Tele2 Aktie

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tele2 Q3 Interim Report 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Nicholas Hogberg, President and Group CEO. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Tele2's report call for the third quarter of 2026. With me, I have Peter Landgren, our Group CFO; and Stefan Trampus, our Chief B2B.

Please turn to Slide 2 for some highlights from the third quarter. In Q3, organic growth end-user service revenue grew by 2%, while organic underlying EBITDAaL grew by 3% from a strong base last year. In Q3, we generated a record-breaking equity free cash flow of SEK 2.3 billion.

Today, we'll also update our full year guidance for 2026, which I will come back to later. Shortly after quarter end, our network JV secured a framework agreement for Sweden's new emergency network. Our network received the highest quality score in the procurement, a strong endorsement of its quality and reliability. We also became the first operator in Sweden to offer rich communication services for both Android and iOS, further demonstrating our ability to drive innovation in the market.

Finally, one of the highlights of the quarter was that we have the most satisfied mobile customers -- consumer customer among the main brands in the latest SQI survey, supported by a growing share of sales through our own channels. Beyond the highlights, we remain highly disciplined on investments and costs while continuing to see strong momentum across the company in engagement, innovation and execution, reflecting the strength of our challenger culture.

AI and automation are already delivering value across our operations. As an example, most simple customer queries can now be resolved instantly by AI while our voice bot Anna continues to improve customer satisfaction and allows our agents to focus on more complex customer needs. We are closely monitoring the development of agentic AI. We believe this will reshape parts of the industry over time, and we are adapting to ensure we are well positioned as customers increasingly search, compare and purchase services in new ways.

The pace of development is rapid, and we are actively assessing both the risks and opportunities while continuously building on actions already underway, advancing initiatives already identified and identifying further action as this landscape evolves. Given the early stage and the speed at which the ecosystem is developing, we remain humble about how the market will evolve. For competitive reasons, however, for now, we don't -- do not intend to comment in detail on specific initiatives or further plans.

That said, rest assured that we are actively preparing for a future where agentic AI plays an increasingly important role in our customer journey. We are not here to defend ourselves from AI. We are here to win more, thanks to AI. So please move to Slide 3 for more details on our results.

Our 2% organic growth in end-user service revenue was driven by all our operations. And our 3% organic growth in underlying EBITDAaL was driven by both revenue growth and continued sharp cost control. Reported growth was rather flat, burdened by the impact of the Baltic Tower transaction in Q1. Our strong equity free cash flow grew by 30% year-on-year, and Peter will go through the details.

CapEx to sales, which was seasonally low, remained below last year's level, mainly due to lower 5G rollout pace. Our financial leverage ended at low 1.5x ahead of the final dividend tranche, which was paid last week.

In Sweden Consumer, end-user service revenue remained stable with continued growth in mobile postpaid and DTV. In Sweden Business, end-user service revenue grew by 5%, mainly driven by mobile due to continued strong IoT growth. Our Baltic operations grew organic end-user service revenue by 6% and organic underlying EBITDAaL by a strong 9%. So let's move to Slide 5 for more details on Swedish Consumer.

As outlined in the CEO Letter, the Swedish market remains highly competitive. While reducing churn is key, we are encouraged by developments in gross intake, driven by a stronger sales culture, operational improvements and increased brand momentum. At the same time, we continue to expand our own channels with positive trends both in own channel sales and conversion.

Mobile postpaid end-user service revenue grew by 3%, partly offset by a continued decline in prepaid, resulting in a 1% growth in total mobile end-user service revenue. In fixed broadband, end-user service revenue declined by 3%, impacted by continued competitive pricing dynamics. In digital TV, end-user service revenue once again grew by 4%, driven by healthy high single-digit growth in Tele2 TV, more than offsetting the continued impact of Boxer TV switch off.

Let's look at consumer KPIs on Slide 6. In Q3, mobile postpaid added a solid 11,000 RGUs, mainly driven by mobile broadband, whereas mobile postpaid ASPU remained unchanged year-on-year. Fixed broadband RGUs declined by 6,000 in Q3, reflecting our continued cautious stance in open networks, where pricing competition remains unhealthy. TV RGUs increased by 2,000 in Q3 with continued good momentum in Tele2 TV. ASPU grew by 3% year-on-year. So to sum up, we delivered another solid quarter overall in terms of customer intake despite continued competitive intensity and typical seasonal softness.

Please move to Slide 7 for Sweden Business. Sweden Business continued to deliver solid end-user service revenue growth, reaching a strong 5% in Q3. Mobile grew by 7%, mainly driven by our fast-growing IoT business. Mobile RGUs increased by 10,000 in Q3, supported by steady growth across several segments. ASPU continued to improve sequentially. Solutions grew by 4% in Q3, primarily due to strong demand for network solutions and managed connectivity services. Fixed declined by 4% due to lower IP VPN revenues as a result of migration to new solutions, partly offset by continued solid growth in fixed broadband.

Please move to Slide 8 for Sweden financials. In total, Sweden end-user service revenue grew by 1% in Q3, driven by business. Underlying EBITDAaL grew by 1%, driven by the end-user service revenue and continued sharp cost control. Cash conversion improved to 77% over the last 12 months.

Let's move to Baltic financials on Slide 10. Baltic once again maintained strong top and bottom line growth. Total end-user service revenue grew by 6% organically, partly supported by price adjustments. Underlying EBITDAaL grew by 9% organically, mainly driven by end-user service revenue growth and cost optimizations. Cash conversion based on the last 12 months remained at 80%.

So let's move to Slide 11 for Baltic operating KPIs. Total postpaid base increased by 14,000 RGUs in Q3, driven by Lithuania and Latvia, while prepaid increased by 2,000 RGUs. Blended organic ASPU continued to grow by a solid 7%, driven by price adjustments and continued prepaid to postpaid migration.

With that, I hand over to Peter, who will go through the financial overview.

Thank you, Nicholas, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Page 13 for the group income statement. Total revenue grew by 2%, driven by the service revenue. On reported underlying EBITDA after lease, I'd like to remind you about the Baltic Tower transaction. As previously stated, the transaction is expected to have a negative impact of around EUR 35 million on a 12-month basis, starting from March 2026. This translates to around SEK 100 million in the quarter.

The organic growth in underlying EBITDAaL, which reflects the pro forma development was plus 3% compared to Q3 last year, thanks to the service revenue contribution and sharp cost control across the group. Items affecting comparability were mainly impacted by restructuring costs, which were significantly reduced compared to last year.

Net financial items decreased year-on-year, mainly thanks to higher interest income. In Q3, our average interest rate was 2.8% with a debt mix of 74% fixed rates and 26% floating rates. And income tax increased year-on-year mainly due to higher taxable profits.

So let's move to the cash flow on Slide 14. CapEx paid, excluding spectrum decreased, primarily due to lower 5G rollout pace and somewhat delayed hardware supply. Spectrum CapEx paid refers to the Lithuanian spectrum acquired in 2026. Changes in working capital were mainly impacted by increased accounts payable, including a spillover to October of around SEK 150 million.

Net financial items paid, excluding leasing decreased, thanks to both lower financing costs for outstanding debt and higher interest income. Taxes paid decreased since Q3 last year included around SEK 135 million of withholding tax payments in Latvia, while the corresponding payment this year occurred in the second quarter. Altogether, equity free cash flow reached SEK 2.3 billion in Q3. And over the last 12 months, SEK 6.7 billion has been generated equivalent to around SEK 9.7 per share.

Please turn to Slide 15 for our capital structure. End of Q3, economic net debt was SEK 17.5 billion, a reduction of SEK 6.8 billion compared to end of 2025. This was driven by cash proceeds from the closing of the Baltic Tower transaction in Q1 and the cash generated in the business, exceeding the payout of the first dividend tranche in May. Our leverage of 1.5x underlying EBITDAaL is comfortably within an investment-grade range. And adjusted for the payout of the final tranche of the ordinary dividend, which we did last week, pro forma leverage would have been at 1.8x.

And with that, I hand over to Nicholas for some comments on our 2026 guidance.

Thank you, Peter. Please turn to Slide 16 for our 2026 guidance. Based on our Q3 performance and expectations for Q4, we are updating our full year 2026 guidance as follows. Organic growth of end-user service revenue remains unchanged at low single-digit number. Organic growth of underlying EBITDAaL narrowed to 4% to 5% from previous low to mid-single digit and CapEx to sales lowered to below 10% from previously 10% to 11%.

So with that, I hand back to Peter for some additional comments regarding 2026 before we open up for Q&A.

Thank you, Nicholas. Yes, as always, a few additional remarks on the cash flow for 2026. On spectrum, we still estimate full year payments of around SEK 180 million related to auctions concluded in Sweden and Lithuania. On working capital, we are, of course, pleased with the strong performance year-to-date, but Q4 is expected to be weak related to seasonal increase in equipment receivables and the SEK 150 million of payment timing that I mentioned earlier.

On financial items, excluding leasing, we still estimate full year net payments of around SEK 600 million. And finally, on taxes, we still estimate full year payments of around SEK 1.45 billion.

And with that, I hand over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from the line of Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs.

I had 2 questions around costs, 1 on CapEx and 1 on your OpEx, straight CapEx. On the CapEx side, obviously, your CapEx is coming in lower than expected this year. I guess, what everyone is trying to understand is, is that just phasing? Does that get bumped into 2027? Because I think you have mentioned some delays in hardware supply? Or are you finding some structural efficiencies that could mean your CapEx intensity is perhaps lower in the long term than you expected? Any color on that would be helpful.

And then secondly, just in terms of cost efficiencies, obviously, not a lot of operational gearing being shown in your numbers at the moment in Sweden, and there's been some tension between you and Telia in terms of who can show the most cost efficiencies and peer analysis, et cetera. We haven't heard from you for a while in terms of large-scale cost efficiencies. I understand that you're doing ongoing head count reductions but should we be anticipating a bit more effort or at least commentary from you on OpEx and cost efficiencies more broadly going into next year, given there's less evidence of it at the moment?

Thank you, Andrew. I can start off by commenting a bit on both actually, and that is of course, that we will continue with a very, very strict cost control and cost discipline, which is part of our DNA and will be. So no changes on that going forward. Also, when it comes to CapEx, it's important to understand that we are sort of having a culture where we scrutinize every investment and making sure that it reaches the customer, and that we're doing smart investments.

With that said, we have passed the big 5G build-out phase. We're now focusing on enhancing the core network. One example is building the 5G stand-alone to be even more efficient in the network. Also, said regarding CapEx, I think it's important to understand that our company culture is that we always try to find new ways and new solutions to problems that occur. And one of those problems is increased hardware prices and memory shortage, et cetera. And we have found ways around that, which makes us very efficient when it comes to CapEx investments.

And cost efficiency, the cost efficiency part before I leave over to Peter for some further comments is that we are scrutinizing all costs. At the same time, we are investing where we think we will benefit from that. So with that said, I mean, we have increased our store footprint since January 2025 with 15 stores. And also, we have put more investments behind our brands, which has paid off quite significantly where we have seen great improvements when it comes to sender ID, which also helps us in our growth journey.

So we should be very disciplined and work with profitable, sustainable growth. So that's the part I wanted to highlight regarding these 2 questions. With that said, I leave over to Peter to comment more on these parts.

Thank you, Nicholas. I think you covered it quite well, but maybe on the CapEx since you asked about some maybe spillover. What we see, as you know, is that it's a challenging hardware situation. As Nicholas points out, a lot of it is solved by creative solutions in the company, but we see a spillover of maybe between SEK 50 million and SEK 75 million that might come moving forward instead. And then looking forward, we have been -- we have seen the peak investments in Sweden when it comes to the swap and rollout.

Now we're moving to another CapEx era for a couple of years will remain the discipline. We benefit from the Net4Mobility construction. But of course, we keep investing, for instance, in the mobile core, as Nicholas mentioned.

On the cost side, maybe repeating a little bit there as well, but it's less about announcing large programs and more about the constant optimization that will continue and reinvesting where it makes sense commercially. And we shouldn't forget that we raised the bar quite dramatically last year, and that's one reason why it optically looks like we may be doing less now, but that shouldn't be forgotten.

Can I just have one quick follow-up on your comments on the CapEx and the spillover, Peter? That SEK 50 million to SEK 75 million, is that a spillover from 2026 into 2027? Or by spillover, do you mean kind of a SEK 50 million to SEK 75 million cost inflation around memory and hardware cost inflation generally? How should we...

It's related to the complicated hardware situation, which we're partly solving by -- in other ways by thinking twice how we design the network and what we buy and what we can refurb. But then, of course, in some cases, we need to buy. Exactly when that will -- when and how that will turn out remains to be seen because that's in the nature of this quite complicated situation that it's not fully clear when all orders will be placed and received. So we'll see how that will play out exactly.

Understood. So that's SEK 50 million to SEK 75 million that would have been spent in 2026 that now looks to be spent in 2027?

Yes.

We will now take the next question from the line of Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken.

Well, maybe 2. You received this SWEN contract just a couple of days back or maybe yesterday. Can you talk a little bit what you foresee that will translate to on sort of your service revenue line over the years? I understand it's a very long time period to implement and receive sort of revenue streams maybe. But it would be interesting to hear that?

And then second is a bit more high-level discussion maybe that is of interest, the satellite and your view on what satellite and what role that will play for you over time? It would be interesting to hear some elaboration on that.

Thank you very much. I will leave the SWEN question over to Peter, but I must say and comment that we are very, very proud about that contract and coming out as the #1 when it comes to quality of our network. So with that said, Fredrik, and thank you for your questions. I leave over to Peter to comment on the financial part.

Yes, I'll do the more technical and financial part. When it comes to service revenue, we should keep in mind, this is a Net4Mobility contract, which we're, of course, very pleased with, but that will technically mean that it will rather serve our network cost rather than injecting any more top line. So -- but it doesn't make it less worth. It's a great project. You shouldn't expect any sizable benefits in the short term. This is a long project, and it's long lead times before you see anything material. So we're very pleased in the midterm, but nothing in the short term that you should -- that will turn the needle.

Can I just add on, on that one? But it's sort of delta positive, right? It's not something you have done on other aspects before. So this is adding to your operations in a sense, right?

Yes.

Yes. And then comment on the hottest topic right now, the satellite part. So first of all, I think it's worth saying that you should always be humble when Elon Musk does something. A couple of weeks ago, I didn't believe in flying cars. Now we have seen that. But with that said, I think it's important here to keep a couple of things in mind. We're talking about 2 different things when it comes to satellite. The first thing is the broadband part. When we look at the broadband part, we think it's -- we don't see it as an imminent threat more than a complement to our already existing services.

You have to remember that 88% of the population lives in rural area representing 1.6% of the surface of Sweden. So we have a very dense population, which makes it a bit harder for satellite broadband to function really well and serve a lot of people. But with that said, I think it plays a great role in the future for B2B, but also for individuals in -- outside of urban areas, in the rural areas. Also, it is important to understand that we have low prices on broadband already, and we have very good quality on broadband in Sweden.

So the broadband part is more a complement. Then going over to the D2D part, which is then voice. I think we all saw that Elon Musk acquired a low-band spectrum for SEK 80 billion. So this is very much a different situation in Europe when it comes to regulation. So you have to buy spectrum to be able to work with D2D from a satellite. And there is no spectrum to be sold in many, many years, and the regulatory situation in EU and in Sweden, in particular, is quite complicated. It's not for everyone to just go out and buy spectrum.

So even though there are probably sort of in a theoretical way, technical possibilities in the future, I think we will see that it will take some more time in Europe and Sweden before satellite D2D is launched and works really well in the subway or in the office or where we have a dense population. Does that answer your question, Fredrik?

Absolutely. It's very good. Can I have a follow-up on that one and see if you're already in your operations sort of evaluate and have projects that work with sort of a hybrid solution on the B2B side so that you are well prepared whenever you can sort of add on that kind of connectivity to your terrestrial already available services. Is that something you do?

Fredrik, Stefan Trampus here. Thanks for your question. And yes, we do. We were actually the first operator launching such a cooperation with Skylo last year. So we're offering complement to our mobile services in order for some customers to have communication on satellite. So that's something that we have already put in motion, and I think to what Nicholas was alluding to, we will see this more as a complement rather than something replacing the services that we have.

We will now take the next question from the line of Andreas Joelsson from DNB Carnegie.

Maybe a follow-up to Andrew's question. But on the other side of the equation. So to grow EBITDA, you can do things on the cost side, but you can also do things on the top line. And since you are quite efficient, maybe that will become more and more important, the top line growth. So can you say something not offer any guidance or so, but how do you see that you will drive growth going forward, especially given that you say it's a very intense competition in your main market in Sweden. How do you see that the ASPU will continue to grow given that competition, given the agentic AI that you mentioned and perhaps also other type of challenges?

Thank you, Andreas. Well, you're absolutely right. You have 2 levers to work with cost and revenues, of course, and we will be very focused on both of them. And going back to what I said, we have invested, and we'll continue to invest in our own sales channels. We are working relentlessly on our sales culture and being much more into the details and working on optimization everywhere. This is, of course, a combination of many, many different things.

And let me just talk very short about our brands. and marketing. We have invested quite heavily, as you know, in reintroducing Frank, which has been very successful for us. We have gone from a sender ID, meaning how many knows that Tele2 actually is the company doing marketing from 30% before to almost 80% now for Tele2 and even higher for Jattebra Karim with Comviq. That, of course, increases our possibilities of growing more efficiently. So expanding our own sales channels and then, of course, enhancing our brand. This is for consumer.

Looking at B2B, we are growing, and we have a very strong growth in B2B, and we are growing in all segments. And that is thanks to many reasons that Stefan can elaborate a bit more on. And the Baltics, as you see, is continuing to grow. So sharp cost control of course, and then make it very easy for the customer and going forward, also agentic agents. Of course, we are not here to defend ourselves against AI. On the contrary, we will use AI to win even more. So we are humble, but looking forward to make the company even better, thanks to AI and offer the customers much better and simpler ways of buying our services and combining a lot of services for the customers.

But I don't know, Stefan, if you want to elaborate a bit on sales and growth for B2B.

