Operator: Hello, and welcome to the Proximus Q3 2026 results. My name is Gaia, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this conference is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. This can be done by pressing pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to register your question at any time. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press pound key 6. I will now hand you over to your host, Nancy Goossens, Investor Relations Lead, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Nancy Goossens: Thank you, Gaia. Good afternoon, and welcome to our Q3 results webcast. We trust you have reviewed the results this morning, so we will keep the presentation to the point, allowing more time for your questions. Joining me for the presentation and the Q&A are our CEO, Stijn Bijnens, and Fiona Lam, the new CFO since September. Welcome, Fiona, to your first Proximus results call. Also with us are Seckin Arikan, the Global CEO, and Jim Casteele, our Head of B2C and AI. So over to Stijn now for today's highlights.
Stijn Bijnens: Thank you. Welcome from me as well to our third quarter results. I trust you have seen the result publication, so as Nancy said, we will keep it short. This slide provides the usual brief overview, but as we will cover this in a minute, let me move straight to the next one. I will start with a high-level overview, and will leave it to Fiona to cover the financials in more detail. In the Domestic segment, we delivered another resilient quarter with slight increase in services revenue.
Stijn Bijnens: This was offset by higher OPEX, which was in part due to the consolidation of Unifiber, and resulted in a lower Domestic EBITDA. Turning to the Global segment, I am pleased with the disciplined execution of its strategic plan, which delivered direct margin growth ahead of expectations. Overall, for the Proximus Group, the third quarter EBITDA decreased 2%.
Stijn Bijnens: I will leave it here and move to the operational results. We delivered another good commercial quarter for the B2C unit, and this in a highly promotional market. This led, for the total domestic segment, including B2B, to a growth of 18,000 mobile postpaid cards and 5,000 internet subscribers. Our convergent customer base also continued to grow steadily, adding 7,000 residential customers in Q3. Meanwhile, the fixed voice and TV customer base continued their gradual erosion. Turning to fiber, our footprint continues to expand. By the end of September, we had passed more than 2.8 million homes across Belgium. That represents population coverage of over 44%. In Q3, we added another 38,000 active fiber customers. This brings our total to nearly 860,000, and the network filling rate stands at 35%.
Stijn Bijnens: Before I hand over to Seckin for Global, let me say a few words about satellite connectivity and AI agents. Both have raised concerns across the telecom sector and put pressure on share price in particular. Let's start with satellite. It's a great technology, but helps solve problems that we don't face here in Belgium. Belgium is one of Europe's most densely populated countries. Even our rural areas are very different from the wide open spaces you find, for example, in the US, Africa, or the Nordics. We have very good networks here. Our 5G network already covers almost the whole country. We will reach 99% indoor coverage by the end of 2027. We also have a great and broad range of spectrum secured for the next 15 years. Our fixed network has clear advantages over satellite too.
Stijn Bijnens: With our fiber agreements, we're on track to cover 80% of Belgium with fiber, offering both fast upload and download speed. Satellite has physical limits on capacity, so it will always be limited in the number of households it can serve. We see satellite less as a threat and more as an opportunity, something we could offer as an add-on to our services.
Stijn Bijnens: Turning to AI agents, I see this as an evolution and not a revolution. It's another step in how customers make their choices. Here too, we see opportunities. AI can help us build on what makes our services different, our strong brands, and our customer rewards. We're also investigating in generative engine optimization, helping customers find us when they use AI to search. Telecom will keep changing, and we will keep adapting. As more people use AI, good connectivity matters even more.
Stijn Bijnens: AI needs networks that can handle large amounts of data, support more uploads, and stay connected all the time. As Belgium's largest fiber owner, we're well-placed to meet those needs. With that, I'll hand over to Seckin to talk about Global.
Seckin Arikan: Thank you, Stijn, and good afternoon, everybody. As we told you earlier, our transformation will take 8 quarters, and we have now completed 3. We are making good progress, and we are on track. This year, we focused on a set of key integration battles, and we will close all of them as planned. Let's talk about the core business. We improved how we farm our large customers in Protect and Engage. In Connect, we reinforced our scale with new roaming wins.
