FRTAY (FRTAY) Q2 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

[Audio Gap] Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the freenet AG Conference Call on the Second Quarter 2026 and Half Year Results. The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand over to Robin Harries, the CEO of freenet AG.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 earnings call. I'm very pleased with our performance in the first half of the year. Everything is moving in the right direction, and we see substantial growth opportunities ahead of us. In the first half of 2026, we expanded our subscription base by 140,000, surpassing 10 million subscribers. I think this is an important milestone, which is very impressive, and a clear statement to the strength of our sales organization. We are on track and confirm our 2026 guidance. While others struggled in the first half of the year, we were able to add 34,000 Mobile subscribers and 35,000 IPTV subscribers and could increase our postpaid service revenue. We see progress in the integration of mobilezone. This is progressing nicely, and this also broadens and expands our sales footprint and creates new opportunities for us. waipu was strong again, and nice contribution, and we could increase the adjusted EBITDA by almost 40% in the first half of the year. And besides this also a solid subscriber growth. Our top line grew almost 25% due to the acquisition of mobilezone. This also reflects our broader business scale and shows that we have become much more important for the industry and for our partners. Our Mobile business is still affected by the negative known MNO agreement effect. The negotiations are still ongoing. Nothing decided yet, but we are on it. We have, I would say, constructive discussions. Last week, we were in Munich and talked to them again. So I think this is moving forward. And we are very pleased about the progress and strong execution. In terms of our AI-first strategy, we brought further applications live, our AI Voicebot, we further scaled it and our AI Buddy, which is a tool for our telesales team. And besides this, we initiated even more projects. All of this supports our full year outlook for the rest of the year, and our dividend policy is unchanged. We have a very strong cash conversion over 60% and which will translate into shareholder return. As we said, we have a minimum dividend of EUR 2 for the year '26 to '28, rising to expected EUR 2.3 in full year '28 if we are -- and this might be even higher, another dividend. Let me provide more color on our Mobile business. We grew in the last quarter in Q2, we grew 34,000 subscribers. I think this is very solid, and when you look at our competitors and the market conditions. And besides this postpaid net adds, we could even grow stronger in terms of gross adds where we could achieve plus 11% year-over-year. So our marketing and sales channels, they are strong. We are optimizing this. We are scaling this. We are very happy about the performance of our marketing and sales teams. And we are happy about our strong sales footprint has become even bigger with the acquisition of mobilezone. You can buy freenet products in a huge variety of platforms. And I think this is -- it's really encouraging the progress that we see in terms of marketing and sales. Besides this, we could also increase our postpaid service revenues by 0.7%. And as you know, we see ARPU decline. So this started in '24 when the market was very competitive. Prices went down a lot in '24 and '25. However, we could stabilize it. It started in the end of last year and in the first half of '26. Again, we could increase the front book pricing by 1%. You might think 1% is not so much. But if you consider the negative trend in the last 2 years, I think this is a strong sign, and it's a very positive development. It has become a value over volume game and not only by us, also by our competitors. And we are confident that this trend will go on. So therefore, I would say the outlook is also encouraging. If you look at the right graph, you can see our postpaid reselling business. And we also generated over 350,000 postpaid subscribers for our partners. And all of this, together with our own customer base, shows how important we are in the industry, and how we develop as a strong partner for the network providers within the industry. Let me also talk a little bit about the levers to see the quality of our growth. Price discipline is important. So we have started this. We are doing this. We will keep doing this. Value is more important than volume. And we steer this through our different brands. We have our premium brand, which is freenet. And this is also where we put our money. We invest into our premium brand freenet. This is -- we will also put more focus on bundles in the following months. This has also a positive effect on the ARPU. And we will further develop and optimize our customer base. We have started it last year with a huge project with over 50 initiatives. We could already finalize some of them, but we are still also working on many other initiatives, and the impact, so the return of all of this, we expect the first -- we will expect the first positive returns in the second half of the year and then also in '27 and the following years. One huge opportunity is our brand freenet itself. When you look at unaided brand awareness, we are still far behind our competitors. If you look at unaided brand awareness, we are around 10. If you compare this, for example, with 1&1, our competitors, they are around 50. And this is important because the stronger your brand is, the more people will come to you directly and you don't have to pay for them. So that's why we keep investing into our brand. We relaunched the freenet.de domain in the beginning of the