Yes, sure. First of all, I think it's worth highlighting when we talk about growth, this is our 21st consecutive quarter of showing B2B growth. And as stated after the Q1 report, I'm happy to see that we have a well-diverse portfolio, which gives us the ability to have growth from different sources. And time to time, we do, as you know, have quarters with some swings due to some larger customer projects wins or larger rollouts that we do. This quarter, we have good growth from fixed broadband, the solution, which is driven by the networking part. And that's driven really based on the need for data, consumption, modernization, security, AI, et cetera.

And then we also have the mobile part, where we have both growth on the mobile regular, but very much so driven by IoT this quarter. And looking forward, I would say we have a clear strategy on where to grow, on what segments or products. You have seen or we communicated about the transformation on the portfolio that we did last year. It's clear for us where we have growth in the future, and we see demand in other areas like data centers, cloud, both public cloud together with our partnership with Scaleway, but also on our private cloud part.

So long term, I see demand for our services, and we are well positioned to support our customers in the digitalization journey. I hope that gives some color to it. I think I'll stop there.

Yes. And I just want to add a last thing regarding growth. It's also about keeping our customers, and we are striving for having the most loyal customers in the industry, both B2B and B2C, where churn is super important. We have very good development when it comes to churn where we have sold to customers through our own channels, both for B2B and B2C, which is promising going forward.

We will now take the next question from the line of Maurice Patrick from Barclays.

A question on agentic AI, if I may. I appreciate your comments in the opening remarks about saying it's early days and that it's hard to comment, but investors do ask a lot about it. It would be helpful to understand, especially for those of us maybe not in Sweden, a bit about some of the dynamics in your market. So for example, do you have a material front book, back book pricing ARPU differential in your broadband and mobile base? It would be quite helpful to understand how material that is if it is? Maybe understand a bit around the penetration of discount brands just more widely in mobile and fixed in terms of actual numbers? And then also how -- what you're doing and what do you plan to do about addressing this agentic AI risk?

Thank you, Maurice. I will start by talking about and repeating what I said. And from a personal perspective, I didn't jump on this job to sit here and defend ourselves from AI. I think we're here to win more, thanks to AI. And of course, we have been working on this for several years and it's a very, very exciting development. I remember back in the days that old when we all thought that Apple would take out all the operators.

I think we need to be humble. No one actually knows. But at the same time, for us, it's super important to be the best choice and give the customer reasons to stay through a good network, I mean, great service. We see -- it's very appreciated the footprint of the stores that we have built out. It's been very successful, both in sales and conversion rates and traffic. And we should give the customers a high value for money and do that by combining a lot of products.

We should also be the easiest choice for the customers and be very -- have very simple and attractive offers, and that goes for both humans and machine, I would say. So let's call them agents or whatever, but it needs to be easy to buy our products and perceived high value. And then, of course, and probably one of the most important parts is that AI -- we should use AI to become a better business by lowering cost and operating smarter and handing that value over to the customers as well. So there are many things.

We view AI and agent as an opportunity being a very fast and flexible challenger like us. And also, we would never be able to do the transformation we are doing and will be a part of our everyday life, if it wasn't for AI. So it actually speeds up. So for us, of course, we are humble. We don't know exactly what will happen. I don't think anyone can tell, but we are viewing this as an opportunity.

When it comes to your questions regarding front book and back book, I mean there are always differences and things to consider, but I view us being in a very good position when it comes to that. And maybe I don't know, Peter, if you want to elaborate a little bit more.

No, I think obviously, there are different instance in the way that we have campaign prices in the -- when people are joining, but besides that, we're not -- it's nothing that we call out exactly what it looks like.

Great. I just thought, as a sort of follow-up, given that your point about wanting to be the first choice for customers, et cetera, et cetera, that you might be able to give some data points to support that?

Sorry, can you repeat that question?

Well, you made a point about wanting to be best for customers and first choice. And I just thought you might want to give some data points to support that view because investors ask a lot about it.

No. At this moment, I think we -- I will not give you any specific data points around that because that's for us to keep close to us, how we work with that and those data points, and we don't want to give that away in a public forum actually. But rest assured that we are working heavily on all those areas when it comes to AI.

We will now take the next question from the line of Nick Lyall from Berenberg.

Hope you can hear me. It was a quick question on churn, please, and then on broadband. So firstly, on churn, I'm a bit confused as to where you start on the churn side. You mentioned, I think, Nicholas, in the comments that gross intake improved. But it looks like net postpaid adds are static, broadband is sliding. So could you just describe where you are on churn please? Is it something you want to develop on next year, but is there no sign of improvement yet? Whereabouts are you, please?

And then secondly, on broadband, you lost another 6,000 subs, and you talked about unhealthy pricing in the open networks. Do you have any great concerns for next year as Telia gets stuck into Bredband2 post the acquisition and Telenor also adds Bahnhof. Is that going to get tougher? Can you just describe what you expect into next year, please?

Okay. Thank you, Nick. Looking at the churn question, I think there's a bit of a mix here. I mean we have a net in positive net intake when it comes to mobile. What's worth pointing out, as you mentioned, is the broadband side where we lost some 6,000 customers due to the fierce competition. And we have chosen to not be as aggressive as some of our competitors when it comes to pricing.

With that said, we have initiated some initiatives in the broadband open SDU LAN broadband, where we are taking some bets, of course, from a very strict sort of profitability perspective as well. And we can see the very, very first signs from that, which is positive. But the unhealthy pricing is a challenge, and we have chosen to not participate so far in that pricing.

When it comes to B2 and Bahnhof, we'll see how that plays out, and I prefer not to comment too much on our competitors and focus on our own business, but we'll see what -- how that plays out. I think on a general note, not touching upon this specifically, but on a general note, we are positive to consolidation in the market because we have, of course, very many players in the market. So we are positive to that.

And maybe adding since you asked about the future in broadband, of course, we're impatiently looking forward also to the upcoming regulation when it comes to the Villafiber and that's -- we expect that to be clarified towards the end of the year. Then, of course, it's lead times until it's implemented and the pricing structure is clear, so it will probably last until the end of 2027 before it's fully implemented, but that's something that we think will be beneficial also for the future in the broadband space.

We will now take our next question from the line of Felix Henriksson from Nordea.

It's on Sweden. I think I heard the quarter in the pre-closing chats. I, at least, got an impression that you had been a bit more active in the third-party retail outlets in consumer during the quarter. So can you maybe comment about that given that it goes slightly against your medium-term strategy of shifting volumes towards your own stores? How is the third-party retail outlet exit progressing? And what is your conviction in executing that?

Thank you, Felix. Well, I don't know if I agree that we have been more active in third-party retail. That's not my impression. We are still acting in third-party retail, but the most important part for us is to have the most loyal customers in the market, and that's why we have expanded our own sales channel footprint, and we have done that quite a lot this year as well as last year, and we are continuing to doing that.

When it comes to sales channels, I think it's important that as long as we can get loyal customers that are happy with our service at a good sort of -- at a low investment, any channel is relevant for us. Right now, we see that we are performing better in our own channels and hence, why we are focusing on them and expanding those channels.

We will now take the next question from the line of Derek Laliberte from ABG Sundal Collier.

I have 2 questions, starting out with the sort of high level one on guidance and Q4 here. You have delivered 5.9% organic underlying EBITDAaL growth this year-to-date, but you now guide for the 4% to 5% for the full year. What would you say are the main factors behind this implied slowdown in Q4? And is it mainly tougher comps or anything else changing operationally?

Okay. Peter here. I think you had 2 questions, but we'll wait for the second one then. On the guidance, you're right when it comes to the numbers. What we see in the fourth quarter is a little bit of a repetition of what we have talked about during the year. We recognize that it's a little bit of a challenging macro environment, and then the competitive situation is also, as we have called out, competitive.

So we -- and that's what's reflected in our guidance. And you should keep in mind that we also again, had a very strong last year and a strong Q4 last year, which is the comparable for Q4. And of course, we want to have the flexibility which we have to act commercially as we see it fit during the quarter. And with all those things together, we think that the guidance that we have called out now of 4% to 5% organic growth is the right one.

Great. I appreciate the color. And then just on the Baltics, here, how much of this pretty strong Baltic growth is driven by the prior price increases versus underlying volume and upselling? And how sustainable do you think the current growth rate is into 2027 now?

Yes. What is -- I mean, first of all, we should, of course, remember and recognize and be happy about the great performance quarter after quarter and year after year in the Baltics. When it comes to what the price or the top line increase of growth is coming from, we have a gradual improvement of our postpaid base. And that's -- if you look at the aggregated Baltic numbers that keeps -- the postpaid base is growing constantly and every quarter, also this quarter. So that's the foundation and the prepaid to postpaid migration can bring ASPU as well.

And then on top of that, we have pricing in different shapes and forms. We had some pricing in the beginning of the year in Lithuania, then we work with discount reductions and value-added services. That's other ways of -- and more for more activities when we prolong the contracts. So it's not one tool to improve the ASPU levels. It's different tools to get there. And as you can see in the numbers, we see growth in all markets in -- also in Q3, and we are positive about the future of the Baltics. We expect the top line growth to continue, but we have been a bit spoiled. So we shouldn't expect the growth to be exactly the same always. But fundamentally, it's good markets where we expect growth.

We will now take the next question from the line of Ulrich Rathe from Bernstein.

Two questions, please. The first one is on the leverage, the target leverage corridor. In a higher rate environment, would you see a reason to sort of go to the lower end of the leverage range or even adjust the leverage range? Or would you say the higher rate environment is sort of within the boundaries of where the guidance for the leverage was set. So there's really no need to talk about this topic at this point? That's my first question.

My second question is you mentioned that the equipment cost inflation has an impact. You also said that you're doing some pretty clever things to alleviate that. Could you just talk about what these mitigating actions are? Is it substitution of products? Is it substitution of vendors or whatever else are you doing to mitigate the impact?

Thank you, Ulrich, for the questions. I'll do the leverage question and then I'll hand over to Nicholas. I think we're quite pleased with the position, as you point out, the interest rates are a bit elevated, and it's a little bit more turbulent now. And given that, we're quite pleased with the situation where we are. We were able to distribute our dividend last week without issue any new bonds or anything like that. And we think that the rate we are at right now, the leverage of 1.5 or 1.8, adjusted for the dividend is, of course, very pleasant in such a situation.

We have the -- or we had the financial policy stating that we should stay investment grade, and it's not changing from the environment we're sitting right now. I think it's just a reminder that it's great to have low leverage right now when we -- when it's a little bit more turbulent, but no change in the perspectives or the financial policy whatsoever. And with that, I think the equipment question, I think I leave to Nicholas to start with it, please.

Thank you. I will keep it very light because it's internal work that we don't want to sort of share with the open community in detail, but you mentioned a couple of alternatives yourselves. So yes, it's everything from what we should do to which vendors we should use to how we should do it and optimizing, and it's a very hard work behind this to make us much more efficient without risking customers or their experience from us or the growth. So it's very much internal work that we have been doing that has been very successful, I must say.

We will now take the next question from the line of Viktor Hogberg from Danske Bank.

Nicholas, this is your first quarter as CEO. It's not the first in the company. It's a derivative of previous questions, but the Board strategy obviously remains. Anything you would say that you would want to tweak and what would you not tweak in terms of go-to-market and pricing and stuff like that? That's the first question.

Okay. Thank you, Viktor. So yes, as you said, the very, very strict cost discipline remains. Also, I think the strategy to continue to build out our own sales channels, et cetera, stays. The strategy itself stays. The difference here is that we have had the big transformation doing some big things that you have seen in the numbers. My role now is to secure that we continue to gain efficiency out of those things, but also that we become best in class to -- and sorry for using the expressions, but being obsessed about delivering on every detailed level.

So it's not the biggest that wins in the market. It's the fastest who wins over the slower ones. So we should make sure that we simplify even more, become even more flexible and even faster. And that's both processes, but it's also culture. So making sure that we are performing on every detailed level, meaning operational excellence, and that will be a lot of focus going forward.

It sounds like continuing in the direction of tangent. On the Swedish consumer, it was a bit below at least the consensus expectations. Could you say anything about your expectations? And also the expected payback on the ramp costs, especially within Sweden Consumer. When would you expect that to be paid back basically? Question touches mobile and fixed.

Sorry, just to clarify, which costs are you -- the increased costs, which you are referring?

I would say, it seems like there's -- at least compared to our expectations, more costs maybe in third channels even despite ramping up your own channels in total might be a mix that is not in line with at least external expectations.

Okay. Maybe I can start with covering that one and then hand over the first one to Nick. I think when we look at the quarterly results on EBITDAaL level, of course, there are always a little bit of swings back and forth between the quarters. I think we should remember that we constantly raise the bar last year on bringing in more and more efficiencies, making the comps tougher and tougher. And in -- in this quarter, we have top line growth in Sweden, part of it is filtering through to EBITDAaL.

Part of it -- but we also had the competitive pressure as we have called out, which consumes some of the top line growth. And of course, we have reinvested also in our -- for instance, our Comviq brand is something we have invested in a bit in this quarter. That's one example among others. But it's a lot of moving parts, but I think our cost ambition remains the same, and we still see an EBITDAaL growth from it.

And also probably worth mentioning is that we see a healthy growth in almost all of our core products. But also, we have a sentiment where some legacy products are taking a hit like prepaid, for example. But continuously, we will, for sure, focus on gaining the efficiency out of the expansion of our own sales channels.

We will now take the next question from the line of Ajay Soni from JPMorgan.

I've got a couple. The first around mobile postpaid ASPU growth. So it was flat this quarter again. In Q2, you mentioned no frills competition and the Halebop shutdown. I wanted to know how these headwinds have developed in Q3? Second question is, with your low leverage, how are you viewing capital allocation? You've previously mentioned looking at fiber M&A, but you said that the valuations were a little bit steep. So have you seen any improving valuations within this area where you think you could do some fiber M&A?

Okay. Thank you, Ajay. I will start with the first question, and then I leave the leverage discussion to Peter. But we see pretty much the same situation in Q3. There is no relief on the competitive landscape. On the contrary, I would say. I've mentioned this before, but the no-frills brands meaning Hallon, Vimla, Fello is, from our perspective, almost driving Black Friday offers every day. We think that we are mitigating that fairly well, not engaging fully in that price war.

And as we said before, broadband, especially SDU LAN is very, very price competitive. And we are trying to approach that market in a bit of a different way, but -- and also the first signs is positive, early stage and too early to draw any conclusions from that. But -- the competitive market is definitely very strong. And normally, I don't like to comment on competitors, but just a remark when you mentioned Halebop. I mean, I think it's very clear to see that Telia is now doubling down on Fello, I think which the market can feel also.

And on the low leverage, of course, again, we're -- it's a pleasant problem in a way. It's great to have such a low gearing also now when the financial markets are a little bit more turbulent. Exactly how that will be used or consumed in a way is, of course, a Board matter in the end, as you know, when it comes to the shareholder remuneration, we expect, of course, to come back when we release numbers the Q4 numbers with the thinking there.

And when it comes to M&A, as always, we, of course, look at everything that is moving out there. That's part of what we should do. But as you mentioned, when it comes to some fixed targets, we have so far concluded that it's not value accretive to engage there. And that's why you haven't seen anything from us there.

But we don't see it as a problem that we are low in leverage?

No, no, no. That's a healthy position we have with a strong balance sheet right now. And with this quarter, record cash flow, it's, of course, making the situation even better.

We will now take the next question from the line of Max Findlay from R & Co.

Following on from Maurice's questions on AI agents. When you think about the drive to own channel sales and the desire to grow the lifetime value of customers through reduced churn and cross-sells, if customers are more removed from the search process, does that make those ambitions harder to achieve? And then you've intimated you're working on strategies such as simplifying tariffs. What is the risk that simplification of tariffs results in downward pressure on pricing if mobile tariffs just become increasingly easy to compare for consumers or these AI agents?

Thank you. A couple of things. And this is a big subject that a lot of people are thinking about. I think it's the contrary. The easier it is for the customer to make choices, the more we win on being a trustworthy player, having the best network and selling more products with great offers and value for money. So I think when -- if we complicate it too much, make it hard and go back to the old telecom modus operandi where we should hide things. I think the agents will punish us.

So I think it's the other way around. The more open and the more trustworthy we can be, the better it is for the customer and to choose us and also for the machine to choose us. And also, we should not forget that we are still humans at least for a while more. And I think not everything will be based and not 100% will be based on the agent optimizing. It will also be what you tell the agent to optimize on and some people also actually want to have a physical meeting. We see that in our stores with increased traffic.

So service will become a very important part, and that's where we put a lot of effort as well, becoming better and better. And as you know, we are using AI in our customer operations today with great success, where people actually think that they get a very great service, thanks to our AI bot Anna solving easy matters in a very swift way. So this is not an easy answer, and I don't think we should draw too easy conclusions on this subject. And as I said before, everyone thought that the operators would die when Apple should launch their own connectivity. That didn't happen.

I'm very humble, but I also see a great opportunity in the AI era. And that's actually one of the reasons I joined. I think this is a fantastic opportunity for the operators to become even better. A long answer to your question, but it occupies a lot of my time thinking around this.

Yes. I guess if I could just follow up, just on the ability to cross-sell. If you're simplifying tariffs, does that just make it harder to make these incremental sales? I mean how do you think about that?

No, no, no. I think it's the other way around. You should simplify all the products and offer great combination. So I don't believe in make it harder for the customer because I don't think that will benefit us from an AI agent perspective. And you have to remember that what are the AI agent basing their choices on. That is actually humans giving sort of their criticism or praise out on the Internet. So the agents, they look for clues on what they think is a good choice for their respective sort of -- I don't know what you call it, but human behind the agent.

So it's -- as I said, it's a bit more complicated than just if it becomes too simplified, then it will be a downward spiral. I don't think so. And also -- and this is more of a philosophical discussion, but we shouldn't forget that we are actually representing critical societal critical infrastructure, helping both the society and the business owners and people out there. So we're building this network and making sure that the customers really, really sort of get the best service on the network. That is also something that humans will evaluate and trust is, I think, in the future, super important as well as the physical experience. So it's a big discussion, and we will probably have this discussion over and over again in the coming years.