Seckin Arikan: Our growth portfolio across omnichannel, digital identity, IoT, and cloud communication is gaining traction. In the meantime, our work continues to receive external recognition. SIM for Things won an IoT Global Award for its Secure Sovereign eSIM solution. We took gold at the Merit Awards for 5G and next-generation mobile communications, and BICS is a finalist at the Fierce Network Innovation Awards. Lastly, building the future.
Seckin Arikan: Heltar is now fully integrated and expands our conversational AI capabilities. We see strong customer engagements enabled by Heltar in India market. Telesign and Bancontact Company are partnering to prevent payment fraud. Route Mobile launched a Salesforce native messaging app on AgentExchange, and BICS joined the SCION Association. In short, our transformation is on track, and we continue to stay focused. The core is getting stronger, our growth portfolio is gaining traction, and we are building the capabilities that will make growth sustainable. Fiona now will take you through the Q3 financials.
Fiona Lam: Thank you, Seckin. Let me start with first domestic revenue. In the third quarter of this year, domestic revenue increased by 0.3% year on year on a pro forma basis, supported by growing service revenue, which is up by 0.4%. This was driven by a continuous solid growth in the residential service revenue offset by lower revenue from business services. Turning first to the B2C unit, total residential revenue increased by 2.4% year on year. Specifically, happy to see that continued positive trend in customer service revenue, up by a solid 2.9% year on year. This was, amongst others, the result of a continued growth in the customer base for internet, growing year on year by 2.3%, and mobile postpaid growing 3.1% year on year. Zooming in for a moment on the customer service revenue of the third quarter.
Fiona Lam: As illustrated on the chart, we achieved to continue a nicely growing trend, moving up to 2.9% growth as mentioned earlier. This was driven by sustained growth in revenue from convergent customers, which increased by 4.7% compared to Q3 of last year. Overall, the first service revenue benefited from January 2026 inflation-like price increase, as well as a continued migration to higher ARPC convergent offers, and also a modest support from the renewed Belgium football broadcasting right.
Fiona Lam: This was partly offset by the ongoing shift in customer brand mix, and taking this all together, the overall ARPC was up by 1.7% year on year. Turning now to the B2B unit, total business revenue declined by 1.9% year on year. This was driven by lower business service revenue, down 2.8% year on year on a pro forma basis, broadly in line with recent quarters.
Fiona Lam: The lower B2B service revenue reflects the combination of a few adverse effects in line with historical and market trends. We undergo in the telecom space a steady pressure on legacy fixed voice, as well as on legacy data offers. This was not fully offset by continued growth in internet service. Therefore, the total revenue of fixed data is staying rather stable. Q3 also saw continued pressure on mobile revenue, where the business carefully balances value and volume. IT service revenue also remains soft. The decline reflected project implementation delays, partly offset by continued cybersecurity growth. Looking forward, we see that the longer-term timeline remains solid, so we expect the IT performance to improve. For the wholesale unit, the reported revenue decline is fully due to ongoing erosion of interconnect revenue.
Fiona Lam: However, with almost no margin impact, revenue from wholesale service was slightly up, driven by higher MVNO revenue, roaming, and fiber volumes, which fully offset the revenue loss from services that Proximus delivers to Unifiber as a result of this consolidation. Now turning to domestic EBITDA. Direct margin grew by 0.5% year on year in Q3. Solid B2C services revenue growth supported this, although B2B headwinds offset most of the benefit. As you can see on the chart, higher OPEX more than offset the growth in direct margin. This includes around EUR 5 million of Unifiber consolidation on top of inflationary pressure and higher rental and cloudification-related OPEX. Our headcount reduction remains on track. Workforce expenses rose only slightly by 0.2% year on year. Lower domestic FTE almost fully offset the wage indexation of March and September 2026.