year. We've already had several TV campaigns and brand marketing campaigns for freenet. And the more you invest into the brand, you will create compounding effects, and we believe that there will be positive returns in the following months and also next year. We see that this works. We see this immediately with through stronger traffic on our web shops through higher conversion rates, and through positive impacts on our ARPU because if you convince people that you have great products, they come to you, you don't have to pay for them and they go to you directly without searching, you also have a possibility to sell something for a really reasonable price. So our ambition '28 for the Mobile is to keep growing our customer base, supported by an AI-first operating model. So we want to grow profitably and want to generate a lot of cash. Now let me provide more color on our IPTV business. We saw a healthy growth in the first half of the year. Second quarter was also solid with 35,000 subscribers. We could add a new wholesale partner, [ DNF net ], that's also important here. And we are happy about the start into the year, and we believe that the performance in the second half of the year will be even stronger. As you know, through the soccer championship and one of our competitors really invested heavily into the market, into marketing campaigns, we experienced this. So even though we could still grow in the market, and we believe that this was also good for the market that the competitor invested into it and it helped to shift from traditional TV to IPTV. On the right-hand side, you can see our targeted advertising. So we have already over 1 billion impression per month and 500 million is marketed by our partners, 750 by us, by waipu.tv. So the impressions, they go up. We are happy about the development. And overall, it's a healthy business that goes into the right direction. On the next slide, you can see a study which highlights the IPTV penetration in the market. And we've always said this that it's the market itself, it's a huge opportunity. And you can see this here really clearly. The IPTV penetration in Germany is less than 20%, 18%. If you compare this with other markets, for example, France, where it is 60%, Spain is 40%, Belgium 35%, I think it's obvious that there is -- it's a huge opportunity in the market. We have a leading product, I would say, the best product in the German market, and we have strong partners. And just by growing with the market, you can get a glimpse about the potential in this company. But besides this, we also have good marketing campaigns. We have trained our models, and we know how to acquire customers. We proved this in the first half of the year again, we could also grow stronger, but it's also here in the IPTV business, value is important, not only volume. So we found, I would say, a very healthy mix where we could show that we grew the customer base and could show a solid growth. And besides this, we really could improve the adjusted EBITDA a lot and which is important. We always say we want to grow the customer base. But besides this, we also want to have a cash-generating business, and that's why we are improving the profitability step by step. First big step was last year where we could increase it to over EUR 30 million. And now we are doing this again and are on a very good path here. On the next slide, you can see 2 of our AI applications. One is Finn, it's an AI Voicebot. And we started the first test in March this year, we keep scaling this. And we are very, very happy about the results so far. So Finn is already able to solve customer requests whenever he's live with over 10%, so over 10% of the calls that he gets or we lead over 10% of the calls, we already lead to Finn if he's live, and then he's able to really solve the problems. The customers are happy about it. And that's just the first step. The potential in the AI Voicebot is strong, and we are very confident that we can -- within the next month, we will keep scaling this, and then that we will be able to solve even more customer requests. On the right-hand side, you can see our Telesales AI Buddy. It's a tool for our telesales agents that helps them to have a 360-degree customer view. And we have guided conversation. We have transcripted calls, and we have AI-based offers. So the agents get AI -- get recommendations from AI, what they shall offer the customers. This leads to higher conversion rates, makes it much more effective. We already have the first call centers where we have -- where we roll out the Telesales AI Buddy, and we will keep rolling it out. Besides this, we are working on many other AI applications and features, Agentic Commerce. So we will further strengthen our footprint here. This makes a lot of sense because if you look at our product offerings, offers, we have offers in all networks in all German telco networks for very good prices, and you can book directly with us. So this makes a lot of sense to integrate it into all kind of LLMs. We are already doing this. We will further strengthen our footprint here. Besides this, we already started a project where we bring AI into our stores. We have over 500 retail stores in Germany, and we will improve our IT there as well, enable our sales staff on the ground with really very good AI tools that help them to sell more. And I think that will be good for the customers. It will be good for us. And we are progressing in terms of AI development. And when we look at our web shops, this is something that we are testing to test or to create front end faster with AI, to test faster with AI. We have many brands, many web shops. So therefore, this is also a very nice and very interesting project. With that overview, I hand over to Ingo Arnold, our CFO, for the financial update.

