Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Liberty Global Fourth Quarter 2022 Investor Call. This call and the associated webcast are the property of Liberty Global and any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the express written consent Liberty Global is strictly prohibited. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found underneath the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's website at libertyglobal.com. After today's formal presentation, instructions will be given for a question-and-answer session. Page two of the slides details the company's Safe Harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements. 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 future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical fact. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. The risks include those detailed in Liberty Global's filings with Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent filed forms 10-K and 10-Q 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 of which any such statement is based. I would now like to turn the call over to Mike Fries. You may now proceed.

Okay. Welcome, everyone, and thanks for joining our year-end results call. I hope you're all doing well. As usual, we have some prepared remarks that Charlie and I will manage and then we'll get right to your questions. And for that, I'll bring in my key leaders who will be ready to respond as needed. We're working off slides, as we usually do and they contain quite a bit of good information this time. So we'll assume you've got those in front of you or you'll access them at some point. Just a warning, this is our year-end call, so there's a bit more information than usual, but bear with us, we'll try to keep it crisp. I'll begin on slide three with some highlights for the quarter and the full year. And I have to start by saying that I'm extremely proud of my team in each of our operating businesses for how they executed through a challenging year. And just when we thought things were getting better, Europe was hit with a war in Ukraine, rising energy costs, record inflation and cost of living crisis that impacted customers really across the region. But despite these headwinds, we hit or exceeded all 16 guidance metrics for our big FMC operating companies that we established a year ago and we beat our forecast for distributable cash flow at the Liberty Global level by $100 million, and that's using guidance FX. So this is the third year in a row that we were faced with external uncertainty, but still managed to deliver on our public targets. Second, and perhaps not surprisingly, Q4 was a very strong quarter for us across the board and we delivered positive broadband and postpaid additions in every market, fueled by convergence offerings and Black Friday campaigns.…

Thanks, Mike. On the next page, we've provided a summary of the revenue profile in our four key markets. 2022 saw stable revenues in three of our four markets and slight growth in Belgium despite the challenging macroeconomic environment. Fixed consumer revenue pressures across our markets were suffered by sensible price adjustments in Benelux and in the UK and we saw strong mobile and B2B growth across our portfolio. Virgin Media O2 delivered stable revenues in Q4 and across 2022 with continued pressures on fixed consumer ARPU and challenges in B2B being offset by strong mobile subscription revenue growth. Switzerland saw Q4 revenue growth decline, as continued strong mobile growth was offset by weaker B2B wholesale revenues and continued pressure on the consumer ARPU mix, as the business resets the pricing of its UPC customers in the migration to the Sunrise brand. In the Netherlands, despite a strong net outperformance, we saw a slight decline in revenue growth due to weakness in the consumer fixed business, partially offset by price adjustments, which we implemented in July. We delivered mobile service revenue growth of 6.3% in Q4, which was supported by a metal price adjustment in October. Belgium delivered Q4 revenue growth of 1.7% and 1.5% across 2022 and as the mid-June price adjustment continue to support top line fixed ARPU growth in the second half of the year. The next slide sets out our adjusted EBITDA performance in the quarter. The standout performance in Q4 was delivered by Virgin Media O2, posting full year adjusted EBITDA growth of 6%. In Q4, Virgin Media O2 delivered accelerated EBITDA growth of 10%, driven by synergies from the merger and the continued impact of price rises earlier in the year. This was despite $40 million of cost to capture, which hit the OpEx…

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Sam McHugh with Exane. You may now proceed.

Thanks very much for question. I'm just trying to wrap my head around Slide 21 and the central cost update. It's kind of a two-part question. The first bit is just I see that there's some changes happening with the P&E allocations. Just to confirm that's already captured in the OpCo guidance that you gave separately for example, like the Switzerland OpEx charge shift that's already in the Swiss guidance? And then secondly, how should we think about the cash burn in Central in 2023, relative to what looks like maybe €200 million loss in 2022. Thanks very much.

Charlie?

Yes. Yes I confirm just everyone understands what goes on we do it sort of our joint venture as well as our wholly owned companies. We have what we call technical service agreements to really support the tech spend, which has been coming consistently down actually over the years. And so that's baked in at the opco level, we've actually got a renegotiation with one of them pending, but broadly speaking it's all fully baked in. And then at the center as you know we've been running around this €200 million time number. Gives and takes on that depending a little bit on how much money we spend on development and new areas, but I think you should assume it's going to be broadly consistent around that number for the upcoming years.