Fiona Lam: Taking together, this results in a 1.4% decline in domestic EBITDA in Q3. That concludes the domestic session. Let's now turn to the Proximus Global segment. Starting with the global direct margin, we returned it to growth earlier than expected. Direct margin was up 0.8% year on year and 4.5% compared with the previous quarter. This growth came entirely from the communication and data protect group, which direct margin grew by 4.4%. This is a promising sign that our investments to support the global turnaround are delivering result. Turning to cost, this disciplined OPEX investments, together with wage inflation, drove a 5.8% year-on-year increase in the Q3 OPEX. We expect spending on these initiatives to increase further in the coming quarters as the business moves into its next phase of growth, focused on customer acquisitions.
Fiona Lam: All in all, this brings global EBITDA to EUR 35 million for Q3, which is a good result. Now, let's turn to the group CapEx. Over the first nine months of the year, the group accrued CapEx totaled to EUR 835 million. This is EUR 10 million more than the same period last year. The increase was mainly driven by phasing of multi-year content contract renewals, as well as the impact of consolidating Unifiber CapEx from June onward. At the same time, fiber investment in the dense areas, as well as CapEx for the upgrade in the mobile RAN network, were coming down as well.
Fiona Lam: As results, strong organic free cash flow in Q3 2026 have lifted up year-to-date organic free cash flow to EUR 114 million, which compared to EUR 153 million last year. You can see on the graph, the year-on-year decrease was mainly driven by lower EBITDA from Global, higher interest paid, and higher cash CapEx over the first 9 months of the year. On a total reported basis, the free cash flow for the first 9 months of the year was EUR 54 million.
Fiona Lam: This brings me to the last final slide on outlook for the full year. We reiterate our domestic guidance, expecting underlying domestic service revenue and EBITDA for 2026 to stay broadly stable on a pro forma basis. For Global, the full year EBITDA expectation is raised to EUR 125 million to EUR 135 million, reflecting the earlier-than-expected improvement in direct margin combined with disciplined OpEx investments to support the turnaround.
Fiona Lam: With the improved EBITDA outlook for Global combined with slightly lower CapEx expectation, we also lifted up our full year outlook for organic free cash flow to around EUR 100 million. With that, we hand it back to the operator to open the line for your questions.
Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press pound key 6. You will be advised when to ask your question. The first one is coming from David Vagman from ING. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
David Vagman: Yes, thanks. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for taking my question. The first is on the CapEx guidance cut for this year. Could you clarify how much is really efficiency gains and how much is phasing of the CapEx? The second is on consumer mobile. There seems to be a sort of mini price war in the no-frills unlimited segment. Can you explain, in your view, the justification behind it? Is it that you anticipate a move by Digi on unlimited? Is it preventive, or are there other reasons behind this development? My last question is on the cooperation agreement in fiber and HFC. Can you update us on the latest development in the north and in the south? Thank you.
Stijn Bijnens: Okay, thank you. I will take the last one on the fiber collaboration. In the south, it is advancing very well, and we are interacting with the regulators. My best guess would be finalization by summer 2027. In the north, the competition authority approved the deal, so it is more in finalization also with the telecom regulator on market analysis. Everything is moving according to schedule, and we are positive around the outcome. The CapEx question, I will refer to Fiona.
Fiona Lam: Yes, so on the CapEx, we will be slightly below our EUR 1.3 billion guidance. This is driven partly by efficiency and partly by timing effects. Timing effect, I mean by the cash CapEx. So, we expect a little bit later to pay in the cash CapEx for this year. You can count half is efficiency, half is cash CapEx, and it is slightly below our EUR 1.3 billion.
Jim Casteele: Hi, David.