Thank you, Robin. Good morning, everybody, from my side. I start with an overview about the group results in the first half of the year. So maybe a little bit surprising, but we are very happy with the performance what we saw, even if we see some minus symbols on this overview here. But starting with the revenue, there is a strong increase. This is, from my point of view, not that impressive because we acquired mobilezone and we acquired a lot of hardware sales, what we are doing here. And this is the increase, even less impressive, because as you all know, with hardware sales, the margin is not as high as in the business what we do in the subscription business. And on the gross profit side, yes, there's a minus symbol. But if you correct it by the unfavorable MNO agreement, it is a plus of 3%. And I think this is the proof that the underlying business is totally working fine. And it is the same on the EBITDA level here because if you would correct it by the unfavorable MNO agreement, then also there would be an increase of 3% in the EBITDA. So underlying trends are quite fine. And in free cash flow, it is even better with the EUR 155 million, what we do have. So it's slightly lower than last year. I will explain the details later on. But all in, the results what we have here, from my point of view, it's a clear confirmation that the underlying business is not only okay, but it is growing. Moving to the revenues. Here in Mobile, we have the same picture what we have on the group level. We see a strong increase from the acquisition of mobilezone, but what is more relevant is the service revenue, and Robin was already discussing it earlier. Yes, we see -- it's a slight increase what we see. But in an environment where we see decreasing ARPUs, I think this is -- it's a big success to more than compensate the decreasing ARPU by additional customers. So I think this is quite fine. And in the IPTV business, here, what you see the most relevant one is not only the subscription business or the subscription revenue, but also the targeted advertising revenue. And again, here, you see an increase of nearly 50% -- of nearly 10%. 50% would be even nicer, but of nearly something near to 10%. What you also see is that in the other revenues, you see a decrease from EUR 6.6 million to EUR 2.1 million. And as usual, the other revenues or the other parts of the business normally are not that important. But here, we have a special effect. And I think it -- the whole Media Barter topics and all what I heard is that Tim has discussed it with some of you in depth yesterday evening. So I would say it is more prominent than necessary because at the end of the day, these Media Barter revenues, which do have an effect in the gross profit does not have any effect in the EBITDA. So therefore, yes, we see it here on the revenue level, the decrease by EUR 4 million based on this missing Media Barter business, but this does not have any implication on the profit of the business. Moving to the gross profit page here. We see on the Mobile side, yes, I think we do not only have the effect from the unfavorable MNO agreement. We do also see that the benchmark from 2025 was really high because in the second quarter of '25, we received some additional payments from one of the network operators. This is normal business. You have these quarters where you have additional commissions, and then there are quarters when these commissions are missing. This is no sign of any change in the quality of the business. But yes, definitely, the second quarter '25 was much higher also if you compare it with the first quarter '25. So long discussion, short result. The gross profit compared to the last quarter is lower. But I think we are here -- even here, we are on a good way to reach our targets. And if you see it on the half year base, you see that the gross profit in Mobile is relatively stable. What you can also see is that the gross profit margin is stable compared to the first quarter. In IPTV and gross profit, here, again, first focus on the ongoing, on the subscription, and on the advertising business here, you see the increase what you already saw in the first quarter. It's repeating in the second quarter here. All in, this gross profit is increasing from EUR 38 million to EUR 43 million. And if you look just only in the valuable parts of the business, you still see that we have an underlying gross profit margin of something like 40%, which is very promising for this business. On the other hand, if you look into the other parts of the gross profit here, I was already discussing the EUR 4 million effect from the Media Barter. There is one other effect. There is a revaluation of the inventory of the business. And there, we had to do a correction of EUR 1.4 million. I think in the best case, we would have already done -- we would have done it already at the end of '25. But I think we had to do it now, and this is the correction of EUR 1.4 million, which will be also seen on the EBITDA side. And then there was just a reclassification for EUR 2.3 million, which is shown here in the gross profit, but which is unrelevant for the EBITDA. So I think it makes it a little bit intransparent that