We will now take our next question from the line of Ondrej Cabejsek from UBS.

I've got 2 questions, both on Sweden. The first one, just referring back to the consumer. I guess we started the year with some encouraging efforts by yourself specifically, you're slowing down the number of tariffs, raising prices on family tariffs, which had been dilutive to the market yet quarter-by-quarter, we're seeing the whole market, not just yourselves, but seeing more pressure on the consumer revenues. I'm wondering if this is really just macro? Or is it -- was there a catalyst, I guess, with the Halebop discontinuation that went the wrong way as you say, Telia. I guess, shifting more into pushing the discounted brands spilling over into Telenor and Tre trade doing the same? So is it really -- do you trace this back to this decision to kind of cut the Halebop brand primarily?

Or is this also may be a function of -- maybe are we again approaching some kind of M&A talks. I guess, the same way we saw mid-2025 where competition between Telenor and Tre heated up? And I guess what is the way out of this besides consolidation? Is it just we need to wait for this Halebop brand shutdown to kind of exhaust? Or is it something that you see as a risk of a prolonged competitive deadlock in a way? And associated with this question, I guess, is Halebop again, probably the main reason why you're seeing less operating leverage in Sweden today in the sense that have you had to go back into third-party channels, which you were mentioning? And yes, is kind of the biggest reason for the impact on your EBITDAaL as well, simply speaking?

Maybe I can start with the second one with -- because I think we have had that question on the -- in different shapes and forms on operating leverage. On the Swedish, we see some top line growth, some healthy growth in B2B and some pockets of B2C is growing. And then we have some drags in certain legacy services and a challenging position in fixed broadband. On the EBITDAaL growth, we benefit from the top line growth, and we benefit from the cost -- continued cost discipline. But as we have called out, it's a challenging market, putting some pressures on the market, and we have also reinvested a bit, for instance, in the Comviq brand in the quarter and other activities.

And then it always swings a little bit back and forth, but we raised the bar last year, and we keep growing EBITDAaL from that level. So that's -- but then we, of course, recognize that if you look at operating leverage, it's maybe not there for Sweden in Q3, but still a solid set of numbers for that. On the first piece, I don't think we should dwell too much more on other companies' brands. We have mentioned what we have seen in terms of Halebop, but that it's many factors driving the market, and I don't think we should call out one single move, it's different elements of it. The Halebop move is one of them.

What it will look like going forward, we shouldn't speculate too much on it, but I think we focus on what we can do. And I think Nicholas has elaborated on the different pieces we'll work on to optimize and bring up the customer loyalty and so forth.

We will now take the next question from the line of Abhilash Mohapatra from BNP Paribas.

I got 2, please. Firstly, just sort of coming back to the topic of AI, but more in the context of the Swedish market. I mean, in Sweden, we've always had the trend of a high sort of proportion of sub-brands existing in the market. These are all well established. But at the same time, you said that this is a space that remains very competitive. I suppose my question is from a sort of AI pricing point of view, do you think that the high proportion of sub-brands in Sweden, does that make things worse? For example, does it increase the risk that people look to sort of spin down to these brands, which are already out there? Or somehow does that negate the risk in the sense that, well, people are already aware of these brands, and therefore, you don't really see things getting incrementally worse?

And then secondly, just a follow-up on sort of EBITDAaL and CapEx. You mentioned all the various moving parts during Q3. I mean, would you characterize Q3 as carrying sort of any amount of additional OpEx during the quarter? Or would you say it was usual? And then just on the CapEx point, obviously, you sort of mentioned less than 10%. I mean, is there a way to sort of think about this? Would you just marginally lower than 10%, would that be in line with your guidance? Or should we think about CapEx being meaningfully lower than 10%?

So I can start with the first question. I think you are very on to how we look at it as well. We have had these sub-brands or second brands, no-frills brands for quite a long time now in the market, and there is a very high price transparency. And yet still the main brands and Tele2 is doing well on the mobile side. So this is how the Swedish market operates and as well in the Baltics. So if price was the only thing that everyone cared about, then everyone would be with the no-frills brand, and that's not the case.

Also, you can see that some of the brands are moving towards introducing more sort of premium brand services, which tells me at least that the growth is not as high as it used to be in those brands because people expect more from their operator. So that's my view on this from a Swedish perspective. And then talking about EBITDAaL and CapEx.

Yes. Thanks for the question. When it comes to additional OpEx, I would put it this way. We always have -- it's not a straight line when it comes to revenue or OpEx. Sometimes you have some elevated numbers and sometimes it goes down a bit, but it's nothing in -- and we, of course, have invested, for instance, in our stores and in some of our brands. But it's not a specific number that I would call out as something extraordinary in Q3 in that sense, quite. No big one-offs or adjustments that I would like to call out.

On the CapEx side, we're guiding on what we're guiding on. It's below 10%, and I leave in a way to you to do the interpretation of that. But what we know is that so far, we are lower. We know that Q4 is always an intense quarter when it comes to investments, and we -- but exactly how it will play out, it depends, of course, on our decisions, but also what's happening out there, and we have talked also about the hardware situation and other activities. So exactly where it would land remains to be seen, but we are confident with the improved guidance or reduced CapEx to sales down to below 10%.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Nicholas Hogberg for closing remarks.

So thank you very much, and thank you, everyone that participated and for the time you spent with us. And hopefully, we will meet again. And with that, we are closing this earnings call. And I want to thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tele2 Q2 Interim Report 2026 Conference Call.

[Operator Instructions]

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Nicholas Högberg, President and Group CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. So good morning, and welcome to Tele2's call for the second quarter of 2026. With me, I have Peter Landgren, our Group CFO; and Stefan Trampus, our Chief B2B.

So please turn to Slide 2 for some highlights from the second quarter. So in Q2, group end user service revenue grew by 2%, whereas underlying EBITDAaL grew by 4% despite tougher comps than in Q1. In Q2, we also continued to generate healthy equity free cash flow of SEK 1.5 billion. We also announced a partnership with Scaleway, Europe's leading public cloud provider to launch sovereign and scalable cloud and AI offering in Sweden. The offering combined Scaleway's public cloud capabilities with Tele2's private cloud services, providing organizations with a powerful hybrid solution.

We continue to expand our store network in Sweden, adding 3 new stores during the quarter. And finally, we are proud to have been recognized by Time Magazine as one of the world's most sustainable companies. including being the most sustainable telco in the Nordics.

So please move to Page 3 for more details on our results. So our 2% growth in end-user service revenue was driven by all our operations and our 4% growth in underlying EBITDAaL was driven by both revenue growth and continued sharp cost control. Our solid equity free cash flow, which reduced by 9% year-on-year was negatively impacted by timing of tax payments, whereas operating cash flow grew somewhat, and Peter will go through the details later.

CapEx to sales, which increased seasonally versus Q1, remained well below last year's level, mainly due to lower 5G rollout pace. Our leverage ended at 1.7x following the first dividend tranche, which was paid in May. In Sweden Consumer, end-user service revenue remained stable with growth in mobile postpaid and DTV. And in Sweden business, end-user service revenue grew by 4% and driven by mobile due to strong IoT growth. And our Baltic operations grew end-user service revenue by 6% and underlying EBITDAaL by a strong 10%.

So let's move to Slide 5 for more details on Swedish consumer. So as discussed in the CEO letter, this quarter, we continue to enhance the customer experience through investment in our brands, expanding store footprint and increased use of AI and automation. Also, according to Ookla test, Tele2 has Sweden's best 5G network, demonstrating the quality and reliability we deliver to our customers. Mobile postpaid end-user service revenue grew by 2%. Total mobile revenue grew by 1%, partly offset by continued decline in prepaid.

In fixed broadband, end-user service revenue declined by 2%, impacted by increasingly competitive pricing dynamics. In digital TV, end-user service revenue continued to grow by 4%, and once again driven by healthy high single-digit growth in Tele2 TV, more than offsetting the impact of Boxer TV switch off.

So let's look at the consumer KPIs on Slide 6. Mobile postpaid added a solid 13,000 RGUs during Q2, whereas mobile ASPU remained unchanged year-on-year. Fixed broadband RGUs declined by 8,000 in Q2, reflecting our deliberate caution in open networks where price competition remains unhealthy. Meanwhile, we grew RGUs in our own network where profitability is high. TV RGUs increased by 5,000 in Q2 with continued good momentum in Tele2 TV. ASPU grew by 3% year-on-year, driven by pricing and cross-selling of sports content. So to sum up, we delivered a solid quarter overall in terms of customer intake despite continued competitive intensity in the market.

So please move to Slide 7 for Sweden Business. So Sweden Business continued to deliver a solid end-user service revenue growth, reaching 4% in Q2. Mobile grew by 7%, driven by our fast-growing IoT business. Mobile RGUs increased by 15,000 in Q2, supported by steady growth across several segments. ASPU continued to be impacted by change in customer mix. Solutions grew by 2% in Q2 primarily due to strong network solution performance. Fixed declined by 2% due to lower IP VPN revenues as a result of migration to new solutions, partly offset by continued solid growth in fixed broadband.

Please move to Slide 8 for Sweden Financials. In total, Sweden end-user service revenue grew by 1% in Q2, mainly driven by business. Underlying EBITDAaL grew by 2%, driven by the end-user service revenue and continued sharp cost control. Cash conversion improved to 76% over the last 12 months.

Let's move to Baltic financials on Slide 10. Baltics maintained strong top and bottom line growth in Q2. Total end-user service revenue grew by 6%, partly supported by price adjustments. Underlying EBITDAaL grew by 10%, mainly driven by end-user service revenue growth and cost optimization. Cash conversion based on the last 12 months was 80%, slightly negatively impacted by the tower transaction in Q1.

Let's move to Slide 11 for Baltic operating KPIs. The total postpaid base increased by 11,000 RGUs in Q2, driven by all markets, whereas prepaid declined by 9,000 RGUs. Blended organic ASPU grew by a solid 7% driven by price adjustments and continued prepaid to postpaid migration.

So with that, I hand over to Peter, who will go through the financial overview.

Thank you, Nicholas, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Page 13 for the group income statement. Total revenue grew by 2%, driven by the service revenue growth of 2%. On reported underlying EBITDAaL after lease, I'd like to remind you about the Baltic tower transaction. As previously stated, the transaction is expected to have a negative impact of around EUR 35 million on a 12-month basis starting from March. This translates to around SEK 95 million in the quarter.

The organic growth in underlying EBITDAaL, which reflects the pro forma development was plus 4% compared to Q2 last year, thanks to the service revenue contribution and sharp cost control across the group. Items affecting comparability were mainly impacted by workforce-related costs. Net financial items decreased year-on-year, mainly thanks to higher interest income. In Q2, our average interest rate was 2.7%, with a debt mix of 74% fixed rates and 26% floating rates. Income tax increased year-on-year due to higher taxable profits.

Let's move to the cash flow on Slide 14. CapEx paid, excluding spectrum decreased, primarily due to lower 5G rollout speed and delayed hardware supply, partly offset by payment timing. Spectrum CapEx refers to the Lithuanian spectrum acquired in Q2. Net financial items paid, excluding leasing, decreased due to both lower financing cost for outstanding debt and higher interest income.

Taxes paid included around SEK 135 million of withholding tax payments in Latvia in Q2, while the corresponding payment last year occurred in Q3. In addition, this year included a supplementary tax payment of around SEK 60 million in Lithuania related to 2025. Altogether, equity free cash flow reached SEK 1.5 billion in Q2, and over the last 12 months, SEK 6.2 billion has been generated equivalent to almost SEK 9 per share.

Please turn to Slide 15 for our capital structure. End of Q2, economic net debt was SEK 19.7 billion, a reduction of SEK 4.6 billion compared to end of 2025. This was driven by cash proceeds from the closing of the Baltic Tower transaction and the cash generated in the business, exceeding the payout of the first dividend tranche in May. Our leverage of 1.7x underlying EBITDAaL is comfortably within an investment-grade range.

And with that, I hand over to Nicholas for some comments on our 2026 guidance.

Thank you, Peter. Please turn to Slide 16 for our 2026 guidance. So following our solid Q2 numbers, we are well on track to reach our full year guidance for 2026, comprising low single-digit organic growth of end-user service revenue low to mid-single-digit organic growth for underlying EBITDAaL and CapEx to sales in the range of 10% to 11%. As for underlying EBITDAaL, we are optimistic about avoiding the low part of the range. And regarding CapEx to sales, we believe we will land in the lower part of the range.

So with that, I hand back to Peter for some additional comments regarding 2026 before we open up for Q&A.

Thanks, Nicholas. Yes, as always, a few additional remarks on the cash flow for the full year 2026. On spectrum, we estimate full year payments of around SEK 180 million related to auctions concluded in Sweden and Lithuania. On working capital, keep in mind that H1 was seasonally strong and H2 is expected to be seasonally weak. On financial items, excluding leasing, we now estimate full year net payments of around SEK 600 million with a similar quarterly phasing to last year. And finally, on taxes, we now estimate full year payments of around SEK 1.45 billion.

And with that, I hand over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions]

We will now take the first question from the line of Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs.

And welcome, Nicholas. I think we missed in the past when you were at 3 Sweden. I just wanted to ask one question, which is related -- which is kind of the key question investors were asking, given the management change we've seen at Tele2 in you joining. The concern that investors have is did Jean-Marc leave because there wasn't much more to be done in terms of cost efficiencies.

So it would be great if you could talk to what you see as the opportunity in terms of cost efficiencies from here and ability to deliver mid or mid-single-digit EBITDAaL growth from here. In the context of you guys not raising your guidance of low single digit to mid-single-digit EBITDAaL growth this year despite having delivered 7.5% already year-to-date. People just -- investors just questioning what the kind of cost efficiency opportunity and outlook is from here, and it would be great to get your take on that.

Thank you, Andrew. So I think it's important to begin with stating that the next phase now is not about the new direction. So the focus continues to further improve customer loyalty and drive sustainable and profitable growth. And it's also important that we call ourselves a challenger and that is not a slogan for us. For Tele2, it means that we should act simpler and we should act faster and we should be more flexible.

So being in and out in the telecom industry for almost 30 years, the beauty of the industry is that there is almost always more to do. So it is in the details where cost efficiency happens. And we will have a very strict cost control going forward. And we see several areas. And also we are working heavily with AI and automation where we see opportunities when it comes to creating even more operational efficiency in the company.

So the strategy is there. We are, of course, we're very proud of this quarter, delivering on our expectations. But we will continue to have a very strict cost control going forward.

We will now take the next question from the line of Erik Lindholm-Rojestal from SEB.

Sure. Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome, Nicholas. So I just wanted to ask about pricing in Sweden to start with. Sweden postpaid ASPU was flat year-over-year. How should we think about pricing into the second half? And would you say that sort of promotional activity in general competition has increased in the CCC mobile market? And then just a second question on fixed broadband. Service revenues down 2% year-over-year here. How do you think sort of about volume loss versus price decline? And do you think the current pressure that you're seeing is sort of structural or is it mostly campaign-driven?

Thank you, Erik. So when it comes to the market and the competition, it's clearly a very competitive market, and it has also within the no-frill segment increased since Telia shut down the Halebop brand. So we can see increased competition in the no-frills market. We have chosen not to be part of that. We strongly believe that we can continue to build our challenger position and value for money. We are doing that by strengthening our brand assets with Comviq launching Jättebra, the very good campaign, and it actually performs very good. So we're happy about that, but we can see that it is a fierce market.

From our perspective, we have created the flexibility in the company, thanks to our strong financial situation to choose whether we would like to take part of that competition or not. Right now and at this moment, we are not doing that. We are focusing internally on becoming even more efficient and strengthening our customer loyalty and our brands. So when it comes to fixed broadband, that is sort of a complex situation because we have players in the market, in the [indiscernible] market that is actually selling services below their cost price. We are not participating in that, and that is reflected in the numbers.

But what I can say is that we are growing at the same time in our own network, which is positive. So we're also looking forward to the legislation from EU, which I think will create a more healthy situation in the market. So I hope that answers your 2 questions.

We will now take our next question from the line of Andreas Joelsson from DNB Carnegie.

Good morning, everyone, and also welcome Nicholas from my side, a follow-up to Erik's question, but maybe more. In general, I read your focus areas in the CEO letter and you highlight accelerating growth and profitable and sustainable growth. But it is a sector, as you know, having been in the sector for many years that it is a challenge to grow the service revenue. I just would like to hear your more broad thoughts on that long term, how you see Tele2 being able to sustainably grow. We have seen that 3 has managed it over many years recently, but how do you see Tele2 being able to grow? And do you see in terms of both market share and pricing?

Thank you, Andreas. Well, this could be a very long answer, as you said, being in the industry for a while, but I'll try to keep it short. There's a couple of components in this. Of course, to start with, I think the strict cost control gives us flexibility on how to act as a company. So that is very important going forward. Our 5G network being now promoted as the best 5G network in Sweden by Ookla, helps us because then we have the very best product in the market, which is super important.

Then, of course, I think it's important to highlight that we want to have the most loyal customers in the industry. And that comes down to offering very strong service in whatever channel is relevant for the customer. It is very much about distribution and make sure that we can offer good distribution from the customers' wish and also it is very much about the brands and the brand assets that we have.

And maybe I'm -- of course, I'm talking out of Tele2's position, but I think being in the market for a long time that Tele2 has the 2 strongest brands in the market, both with Tele2 and Frank and also with Comviq and [ Karim ] where we now have revamped the positioning of both brands and we can see some results. So going back to the growth, it's very much about operational efficiency and details and giving the customers what they really want and create a loyal customer base that feels that they get value for money. So for me, being a challenger is not lowest price. It's most value for money. But it's hard work, and we will make sure to do that work.

We will now take the next question from the line of Viktor Hogberg from Danske Bank.

So on the fixed broadband on Sweden, you see increased price competition with the upcoming regulation, which have been kind of updated on previously, the aim from the regulator, of course, you see lower consumer prices. So what's your strategy? And how will you capitalize on the new market regime, given what we're seeing on the pricing side already as the first and potentially only question, we'll see.