Stijn Bijnens: In, in-
Jim Casteele: I will take the question on consumer mobile. If you look, A recently launched their unlimited plan at EUR 24. We already added Mobile Vikings, an unlimited plan at EUR 25 as entry unlimited plan because we have speed tiering on our mobile plan to drive further value up. I think it is probably a mix. I would look at it as a mix of elements. On the one hand, what we have seen is that these unlimited plans actually drive ARPC up, so it is actually a value-based move. At the same time, it also helps to prepare for potential new Digi moves on unlimited plans because you have lowered already price points in the market. What we see today is that it is actually driving value, rather than being a price war.
David Vagman: Okay. Thanks very much, all three. Maybe a very quick follow-up on the CapEx efficiency gains. Should we think that there could be more in 2027, or it is more in the vein of the CMD 2026?
Stijn Bijnens: We are within the range of the CMD, including the Unifiber acquisition, but we are always looking for efficiencies across the board.
David Vagman: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: The next question is coming from Dhruva Shah from UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Dhruva Shah: Hi, all. Thanks very much for taking the questions. I have a few, please. If we start off with Domestic and just continuing in terms of the residential competition, Digi are now offering their mobile plans in 655 Bpost stores across the country. Do you think this will lead to a step change in their net add trajectory, or do you think this really is a non-event?
Dhruva Shah: Maybe just, so that's on the mobile side, and on the fixed side with Digi, are you seeing anything significantly changing in terms of their rollout? They've obviously committed effectively to being in the Belgian market through additional financing. Just curious as to, yeah, any changes on the fiber side of things. Second question really is on the Global side of things. Can you maybe just double-click on what's driving the stabilization in revenues?
Dhruva Shah: Is it more that the legacy declines are slowing, or is there higher growth in the growth areas, or is it a combination of both? You also mentioned that you're 3 quarters through of the 8-quarter transformation, the direct margins are already growing. Would you say things are going quicker than expected? Do you still expect Global EBITDA for 2027 to grow? The final question really is just on free cash flow. My understanding is 2027 will be the peak CapEx year, but if I rewind back to the CMD, if I recall correctly, then there was a free cash flow chart which suggested that we will see moderate free cash flow growth in each year, all the way through towards the targeted EUR 400 million per annum. Is that still the case despite peak CapEx in 2027?
Dhruva Shah: Should we and could we expect free cash flow to still grow? Thank you very much.
Jim Casteele: On the question on Digi and Bpost, the way I look at it is that we have a great retail network ourselves. We have our own Proximus shops. We also have an extensive non-exclusive retail partner network. We have a very strong retail environment ourselves, so we are not really worried that we would be under pressure from a channel perspective. This deal has been signed a couple of months ago, and if you look at our quarterly net adds, I think we are continuing to deliver robust net adds in a very competitive environment. I think our strategy is working. We are continuing on focusing on our own strengths, and as I mentioned, we are very happy with our strong retail channels ourselves.
Stijn Bijnens: Concerning additional financing for fiber rollout, we have a fully financed business plan. In the Capital Markets Day, we show that we have a good bond program with good maturities. The first bond maturity is in 2028, so we will probably raise some bond before that. From a free cash flow perspective, indeed, we said previously that the organic free cash flow for 2027 would be above EUR 100 million, and that is still the case. We also confirm our dividend policy for next year and the year after. Global, I will hand it over to Seckin.
Seckin Arikan: Thank you, Dhruva, for the question. There is not a silver bullet, to be honest with you, when it comes to the stabilization of our business. It is lots of hard work and the disciplined execution of our Elevate strategy. We are working very closely with our largest customers to make sure that we maximize that business. Our legacy declining portfolio, P2P voice, and P2P messaging, we are securing that we farm those businesses and reduce the decline as much as we can. We see good traction in our growth products like IoT, omnichannel, digital identity. The things are, let me say it like this, where we want them to be at this stage in these eight quarters of the journey. We are around less, we finalized the three quarters, little bit less than 50%. We are happy where we are.
Dhruva Shah: Thank you all very much.
Jim Casteele: Thank you all very much.