we have these one-off effects here. But hopefully, especially with the chart above, it is clear that the underlying business is fully healthy and growing. Moving to the adjusted EBITDA. Yes, we see -- I think we -- on a half year basis, we normalized it in these boxes. We normalize the effect from the unfavorable MNO contract and from the negative provisions what we had to build here. And if we would not have done it, then we would have a stable Mobile business, a stable EBITDA. And I think this is in our eyes with a stable, slightly increasing service revenue. So underlying, it's quite fine. It's not growing, this could be critics, but it's totally stable. And we have all these initiatives what Robin was describing before. So we are still very optimistic for the future year. Moving to the IPTV EBITDA here. Also here, we see the increase compared to last year. We see the special effect of EUR 1.4 million from the catch-up in the inventory valuation. But all in, it is all as we expected also here in the IPTV business. And yes, I think we -- on the subscription side, we were -- I think, it was quite fine in the second quarter. But in the back of -- with the World Cup, we expected slightly more. But I think for the second half, we are still positive here to reach our targets also in subscription terms. Moving to the cash flow, to the cash flow bridge. I already said, yes, it's a positive surprise that it is that good. It's EUR 155 million in the first half. We see a positive effect from the change in working capital because there were some MNO bonus payments, where we had a very positive phasing in the first half. All in, the negative from the change in net working capital is EUR 5.6 million. And if you look into the yearly bridge, you see that we expected to have minus EUR 40 million here. Yes. So maybe I would say I would be a little bit more optimistic on the working capital side from today's point of view. It is too early. I think we have to wait and see how the second half of the year will work, with the inventories, et cetera, in the Black Week and the Christmas business. So there are still some risks. So it is too early to change anything. But yes, the working capital development in the first half definitely is promising. From the taxes, something comparable. So the prepayments, what we have to do, we expected to get some statements from the tax authorities earlier because definitely, our prepayments for taxes have to be higher because the tax loss carryforwards gets smaller and smaller. This is something what we discuss separately. But as long as the tax authorities does not ask us to do anything, so there is also a chance, but it's only a phasing definitely. For the other part of the bridge here, yes, in the first half of the year, we spent a little bit more in CapEx, especially on the Media Broadcast digital radio side. So it's a question what will happen here in the second half of the year. I think we have forecasted EUR 45 million for the full year as CapEx -- and I think it is still -- this is still what I would expect from today's point of view. No surprises in lease payments and in interest. Interest are slightly higher than last year because of the acquisition of mobilezone, we have more debt volume, and therefore, higher interest rates. But all in, more positive surprises here than any negative surprises. Moving to the guidance. We confirm the guidance for the full year. We know that we have some challenges still in the second half of the year. The easy math would not work just to double what we had in the first half of the year on EBITDA level. But I think we did another forecast internally here. And we still see a lot of chances here to reach the guidance. So I think we have to wait how the second half will work, and how the business will continue to go. But it is still -- we still see very good chances to reach the corridors even in Mobile and also in IPTV. And so yes, we are optimistic on an EBITDA level, on a free cash flow level anyway, we are -- even on a linear base, we are even on top of the guidance. So I do not see any problems here. And with subs and postpaid customers, I think postpaid customers, I do not see any problem to reach the guidance in the IPTV segment. Yes, we need a good second half, but we have seen from that business that it was performing good in the second half, especially in the fourth quarter. So therefore, it's not clear if it works. But yes, also here, if we do what we did in the past, this is still possible. And I think Magenta was very aggressive in the second quarter. We have to wait and see how they react in the fourth quarter and in the second half of the year. And I think there are still chances. And yes, I'm optimistic -- on a full picture, I'm optimistic, but yes, it is an ambition. It was an ambition from the start of the year ongoing. But yes, I see good chances here. And so there is no reason not to confirm the guidance. So this is from a financial side, a short overview. So I hand over to the operator and ask you to start the Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] So we already have few questions in the line. The first question is from Joshua Mills, BNP Paribas.