Fair. Thanks very much. Thanks, Charlie.

Thank you, Mr. McHugh. The next question comes from the line of James Ratcliffe with Evercore. You may now proceed.

Thank you. Two if I could. One, sort of, big picture and one more specific. You talked about you're seeing for converged customers higher NPS scores, lower churn et cetera. What's the comparison to that? Because I certainly imagine that somebody isn't happy with their broadband service they're probably not going to add the mobile service as well. So can you talk about what sort of the comparison set for specific customers who do add on broadband what you're seeing versus customers who don't the converge route. And second just on the Vodafone investment. You're now a meaningful holder of a core partner of yours. Can you talk about anything that that would facilitate or anything you would make more difficult or limit in terms of your relationships around the JVs in particular? Thanks.

Hi, James. Listen on the convergence figures [indiscernible] is on the call, I can let him chime in a little bit too. But in the case of Holland, which we cite regularly I think we're simply comparing FMC converged customers to non-converged customers. Now fair point if that's one you're making there could be some sort of self-selection there. If you are happy with us then you're likely to buy more products, which means you become happier, whereas people who are not happy with us generally may not buy more products in which case you might say, well, clearly they're not having customers. At the same time there's no other way to do it. I mean, you're either converged or you're not. And when you can drive 20 points of NPS and have your churn that's a big enough gap so to speak to support the premise that convergence works. Now we can maybe endeavor to provide a bit more color and detail around that going forward, but that is the basic set of statistics. On the Vodafone stake we are good partners with Vodafone. We do business together quite frankly in three countries. We own a power network together through this Beacon arrangement in the UK. We've just signed a wholesale deal to provide them fiber access in Ireland. And of course we're partners in Holland. So our touch points with Vodafone are many. This may or may not change that dialogue. We'll see. It's certainly not the reason we did it. Direct reason we did it, but I think it doesn't hurt to have to ensure that our conversations with them going forward about all of these business arrangements are open and direct. That's really all I would say there.

Great. Thank you.

You bet.

Thank you, Mr. Ratcliffe. The next question comes from the line of Maurice Patrick with Barclays. You may now proceed.

Thanks, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Yes, if I could ask a question on the UK ARPU trends. I think the UK ARPU the fixed ARPU was down about 3% or so this quarter despite 6.5% price increase you put through early in the year. Just curious to your thoughts in terms of how the next pricing increased lands. Obviously you've communicated the increase. I wondered how much of that you thought would flow through into better ARPU and therefore what's baked into your guidance would be helpful. And just linked to if I can be curious to know your thoughts around front book and backward pricing in the UK, clearly a lot of back book pricing increases but the front book is still very promotional. What do you think that's set to narrow? Thank you.

Okay. I'll take the first one Lutz you take the second one. I think on the pricing, I will say is that, we anticipate our mobile and fixed pricing to behave – the impact of that pricing to be similar to prior years. And we said in the past, I think what we believe generally happens in fixed pricing, where we get roughly half of that if not more and mobile pricing a larger percentage. And so for sure we expect to either do as good or better, it's a larger increase that's certain in which case you might argue, hey, it's going to be harder. On the other hand, we have a lot more tools in place to manage customers in this particular go around. And as you would have read in the – going forward we have put into the Ts and Cs of contracts in the fixed side of our business in RPI plus 3.9% moving forward. So now you'll know next year, what that price rise is based on January's RPI. It won't be something we're making. It won't be a decision we're making on a discretionary basis it will look like BTs. Lutz, do you want to handle the front book back book question? Lutz Schüler: Yeah. Maybe the only thing I would add on the pricing is right Mike said, it we have much more tools in place. So we are a month into it. And we know exactly how many customers of which cohorts have reacted in whatever way of form. And we also therefore understand exactly how much of the retained revenue we got. And we – I won't disclose any number, but so far we are fully on plan right? The last year you referred to that there are two things…

Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mr. Patrick. The next question comes from the line of Robert Grindle with Deutsche Bank. You may now proceed.

Yeah. Hi, there. Hope, you can hear me. On the UK cable upgrade and new fiber JV 1.5 million new fiber homes for the combination in 2023, doesn't appear massive versus one million achieved in full year 2022. Are you being cautious here? Perhaps, it takes a while to get to run rate and perhaps related to the question is the press as you're looking at out net acquisitions? Are you tilting away from build to buy? And how quickly can VMO2 sell off the new build, once it's happened? Thanks.