Operator: The next question is coming from Michiel Declercq from KBC Securities. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Michiel Declercq: Yes. Hi, and thanks for taking my questions. The first one would be on the domestic EBITDA development in Q3. You mentioned that there is a bit of an impact from the Unifiber consolidation. Just curious, is this a bit of a one-off impact, like implementation impact, or is this more structural? Just to get a bit of a degree on what kind of impact we should expect from this in Q4 as well, and maybe rolling over into 2027. Also a bit on the inflation in rent and cloud inflation. I assume this is something that we will see continue in Q4. That would be my first question. The second question would be just on the consumer ARPC or ARPU, was up quite a bit in Q3.
Michiel Declercq: Can you give a bit the drivers here on the strong revenue per customer? Thank you.
Stijn Bijnens: Yeah, I'll take the Unifiber one. Unifiber will continue to have OPEX, but the EUR 5 million in Q3 is rather exceptionally high due to some timing elements. For the second half of 2026, so the last 6 months of this year, the OPEX impact is approximately EUR 6 to 7 million. It is rather exceptionally high. In the future, it will be offset by also income with the increasing filling rate and the intended onboarding of Orange on the Unifiber network. That should become a positive result in the future.
Jim Casteele: On the question on the consumer revenue per customer, we indeed have a year-over-year increase on ARPC, which is driven by a combination, of course, of the pricing power that we still have on the Proximus brand with price increases that we did in January 2026. We continue also to see a movement of customers to convergence, where the ARPC is higher than on customers that only have one product. Also, fiber monetization continues to help drive ARPC up. Of course, there are some elements that put pressure on the ARPC. We talked about the A and B brand mix, but also the continued decline of fixed voice and television puts pressure. All in all, with the positive upsides that we drive, we continue to see an increasing ARPC on consumer in detail.
Stijn Bijnens: Yeah. Coming back on the more general question on cost side, the inflation, of course, the Belgian situation is an automatic indexation of salaries. That is why we have a very disciplined OPEX program to help that work out through our plan. Thank you.
Michiel Declercq: Okay. Thank you.
Operator: The next question is coming from Paul Sidney from Berenberg. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Paul Sidney: Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks very much for taking the questions. Just two from me, please. Firstly, you have executed extremely well over the past 12 months on CapEx and OPEX, areas that are in your control, Proximus' control. But the domestic top-line growth remains a little bit muted. I was just wondering, what can Proximus do, if anything, to reinvigorate service revenue growth looking forward? Or is it just a question of it is a difficult four-player market, and then it could be quite challenging looking forward? Secondly, Stijn, you said at the Capital Markets Day back in February that the Global business does not belong with Proximus' traditional Belgian operations. Any further thoughts on strategic options, the Global business? Has even the turnaround in the quarter and the raised guidance changed the view internally on the business?
Paul Sidney: Are there any potential additional options, a spinoff or a sale? Just to get your thoughts there would be really helpful. Thank you.
Jim Casteele: Hi, Paul. Jim here. I am going to answer the first question on how can we drive service revenue growth. If you look at the consumer, we have been growing service revenue between 2% and 3%. Of course, this is driven to a large extent on, I would call, more the traditional telco business by pushing customers to convergence, taking more and more products from us, focused on internet and mobile, because we know there is pressure on fixed voice and TV.
Jim Casteele: I think next to that, of course, there is also a lot of other opportunities. We drive a lot of additional value by exploiting the assets that the technologies bring. If you look at fiber, we are really doing well in driving fiber ARPU up, where in the past, on our copper network, we were not able to do speed tiering. We do the same on mobile with 5G speed tiering.
Jim Casteele: I think we are being creative in finding new revenue growth within the existing business. On top of that, if we have a lot of customer relationships, we also, of course, try to maximize the value of those relationships. I am thinking about Wi-Fi boosters, but also more and more things on network security, helping customers to cope with phishing. All the elements on cybersecurity, which is not only a B2B space, but is also relevant in the B2C domain. Going forward, we also see opportunities related to AI. I think some of them are already known today. Some will probably become more concrete as we move on. I think there is a lot of opportunities still out there to continue to grow, also in a market that gets more and more saturated.