My first question is just around the ongoing negotiations with your MNO partners and specifically the MNO partner which canceled their -- or changed their reseller agreement with you at the end of the year. You've said that those talks are ongoing. It sounds like you're still optimistic for a positive outcome. But can I just push a bit harder on why is it taking a bit longer than you might have expected? Specifically, what kind of terms are you negotiating around? Is it volumes? Is it price? Where is the sticking point? And then finally, if we are able to see you re-sign this MNO contract, let's say, in Q4 this year, would it still have a positive impact on your guidance and free cash flow for 2026? Or is it only going to really impact from 2027 onwards? So that's the first question. Second question is around the competitive environment in Germany. You mentioned that Magenta had been quite aggressive in the second quarter. Are you seeing any other changes in commercial trends or promotional activity from the likes of Vodafone and Telefonica?

Thanks for your 2 questions. Happy to take them. First one related to the MNO partner. So yes, we are still optimistic that we believe we have a fair chance that there will be -- in the end, there will be a positive outcome for freenet. So why does it take longer or long? So I think it's normal for a contract or agreement of that size with that volume that it takes some time. It's complex, it's complicated business in the end. So we have the objective to close a fair agreement with a win-win situation for both partners. I believe it's possible to do a great deal here, but it takes some time, but we are on it. So we have regular meetings. As I said, last week, we went -- we met them on the ground. So -- and see where we are in ongoing constructive discussions. And we are still optimistic. I cannot talk about details that are about details this new agreement because we don't share this. You also asked if there will be a positive impact this year. So this depends on the agreement. It's still too early to talk about it. But yes, we will let you know as soon as we have something concrete here. The second question was related to the market environment. And I think the market goes into or moves into a healthy direction. You could see, for example, in Q2 that market -- that competitors of us, they increased prices. And I mean, this is something that we could also see from time to time in the past. But this time, I think it's different because even though there was strong pressure on their customer growth, and you could see it if you look at the Q2 results of our competitors, they didn't change the way. So they didn't start to decrease prices again. And I think that's a really good sign. So they accept that they lost customers, but they stick to their policy, and increase prices and keep the prices, and that's a really good sign. And that's also what we did. So we started to increase prices relatively early, even earlier than our competitors. But if you look at the price levels, they are stable. And it's not that there is a broad price increase for all mobile plan tariffs, but you can see it in special offers that the prices don't go further down and sometimes they even go up. Yes, I hope this answered your questions.

The next question goes to Polo Tang from UBS.

I've got 3. Just circling back in terms of competitive dynamics, but maybe coming from a different angle. All the operators apart from Deutsche Telekom are seeing weaker mobile net adds. So what do you think is actually happening with market growth in terms of postpaid subscribers? And who do you think is taking share? Second question is really just about EBITDA growth or the phasing of EBITDA growth. So you were down 5% in terms of EBITDA in H1. So to reach the midpoint of guidance that is broadly stable for the full year, I think you need around about 5% EBITDA growth in the second half. So can you talk about the main drivers to get that improvement in EBITDA in the second half? My third question is really just about waipu.tv. So you've reiterated the ambition in terms of 3 million subscribers by 2028, but that does imply a more than doubling of the current run rate in terms of net adds. So what do you see as the main driver to kind of get that step-up in terms of waipu.tv net adds? And will this involve more marketing spend? So I'm just wondering if you can deliver both accelerating subscriber growth at waipu.tv and also higher levels of EBITDA at waipu.