Yes. There's a handful of good questions there. And I think on the speed point, I would simply say that we've got until 2028. So this is not -- we've never given numbers or time frames, that we believe would imply this is going to happen overnight. So, we think it does take a bit of time to get the machine moving, and the 50% uptick is reasonable, but could be exceeded. Let's see. It's a -- I'm not saying it's a marathon, but it's not a sprint either. We're hoping to have 80% of homes covered by fiber here by 2028. We think that is the right long-term strategy, but it's a long-term strategy. So we'll do it at the pace that makes sense for us. And as Lutz would say, we sit today with a one gig network, that reaches 16 million homes offering an average speed of 300 meg, which is 5 or 6 times faster than the average British households received from other providers. So, we're in a great position even while we build out. It's not as if, we have to convert a network from copper to fiber, or in some sort of other foot rates. Quite frankly, we are already leading the race and so we're just fortifying the long-term position. Lutz, do you want to take the second part? Lutz Schüler: Yes. Can you repeat the question, Robert. So, what was it again?

How long does it take VMO2 to sell off the new JV once homes are passed? And are you tilting more to buy than build in the JV homes? Lutz Schüler: Okay. So, I mean the first one, we are as you know, very experienced to get to the penetration on the lightening network. With now, next fiber there's no change there, right? Because Virgin Media O2, is building the network for next fiber and where the media is also the anchor tenant of it. So we are selling into it. And so you know, that we are getting to a far higher penetration than any altnet got to. And you know, also how quickly we ramp up. So, I don't expect any changes here in the future. So, we plan exactly with the same. And then obviously, it Virgin Media O2 is not a shareholder of next fiber. So this is more Liberty Global Telefonica and InfraVia. But altnet are getting under stress. This is our perception. The reason is they don't get to the penetration they need to. So according to our numbers, there is 7.6 million fiber homes in the UK from altnets and the penetration is around 15%. And from a pure wholesale perspective, we all know you need 40%, and cost of capital are increasing. So opportunistically, we will look at it and we will take the opportunities then as they come.

Thank you. A – Mike Fries: Next question, operator.

The next question comes from the line of Luis Sanchez-Lecaroz with Credit Suisse. You may now proceed.

Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. I wanted to follow-up on the previous question and specifically looking a little bit deeper on the €1.5 million for next year? And can you give us the split between upgrade and rebuild rollout. And then looking into the UK guidance, can you let us know if you are factoring in the construction revenues from the new fiber JV and the retail business that you would get from greenfield areas? Thank you.

Yeah. I mean, I think Luis we've said the split is roughly 50/50. But I don't know -- and Charlie this is a question for you whether we identified the revenues from next fiber or call them out, but there will be revenue, modest revenues not material revenues.

That’s the correct answer. This is not a massive number, but there is some modest revenue baked into our numbers. André Krause: Yeah. So, I mean, next fiber, right, we are building the network for that we are getting paid. On the other hand side, we are selling the network. And for that, we are now paying wholesale revenue. So this is the changes in the P&L, I think we haven't disclosed any numbers the split between expansion and upgrade. So -- and I think we don't want to do that. The only thing I'm saying is these are two completely different activity; expanding obviously is much more heavy lifting, it takes more work. And I think what we have said is that in 2022, we have expanded faster than in 2021. And in 2023 we have the ambition to expand faster than in 2022. And on the upgrade, what we have to do just to remind everybody is we have to pull fiber through our existing duct. This is much less of heavy listing. We have also guided that we will -- we are spending around £100 per homes passed. So, which also explains that the work is significantly less. And I want to simply reiterate the point Mike has made earlier that we first leverage our core network as much as we can. And selling fiber too early doesn't have really a commercial benefit for us at that point in time. So we have time.

Okay.

Thanks Luis. Next question, operator.

Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Lecaroz. The next question comes from the line of Polo Tang with UBS. You may now proceed.