Well, thank you, Viktor. I think It's fair to say that we will wait for the regulators to come with the new legislation. And after that, we are more prepared to discuss how and what we will do going forward. I think it's a bit -- would be a bit premature for me to go into details regarding that. But with that said, we see opportunities, and it is necessary to make sure that the new regulations come in place, which we think will happen in 2027.

Okay. And also a follow-up on this one, but on component prices and general inflation, I talked about this in Q1 -- in the Q1 report as well, but how will you mitigate this ties into previous questions. Are you willing to do anything on pricing already before the annual January hike to mitigate this? Or is it something that would affect the profit margins? Just thinking about inflation theme, which you clearly highlighted as well in the CEO letter?

Just a general comment, and then I will leave it to Peter to answer a bit more. But we have, as you can see in the numbers, created a strong balance sheet and good operations. So we have -- we are prepared and we can mitigate and we stand by our guidance for this year. Then of course, everyone knows the geopolitical situation. And going forward, we will see how that develops. But we think that we stand strong in this situation right now. With that said, I can leave over to Peter to give maybe a bit more flavor.

Absolutely. Maybe first on how to deal with this inflation. There is indeed inflation in certain pockets here and I think the work is, of course, to work specifically on those matters and see how we can act differently, challenge the suppliers and see if we can find other solutions. But in the end, sometimes we face inflation. So specific work towards those counterparties is, of course, key, but also the general work that we have talked about also last year about our procurement activities and review our contracts which we keep doing. And last year, we saw a lot of it filtering through to better profitability.

This year, we see that as well, but part of it is also to mitigate this inflationary pressure that we see in some places. And maybe that's also worth reflecting on our CapEx so far this year. It's quite low, partly as expected, but partly also because of the delays in deliveries due to this complex situation, and that's something that we cope in different ways. And one -- we try to plan differently and refurbish things where possible. And -- but in some cases, we need to buy. But so far, it has impacted our CapEx to sales in a way that it's so far quite low, as you can see.

Sorry, just a follow-up on that. Of course, you haven't guided for 2027 yet, but do you see a catch-up on these investments next year in a material way? Or is it a manageable quantity of CapEx that is delayed.

Yes. What can even though to quantify it a bit, even though it's a matter of definition, but we think that what has been in a way pushed forward, it's about SEK 100 million in the first half of the year. And that's something that might come back to some extent in the second half of the year or we try to mitigate it in other ways, or it's built over to be invested going forward. It's in the scheme of things. It's not a massive amount, and we feel confident that we can continue to run a business with low CapEx intensity.

Then also, I think it's fair to say that it's very difficult to speculate on component prices, memory prices, et cetera, for 2027. Things are moving fast, and we don't know actually what will happen during next year. So that is also an uncertainty in the situation.

We will now take the next question from the line of Felix Henriksson from Nordea.

You announced the strategic partnership with Scaleway recently on sovereign cloud and AI offering in Sweden. So can you elaborate a bit more on this? How should we think about the financial impacts of the partnership in terms of revenue margin potential as well as investment needs? And if you could also touch on the sort of competitive landscape in that area in Sweden, that would be great.

Thank you for your question, Felix. I will hand over to Stefan Trampus, who is heading the B2B division.

Felix, thanks for your question. Before I come into sort of financial impacts, I think it's worth describing why we're in this area. First of all, leading cloud and data center services it is a natural extension of Telco's core business and already invested assets that we have. And also we, as a provider, we are good at critical societal infrastructure. security, operation stability and also our resilience, are reflected in everything that we do and deliver.

What we see is that customers are looking for an -- not all, but there are segments that are looking for not fragmented infrastructure. They want to buy both cloud network security services, so more of a cohesive solution. And we deliver that. And I would say there's a few players in Sweden that can do that. the whole end-to-end that I was talking about. And the strategy and the position we want to take is to be a leading telco in cloud and AI infrastructure and then offering both private, public and hybrid cloud solutions, the mix of it.

And what's interesting to see, and I think we've touched about it on previous calls is that we see an increasing demand for European sovereign cloud and AI solutions. And Swedish organizations in our dialogues, we see that they want alternatives to global giants. And it's more than just a physical location for data stores. They also want to clear clarity regarding ownership, regulatory compliance, long-term control over their infrastructure.

So the customers we are meeting and the need that we see is really matching with our own private cloud, which we delivered to our own data centers, but we saw it as a need also to complement with something else from the hyperscaler place perspective. And therefore, we -- it was easy, I mean, Scaleway being closed part of the Telia Group have these capabilities. So we're combining their public cloud with our private cloud into a powerful hybrid solutions. And as many or maybe have seen some of you that we have already secured our first customer, a major player in the energy segment. So I think that shows that we have the right offerings and skills in place to serve the future already today, not in the future.

Then from a financial perspective, I mean, how this will affect our revenues. I mean, we don't report on the business line specifically. But we see good growth potential going forward, both from the customer needs, but also from legislation policies that we see both from Swedish authorities but also from an EU perspective. So this is something that we see as a good growth. Then it's attractive for selected segments, but you shouldn't see this as something that will replace our core revenue streams. We see this as an addition to the portfolio. So that's a little bit about the partnership and why we're doing it. I hope that answers your question, Felix.

We will now take the next question from the line of Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken.

Thank you very much, Nicholas. Welcome to the team. Nice to see you here. If I could take your view now when you have stepped in as CEO and I know you've been on the Board before that. But on the cost level, we know all about the actions you've taken in the last few years. But when you're sitting where you are now, do you feel there is more to do on the cost side? And if so, where do you find that? And how would you proceed in order to move into an even more efficient cost profile going forward? It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on it.

Thank you, Fredrik. Well, there is always more to do. And that is my experience in this industry. And also, I think it's important that it's sort of a part of our DNA to be very cost disciplined. And also, we see a technology shift right now with AI and automation that will help us drive those cost reductions over time. So I think we are looking into all areas and not a specific area to become even more efficient and have a high operational leverage in what we're doing. So I hope that answers your question. But for us, it's a never ending story to optimize costs.

Yes. That's interesting. And could I have a follow-up on the Sweden and the mobile. We see some net adds, but we also see that ASPU in Sweden is a little bit under pressure. So what is the tactics here through the coming 12 months? Is it -- the fact is to have a net adds that is on the positive side and at the sort of a little bit expensive ASP, is that a driver for you? Or how do you play that would be interesting?

Thank you. So we are focusing now on driving sustainable and profitable growth. So that will come from our extension of distribution our own channels where we are becoming more and more efficient, but also by making our brands even more attractive to the customers. So I think we will have a healthy growth. But at the same time, we will work hard on keeping the ASPU on good levels and not as for now, at least participate in the price war that is going on within the no-frills segment because that is, over time, not a healthy situation.

And as I pointed out, it has intensified quite a lot since Telia took away the Halebop brand from the market. So we are observing what is happening right now. But over time, for us, the most important part is to create the most loyal customers and continue to build on our brands and our distribution and our service.

We will now take the next question from the line of Ulrich Rathe from Bernstein.

I want to ask this cost question, efficiency question maybe another way. It's a change of leadership now and the prior leadership sort of came in and I think the signature move was to cut very radically. The head count in particular. Do you see any areas where that has done damage that needs to be fixed where things have overshot?

Thank you, Ulrich. No, I cannot see that actually I think we have become overall as a company. We have become simpler and much faster and much more flexible in how we operate. So I think overall, it has been -- even though it was a tough situation for everyone involved. I think we have become a much leaner and better company going forward, and we are definitely in a much better position.

Great. Can I ask a follow-up, please? In the CEO letter you talk about specifically unpredictable consumer sentiment. Could you explain whether that's a more sort of general point in the -- with the geopolitical uncertainties and inflation uncertainties? Or do you have anything more specific in mind that caused you to insert that sentence into the CEO letter?

Thank you. No. It's not a specific happening or anything. It's more the geopolitical situation, which I think we all can relate to even more the latest week and the headlines we're waking up to every day and how that will affect the consumer going forward. it is an uncertainty, and it's hard for us to see where this is going. But we are well prepared to tackle such a situation if it would become a negative consumer sentiment.

We will now take the next question from the line of Abhilash Mohapatra from BNP Paribas.

I just wanted to come back to the Swedish top line performance this quarter, please. As you mentioned before, fixed service revenue slow down quite materially versus Q1, you also saw a slowdown in the mobile end user service revenues. I was wondering if you could just comment a bit more on that, please. You talked about competition in the open networks and a low end of mobile market, which is if you could help bring that back into your revenue performance, how much of that was the competition, how much impact it had on your ASPs? Or is there some phasing around back book price increases that we should be aware of? Just some more color on the -- what looks like a slowdown in your top line, please?

I'll answer that. Thanks for your question, Abhilash, on this one. When it can start the mechanically with phasing, we just a reminder around that, that we did annual pricing in Q1, as you probably recall, in Sweden consumer. So -- and that's, of course, helping. But then as we have pointed out in different ways here. There is -- it is a busy market and competitive market, especially in fixed broadband and in the no-frills area. We face that. And our focus is on keeping our customers, making them more loyal, of course, but keeping our customers and which also is illustrated a bit by our positive net adds in Q2 in mobile.

But when doing this, we have we needed to make sure to keep them by, in some cases, offer somewhat better pricing. So that's something that is offsetting the price increases that was implemented earlier in this year. And that's a constant balance and a constant fine-tuning to find the right way to approach our customers and provide the right price at the right time, and that's the work that we'll continue to do with the development of our own stores and our AI capabilities to approach the customers in the right way. But that's what we see.

That's very helpful. And just a very quick follow-up, please. I mean, just sort of taking a step back, I guess, the Swedish market this quarter has generally been seen as sort of relatively rational I know that the competition in the open network that you've referred to in the past as well. But just taking a step back, do you fundamentally has the market become more competitive than where you were previously? Or is this more of sort of the usual kind of trends that we see?

Thank you. I think it's fair to say that we definitely see a more competitive situation in the no-frills market. That's where it's most obvious. And sort of a reflection is that it's almost -- it feels like it's Black Week, Black Day every day right now. So it's different brands are pushing really hard. That's what we see where we think it's a bit of a -- as you stated it, irrational in one sense.

We will now take the next question from the line of Ondrej Cabejšek from UBS.

I've got a couple of questions. Maybe starting with a follow-up on the theme that was already developed several times the increased composition following the shutdown in Halebop as a brand, can you elaborate on why exactly this is? I presume that's because I guess other companies or maybe even yourself, [indiscernible] are trying to take advantage of that and somehow use that as a way to kind of increase market share at the expense of the shutdown brands. So any color on that would be very helpful. And then I'll follow up with other questions, please.

Ondrej, Well, I mean, it's -- is it hard to understand why, but we do see increased competition. And I assume that, that is a consequence of trying to make sure that the Halebop customer base stays where it should be or where some actors think it should be. And maybe that is driving the sort of the increased competition. From our perspective, we are always making sure that we come out as attractive brand and that we have great offers and make sure that we can take as much as possible from the market. But with that said, in a healthy and sustainable way.

And then I had 2 questions kind of related to Tre, Nicholas. So I guess Tre had a much organization as far as I know, at least in terms of internal sales channels. So I'm curious how you view the strategy of Tele2 currently of exiting third-party distribution, which I believe for Tre were or was much more of a prominent part of the sales mix? And I guess my question is, do you subscribe to the Tele2 strategy fully? And if not, how do you plan on developing the sales channel mix going forward?

Thank you. Well, first, just a reminder, it was more than 10 years ago, it was 10 years ago since I left 3. So I have no clue or insight in what they are doing today. And now I'm fully committed to Tele2 been watching for almost 30 years. as a fantastic competitor. And then from the Board and now operationally, and I'm very, very impressed on how we are running Tele2 from a sales and distribution perspective.

And I think it's fair to say that we have been vocal on that we are investing in our own distribution channels. And I fully agree on that strategy and have been working with that strategy, both from operational and strategic Board perspective. So we are very aligned on what we are doing and where we're going when it comes to the distribution strategy.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the next question from the line of Ajay Soni from JPMorgan.

And in Q2 last year, you had lower marketing spend, so comps were slightly harder for this year. So if you did, where will your group organic growth being from the 4% reported today? And then if we look at Q1 EBITDAaL growth, it was double-digit Q2, let's say, mid-single digit and your guidance remains at low to mid-single digit. And the low single-digit level, it feels like things have to get materially worse in H2. So what headwinds do you see in H2 where potentially for the EBITDAaL growth ends up towards that low single-digit number?

Thanks for the question. I'll cover those 2. We're not calling out exactly what it would mean in terms of growth with them without the marketing moves. What we, of course, can -- what we notice, of course, is that we had a very, very strong growth in Q2 last year. And of course, that impacts the growth this year that we had tough comps. And on that note, and that's why we find the 4% growth that we see now as a solid performance, which we were pleased with and in line with our expectations.

Going forward then on the guidance for the full year, I think it's a couple of things to call out. First, we should keep in mind, we keep saying that we raised the bar last year, and we're hence starting from higher levels. And also, as Nicholas pointed out earlier today, is that we are optimistic to avoid the lower end of the range on EBITDAaL. But as you know, then we keep the guidance untouched and it's a couple of reasons. One thing is then, as we said, the geopolitical and macroeconomic environment, it brings uncertainty we have talked about it here, but it's about consumer sentiment and where that goes and also the inflationary pressure that we have, especially in certain pockets of our cost base.

Secondly, as we've talked about, it's the Swedish market that is competitive, especially in friend fixed broadband. We don't know how that will evolve in the second half of the year. And so far, we have stayed out from deliberately from the most intense competition, but we, of course, want to retain our ability and optionality to act as we find best fertility. So that's how I look at our guidance for the remainder of the year.

We will now take the next question from the line of Viktor Hogberg from Danske Bank.

Just on a recent topic will be interesting to pick your brain, satellites, the large vendor having recently appealed. Just your thoughts on satellite providers within the context of the complete landscape in the future, both for your sake, but also for the industry, it will be interesting to just hear your thoughts on it.

Thank you, Viktor. Well, it's always thrilling when new technologies come out, satellite is not new, but it's a different way of using it. So if we're talking -- it's a bit of a different scenarios here. So if we're talking about broadband, then it's more rural areas and complement. We don't see a big threat right now from satellite. We think it will be a complement to us.

If we talk about B2B, device to device, there are a couple of things to look into when it comes to satellite. So we have the regulations, looking at EU and the Nordics, specifically, we have regulations that makes it a bit sort of complicated. We also have frequencies and capacity that you have to understand and how that will affect satellite operator. Then of course, we have the more operational part where we have very, very good networks in the Nordics, in Europe, where we have a dense population the price levels are quite low.

So maybe also that will, yes, affect the sort of opportunity and possibility for a satellite operator to enter the market. But as a complement, we are very positive, and we think there is an opportunity there. So I hope that answers your question. But of course, we are following it closely. And I mean, as I said, it's always exciting with new technologies and technology shifts I would rather see AI and automation as a bigger sort of opportunity and technology shift, which also is very exciting to talk about, of course.

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Nicholas Hogberg for closing remarks.

Thank you very much, and thank you all for listening in and great questions. And as I said before, we are proud to deliver a solid and strong quarter. according to our expectations. And I want to wish everyone, thank you so much, and wish you everyone a great summer and hopefully, good and deserved vacation for some of you. So thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tele2 Q1 Interim Report 2026 Webcast and Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jean-Marc Harion, President and Group CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, and welcome to Tele2's report call for the first quarter of 2026. With me here in Stockholm, I have Peter Landgren, our Group CFO; Nicholas Hogberg, our Chief B2C Officer and Deputy CEO; and Stefan Trampus, our Chief B2B. Please turn to Slide 2 for some highlights from the first quarter.

In Q1, group end-user service revenue grew by 3%, whereas underlying EBITDA grew by 11%, marking the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. We also continue to generate strong equity free cash flow with SEK 2.2 billion in Q1, plus 7% versus last year. Our Baltic Tower transaction was completed by the end of February, generating cash proceeds of SEK 4.7 billion to Tele2. And we also opened 5 new stores in Sweden in Q1 and upgraded our fixed network to 2.5 gigabit per second, a record internet speed, which are already available across many of the largest cities, including in Stockholm. With our 5G already recognized as the fastest in Sweden, we now operate the fastest networks in the country. Please move to Page 3 for more details on our results.

Our 3% growth in end-user service revenue was driven across all our operations and core services. Our 11% growth in underlying EBITDAaL was driven by both transformation and revenue growth. Our strong equity cash flow or free cash flow, which grew by 7% year-on-year was largely driven by the increase in our operating cash flow. Peter will go through the details.

CapEx to sales declined seasonally, partly due to lower 5G rollout speed in Q1. Leverage fell to 1.5x due to the Baltic Tower transaction and organic cash generation. In Sweden Consumer, end-user service revenue grew by 1% with contribution from all main services. In Sweden Business, end-user service revenue grew by 5%, driven by mobile and IoT. Our Baltic operations grew end-user service revenue by 7% and underlying EBITDAaL by 15%. Let's move to Slide 5 for more details on Swedish Consumer.

As commented in the CEO letter this quarter, we combined store expansion with rapid progress in AI and automation, improving customer experience, operational efficiency and our ability to anticipate customer needs. Mobile postpaid end-user service revenue grew by 3%. Total mobile revenue grew by 2%, partly offset by continued decline in prepaid and some temporary issues due to the move to our new logistics platform. Fixed broadband grew end-user service revenue by 1% due to ASPU growth. Digital TV once again improved sequentially, driven by healthy high single-digit growth in Tele2 TV end-user service revenue, more than offsetting the latest impact of Boxer TV switch off. Let's look at consumer KPI on Slide 6.

Mobile postpaid RGUs remained unchanged in Q1 despite temporary negative impact related to 2G, 3G shutdowns. Mobile ASPU increased by 1% year-on-year, driven by price adjustments, while still negatively impacted by IFRS 15 fair value adjustments, which will gradually abate during the year. Fixed broadband RGU declined slightly in Q1, while ASPU grew by 1% due to price adjustments. As in previous quarter, we have remained selective in parts of the market due to continued aggressive competition, which hampered volume growth. TV RGUs increased by 4,000 in Q1 as the good growth momentum in Tele2 TV has continued. ASPU grew by 5% year-on-year, driven by pricing and cross-selling of sports content improving the success of our flexible offer. Please move to Slide 7 for Sweden business.