Thanks for your question. Happy to take the first question and the third question. The first question was related also to the competitive environment and what actually moves market or if the market is growing. So when you look -- I mean, yes, our competitors -- so lost -- I mean, besides Telekom, they were strong and Telefonica, they also grew and then the other 2, they lost customers. If you look at the market overall, I think there is opportunity in, for example, family card or second card. So this is something where Telekom has been strong. I think the others are also doing this. We are doing this. So this is a potential for further growth in the market so that you start to [Technical Difficulty] customers, and we are doing this. In terms of freenet, if you look at the market opportunity, I think we are in a very good position because it makes a lot of sense to go to freenet and buy your mobile phone or your mobile plans there because actually, you have a choice, you have a variety of networks, and you get them -- you get it for a very good price. And our prices are very competitive. And if you are a customer with freenet, you are in a very good position, because even if you want to switch networks with your next contract, yes, we can offer everything to you. And that, I think, from the product, from the offering, I think we are in an advanced position, and this allows us, I would say, to grow stronger than the competition. Even though there's a Telekom and they have a very, very strong brand, they have -- really have branded fans and the brand itself, it's very strong. So that's why I also -- they are very strong in the market. And then let me answer the third question, waipu.tv, 3 million. Yes, we believe it's possible. If you look at -- so the market itself, how it will develop, I showed a slide where you could see that the IPTV penetration in Germany is just 18%. And this is really -- it's much lower than France with 60%. So the market itself, we believe, and also others believe, that this will grow. So the opportunity will grow. And even if you only grow with the market, you will see nice subscriber development. But on top of this, I really believe that we have a superior product. The product is strong. We have a wide range of channels. We integrated partners and the user experience is really good. We have a dedicated team only working on this. It's -- waipu is a meta product, independent meta product that makes a lot of sense. And we will keep investing into our brand. There's still a difference between the #1 in the market, which is Magenta and which is us. But also if you compare how much they invest into their marketing, and then compare it with the amount that we invest, it's tiny. But even though we are so strong in the market because of the [indiscernible] product. And we will -- I think we don't have to do crazy things in the next years to come. We will be very disciplined with our marketing investments. Our marketing budget is on a healthy level. We are investing into brand marketing campaigns. And so that's why we are quite confident that the combination of market development, the combination of the strong product with good marketing, and then also with our revenue stream, which is advertising because it's not only subscribers where we earn our money, it's also the advertising business. And there, we will further see development because the more subscribers we have, the more impressions we have, the more impressions we sell to advertisers. And this will bring us in a better and better situation. And we believe that this will increase the revenues in both streams and will also lead to a nice EBITDA uplift in the next years. Now I hand over to Ingo for the second question.

Yes. For the EBITDA phasing, yes, I already mentioned that it is an ambition for the second half of the year. But in Mobile, on the one hand, I was discussing earlier the commissions, what we get in the second quarter of '25 from one of the networks, and that is typical for the business. So this could also happen in the third quarter '26 or in the fourth quarter, and this will bring a step-up in the second half. Do I have an agreement today? No, but we are in ongoing discussions with the networks. And so it could happen in the second half. So this is one point to increase the profit. On the other side, we were very generous in paying marketing in the first half of the year. And we still had to pay some brand marketing campaigns, which were initiated from the former management. So some of them were finished in the last weeks. So even with the same performance, it will be possible to pay less on marketing. So I think these are the 2 parts. Definitely, it will not be possible to change anything in the service revenues because this is a slow-moving part. It is stable. We are happy that it is stable, but I think we have enough levers here to increase the results of the Mobile business. On the other side, in the IPTV business, totally different situation. Here, we grow our profit along with the growth of the subscription base, and subscriber base. And so this is definitely -- therefore, it will be higher by definition in the second half. And what we do also have is we were discussing these advertising revenues, what we generate. And in the Christmas business, in the Black Week, these advertising revenues are in a normal state are much higher than in the first half of the year. So here also, there are good chances to reach the guidance. And if we reach the guidance for Mobile and for IPTV, definitely, it will also be possible to reach the EBITDA guidance on a group level. But yes, I said it, it is challenging. But in our forecast, we do still reach it.

