which I think from a delivery point of view, we think is a good thing.
These synergies as soon as possible, but they do cost money to get there and also our pace on the on the absolute.
Network build out and how quickly we accelerate et cetera, so probably too early to give some definitive guidance, but in terms of distributions from Virgin media to there are a lot of levers I mean, I think we can expect some pretty healthy distributions to liberty global over the upcoming years.
Awesome. Thanks.
Yes.
Hello Tang from UBS here can you hear me.
We've got you Paul Okay, Great just have one question on Switzerland.
Andre.
Coma, posting their ft th for light as well as through the partnership with Salt just given the ruling by the competition Commission. So how do you think this will impact the Swiss market, but also sunrise EPC.
Andrea I'll take that.
He might be on mute Andre.
Actually can you hear me.
Yes, we have.
Okay, sorry, yes.
Yes, thanks for the question.
Yes indeed.
<unk>.
Competition Commission and also the latest.
Court decision is confirming that swisscom has to rethink their approach to the point to Multipoint rollout.
And starting in <unk>.
Solar is also building.
Their network so at the moment I would say therefore, the overbuild of our network is costs and as such our window of opportunity to sell our one gig lines.
That footprint there is not overbuild, yet is probably better.
We would not expect that to last forever, but of course, it's a.
Increased window of opportunity for us to monetize our infrastructure faster and better.
Thanks.
Okay.
We will now move to our next question from Mike <unk> with Dr. Chen. Please go ahead.
Hi, I've just got click so I think there is near term so Jan Hi, Mike Hi, Charlie It was a quick question on <unk>. Please.
Do you could you just run us through your thoughts on why you think there's been a bit of a negative reaction to the telenet Flavius deal. So far do you think it's a bit unfair to talk about.
Being more complicated.
And what already is a complicated liberty global asset as being an issue and the potential for future inflation and how you're taking that into account.
When you are looking at all of the assets you are talking about is <unk>.
<unk> I think the three assets on slide eight where you talk about the potential for net cruise Mike. Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Nick listen I think as I said, John did a nice job of summarizing where Helen it is on the <unk> deal I'll repeat we think its fundamentally an accretive transaction I think the market's probably.
Waiting for final terms and perhaps was wondering why non binding deal was announced before it was binding and find all that could be one issue with the overhang. There I think theyre also understandably waiting for more information about financial implications if any what the partners have said quite clearly as this will be.
An independent self funding net toe.
That will surely attracted interest from both in market partners and financial partners. Given the fact that it's going to start life with something like 60, or 70% utilization remind you that most.
Alt nets begin with zero utilization. So whenever you have an existing company like telenet looking or willing to create a net cost structure.
Infrastructure investors looking their chops as they say.
Usually extremely.
Attractive to them and I think from a cost point of view very attractive to the nacco itself. So.
I think it's going to be a positive outcome for telenet I think it's the right decision over the long term for Flanders I think perhaps.
Related to that there's questions around the <unk> transaction and other things that will need to get sorted.
Sorted out over the long term for telenet, but we're generally positive on that business I think John.
Doing a great job driving growth in a mature market, where he has the largest market share in pretty much every product.
And I think the management team is up for this type of.
Transformation.
Iteration, if you will in their operating structure and.
And growth plan.
I can't speak to where the stock should be or wide stradey, where it is except that we're positive about it we think it's the right decision for them.
And I think people are looking for more certainty and more clarity and that's normal.
So you might have a little overhang why these things get sorted out, but we obviously are on the inside so we have a bit more data than you and we feel pretty positive about the direction of travel.
Thanks, Martin could you just mentioned maybe on slide eight as well on Vodafone Zika when you talk about the potential to wholesale as well is there any update on the acm's position in some of the language that you are hearing from them is there anything in that sort of ACM investigation no towards purely Liberty decision yes.
Yes, that's got nothing to do with ATM, that's more trying to be responsive to the markets questions around net kosher COSE voluntary front.
Foot type of Restructures, that's got nothing to do with the ATM.
Because it says TBD, because we're still discussing with our partners and the management team what the right long term structure might be in that market in the meantime.