Hi, thanks for taking questions. I have two. The first one is on Switzerland. So a question for André. Can you talk through the competitive dynamics in the Swiss market? And maybe talk in a bit more detail about the issues that you're facing with the retirement of the UPC brand? And going forward, should we expect maybe a relatively stable broadband performance in terms of net adds for Switzerland but maybe it's just a case of re-pricing taking its time to work its way through. Alternatively where are the other moving parts that are driving the Swiss EBITDA declines in 2023? And then second question is really just about fiber wholesale in the UK. So I appreciate that you're still in the process of upgrading your cable network to fiber, but have you had any discussions with other communication providers about wholesaling on the VMO2 network? And do you think that this could be a meaningful revenue stream going forward? Alternatively, is the Equinox 2 pricing from Openreach now an unstoppable train meaning you have no chance.

Well, let me take the second one first, and Andre, you can work up an answer to the first one. As I just mentioned, we're building a network, we think we'll reach 80% of the market. It's going to happen over an extended period of time. It's not happening tomorrow. And what any investor in a telecom market requires or would like to see some long-term certainty and a level playing field. Equinox 2, from our point of view, is unlikely to make a long-term impact on our plans. But in the short term, feels to us to be a bit desperate and premature by BT, reflecting, I would say, an overreaction to the market more broadly for whatever reason they felt that was necessary. On the other hand, we think Ofcom gets the larger picture here and is likely to look at Equinox 2 in a -- hopefully, a comprehensive way, and we look forward to the consultation process. But from our point of view, whether we are providing wholesale services tomorrow or next year or the year after, remember that in the upgrade of our fiber homes, which we announced some time ago, upgraded to 16 million homes. We did not say at that point in time that, that decision to spend £100 per home was based upon the need to realize wholesale revenue. In fact, we said the exact opposite, which was we believe this makes sense relative to DOCSIS 4, regardless of wholesale revenue. That doesn't mean we don't have ambition. It just means to say that our economics are sound either way. Now the next fiber JV clearly would love to expand wholesale revenue beyond Virgin Media O2 as its anchor tenant. And in that instance, that particular joint venture will make the argument it…

I'll just add that I have confidence in Andre and the team to manage through this. There's deep knowledge and understanding of the market and this is a blip not a change in direction. On the other hand, I would also point out that Charlie skipped over in his guidance slide, the fact that Switzerland is guiding to 320 million to 350 million of free cash flow in 2023, which I'm going to guess here Andre I think it's up 30% to 40% over 2022. So despite the challenge is that Andre is working through at the revenue and customer level, which I'm sure we will get through, the business is generating significant free cash flow and on pace for the kinds of free cash flow results we had initially anticipated when we made the acquisition.

Clear. Thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Tang. The next question comes from the line of Steve Malcolm with Redburn. You may now proceed.

Yes. Good afternoon, guys. And I'll go for 1.5 questions, one in the UK just a quick follow-up to an earlier question. First just going back to the UK and the price moves look that you're enacting at the moment. I guess if I look at 2022, looking from the outside in my perception would be that the fixed line price rises didn't learn probably quite as well, as you'd hoped and the mobile price size maybe landed a bit better. I don't know if that's right, wrong but that's my impression. As you go into 2023, look you said you've got more tools at your disposal, but obviously, it's a very, very big price rise. So I guess the instinctive reaction would be that you're going to see more churn, you're going to some more promotional activity. But could you just elaborate maybe on those best actions that you can take to prevent that and give us sort of a bit more confidence that we don't see the ARPU reactions that we saw following the price rise last year that would be great. And then just coming back to the point on Vodafone. Mike, you said that the reason for the investment was not to sort of create more touch points of Vodafone was it exactly? Was it just because you thought the shares were cheap. And if that is the case, can you maybe give us some sort of guidelines as to what is sort of in and out your scope? Is it just sort of contiguous sector telco media anything that you think is sort of opportunistic. Or does there have to be some kind of existing relationship for you to invest shareholders' money in stocks like Vodafone? Thank you.