Can I just circle back on Robin's answer in terms of the Mobile market? I've heard the comment in terms of value over volume. But do you think overall market volume growth is slowing, Robin?

It's slowing, that's a good question. I don't think so. So if we look at our opportunity, and we could have -- for example, if we would go for subscriber, we could have grown even stronger in terms of subscribers. So -- but we haven't done this in the first half of the year because we put a lot of focus on value. So we don't do everything that we could do, which would bring up subscribers. But we see that there's still elasticity in the market. And so therefore, I think the market is still healthy.

Question goes to Florian Treisch from Kepler.

I have a question around, let's say, general ARPU trends and front book trends. I mean, I appreciate your comment that front book prices are up 1% year-over-year in H1. So the first question would be, how do you think about front book pricing entering the second half? And secondly, how does the current front book pricing compare to your back book? I mean, in essence, my question is targeting towards getting a feeling when the year-over-year ARPU trend can, let's say, stabilize or return closer to 0 as simply, I mean, your net adds are indicating also customer growth will come down post the phase-in of the mobile phone customers?

Thanks a lot for your questions. So I think front book pricing second half of the year will be at least stable. So I don't expect that it will go down again. So it will be at least stable. I rather expect further positive trends. And in terms of back book, so you know that the overall ARPU will still go down over the course of this year, because the impact of the customer base, so the old customers, the normal, the ordinary churn that leave telcos. So every telco has this, so they have higher ARPUs. So you lose customers with high ARPU and this impact -- this will still impact our business or I would say, the overall industry until probably the second half of '27. So because you have normally 2 years contracts and then people churn, so therefore, I would expect that the back book impact will still take some months, and we will see probably a stabilization second half of '27.

The next question is from Lars Vom-Cleff, Deutsche Bank.

Two quick questions remaining. The first one is you have been talking very positively about your own waipu product, but waipu only sustained its market share in this growing IPTV market. And you also mentioned that Magenta was very aggressive in Q2. So I would be interested in finding out whether Magenta increased their market share at the expense of the others? And if yes, why you have not profited from that?

So first of all, I think the effect of the soccer championship was not as strong as we thought it would be. And I think this is also -- I mean, if you look into the atmosphere in Germany related to the soccer championship, so Germany was out relatively, let's say, too early. So this was, I think, not so good for the overall atmosphere. And then the games were rather late. This was also not so ideal. And I think there was not really the strong rise that we expected with the soccer championship. However, we could still achieve a solid growth. And we can see, for example, in certain channels that we lost a little bit share -- impression share in some channels. And I expect that this was then that this went to our competitors. I think you should talk to them, but I think they also invested aggressively in other channels. But for us, the IPTV business is the same as Mobile, we don't do crazy things. Profitability is important for us. So value is more important than volume. And that's why we said, okay, the growth that we achieved in Q2 is solid, is strong. And for us, it's important that profitability goes up and that we don't now start investing into channels just to get the customers. So therefore, yes, that's the story.

Understood. And then a quick housekeeping question for Ingo, if I may. If I noted it down correctly in the past, you were expecting the reported tax rate to still be below 20% in '26 and '27 and H1 '26 rather shows a tax rate of 33%. Shall we calculate with a higher tax rate for this year then, maybe 25%, 30%? Or will the tax rate in H2 be extremely low?

On the one hand, I would ask you maybe to talk separately with Tim because we definitely do not have a tax rate of 33%. Tax rate is -- will be something like 19% this year.

With that, I thank everyone for the questions, and I'll hand you back to your host for the closing remarks.

Thank you. So it has been an exciting first half of the year. And looking ahead, the opportunities are at least as exciting with continued growth at waipu.tv, a value over volume focus on our mobile communication business, and the consistent application of artificial intelligence across our value chain. We are working towards the next milestones of our ambition 2028 strategy and want to thank our team for the fantastic work and the strong execution. And yes, we are really looking forward for the next months and for the rest of the year. Thank you very much.