Jim Casteele: That is a bit the way that we try to continue to drive service revenue in the domestic market on consumers.
Stijn Bijnens: The second question on Global, referring to the Capital Markets Day, we are still on the same trajectory. As I have said, and also in discussion with my board, I asked two years to get Global back to growth and make it a better business. Around 2028, we will have the discussion with the board in terms of value crystallization. Of course, we create optionality in the business by also going back to the business unit structure. On the one hand, Connect, the BICS part, and on the other hand, the Protect and Engage part. I am pleased with the progress, but nothing has changed compared to the statement at the Capital Markets Day.
Paul Sidney: Thank you very much. Is it possible to just have a quick follow-up. I appreciate the comments on the consumer side, but is it business, the enterprise in Belgium, the potential problem. Is there anything we can do there to improve the service revenue trend?
Stijn Bijnens: Yes, we can do definitely to improve. We've presented the growth strategy. We strongly still believe it's based on the one hand, we do have the declining traditional telco business, like fixed voice and traditional higher ARPCs that needs to get offset by growth areas, mainly in the adjacent IT side, like cybersecurity, cloud, sovereign cloud. I also explained at the Capital Markets Day that turning B2B back to growth, we have 2-year transformation program. It will be hard work. We have some delays in the IT side of the business due to some project delivery issues, but we're taking action to mitigate this, and we still strongly believe we can get that back to growth.
Paul Sidney: It's very clear. Thank you for your comments.
Operator: The next question is coming from Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Roshan Ranjit: Great. Afternoon, everyone. I've got two questions, please. Thank you for the slides on satellite and AI agents. My first question is, are you having to be much more proactive in your, as you said, active back book management in defending from these agents? I guess, are you seeing more incoming queries from your customers trying to exploit the gaps between your three brands? What are you doing or what are you able to do to mitigate that, please? The second question, Stijn, I think you just mentioned B2B, and whilst you highlighted the structural headwinds you are seeing there, are you seeing more competition from your domestic peers as well?
Roshan Ranjit: Because I think they have identified B2B as an area where they are perhaps under index versus you guys, and are they pushing harder, and are you having to tender harder for new contracts or contracts being renewed? Thank you.
Jim Casteele: Roshan, I am going to take the first question. On AI agents, we are approaching this from multiple angles, and I think the most important angle is making sure that we have as many as possible products with our customers. Convergence, pushing internet and mobile, is a key cornerstone of the strategy. The good news is this has been a cornerstone of our strategy for several years, so we are quite advanced in doing that.
Jim Casteele: Next to that, for me also extremely important that we have strong brands, and there the NPS of the Proximus brand, but also Scarlet, Mobile Vikings supports our belief that we are also there doing the right things. We continue to strengthen the emotional engagement that we have with our customers so that as a telco brand, we are also a relevant brand for our consumers.
Jim Casteele: Typically thinking about the revamp that we did in September on our loyalty program, where we now have every Wednesday a rendezvous moment through Proximus for You Wednesday. Then probably also important is that we also try to understand how we do marketing with the agents. We are investing quite a lot on what is in the industry called the GEO, trying to understand how an agent comes to a decision, and then how can you, as a company and with your brands, understand how to influence that decision in the direction that you want. Just like we do with traditional marketing. I would say it is a multiple answer, but we are working on all actions on that.
Stijn Bijnens: The other question on B2B, whether structurally something is changing. No, it is a competitive market. Of course, at the telco side, we have to digest the decline in fixed voice, and of course, with every mobile renewal RFP, there are price discussions, but we are able to win most of the renewals. At the IT side, it is a competitive market, but nothing has changed. It is more execution, and with the transformation program to capture more of that market is the ambition. But the telco pressure, it is in our plan that we presented. Yeah.