Sweden business continued to deliver strong end-user service revenue growth, reaching 5% in Q1 despite strong competition. Mobile grew by 8%, largely driven by our IoT business, which is expanding in new industries such as the automotive sector and geographies, for example, in Latin America. Mobile RGUs increased by 3,000 in Q1, ASPU continued to be impacted by change in customer mix. B2B solutions grew by 3% in Q1, reflecting our decision to focus on a more targeted portfolio of services. Please move to Slide 8 for Sweden financials.

In total, Sweden end-user service revenue grew by 2% in Q1, driven by both business and consumer. Underlying EBITDA grew by a solid 9%, driven by the end-user service revenue, workforce reduction, stricter prioritization and cost control. The cash conversion has improved to 73% over the last 12 months. Let's move to the Baltics financials on Slide 10.

Baltics once again maintained strong top and bottom line growth in Q1. Total end-user service revenue grew by 7%, partly supported by previous price adjustments. Q1 was the fifth consecutive quarter in which all Baltic markets delivered double-digit organic growth in underlying EBITDAaL, delivering a total growth of 15% pro forma the Baltic Tower transaction. It is worth commenting that our Baltic operations started accounting the cost of Baltic Tower company in March 2026. Cash conversion based on the last 12 months stands at 80% despite the impact of the Tower transaction. As you know, a spectrum auction has already been announced and will take place in Lithuania in 2026. Let's move to Slide 11 for Baltic's operating KPIs.

The total postpaid base in the Baltics increased by 17,000 RGUs in Q1, driven by all markets. Prepaid decline was due to regulation and migration to postpaid. Blended organic ASPU grew by a strong 10%, driven by price adjustments and continued prepaid to postpaid migration.

With that, I hand over to Peter, who will go through the financial overview.

Thank you, Jean-Marc, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Page 13 and the group income statement for the quarter. Total revenue grew, thanks to organic service revenue growth of 3% with contribution from all operations. Underlying EBITDA grew by 10% organically or 11% after lease, thanks to the sharp cost control across the group and the contribution from service revenue. Items affecting comparability were mainly impacted by redundancy costs related to workforce reductions.

Last year, the corresponding redundancy provisions were more significant as you might recall. The gain from sale of operations of SEK 5.1 billion refers to the capital gain from the Baltic Tower transaction completed at the end of February. Net financial items decreased year-on-year, mainly thanks to higher interest income and positive currency effects. In Q1, our average interest rate was 2.7% with a debt mix of 73% fixed rates and 27% floating rates. Income tax increased year-on-year due to higher taxable profits. Let's move to the cash flow on Slide 14.

CapEx paid, excluding spectrum decreased compared to last year, mainly due to lower intensity in the Swedish 5G rollout and reduced workforce. The decline was also impacted by delayed hardware supply with an expected catch-up later in the year. Spectrum CapEx paid increased due to the first out of 2 payments for the Swedish spectrum secured in 2025. Changes in working capital contributed to the cash flow with around SEK 450 million, largely driven by seasonal decrease in equipment receivables. Taxes paid increased since last year included a tax refund of around SEK 280 million, while the corresponding tax refund this year was around SEK 50 million. In summary, Q1 equity free cash flow reached SEK 2.2 billion, which implies a 7% growth compared to last year, and this translates to around SEK 9 per share over the last 12 months. Please turn to Slide 15 for our capital structure.

End of Q1, economic net debt was SEK 17.4 billion, a reduction of SEK 6.9 billion compared to end of 2025. This was driven by 2 things: the cash proceeds of SEK 4.7 billion from the Baltic Tower transaction as well as the SEK 2.2 billion generated in the business. And this brings down leverage to 1.5x underlying EBITDA after lease ahead of the proposed dividend distribution.

And with that, I hand over to Jean-Marc for some comments on our 2026 guidance.

Thank you, Peter. Please turn to Slide 16 for 2026 guidance. As highlighted last quarter, we concluded 2025 by setting a high standard and establishing a new reference point for Tele2 profitability. Building on that momentum, we remain focused on consolidating the company's transformation further strengthening profitability and safeguarding revenue growth in the face of continued geopolitical uncertainty. We, therefore, maintain our full year guidance for 2026 with low single-digit organic growth of end-user service revenue, low to mid-single-digit organic growth of underlying EBITDAaL, CapEx to sales in the range of 10% to 11%. Note that the organic growth rates include the impact of the Baltic Tower transaction on a pro forma basis.

And I hand back to Peter for some additional comments regarding 2026 before we open up for Q&A.

Thank you. First, a reminder about the Baltic Tower transaction. As previously stated, the transaction is expected to have a negative impact on underlying EBITDAaL of around EUR 35 million on a 12-month basis. And in Q1, this only impacted March, while we'll see the full impact onwards. And then a few reminders on the cash flow for the full year 2026.

On spectrum, we noticed that an auction has been announced in Lithuania expected to take place during 2026. On financial items, excluding leasing, we still estimate full year net payments of around SEK 650 million with a similar quarterly phasing to last year. And finally, on taxes, we still estimate full year payments of around SEK 1.4 billion.

And with that, I hand over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Ondrej Cabejsek from UBS.

I had a few questions on Sweden and specifically mobile, I guess, please. So I am looking at the mobile trends specifically in postpaid. And if you could please talk about -- I guess, you mentioned previously that you put through price rises this year about a month earlier than last year that the market has been kind of improving. So I think we would have maybe expected a bit more of an acceleration. You mentioned also that there has been some kind of legacy negative impacts on mobile. So if you can talk about the growth rates for postpaid Sweden specifically and how you see those throughout 2026.

And second question, if I may, also related to this, but maybe from a different angle. You've obviously put with the new portfolio on mobile, you seem to have a very stable base in the quarter on postpaid against some price rises specifically on like family plans, which I think are very important. So how is the reception then and again, tied to how we should think about the service revenue kind of profile for the rest of the year?

Slight technical issue, but we continue the Q&A session. Just to answer your first question first, and then I will hand over to Nicholas to develop on the portfolio and the new pricing. But of course, the price adjustment that we implemented a little bit earlier this year, of course, has a progressive impact, and it's as always, mitigated by the BTL discount, the different segment that -- where these price adjustments are adjusted for. I believe that the second question is more relevant to be answered by Nicholas about the postpaid portfolio now and the positioning and how we see the competition, not only, I would say, with the other operators, but with the sales distributors as well.

So thank you, Jean-Marc. This is Nicholas. Yes, the new portfolio has been very well received. We have simplified the portfolio radically, which is good, and we have also continued to build Frank. And of course, as you know, we have started somewhat a repositioning of Comviq with Jattebra, very good, and it's actually working very good so far. So what we can see is that it's still a fierce competition and a challenging market. We have been restricted to engage in the price war, especially when it comes to the no-frills brands. They are pushing the market really hard. But we see that our new portfolio is working well and that we -- our position in the market becomes clearer and clearer.

Then when it comes to our distribution, we have launched 5 new stores during the quarter, and they are working very well, and we think that, that's the way forward for us. And we also see that we are less dependent on third-party distribution.

If I may maybe follow up on the last point. So is it a case of maybe you are -- as you kind of reposition the distribution channels, is it a case of maybe there will be slightly weaker volumes this year, but profitability will benefit as a result?

Yes. Let me -- Jean-Marc here again. To complete what Nicholas was commenting, of course, we are operating in a very competitive environment in Sweden on the consumer market. We like this kind of competition. We have 2 strong brands to compete with the others. One of the specifics, and this is a comment that I already made several times, one of the specifics of the Swedish market is that the competition is distorted by the behaviors of some sales channels, which are too important, overwhelming on the volumes, for instance, telemarketing. So that's probably what you were referring to.

We made a very clear statement last week supporting stricter rules for telemarketing operators. But we believe that this stricter rules should apply as well to other channels, third-party retailers where we have as well received a lot of complaints from our customers. So this, in my view, is one of the focus -- one of the priorities for the industry in Sweden and, of course, for Tele2 in the coming few months.

Our next question for today comes from the line of Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken.

I would like to come back to your cost profile and the good cost control you are driving the company with. A little bit more on the sort of the software stacks. You alluded to that in the report that you're working your way through with automating the software stacks and all that stuff. How much of that upgrade, modernizing, automating your software environment will sort of trickle through in improved cost profile over time as well? Or is this that sort of you get into a modern state with your software and the cost will be pretty much the same to drive it. It would be interesting to hear a little bit more color on that.

Okay. Thank you for your question. It's a very complicated exercise to answer your question in a few minutes in this Q&A session because, of course, now, for one simple reason because it's an ongoing transformation process. We have a huge potential ahead. And I believe that Tele2 is leading the pack in the AI and automation initiatives. We received recently an international award for the automation of our processes.

We have built -- in parallel, we were optimizing the organization in the company. We have created a dedicated data and AI team. Of course, one of the purpose is to help us better understand the customer behavior, anticipate their issues and make the support to these customers smoother and more faster and more transparent. But we have engaged into a huge transformation of all our processes. So we have a series of initiatives, internal initiatives that empower the managers and the employees to automate their own processes.

So we have created a kind of library of tools and small internal academy to support automation and AI initiatives. And furthermore, and I believe that, that is more relevant with the content of your question. We started applying agentic coding in our development. And this, of course, is a huge opportunity because it accelerates the delivery and lower the cost of the development. We haven't seen all the potential of this initiative yet, but I'm personally very impressed by the first results that we are delivering. So far, we don't have any number to share with you. We are just trying to unleash the potential of agentic coding internally to accelerate our transformation.

Very clear. Can I have a follow-up on that, Jean-Marc? Do you expect that you will see the biggest effect or maybe the earliest effects within your production. Or will you see it within your support systems or support functions, I should say. Where do you see the early signs?

No, we -- I believe that we already see it in the customer interaction because that's where, of course, we put our priorities. We want to improve our knowledge in order to better understand the needs and the issues faced by every single customer segment. But the automation and the development is evolving fast as well, including in the support of our B2B customers. And that's because, of course, I should have mentioned that the automation of our processes started in the B2B area last year when we started trying to automate the processes that we have in place in order to support our large accounts. And this is from there that we have developed this automation academy and so on.

Our next question comes from the line of Andreas Joelsson from DNB Carnegie.

Two questions from my side. First of all, Jean-Marc, your comment about the macro situation currently, how does that impact your growth plans and growth ambitions for the year. Has there been any changes to that given what you see around you? And does it also make you more eager to look further to the cost side and CapEx side?

And secondly, just curious, given a quite strong start to the year with 11% EBITDA growth, how did you reason when you decided to keep the EBITDA outlook unchanged?

Okay. Thank you, Andreas. I believe that the 2 questions are linked. First, so far, the telecom industry has not been the one most impacted by the international situation. So that's good news. But in the meantime, we see a sharp increase in the price of the component of IT equipment. So this may impact our cost, CapEx and OpEx in the coming months. But so far, we can deal with the situation, but this price increase in the component is a concern for our industry, not only for the telecom industry.

But of course, the major focus we have is about the consumer behavior. So far, the Swedish economy was recovering, but still lagging behind in terms of consumer consumption. The international situation will probably create some tension as well in the customer behavior and appetite to spend. We will see. We are just careful. And so far, so good. But if the situation lasts, then we will need to adjust. And this is why we are very happy to have transformed the company last year so that we are agile and reactive again. So we can react very fast. We have a much leaner cost structure that help us adjust if necessary. And that explains as well why for the time being, we are careful with our guidance.

Our next question moment comes from the line of Derek Laliberte from ABG Sundal Collier.

Just a follow-up there on the guidance and given the strong Q1, what would you say needs to happen or not happen for you to reach the upper end of this EBITDAaL guidance or even beat it?

Just -- okay, Peter?

Derek, thanks for the question. I think it will be a little bit of a repetition of what Jean-Marc is saying because I think we have elaborated on it. We have the geopolitical uncertainty, which is both on the component side, but also on things like energy costs and FX and things like that, but most of all, the customer sentiment. And to add to the customer sentiment, it's also about the competitive situation, which is, of course, we know where we stand now in April, but it's a long year and it's early days and how that evolves is, of course, critical for our top line evolvement. So that's something to add and that can bring things to upper or lower end, I would say. So that's what I would add.

Okay. Got it. And on competition there, has anything changed in terms of the Swedish competitive intensity in the consumer segment?

Nicholas?

Yes. We can see that it's a bit of an increased competition, and it has to do with all the product segments. So we can see it both on Voice, but also on broadband and entertainment TV. So we see that there is clearly higher competition in the market during Q1.

Got it. And finally, on TV in Sweden, how do you see the growth prospects from here on?

We have a positive view on the growth prospects for TV, and we feel that we have a strong offer, and we see a continuous growth in TV.

And the Swedish football team is qualified for the World Cup. So that's good for the business.

Our next question for today comes from the line of Felix Henriksson from Nordea.

I have 2, both relating to capital allocation. Just want to hear your thoughts about why not distribute some proceeds from the Baltic Tower transaction given that your balance sheet is in an extremely healthy state at the moment? And secondly, in the report, you mentioned this proposal to regulate the Villafiber market by PTS. So I just wanted to pick your brain if that has changed your mind in either way about making M&A in fiber assets in the future in Sweden.

Peter will answer the first question. I will try to answer the second.

On the capital allocation then, I would put it this way that there was a proposal then from the Board, as you know, along with the Q4 release of a quite appealing shareholder return of SEK 10.5 per share, which we assume will be approved by the AGM now in May. So it's sizable and it fits well into our updated financial policy stating that we want to secure appealing shareholder return while retaining our flexibility.

On the Baltic Tower transaction, That's, of course, a sizable cash proceed we received now, SEK 4.7 billion. But as we have said before, that's not really turning the needle in terms of dividend capacity because it also affects which leverage we can allow based on our rating. But we, of course, fully agree. We have a strong balance sheet. We see that as something very positive and something that enables appealing shareholder return also in the future. And on top of that financial flexibility and, of course, good interest rates. So we see that we are in a quite good spot. And then, of course, it's up to the Board to conclude how to pay it going forward.

And as a reminder, the proposal from the Board to the general assembly consists in distributing 118% of 2025 equity free cash flow, which is partly an answer to your question.

And regarding the -- your question about M&A and fiber infrastructure. I would say the comment we make is about the -- we made -- is about the progresses made by PTS, the Swedish regulator in the regulation of the SDUs. So this is, of course, a good news for the Swedish consumers. Let's remember that in Sweden, 1 out of 2 households is a villa, meaning that 1 of 2 villa owner today doesn't have access to competitive offer for the fixed Internet. So this will be a big opening and a big opportunity. And of course, we expect to play a key role in the opening of the market. We are waiting for the regulation to materialize, but at least the first publication by the PTS are a good sign, and we expect the regulation to materialize in the coming few months. Of course, the sooner the better.

Regarding the M&A, we will see. I already commented that we don't exclude anything. But of course, the assets have to be available at a reasonable price. So far, we haven't any opportunity on the table. We are looking -- we are observing and scrutinizing the market, but nothing tangible, nothing concrete at this stage. Maybe it's interesting to comment that to remind ourselves that the Swedish market is very fragmented at this stage. Maybe some consolidation will happen in the coming few years. It's not the time yet. So let's wait and see.

Our next question for today comes from the line of Keval Khiroya from Deutsche Bank.

I've got 2 questions, please. So last year, you made strong progress on renegotiated supply contracts and on the workforce reduction savings. Can you elaborate a bit more on how you think about the source and scope of additional OpEx cuts in 2026? I appreciate you did speak a bit about automation.

And then secondly, in B2B, you've again shown strong revenue growth. Last year, you also talked about wanting to focus a bit more on profitability of some B2B contracts or segments. Are you now happy with the B2B profitability? And how do we think about the B2B revenue to EBITDA growth translation?

Peter will answer on the contract side.

Yes. Thanks for the question, Keval. On the workforce and also the contracts, starting with the workforce, we had this big transformation last year, as you obviously recall with a reduction of 650 positions or 15% across the group. And that was completed, as you know, in last year. This year, we're moving rather from this transformation phase to more of an optimization where we will continue to stay disciplined in the workforce number and, of course, use the opportunities created by automation and AI, but it's a different phase than last year.

And on the supplier contracts, the work continues. Of course, we had a strong start last year when a lot of contracts were reopened with a lot of potential. There is still a lot of potential, but it's not as obvious as last year. But the ambition is the same, the intensity in the supplier renegotiation is the same, and we reap benefit from it. But at the same time, we should, of course, also remind the inflationary pressure that we see in some pockets, especially around hardware, which Jean-Marc has called out. So we keep on working on this just like before, the discipline continues.

And maybe a short comment about the constant optimization of the organization. So once again, it's a never-ending exercise if we want to keep the company at the best of its efficiency. So we are moving pieces of the organization, [ permanent ] -- because of the -- we are close from the end of the rollout in Sweden. We reshuffled some team in the network organization. In the meantime, we are reinforcing our skills and capacities in AI and data analytics, but it's an investment in order to create more synergies, thanks to the automation. So that's why it's a permanent exercise. To answer your question about B2B, I will hand over to Stefan. But in a nutshell, yes, no, we are happy with the profitability of our B2B activities, Stefan?

Thank you, Keval, for the question and also Jean-Marc. Well, the efforts that we've taken in the B2B during last year, but also coming into this year is really broad-based in order to create a better profitability, which trickles down to bottom line, but we're not revealing in the numbers, but we see a significant improvement during last year, but also in this quarter.

We have addressed vendor partner negotiations. We addressed organization where we changed the structure. We have done rightsizing of the organization, and it also continued into Q1. We've done some near-shoring of some resources as well during this quarter. We have outsourced some of our production of some of our platforms. We are working on IT modernization, automation, which Jean-Marc was alluding to earlier, which we kick started early last year. We're creating a center of excellence. And we are, as you know, working on the channel optimization in order to drive versus our internal challenge with one of the highlights during the autumn where we closed 60% of our external resellers. So it's really a broad-based approach on improving efficiency.