Lutz, do you want to start with that? Lutz Schüler: So I mean your high-level observation is right for last year, but I think the reasons are a bit different. So if you park the price rise for a second, right? On the fixed side customers are optimizing their bill because simply right the average ARPU is £50 pounds. So if you want to optimize household spend you look more at the fixed side at the mobile side. And so irrespective of price rise, customers are canceling their landline because they use their mobile and customers are optimizing and picking more of the video content they really need. This is what we have been seeing. And the mobile side you don't see that. What you see on the mobile side instead is they keep using their old phone for longer, right? So if you -- these are developments there would have been happening with price rise or without price rise due to the cost and living crisis. Now the price rise, itself and this is then the question, how do you define that? Last year and I think this is what Mike said earlier on, if you would say well everything you take into account two months after customers have seen the first bill. Then you can say that also on the fixed side, we landed something like 50% of the price rise. And on the mobile side, because it's only on airtime not on hardware, the overall number of the price rise is much lower and it is embedded in the Ts and Cs. So you see barely very little barely zero or very little reason to it. Now what does this mean for this year, right? And we are not guiding on fixed ARPU but we have been -- we are doing a lot of things different. Number one, we are sending out the letters to customers over a period of two months and in a staggered approach. This is number one. That has two benefits. One, we always can ensure we have enough agents dealing with it, so which weren't the case 100% last year. And second, we have really real-time data, so we can see how many customers are calling and what is the best possible retention for them in terms of customer and ARPU. And then we see within 24 hours delay what is actually happening. And when you take this all into account, there's a lot of room for optimization. We can leverage convergence of our fixed customers, we can sell mobile. We can sell in interesting content. We can sell in hardware. And I'm not disclosing anything, but so far, as I said early on, we are on plan with a fixed price rise. And on the mobile side, we have landed it also now, right? So it is communicated and out. And the reaction so far we have been seeing are not higher than a year ago. Hope, that helps.

Looking on Vodafone -- yes. Vodafone, I would say to people -- we said publicly, yes, the stock seems undervalued to us. There's a lot of undervalued stocks out there, by the way. Ours included. And that's why we spent $1.7 billion last year buying it. But certainly, this one also looks undervalued with some near-term catalysts that should play out here we think in a positive way. And it was a relatively small investment, if you look at the -- if you see through how we financed the position. Now, we have a lot of touch points with Vodafone, as I just mentioned and I look forward to a very constructive dialogue with the current and future CEO, whoever that will be, around all of those particular issues and if necessary, with the Board. So, as I mentioned, we're not an activist here, but we certainly hope to be engaged in understanding of what their strategy is and to perhaps even influence that if it makes sense. But we're not doing this to create tension or stress. We're not trying to rattle the pages here. We thought it was an opportunistic transaction that was financed. We thought very effectively with relatively small amounts of capital we could put to risk in a stock that was at or near a 25-year low. So that's really the way to think about it. Are we going to do 10 more of these? No, no. But we will always be opportunistic in situations that we think are strategically and financially aligned. We have time for one more or we’re calling it? Go ahead.

Sorry, I was just -- when you say catalyst, I mean, can you elaborate on what they may be.

I can't give you anything that hasn't been talked about 100 times publicly, UK, mobile, consolidation, rationalization, Spain and Italy, pending Vantage deal, towers in the UK and NL, a German strategy evolution, et cetera. I mean, there's Africa, you just have to read the press. There's a handful for you right there.

Okay. Thanks a lot.

You got it. Yes. Rick, I don’t know if we have time for one more or if the minutes passed, should I close it off?

Just take one more Mike and then shut it down.

Okay. All right. Thanks for hanging in guys. We’ll take one more.

We'll take the last question from Carl Murdock-Smith with Berenberg. You may now proceed.

Hi, thanks very much for the question and taking time for one last one. So I'll just ask one. I think, slide 9 is a very powerful one, on the long-term buyback commitments overtime. Obviously, you've committed to a floor of 10% of buyback this year. That commitment was first actually made 2.5 years ago at the Q2 2021 results and kind of I think that long-term commitment, as also shown on slide 9 is very, very important. Did you at all think about giving a longer-term buyback commitment rather than just committing to the 2023 buyback? And how should we be thinking about your ongoing commitments in future years? Thanks.

Yeah. That's good question, Carl. I appreciate you asking that. We're not today providing any additional long-term guidance, but you don't have to do much reading between the lines to conclude based on everything I said in my remarks, that we're committed to shareholder remuneration. So you should expect overtime we'll continue to provide updates on that long-term strategy. And I think past is prologue.

Okay. That helps. Okay. That’s great. Thank you very much.

You got it. Thanks you got it. Thanks everybody for hanging in. I appreciate you enduring the long remarks. If you're still on we had a lot of info and a lot of talk about and a very strong 2022. And I think all the building blocks in place for strong 2023 and most importantly for value creation. So I appreciate your support. And we're always around for questions if you have any as a follow-up. Thanks everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Global's Fourth Quarter 2022 Investor Call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations Section of Liberty Global's website. There, you can also find a copy of today's presentation materials. Have a good day.