Roshan Ranjit: That is helpful. Thank you. If I may just quick follow up, Jim Casteele, on your answer. Are you seeing any kind of adjustment within your three brands? Some downspin. I know clearly convergence was introduced into the Mobile Vikings brand as well. Are you seeing any shifting within your customer base?
Jim Casteele: What you see is indeed in the Belgian market over the last, I would say, probably year and a half, with the intensified competition, you have more customers taking the choice of a new brand. There, in acquisition, we see that there is more appetite for the challenger brands.
Jim Casteele: The good news is that we have, at Proximus Group, we have two very strong challenger brands that can take their part in that play. We do not see an acceleration of that trend, so it is something that we have been seeing for several quarters. You actually see it back in the net adds and the movement of higher ARPCs. I think it shows that it is well under control. We are also monitoring, of course, to what extent agents start to interact with our brands. Therefore now, also that is very much under control.
Jim Casteele: We continue to monitor the market and our customer behaviors like we always do, and we will adapt as we move forward. Until now, I would say it is all going to plan, and we control quite well the movements between the brands by also making sure that our premium brand, Proximus, is really considered as a premium brand. Investments that we do in trust, being positioned Proximus as a trusted brand, but also as a brand with the best fiber network in Belgium, are all elements that help to support the value volume strategy that we execute.
Roshan Ranjit: Great. That is super helpful. Thank you.
Operator: The next question is coming from Maxime Lejeune from Degroof Petercam. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Maxime Lejeune: Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I have three of them. The first one is on the delayed IT projects. Any idea of how long will the delay be, and when will we be able to see the impact of it in revenue? The second one is on the global direct margin that improved. Do you see it as structural, or was it also helped by one-offs? The third one is the lower cash this year only explained by lower No, yeah. Is it only the impact in FCF guidance, or are there also other reason for the higher FCF guidance? If so, could you measure them? Thank you.
Stijn Bijnens: Hi, Maxime. I will take the first one on IT projects. Yeah, it is some delays in delivery. Our best guess is, and those are some larger projects, is that the revenue recognition kicks in in Q1 next year. Global, I will refer to you.
Seckin Arikan: A short answer is that, no, we do not have any one-off DM improvements in our numbers.
Fiona Lam: I suppose your question is related to the drivers for our increase of free cash flow guidance. As I already mentioned, the increase is coming from, a part is the Global better result that we also increase, and a part is related to the slightly lower CapEx, especially also driven by cash efficiency and the cash timing of that.
Maxime Lejeune: Perfect. Thank you.
Operator: As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question is coming from Charles de Saint-Périer from BNP Paribas. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Charles de Saint-Périer: Yes, hello. Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I had two. The first one is on your customer service convergence. You have just posted a 4.7 year-on-year growth, which was the best for the past last year. I was just wondering how, you have mentioned in your AI agent slide that convergence is one of your best defense.
Charles de Saint-Périer: Now that we have convergence going on and you are pushing it as part of your strategy, could we believe that this segment could have an even larger acceleration, and could we model out an even higher year-on-year growth for the next quarters going forward? My second question was, I was just wondering, as part also of the service revenue growth, how much was each brand the main drivers of this growth, and which brand basically drives the most growth in this quarter? Thanks.
Jim Casteele: Charles, thank you for the questions. On the first one, on convergence, of course, we continue to push convergence as much as we can. But of course, it is also market dynamics and customer behavior. It is not something that we fully control ourselves. But you can continue to expect to see a growing convergence customer base because, like was said already before as well, all my three brands are offering all internet and mobile. We are doing cross-selling as much as we can. On the question on which brands drive the most growth, I am sure you understand from a competitive point of view that on this, I am going to not really answer that question. I am sure you understand that.
Charles de Saint-Périer: Okay, thanks.
Operator: There are no further questions, so I hand back to your host to conclude today's conference.
Nancy Goossens: Thank you. Thank you all for joining us today and for your questions. As usual, should you have any follow-up questions, you can contact the IR team. Bye.
Operator: Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.
Operator: The host has ended this call. Goodbye.