Of course, one part of this is also addressing individual customers and customer profitability. That is something that we're scrutinizing and have a program in place to drive, and it has also yielded results. So hope that gives you some color, Keval, to what we're doing and it's paying off.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs.

I had just a couple of questions around some temporary drags on your customer numbers at the moment in Sweden. Just if you could give us a better sense of scale of those drags and what your service revenue growth might be anticipated to be excluding those.

So first off, in Swedish mobile, I think you had a drag on postpaid customer numbers from the 2G, 3G switch off this quarter. What scale of drag is that? When should we anticipate that drag disappearing or dissipating? And where do you think your service revenue growth could be without that? And then similarly, you've talked a lot on the fixed broadband side about the drag from not competing in open networks areas at the moment. Your broadband net add number is negative at the moment.

If you were competing in the open networks area with a viable wholesale price as you should achieve or at least hope to achieve post regulation, where would you expect your broadband net add number to be? Should it be still negative? Or would it be flat? And what kind of drag do you think that's placing on your Swedish service revenue growth? Those are the 2 questions, I mean, overarching is if you didn't have those temporary drags, where do you think your Swedish service revenue growth would be this quarter as an insight for how we should think about things going forward given that even with those drags, your Swedish service revenue growth was 2.4%.

Thank you, Andrew. I will try to answer the question together with Nicholas. But to make it clear, the 2G, 3G switch-off took place in December. It impacted some prepaid and low ASPU customers in January. So it was a temporary hiccup. We came with a number of solutions and proposals to support the customers who have the -- who were using noncompatible phone for VoLTE, 4G and so on. Unfortunately, we couldn't reach all the customers for obvious reasons, but it was a temporary hiccup. So it's behind us now.

Maybe Nicholas want to complete and elaborate on FBB and competition in the open networks.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you, Jean-Marc. So what we see is that some of our competitors is actually quite aggressive now in the broadband space and in the open networks. We even see competitors are selling right now at below cost, which we are not participating in. So when the regulations come in place, we, of course, see an opportunity to expand more and hopefully take market shares. But we are waiting for the regulations to come in place, and then we can get back more on that matter.

Okay. Can you give us a sense of how many customers you ended up losing from that 2G, 3G switch off? And I get your point on broadband that there's also intensified competition in the space that's also dragging on customers. But is there any sense of giving us -- is there any scope for you to give us a sense of the scale of drag from not being able to compete in the -- or not being able to compete in the open networks there at the moment?

No. But allow us not to answer the first question about the 2G, 3G drag because, of course, it's an information that we keep for ourselves. But once again, it's a temporary hiccup. It's behind us now. And regarding the FBB, we don't have any I would say, forecast or estimation to share either.

Our next question comes from the line of Nick Lyall from Berenberg.

Just coming back to the cost question, please, for 2026. I mean you mentioned about staff costs and procurement, I think in Keval's question there. But could you give us an idea of the scale of savings available to you? You've got roughly 3/4 of your staff savings done before the end of the first half in 2025. So it feels like the pull-through effect for 2026 is going to be minor. But also how far are you through the procurement process itself. Could you help us on that, please? Because some of the comments about inflation from maybe the geopolitical effects and others suggest there's not a lot to go. So could you help us with the absolute amount of savings you might see in '26 versus '25, please, so we can start to sort out the forecast.

Peter, can you take this one?

Yes. Nick, we are not calling out specific numbers, but the flavor around 2025 and '26, of course, as we have said and the main impact or a larger impact was seen in 2025 when we kickstarted this exercise and had some quick wins as well. So we had sizable savings last year. We will see benefits from it this year as well. So it is a contributor, of course, partly flow-through effects, some of it from last year and additional efforts that are doing this year. But the magnitude is lower simply because it's getting tougher and tougher and because we have some cost avoidance to take care of as well. But we're not calling out specific numbers, but it's a high priority also in 2026.

That's great. And the timing of any AI contributions. It sounds like maybe it's a benefit possibly to service revenue, predictability of consumers and things like that. There's nothing we need to think about sort of the AI contribution immediately is there?

I think it's -- we have benefits from this in different places, obviously, on how we meet our customers and how we approach them. On the cost side, we have, of course, efficiencies to reap the benefits from on how we're working, and we will get savings from that. But it's gradual. We have seen some of it, and we keep working on extracting more savings there.

Our next question comes from the line of Ajay Soni from JPMorgan.

I've got 2. The first is around business growth, which was very strong, and you mentioned IoT. So I was just wondering, can this growth continue around this mid-single-digit level because obviously, B2B revenues can be somewhat lumpy. And if it is going to continue at that level, what is driving that growth?

And then my second question is just back to the costs. So you still had pretty sizable redundancy costs in Q1. So could you tell us what your FTE reductions were in Q1? And I can understand maybe you don't want to give a number, but do you have a target for your FTE reductions for 2026?

Okay. So let's start with IoT. Stefan, do you want to answer it?

Yes. Ajay, thank you for the question. I think I'm going to answer it in a general perspective. And I mean, you're correct, and we talked about it before. We time to time have quarters with some swings due to larger wins, customer wins or larger rollout projects. So that can happen. Overall, I'm really happy that we have a well-diversified portfolio and that over time takes turns in driving the growth.

We have a focused portfolio with some decisions that we did last year, but it's still a well-diversified portfolio, which gives us this ability to have growth from different sources. And this quarter, we basically have growth on all product lines and then the stabilization of the fixed part and the fixed connectivity that we saw some quarters ago has continued, driven by deals that we're doing in that domain. And also that we see that there's a need of modernization of networks, indoor networks, et cetera, for the customers. There's modernization in regards to cloud, more capacity that customer needs to bring to their businesses. So this is driving continuous, I would say, need of modernization for our customers, and that helps our growth overall.

This quarter, IoT stands out. It's the highest growth driver, which we're happy to see. And it's driven by increased usage, which is a very positive sign. So not directly RGU. We have good RGU development as we've had before, but very much the usage part, which is good to see. And as I communicated before, I think we expect IoT to continue to grow on the basis of more deployments of IoT-enabled devices throughout the world.

So that's overall what we see at the moment. Looking forward, I think I commented the profile for the year. I wouldn't say that you should take into account Q4 or Q1 as the level of growth for B2B. You should rather look at the full profile for 2024 when you look at the profile for the full year. You know that we had a really good ending of last year. It's going to be hard and the comps in end of this year will be high. So it's going to be hard to see the same growth rate that we've seen in the last couple of quarters. So look at it from a full perspective of 2025, I would say, going forward for this year. I hope that gives you some color, Ajay.

And maybe I should -- Peter, I can continue with the second question around redundancies. Yes, you have probably noticed it in our notes that we have redundancy costs of around SEK 40 million in Q1. It corresponds -- to answer your question, that corresponds to roughly 45 people. We don't have any specific targets on downsizing this year. As we have said, last year, we had a big transformation with the 650 people reduction. This year, it's more about optimization. So it will be more of a gradual optimization never ending that will continue. And that's how you should probably look at the workforce side.

Our next question comes from the line of Viktor Hogberg from Danske Bank.

Just a continuation on the Tower commitments and the rating agencies. Could you say anything if you got something new on the kind of leverage cap you're looking at following the Tower deal? Is it still 2.6, 2.7? And then another question on the cash flow. Just working capital, do you expect it to be neutral this year. And the CapEx, how much was the delayed hardware CapEx now in Q1 that is going to be caught up during the rest of the year?

Okay. Peter?

Thanks for the questions. My favorite questions. Let's start with the leverage or the rating view on this. As you point out or as we've said before, we believe that the cap for our BBB rating is, as you said, around 2.6, 2.7, something like that based on the present context. On working capital, it's clear that this -- we have a clear seasonal effect. We have seen it before.

We are, of course, in the holiday season in Q4 with Black Friday and Christmas, we -- and also sometimes also on Apple launch, we're selling a lot of equipment and then it's a bit of time lag before we can get it financed by our financing partner. And that's a very big piece of the working capital upside we see in Q1 and that one, all else equal, will, of course, normalize or bounce back for the remainder of the year. And yes, we see some delays on the CapEx side. I can debate exactly which number, let's call it around SEK 50 million that delay, but it's, of course, a matter of definition.

Our next question comes from the line of Siyi He from Citi.

I have 2 questions relating to your fixed business. The first question is really a follow-up on your answers to Andrew's question earlier that you mentioned the pricing competition is particularly intense in the SDU market. Could you just let us have a visibility who are the operators that you see being aggressive on pricing? Are they MNOs or they are more like the ISPs?

And the second question is that I wonder if you can tell us if you have seen any changes on the cable trends after you have done the speed upgrades. I saw that landlord revenue are still declining by 4%. Just wondering why you are still seeing all these kind of rental revenues from MTU landlords are still coming down?

Okay. Thank you for the question. Nicholas is going to answer those. I'm not sure that we want to share information about competition, but Nicholas?

No, exactly. No. But we can see an overall competition in the market from all the players. So I won't comment that more. When it comes to our upgrade of the network, we see very positive reaction from our customers. And we see also that we have a strong offer in the market with the highest speed in Sweden in our network and with a very good footprint. So we, of course, are very optimistic about that going forward. So that's about it that I can comment right now.

We will now take our final question. And this question comes from the line of Abhilash Mohapatra from BNP Paribas.

Maybe just one on the Baltics. We've seen you continue to deliver very strong organic end-user service revenue growth in these markets. I think there was a perception that maybe the sort of price increases led revenue growth might slow in the future. So maybe just -- it would be helpful to hear your latest thoughts on the potential to use -- continue using pricing as a source for growth in these markets?

And then secondly, just any color there on your sort of thoughts heading into the spectrum auction that you mentioned in Lithuania. Just any thoughts around the potential size or any context that you can give us there would be very helpful.

Okay. Thank you for your question. I would say that the way price adjustments are applied in each Baltic country takes, of course, into account the positioning of Tele2 in this country, meaning that we are not doing anything crazy. We are just adjusting when we see an opportunity. We remain very well positioning in terms of price points. And of course, in these markets, the largest part of the sales are done in our own stores. So based on conversation and in discussion with the customers. So I would say it's a kind of very smooth and more and more sophisticated price adjustment that we apply in the Baltic countries. So no risk that Tele2 loses clear position as the best value for money in these countries.

Regarding the auction, the spectrum auction in Lithuania, I believe that the message that we wanted to convey here is that please don't forget about this auction in your computations. But so far, we don't have any indication of the price, and we cannot, of course, comment on the details of the auction.

That was our final question for today. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a great day.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Tele2 Q4 and Full Year Report 2025 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jean-Marc Harion, President and Group CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sandra, and good morning to all, and welcome to Tele2's report call for the fourth quarter and full year 2025. With me, I have Peter Landgren, our Group CFO; Nicholas Hogberg, our new Chief B2C Officer and Deputy CEO; and Stefan Trampus, our Chief B2B Officer.

Please turn to Slide 2 for some operational highlights from the fourth quarter. We had quite an intense last quarter of the year. We successfully secured and expanded our 1,800 megahertz spectrum position during the Swedish spectrum auction in November. In early December, we shut down both our 2G and 3G networks in Sweden, marking a milestone in our company history. Combined, these achievements will support our efforts to further improve our 5G network which already covers 99% of the population and was recently recognized by OpenSignal as the fastest 5G network in Sweden.

We have delivered on our ambitious transformation and cost reduction targets, including for the reduction of our workforce. At the end of the year, we had canceled around 650 position at group level. We have so far as well addressed and renegotiated close to 350 supplier contracts, and this will continue during 2026. Moreover our tireless work on sustainability continues. And during the quarter, we were ranked #1 in Europe and second globally by Global Child Forum for our work on integrating child rights into the business. We were also recognized by CDP with an A score for climate change efforts for the fourth consecutive year.

Please move to Page 3 for financial highlights. Our deep transformation executed in record time has borne fruit and translated into not only a spectacular improvement of Tele2 profitability, but also into an accelerated growth of our top line. Our end-user service revenue growth has progressively improved throughout the year to reach a good 4% in Q4. Once again, underlying EBITDAaL grew strongly with 13% in Q4, marking the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.

On a full year basis, we exceeded most of our 2025 guidance KPIs. Tele2 full year equity free cash flow grew by a massive 42%, leaving our balance sheet very healthy. This was mainly driven by our operating cash flow plus working capital, which we have improved by 1/3 compared to 2024. Consequently, our Board of Directors proposes a dividend of SEK 10.50 per share, an increase of 65% from last year and to be paid in 2 tranches in May and October. We have also updated our financial policy and set guidance for 2026, which will soon be discussed.

Please move to Page 4 for more details on our results. Our 4% end user service revenue growth in Q4 has been driven across all our operations and core services. In addition to continued strong performance by Sweden business and the Baltics, especially positive this time is the return to growth in Sweden Consumer. The 13% growth in underlying EBITDAaL was driven by both transformation and revenue growth. Our Q4 equity free cash flow was impacted by a spectrum payment, which offset higher underlying EBITDAaL. Full year, Tele2 delivered SEK 6.2 billion equity free cash flow.

CapEx to sales picked up seasonally in Q4, but remained at low levels, around 11%, both in Q4 and for the full year. In Sweden Consumer, end user service revenue grew by 2% as growth in core services exceeded declines in Boxer TV and legacy services. In Sweden business, end user service revenue growth accelerated further to 7%, thanks to good growth in mobile, including IoT and solutions. The Baltic grew end-user service revenue by 6% and underlying EBITDAaL by 16%.

But let's move to Slide 6 for more details on Swedish Consumer. As mentioned in my CEO later, we have successfully leveraged our strengthened brand and new offers to drive significant traffic to our own channel, which now contribute to 2/3 of our sales. Our continued investment in stores and online capability have started paying off, and we are confident in the efficiency of our commercial model. Mobile postpaid end-user service revenue grew by 5%, up from 4% in Q3. Total mobile revenue grew by 4%, partly offset by continued decline in prepaid.

Fixed broadband grew end-user service revenue by 2%, mainly due to ASPU growth. Digital TV showed strong sequential improvement driven by healthy mid-single-digit growth in Tele2 TV, end-user service revenue growth, which now offset the continued, albeit smaller drag from Boxer TV. Following up on Boxer TV, the full year ended very close to our communicated estimate of around SEK 225 million revenue decline compared to 2024. Total consumer end-user service revenue grew by 3% in the quarter, excluding the Boxer impact.

Let's look at consumer KPIs on Slide 7. Mobile postpaid added a solid 16,000 RGUs in Q4, net of 14,000 one-off contribution relating to recognition of previously uncounted low ASPU RGUs. Mobile ASPU growth improved to 3% year-on-year, which is -- while it was still negatively impacted by IFRS 15 fair value adjustment in Tele2 customer base, Q4 also included a positive one-off. Adjusted for both underlying ASPU growth was still 3%.

Fixed broadband RGUs remained unchanged in Q4, whereas ASPU grew by 1%. Just like in previous quarter, we observed aggressive competition and escalating wholesale access fees, which hampered volume growth. TV returned to positive net intake with 3,000 RGUs added in Q4 as growth in Tele2 exceeded continued decline in Boxer. ASPU grew by 4% year-on-year, supported by more sports revenue.

Please move to Slide 8 for Sweden business. Sweden business continued to deliver strong end-user service revenue growth, this time reaching 7% driven by growth across operations. Mobile grew by 7%, driven by our IoT business, including some temporary project revenue of around SEK 15 million in the quarter. Mobile RGUs remained stable in Q4, while up by a solid 4% year-on-year, ASPU continued to be impacted by change in customer mix. Solutions grew by a strong 10%, driven by finalization of larger network and cloud modernization projects.

Please move to Slide 9 for Sweden financials. In total, Sweden end-user service revenue accelerated to 3% growth in Q4, driven by both business and consumer. Underlying EBITDAaL grew by 12%, driven by the end-user service revenue, workforce reduction, stricter prioritization and cost control. The cash conversion has improved to 69% over the last 12 months.

Let's move to Baltic financials on Slide 11. Baltics have maintained operational momentum with continued strong top and bottom line growth in Q4. Total end-user service revenue grew at 6%, supported by price adjustment during first half year. Q4 was the fourth consecutive quarter in which all markets delivered double-digit growth in underlying EBITDAaL, delivering a total growth of 16%, led by Estonia at 41%. Cash conversion increased to a strong 81% during the last 12 months, reflecting increasing EBITDAaL margin.

Let's move to Slide 12 for Baltic operating KPIs. The total postpaid base in the Baltics increased by 23,000 RGUs in Q4, driven by Latvia and Lithuania. Prepaid declined by 68,000 RGUs, largely due to regulation and migration to postpaid. Blended organic ASPU grew by a strong 11%, driven by price adjustment and continued prepaid to postpaid migration.

With that, I hand over to Peter, who will go through the financial overview.

Thank you, Jean-Marc, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Page 14. First, a couple of comments on the group P&L for the quarter. Total revenue grew by 4% organically, driven by service revenue growth of 4% with contribution from all operations and equipment revenue growth of 7%. Both underlying EBITDA and underlying EBITDA after lease grew by 13% organically, thanks to sharp cost control across the group, and the service revenue contribution.

Then over to the full year P&L. Both underlying EBITDA and underlying EBITDA after lease grew by 11% organically. The group reached a full year underlying EBITDAaL margin above 39%, which implies an increase of 3.4 percentage points compared to 2024. Items affecting comparability ended at SEK 600 million, of which SEK 500 million were restructuring costs related to the transformation, fully in line with our expectations.

Net financial items decreased year-on-year, thanks to both lower interest rates and reduced debt levels. By the year-end, our average interest rate was 2.8%, with a debt mix of 68% fixed rates and 32% floating rates.

And income tax finally, sorry, increased year-on-year due to higher taxable profits. And let's move to the cash flow on Slide 15. In Q4, equity free cash flow of SEK 777 million was generated, broadly in line with last year. The final payment of the Swedish spectrum secured in 2023 was absorbed by strong growth in underlying EBITDAaL and lower CapEx. But let's focus a bit more on the strong full year cash flow. CapEx paid, excluding spectrum, decreased by around SEK 630 million. This was mainly thanks to successful prioritization and partly due to some investments being postponed to 2026.