Vodafone as it goes in a great position I mentioned in my remarks, if you just go down every single metric they're outperforming KPN.
I think they are doing pretty much everything as they should be doing and we're looking more strategically at what over the next five years, you might be considering around the network, but today. They are in great shape, and we're pretty we're pretty positive on that business and that management team.
<unk> got nothing to do with the regulatory picture.
That's clear thanks very much.
We will take our next question from <unk> <unk> from Jefferies.
Yeah. Thanks, very much question goes back to the footprint expansion in the U K.
Yes sort of.
Putting us.
On hold here.
Again, and I'm wondering a little bit how you think about how much time.
Half BT is rapidly accelerating the fiber rollout to 4 million homes per year run rate.
What are the hurdles and.
Who is ultimately looking at that this is a question of sort of.
Decision makers bandwidth.
And the and the sort of post merger situation or or what makes this such a complicated decision given that you have been talking about for some time already thank you.
Well, that's it's not a complicated decision, it's an important decision but.
But I do believe as I said earlier, there are a few moving parts in that decision.
It's a large capital commitment that would require us to feel comfortable with sources of capital and essentially the build structure and all the other factors we've discussed wholesale et cetera. So it's not a decision we take lightly so those who are thinking that while we're just trundling into this fiber experiment.
Capex be damn well, that's quite the opposite we had to telefonica are highly focused on.
On what we should be focused on which is generating free cash flow and dividends to the parent. So we wanted to be thoughtful and we want to be careful about any decision that impacts capex and capital intensity. That's what you want us to do and that's what we're doing.
Having said that so it needs to be an accretive move for us that's nothing but strategically.
Beneficial and financially attractive.
I said earlier that that wholesale revenue could be a very important piece of that it might also involve third party financing or industrial partners and those things don't happen quickly. So we'll figure out what that looks like I'll simply say there should be no overhang on the stock from this type of decision, it's only upside and we'll be smart about the decision.
And if we get to that point in the meantime, while you are.
We called Mustang, our fiber overlay.
The synergies and all the great things that Lutz and his team are doing the steady state business is the one that we're most excited about any decision to move beyond where we are today. It is less a competitive issue it's more of an opportunity issue.
Virgin Media <unk> does that need to expand its network to be competitive and successful.
It could consider expanding its network if it creates additional and incremental value to shareholders think about it that way.
Soon as we have clarity on it youll suddenly the personnel.
Thank you very much.
We will take our next question from James Ratcliffe from Evercore ISI.
Thanks, Tom.
Talk a little bit about the integration process cost to achieve has been pretty modest as far in Switzerland, and particularly in the U K.
Can you talk about what the ramp for those looks like.
And.
Do you have any sense of whether the estimates you put out there, thus far looking reasonable or conservative.
Also if there are any supply chain or process related issues that could slow that down.
Yes, I'll just give a general answer and let these guys, Doug and cost to capture in both UK and.
Switzerland, We did report those figures I think $150 million 700, respectively.
C exiting the smaller number and everything we're seeing is that we are on track there will be variability in how quickly achieved one thing or another or spend capital, but it's a pretty quick.
Period.
Pretty short period of time to that cost of capture.
Is in front of us in more or less on track you guys want to address that as well as supply chain issue and maybe youre seeing any issues on that.
Go ahead Andre.
Yeah.
Yes.
I've talked about the U K so.
I mean, obviously the out supply chain issues, but.
Out there, but so far we are managing them very well, Mike you don't see any impact in our numbers and we don't foresee any huge impact.
The biggest synergies.
In front of us.
Sure thing right, one is simply like convergence and we have rolled out there and buy.
Great start and you will see us ramping that.
Second obviously, we will migrate.
Right got you mobile customers onto the network over time and so we.
Obviously invest into our mobile network in terms of capacity.
Two.
I would have the accordion capacity.
Number three is keep us synergies and we are.
100% on plan.
Yes.
The cost to capture all of the restructuring cost plan.
And the last one so your trunk of procurement synergies so.
<unk>.
We haven't we're really as Mike said on plan.
Very good line of sight for the synergies.