Changes in working capital contributed almost SEK 300 million to the cash flow, supported by optimized inventory levels, but also increased redundancy provisions. Taxes paid decreased by around SEK 155 million, thanks to a tax refund earlier in the year. Net-net, full year equity free cash flow reached SEK 6.2 billion, which means a 42% growth compared to last year. This translates to almost SEK 9 per share.

Please turn to Slide 16 and our capital structure. By year-end, economic net debt amounted to SEK 24.3 billion, a reduction of SEK 1.9 billion compared to 2024. This was enabled by the cash generated in the business, exceeding the dividend distribution. Today, we also announced that the Board has updated the financial policy. With this policy, the aim is to provide attractive shareholder remuneration, while preserving a strong balance sheet and financial flexibility. The proposed dividend demonstrates a sizable distribution, while our leverage of 2.1x underlying EBITDAaL after lease will comfortably stay within the desired investment-grade range.

And with that, I hand over to Jean-Marc for a follow-up on our 2025 guidance and then some comments on our 2026 guidance.

Thank you, Peter. Please turn to Slide 17 for some comments regarding our performance relative to our 2025 guidance. Overall, we delivered clearly ahead of our initial full year 2025 guidance. While end-user service revenue growth was in line with guidance, as you probably remember, in Q2, we raised guidance on underlying EBITDAaL from initially mid- to high single-digit growth to slightly above 10%. We can now conclude that we even exceeded that target by the massive full year growth of 11.4%. In Q3, we also reduced our CapEx guidance from around 13% to around 12%. We ended the year at 10.8% due to the successful prioritization and the deferral of some planned investment to 2026.

Please turn to Slide 18 for our 2026 guidance. As we leave 2025 behind and look ahead, our strong performance during last year has obviously raised the bar and established a new reference point for Tele2 profitability. Our ambition for 2026 is to consolidate the transformation of the company, continue improving our profitability and secure our revenue growth despite the uncertainties of the geopolitical landscape. We have, therefore, decided on the following full year guidance for 2026, low single-digit organic growth of end-user service revenue, low to mid-single-digit organic growth of underlying EBITDAaL, CapEx to sales in the range of 10% to 11%. It is important to note that the organic growth rate for underlying EBITDAaL excludes the impact of the Baltic Tower transaction that we expect to close in Q1.

I hand back to Peter for some additional comments regarding 2026 before we open up for Q&A.

Thanks. I would like to start with then a reminder about the Baltic Tower transaction, which is still expected to be finalized in Q1. Upon closing, we expect cash proceeds of around EUR 430 million after transaction costs. And as previously stated, the transaction is expected to have a negative impact on underlying EBITDAaL of around EUR 35 million on a full year basis.

Finally, the CapEx avoidance is limited to passive equipment, and that's already reflected in our 10% to 11% CapEx to sales guidance for the group.

And then a few additional comments on the cash flow for the full year 2026. In Q1, we'll pay SEK 117 million for the Swedish 1,800 megahertz spectrum secured in November 2025. The other half will be paid later in 2028. Also worth mentioning that there might be spectrum auctions in the Baltics during 2026. On financial items, excluding leasing, we estimate full year net payments of around SEK 650 million. Finally, on taxes, we estimate full year payments of around SEK 1.4 billion.

With that, I hand over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question coming from the line of Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs.

I had 2 questions, both -- or one around the growth guidance or one around capital allocation. So just on the growth guidance, could you just talk through the scenarios you see that would support a low single-digit EBITDA growth guide for 2026. Obviously, Q1 has pretty easy comps. And that means that your low single-digit growth guidance would imply basically no EBITDA growth, I think, for the remainder of the year. Are you missing something in terms of what's happening in the cost base? Or something else that didn't really transpire in 4Q? Any help there would be really useful.

And then secondly, just on the capital allocation. The SEK 10.5 dividend is obviously a meaningful increase. You haven't split it by extraordinary and ordinary dividends. Should we see that SEK 10.5 DPS as a floor now for shareholder returns going forward, given I think that leaves you below or notably below 2x net debt to EBITDA by the end of the year?

Yes, Peter will take the 2 questions. Yes.

Okay. If we start with the second question around the floor, it's correct that the dividend, there is no distinguished between ordinary or extraordinary dividend. That's a conscious decision. And I think we're pleased that we are able to distribute such a sizable dividend, thanks both to the strong cash generation in 2025 and also the strong balance sheet that we have.

Looking forward, we're not communicating in the sense of that this is the floor. We have 2 things that enables dividends going forward, and that's obviously the continuation of cash generation. And secondly, we still have a very healthy balance sheet to enable us to have attractive shareholder remuneration also going forward. But I wouldn't see this as a floor. That's not what we're communicating today. We're communicating a sizable dividend of 118% of equity free cash flow, and we communicate a policy, which enables both a solid rating and good distributions going forward, but not more than that.

Regarding the growth guidance, I would say that when you look around, it's -- of course, it's important to remain cautious about the commitment we take to our investors. That's -- as a reminder, and we insisted on that point, we have raised the bar for profitability. So the starting point is much higher this time. So we continue -- we will continue improving the EBITDAaL and the EBITDAaL margin over the time, thanks to the continuation of the cost discipline and the strict prioritization that we have implemented in 2025. This will not change. But in the meantime, we are observing how the market will evolve and the possible impact on the customer behaviors.

So we have made the company today much leaner and much more agile than it was 1 year ago. So the adaptation, the capacity of Tele2 to adapt to any circumstances to deliver anyhow or targets for margin and cash will not be impacted by or cannot be impacted by the evolution of the landscape. So that's why we remain a little bit careful when looking forward in 2026, and we will see how the situation develops.

Just a quick follow-up. Just -- so am I to interpret Jean-Marc, your comments as in you've built in kind of uncertainty around the kind of the macro environment to that EBITDA growth guide rather than implicitly reflecting an increase in costs, marketing costs, which went up at 1 point during 2025 or some incremental costs around stepping away from third-party retailers or something that...

No, no. If this was the reason for you to ask the question, no, it's not the case. So we remain quite scarce in terms of all kind of expenses, including marketing expenses. We, of course, keep our ambition and confirm our ambition to develop our own channels and reduce progressively the dependency on the third-party channels because of the behaviors and the quality of the sales that we generate through these third-party channels. But definitely, the reason for us to come with this guidance is, of course, the observation of the context.

We will secure the cost base of Tele2 as a continuation of the discipline that we have implemented in '25. Of course, we see the top line continue growing, but depending on the evolution of the context, we may need to adapt. That's the only rationale. But definitely, no increase, no major change in the cost base if this was your question.

We will now take the next question from the line of Ondrej Cabejšek from UBS.

I've got 2 questions as well. One is on CapEx. So Peter, you said that some CapEx is spilling over into 2026 from 2025, but the 2026 CapEx guidance is already, I would think, a positive surprise. So my question would be, does that signal to us that Tele2 can be quite firmly at around 10% CapEx to sales from 2027 onwards? That's the first question.

And then the second question would be maybe asking a different way about the dividend. So in terms of the leverage policy that is now just to remain investment grade. So I was thinking, first of all, is there a soft steady-state target around, say, 2x that you wish to be on? And then implicitly also, what is the -- or in addition, what is the limit under the new definition of remaining investment grade, taking into consideration the impact from the Tower deal? Like what is the headroom basically for you to remain investment grade? What is the maximum ratio is the question?

Okay. Ondrej, thanks for the questions. If we're starting with the CapEx guidance, good that you're positively surprised. That's always nice. 10% to 11% is what we call out now. We know that we have things moving in different directions in one way we -- one movement is, of course, that the rollout in Net4Mobility is slowing down, which is helping our CapEx ratio. On the other hand, we have other investments that we need to take care of, for instance, making sure that we have the rollout complete in the Baltics, and we landed on the 10% to 11% is a reasonable range from that perspective.

What that means for 2027 is nothing we announced today, but we think that this level, which we talk about now is quite representative to where Tele2 stands today. When it comes to the dividend or the financial policy and the range, it's true that, as you call out, that the Tower transaction will have implications on how we look at leverage going forward in 2 ways. One is the obvious one that the leverages will else equal decline by the Tower transaction. So we'll see lower leverage once that's concluded.

On the other hand, as you point out, the acceptance from the rating firms will also be reduced due to commitments we have in the new tower arrangement. And I would say right now, I think that the route for leverage after the Tower transaction will probably be somewhere between 2.6 and 2.7. That might evolve over time, but to give some kind of engagement right now, how we look at the limit for where we can be in the new environment. Hopefully, that's covering your question.

It does. If I may, one quick follow-up. Regardless of what the dividend will be next time around, if it's SEK 10.5 or there's a bit of a reset. Is there an ambition that you can kind of share -- and I know this is the Board, et cetera, but is there an ambition to have maybe like a mid-single-digit growth in the dividend, just like many of your peers do as an example?

No, the ambition is to have attractive shareholder remuneration and stick to this policy. In the end, as you point out, it's ultimately the Board that decides what is the right level every year. I think our focus here is to generate as much cash as possible because that's fundamentally what enables dividend going forward, but nothing more than that for now.

We will now take the next question from the line of Owen McGiveron from Bank of America.

It's Owen McGiveron at Bank of America here. So mentions of releveraging and distributing and share buybacks have been emitted from the new financial policy. My question is if these remain in your toolkit? Or should we now expect capital return announcements to be a once-a-year kind of event at full year?

Thanks for the question. I think for now, the route is, as you also see from the announcement today, is dividends, and that's what you can expect for now going forward. We're not ruling out share buybacks at some point. But right now, that's not what we see coming.

And on the announcement, I think we -- of course, you can expect dividend announcements along with the Q4 report every year going forward as well. If there will be something in between at some point, it's a bit speculative and might happen, but nothing will -- we'll not rule it out, but we don't have a firm decision on when to announce dividends. For now, this is a dividend we call out now in Q4 to be fair.

We will now take the next question from the line of Andreas Joelsson from DNB Carnegie.

I had a question on the KPIs actually. Looking at Sweden and your growth initiatives that you have for 2026, we can see that mobile ARPU is trending quite positively, while ARPU within broadband is at a somewhat slower pace. So it would be interesting to hear your plans to continue growing ARPU in both areas in Sweden going forward?

Nicholas is going to answer your question.

Thank you for your question, Andreas. Well, so I think we are ready to capture both long-term and short-term growth. And especially during 2026, we will unleash the potential on our existing customer base and increase the value of the base through cross-sell and upsell, which will be prioritized. And we will do that through many initiatives, working with customer intelligence as the main driver, and we will make sure that we maximize our customer interactions and sales through own channels as said before. And we now have our own -- sales through our own channels is now representing approximately 2/3 of the total sales, which is important going forward to establish a strong relationship with our customers.

So we will optimize that through sophisticated data analysis and AI tools, and that's an ongoing work to be able to maximize cross-sell and upsell. So also with that said and what Jean-Marc said earlier, we are now increasing our physical footprint and opening up new stores, also in areas where we have historically been underrepresented. So this will help us. We now have the fastest 5G network covering 99% of the population. So given that, that gives an excellent customer experience, it allows us to break new ground and develop our market share in areas where we historically haven't had a very strong market share.

So I think we see a potential of growing during 2026 in our customer base. When it comes to broadband, we have our network, and we're focusing on delivering excellent mobile broadband to our customers, but also we're happy to having our own network, broadband network, and we are now strengthening our coax network, and we are going to launch 2,500 megabit per second service to our customers to increase our strength in that area.

Perfect. And just one follow-up on the dividend. Would you be happy to continue to pay out more than 100% of equity free cash flow for the dividend if needed, so to say?

Yes. I think there's nothing in the policy that stops us from doing that. And as you can see as a demonstration on that today, the proposal is 118% of equity free cash flow. So that might -- it's a bit speculative, but that might, of course, happen depending on the context and the financial outlook and our abilities. The limit is -- what's committed is at least 80% of equity free cash flow as ordinary dividend. That's what we keep stating.

We will now take the next question from the line of Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken.

I'm going to stay with one question. And maybe Stefan, if you could put some color on how you see the business-to-business market developing? What you see in front of you? And if you can sort of split that up in discussions around sort of the large enterprises, the public sectors and the small company segments and how they develop would be interesting.

Thank you, Fredrik. Well, if we start with the different segments then on the micro SME segment, I mean 2025 was a challenging year in terms of bankruptcies. It's the highest level in many, many years. At the end of the year, we saw a slowdown of the bankruptcies, which, of course, also is seen in our customer base. So it has been stabilizing in the smaller segments.

I think the demand is still there from SMEs. And if you look at on a year-on-year growth. I mean, we had good growth and demand in SMEs and the public sector. If we talk about the larger segments, I would say that the public sector must have been a little bit squeezed from a budget perspective coming into the end of the year, it has been visible in some of our product lines.

And in the larger segment, I would say that the larger customers have been a bit cautious. I mean, of course, it's not the same thing for all customers, but I would say that we have seen some cautiousness in investments from larger segments. So that is how we see the development of the different segments. And of course, going into 2026, we hope for a better macro, better demand in general. I mean, we've been hoping that the macro will turn for many times now. But let's see how it develops. Of course, it will help us.

From a competitive situation, I would say that we've seen high competition aggressiveness in the micro and SME segments, especially from Telia and Telenor, where they have, I think been very high on commissions to external partners and also on below-the-line pricing. So that's what we've seen. But on the larger segments, we've also seen that both Telenor and Telia have been keen on keeping their customers and finding new ones looking at how they have acted on different deals. So that's a little bit color on both the competitive side and the segment side. I hope that gives some color, Fredrik, to the situation.

Let me add one comment on what Stefan commented. It's important to remind us that in 2025, we've been through a very deep transformation of our B2B business because the observation we made at beginning of last year was that not all the segments for B2B were, I would say, delivering the same profitability. So thanks to the transformation driven by Stefan, the prioritization of our portfolio, the focus on future-proof technology, a lot of automation in the process.

We are now comfortable to grow all the segments, of course, with the preference for the core business but not only the solutions as well. And that gives us the flexibility to push some segments depending on the evolution of the market. So this is super important. We now have, I would say, a fully profitable activity on the B2B side, and we can accelerate the revenue when we see the opportunity in every segment.

We will now take the next question from the line of Erik Lindholm-Rojestal from SEB.

Two questions from me, if I may. So I just wanted to follow up on the Baltic Tower Co transaction. You've spoken about this already, but sort of when you are seeing the completion of this and given what you said about leverage, could this be a trigger for announcing further dividends?

And then the second question, just on Sweden B2B. I mean, IoT was really strong. Anything to call out there in terms of the drivers to this strength? And also solutions looked really solid, and you said there were completion of some projects. But do you see this strength continuing ahead?

Peter, on the Tower Co.

Thanks for the questions, Erik. I don't think you should expect more dividends just because of the closure of this transaction. What we announced today is what we announced today, and let's see what will be concluded by the Board going forward, but not -- no explicit expectations just because of that. It's -- as we have discussed, we will see a sizable decline in our leverage by the transaction. But at the same time, the commitment in the Tower agreement in the 20 years agreement will lead to that the acceptance for high leverage is declining, is also going down accordingly. So that's what I would say at this point.

And we expect to close the transaction in Q1. On the B2B, IoT?

Yes. Thanks, Erik, for the question on both the IoT and the solutions part. Jean-Marc was alluding to it a little bit in his speech in the beginning that we have a healthy growth mix from all parts, I would say, of the business. It's driven both by mobile, cloud PBX, networking solutions. In the networking solutions area, the growth is coming from managed services and service agreements, both from new and existing customers.

And then we also have the IoT part. And the solutions business is very much driven by customers needing to do network and cloud modernization. And I think that will continue. At what pace? I mean, it differs a little bit about how our customers can make investments in different areas. But for sure, it will continue. It can go up and down between quarters, and we talked about that before that we can have large rollouts for some quarters and then we have a buildup of revenues, et cetera. So that can differ over quarters.

On the IoT side, we have a bit of an elevated increase this quarter, as Jean-Marc was alluding to, with SEK 15 million due to some larger projects. Let's see how the customer demand is there for specific projects. So that's something we are continuously in discussions with our customers. But in general, the IoT growth, we expect that to continue. The underlying growth in that business is really good. And let's not forget that, I mean, excluding this SEK 15 million, I mean, we are on a high level, actually picking up a little bit from Q3 to 5.4% growth, excluding this, what we would call project rollouts then or one-off revenues.

So overall, a solid quarter in regards to the growth and looking forward to 2026. But I wouldn't say that you should take Q4 as the base for the growth going forward. As I said, it's a bit -- it can swing between quarters. I think the profile that we had looking forward, more looking like 2025 in full year, so to say, that's what we look at.

We will now take the next question from the line of Nick Lyall from Berenberg.

Can I just come back to the growth point, please, on service revenues in particular. I mean you've just done 3.7% in Q4 for the group or 2.6% in Sweden...

Nick, can you speak louder because we are struggling a little bit to hear you.

Sorry, can you hear me better now?

Yes, a little bit better.

A bit better. You've just done low single digit -- so you said low single-digit revenue guidance or service revenue guidance for '26, but you've done 3.7% in Q4 and especially with the Boxer effect and the accounting effects falling away, why not more aggressive into 2026, please? And I do realize you've talked a little bit about conservatism and macro. But could you give us more guidance why particularly after the comments you've just made on consumer where you've talked about boosting the value of the subs base. Why is that not coming through more aggressively in 2026, please?

Peter?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Nick. I would say first on maybe building on what Stefan said about Q4 and full year. We are, of course, very happy with the sequential improvement in Q4, but I think we should be -- avoid to be too carried away of taking that as a single data point for looking at the full year 2026. We had some -- we benefited from some tailwind from one-offs in both B2B and B2C.

Going forward then, as Stefan said, we're positive about the B2B development, albeit not at the level as in Q4. On the B2C side, you're perfectly right that we don't have the Boxer headwind. Boxer will obviously continue to be presumably a decline, but not at the elevated levels as we saw in 2025. And we're positive to our core services, but still coming back to what we said in the beginning, a bit humble around the development around us and how things will progress going forward.

And then I think we should also keep in mind that we have support from a fantastic growth in the Baltics. We, of course, expect Baltics to continue to grow, but you might not be able to expect such a growth the Baltics going forward. So we expect support from all 3 business lines, but altogether, we find this a good guidance for now.

Yes. I believe that a general note about our 2026 guidance is, as we stated in -- earlier in the presentation is that we are not starting from the same starting point. So we have raised the bar, and we will continue, of course, developing, but from a higher starting point.

We will now take the next question from the line of Felix Henriksson from Nordea.

I wanted to revisit your thoughts regarding M&A in light of your new updated financial policy. Do you see sort of any opportunities for M&A, for example, in the fixed business in Sweden or somewhere else? Or should we sort of conclude that the use for excess cash will be basically to distribute that back to the shareholders?

I will take this one. Of course, we are scanning the market, and we'll continue doing so. It's part of our role and part of the mission that the Board of Directors is asking us to do. For the time being, there is no deal on the table, and I believe that one of the reason for that, especially considering what the sector that you are referring to, the fixed business is that we are waiting for the regulation of the single dwelling units, which should materialize this year before observing the consequences on the new landscape. But on a general note, we continue scanning for the opportunities. But so far, we don't have any project on the table.

We will now take the next question from the line of Ulrich Rathe from Bernstein.

I have 2 questions, please. The first one is on working capital. That was a major contributor in 2005 to -- 2025 to free cash flow. So I was wondering how much further you can drive that? Working capital is at some point, structurally listed in terms of what it can provide, but we're not quite sure from the outside how much further you can drive your optimization efforts.

Second question is on the terms of the Tower Co. I mean so far, we know cash impact on you, the general structure of the deal with Manulife and then also the EBITDA impact, but we don't know much about what the structure of the underlying agreements are. Now you're highlighting here that the agencies are taking a view. Presumably, they know a little bit more about it, but their focus is on creditor protection, which is not necessarily aligned with what equity investors are considering when they look at such deals and what they do to the value creation. So I was just wondering what further color you can provide on what this Tower Co will do to the Tele2 case? In particular, 2 aspects here would be the EBITDA impact in further outer years. The second one is how we are supposed to value your 50% stake in this Tower Co, if we don't really know what you've agreed there in terms of terms?

Peter, you can...

Yes, I can start with the working capital...

Yes. And continue with Baltic Tower Co.

Yes. On working capital, first of all, of course, we're very pleased with the contribution of close to SEK 300 million in 2025 based on a continuous work and persistency on optimizing the asset side and the main driver is then optimized inventories. That can obviously not -- as you point out, not continue forever. It will continue to be top of our agenda to make sure it's as optimized as possible in 2026. But we also know that, for instance, we have some severance provisions that we need to settle, and we're also dependent a bit on the commercial activities and what will happen around both Hans funding and other things around the business. So exactly where it will land going forward is unclear, but I don't think you should expect it to be repeated again as this swings back and forth. We continue to work on it, but 2025 was an extraordinary good year.

So that's on that. On the Tower Co, the information we provide right now is the things we have called out, the annual EBITDAaL impact of negative EUR 35 million and that's what you should expect in the near term. Then of course, we -- it will evolve, and we will learn more, but that's what you should expect for now and also the upfront cash proceeds and the size in terms of number of towers and rooftops has been called out. And also there is a 20 years agreement around those towers. That's what we call out now. Obviously, in the financial reports going forward, we will own 50% of this company and the contribution from that will, of course, be, to some extent, disclosed in our numbers because it's part of our consolidation in the end, even though not consolidated in our EBITDA numbers, but as a separate line, so you will get visibility there.

Otherwise, more strategically, we're doing -- as a reminder, we do this to be the first pan-Baltic Tower company and build a strong company there. And of course, we have, as shareholders, expectations of creating a successful business there as well. But at this point, this is what we call out, and it will, of course, evolve during 2026.

We will now take the next question from the line Siyi He from Citi.

I just have a follow-up question on the broadband -- consumer broadband trend. It seems that the broadband has stable for this year. I'm just wondering what are the reasons behind the flattish broadband trends, whether you see some pressure in your cable base, or you have chosen not to expanding into the fiber areas because of the pending change of regulations.

And if I can also follow up on the change of regulations, just get your view on what could be the potential changes? And maybe your view on how to benefit from the improvement in regulations, either you think it's fine to benefit through organic growth? Or you think the buying infrastructure assets could be a better option?

Okay. Well, I will take this one first, and Nicholas will complete, if necessary. But basically, on the broadband, we already commented on that in previous exercises. We see -- we have, of course, to deal with the complexity of the market for the fiber part. So the open fiber networks in Sweden are owned by a variety of different owner and operators, a lot of them being local ones. And what we see is that not only there is an intense competition on these networks, but sometimes, the retail prices are capped by the landlord for instance, and there is a permanent increase of the wholesale prices that squeezes the operator. So this situation is probably not sustainable on the long run.

And of course, for the time being, it's a situation that we see in the buildings, mostly because we are waiting for the regulation that will give us access to the single dwelling units, the villas that represents half of the households in habitation in Sweden.

Saying that in the waiting for the -- for this regulation, as Nicholas has commented, we are emphasizing the benefits of our DOCSIS infrastructure that we have partly upgraded to Remote PHY in the areas where we were suffering from congestion. And now we are reshuffling the spectrum, and we have started offering up to 2.5 gigabit per second Internet, which is a performance, of course, that is very rarely matched by fiber in Sweden, and we see that as a competitive advantage. So we are capitalizing on our footprint. And of course, we will wait for the new regulation to materialize before taking new positions on the fiber. But for the time being, the situation of the fiber in Sweden is not optimal. Nicholas, do you want -- no?

No, no further questions or comments.

We will now take the last question from the line of Abhilash Mohapatra from BNP Paribas.

I've got 2, please, mostly clarifications. Firstly, on the dividend. You mentioned that the SEK 10.50 is not a flow, but at the same time, the policy does not stop you from paying more than 100% of the equity free cash flow. My question is, what exactly will determine where you end up on the payout on a year-to-year basis? How do you think about it given your strong cost cutting will probably keep growing free cash flow? So how do you decide on the dividend payout on an annual basis?

And just related to that, is there a sort of numeric leverage range, which is linked to your investment-grade target? Is there a number that we can think about? And sorry, just one other clarification. Earlier in the prepared remarks, did you mention a cash tax number for 2026 of SEK 1.4 billion? Sorry, if I misheard but just if you could clarify.

Okay. On the dividend, first of all, just stating the obvious that it's, of course, in the end up to the Board, what they will propose and ultimately, the AGM. What sets the limits for next -- for the future? First of all, this financial policy gives a framework where to land. And that's the framework we need to live with and play based on that or will do so.

The fundamental thing for future dividend is the cash generation again. But then exactly how a large portion of the cash generation that will be distributed. That's nothing that we can comment on now, obviously, but we commit in the policies is that it's at least 80% of the equity free cash flow generated that will be distributed. That's the floor we talk about.

When it comes to the -- if I understand your leverage question, and then I'm repeating that answer and hopefully it covers your question is that based on the context right now, that might, of course, evolve. But as we see right now, after the Tower transaction, we believe that with the ceiling for BBB is around 2.6 or 2.7 in terms of leverage. But again, it's based on the context and there are also other metrics, but that's what we expect. And yes, on tax payments for 2026, we, at this stage, early in the year, expect SEK 1.4 billion of payments.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Thank you for standing by. My name is Van and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Tele2 Q3 Interim Report 2025. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the call over to Jean-Marc Harion, President and Group CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Tele2's report call for the third quarter of 2025. With me, I have Peter Landgren, our Group CFO; and some members of our group leadership team.

Please turn to Slide 2 for some financial highlights. End-user service revenue grew by 2% in Q3 despite the continued impact of the discontinuation of Boxer TV terrestrial distribution in Sweden at the beginning of the year. Underlying EBITDAaL continued to increase rapidly growing to -- growing by 11% during the quarter, mostly thanks to excellent transformation efforts. Once again, our equity free cash flow was very strong, totaling SEK 1.8 billion in the quarter, which is 60% more than last year.

At the end of September, we had reduced our workforce by slightly more than 600 positions, thereby already reaching the lower end of our targeted range of 600 to 700 by January 2026. September marked a major milestone as we completed the 5G upgrade across our entire Swedish network. Coverage jumped from 25% to 90% of the territory, now reaching virtually 100% of the Swedish population. And just recently, OpenSignal named Tele2, the global leader in 5G video experience.

We are also stepping up our long-term network ambition in the Baltics. The creation of the first pan-Baltic TowerCo is a key enabler supporting our future expansion while unlocking value from our infrastructure there. The transaction is expected to close in Q1 2026. Finally, we are proud to have been recognized by Time Magazine as one of the World's Best Companies, a ranking based on employee satisfaction, growth and transparency in sustainability.

Please move to Page 3 for more details on our results. As said, end-user service revenue grew by 2% organically in Q3, driven by continued strong growth in the Baltics and accelerating growth in Sweden. Excluding the Boxer impact, group end-user service revenue grew by 3%. The 11% growth in underlying EBITDAaL was driven by the transformation, improved profitability in Sweden business and the Baltic revenue growth. Our strong equity free cash flow benefited from lower paid CapEx and better working capital year-on-year, which Peter will soon discuss in more detail.

After reaching 12% in the first half year, our CapEx to sales ratio fell to 11% for the first 9 months due to additional reprioritization and replanning. As a result, we have decided to lower our full year guidance, which I will return to shortly. Our leverage fell to 2.0x ahead of the final dividend tranche, which was paid last week.

In Sweden Consumer end-user service revenue was unchanged as growth is in core connectivity offset the decline in Boxer TV following the decommissioning of terrestrial distribution at the beginning of the year. In Sweden Business, end-user service revenue growth accelerated to 5%, thanks to good growth in mobile and solutions. The Baltic grew end-user service revenue by 7% and underlying EBITDAaL by a massive 20%, matching Q2 performance.

Let's move to Slide 5 for more details on Swedish Consumer. Mobile postpaid end-user service revenue grew by 4%, up from 3% in Q2. Total mobile revenue grew by 3%, partly offset by continued decline in prepaid. Fixed broadband grew end-user service revenue by 3%, mainly due to ASPU growth, while Tele2 TV grew by a low single digit, end-user service revenue for DTV declined by 8% due to the Boxer migration. For full year 2025, we continue to anticipate Boxer revenue to be roughly SEK 225 million below 2024 with minor year-on-year impact on EBITDAaL. Total Consumer end-user service revenue remained unchanged in the quarter. Excluding the Boxer impact, consumer grew by 2%.

Let's look at consumer KPIs on Slide 6. Mobile postpaid added a solid 8,000 RGUs during Q3. Mobile ASPU growth improved to 1% year-on-year, but was still negatively impacted by IFRS 15 fair value adjustment in Tele2 customer base, which did not have handset binding until almost 2 years ago. Excluding this adjustment, ASPU grew by 2%. As mentioned in my CEO letter, successful rebranding of our main brand and strong demand for iPhone 17 led to our best iPhone launch in years, reinforcing the shift towards own channel sales.

Fixed broadband grew by 1,000 RGUs in Q3, whereas ASPU grew by 2% due to price adjustments. Similar to Q2, we observed aggressive competition in open networks, along with escalating wholesale access fee, which hampered volume growth. Our TV business further stabilized as the customer base approaches a neutral development Tele2 TV RGUs grew driven by our recently launched flex TV offer, whereas Boxer TV RGUs declined.

Please move to Slide 7 for Sweden Business. In Q3, Sweden business once again delivered a strong end-user service revenue growth, reaching 5% with all main product lines growing, while the Micro segment remained stable, we saw continued growth in IoT and our larger segments, reflecting the evolution of mobile ASPU year-on-year. Mobile grew by 5%, driven by our IoT business and continued solid RGU growth among larger customers. Solutions grew by a strong 8%, driven by Network Solutions and Cloud PBX, whereas fixed remained stable. A new partner program was launched in Q3 to enhance quality and customer satisfaction. As a result, around 60% of the specialized reseller partners for SMEs were phased out.

Please move to Slide 8 for Sweden financials. All in all, our Swedish end-user service revenue improved to 1% growth in Q3, driven by business, 2% without Boxer impact. Underlying EBITDAaL grew by 8%, driven by workforce reductions, stricter prioritization and cost control from a quarter-on-quarter perspective, growth was partly offset by substantial sequential increase in marketing expenses. As you probably noticed, we invited Frank back. Network operating costs increased due to the expansion of our mobile network and notable cost inflation in access fees from open networks. The cash conversion has improved to 66% over the last 12 months.

Now let's move to Baltic financials on Slide 10. Our Baltic operations have maintained operational momentum with sustained strong top and bottom line growth in Q3. Total end-user service revenue continued to grow at 7%, supported by price adjustment during the first half year. Q3 was the third consecutive quarter in which all markets delivered double-digit growth in underlying EBITDAaL, driving a total growth of 20%, same as Q2 and with Estonia posting a massive 53%.

Cash conversion increased to a strong 78% during the last 12 months, reflecting increasing EBITDAaL margin. As part of ongoing efficiency efforts, we have now initiated project to centralize support and IT across our Baltic countries to reduce operating costs and shorten development time lines in the coming years.

Let's move to Slide 11 for Baltic operating KPIs. The total postpaid base increased by 21,000 RGUs in Q3, driven by Lithuania and Latvia. Prepaid increased by 8,000 RGUs. Blended organic ASPU grew by a strong 12%, driven by price adjustment and continued prepaid to postpaid migration.

And with that, I hand over to Peter, who will go through the financial overview.

Thank you, Jean-Marc, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to Page 13.

First, a few comments on the group P&L for the quarter. Total revenue grew by 1% with end-user service revenue up by 2%, driven by the Baltics and Sweden B2B. Our equipment revenue declined in a continued slow handset market, but a successful launch of the new iPhones supported equipment revenue growth in Sweden B2C. Both Underlying EBITDAaL and underlying EBITDA after lease grew by 11% organically, thanks to the sharp cost control across the group and the end-user service revenue growth. Worth noting is that the group now has reached an underlying EBITDAaL margin of 40% year-to-date.

Items affecting comparability were at SEK 130 million in the quarter, impacted by redundancy costs related to workforce reductions. Net financial items decreased year-on-year, thanks to both lower interest rates and reduced debt. In Q3, our average interest rate was at 2.8% with a debt mix of 66% fixed rates and 34% floating rates. Income tax increased largely due to higher profits.

Let's turn to Slide 14 and our group cash flow. CapEx paid decreased by around SEK 175 million. This was partly due to successful prioritization and partly due to the deferral of planned investment to 2026. Changes in working capital remained quite neutral in the quarter, slightly impacted by reduced liabilities.

Net financial items paid, excluding leasing decreased year-on-year, thanks to the reduction of interest costs along with payment timing. Net-net, equity free cash flow added up to a strong SEK 1.8 billion in Q3, an improvement of SEK 670 million compared to last year. And over the last 12 months, equity free cash flow has reached SEK 9 per share.

So let's move to Slide 15 and our capital structure. End of Q3, economic net debt amounted to SEK 22.9 billion, reduced by SEK 3.3 billion compared to the end of 2024. This was enabled by the cash generated in the business exceeding the payout of the first dividend tranche in May. Our leverage of 2.0x underlying EBITDAaL remains below our target range, thanks to the strong profitability and cash generation. Adjusted for the payout of the final tranche of the ordinary dividend last week, pro forma leverage would have been at 2.2.

And with that, I hand over to Jean-Marc for some comments on our 2025 guidance.

Thank you, Peter. Please turn to Slide 16 for our upgraded 2025 guidance. Following the first 9 months of the year, we remain confident in our ability to deliver on our growth guidance, namely low single-digit organic growth of end-user service revenue, including around 1 percentage point drag from Boxer, slightly above 10% growth in underlying EBITDAaL that we committed on in July. In addition, we are slightly reducing our 2025 guidance on CapEx to sales from around 13% to around 12%. This is driven by successful prioritization efforts as well as the deferral of some costs to 2026. That said, we reiterate our expectation of a midterm range between 10% and 12% from 2026 onwards.

I hand back to Peter for some additional comments regarding 2025 before we open up for Q&A.

Thank you, Jean-Marc. A few additional comments first on the P&L. We continue to anticipate around SEK 500 million in restructuring costs this year related to the ongoing transformation. On savings from workforce reductions, please remember that roughly 80% of our workforce costs impact OpEx, while the remaining share impact CapEx.

Also, I repeat what has been said about the Boxer effect. For the full year 2025, we continue to expect Boxer revenue roughly SEK 225 million below 2024 and with a somewhat negative year-on-year impact on underlying EBITDA after lease. And then a few comments on the cash flow. In Q4, we will pay the final roughly SEK 370 million for the Swedish spectrum licenses that we secured in 2023. Also now in Q4, an 1,800 megahertz spectrum auction will be held in Sweden. The payment terms in that auction is 50% in Q1 2026 and 50% in Q1 2028 as informed by the regulator.

On changes in working capital, we're satisfied with the performance in the first 9 months of the year, while recognizing that Q4 is seasonally weak. We hence now estimate the full year outcome in the range of 0 to plus SEK 200 million for the full year. On net financial items, excluding leasing, we continue to expect full year payments of around SEK 750 million. And finally, regarding taxes, we still expect around SEK 1.0 billion of net payments in 2025, including the SEK 280 million refund we received in Q1.

And with that, I hand over to the operator for Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs.

I had -- my first question was on -- well, both questions are on costs. My first question was on EBITDA costs and specifically the open network access fee inflation. I think that, that impact is around SEK 30 million, but I'm not 100% sure. I wondered if you can give us any clarity on the scale of the impact from that.

And then just on that point, you have historically or recently said that you feel that price rises can be put through over and above cost inflation. Do you feel like you can pass that increase in cost on to the customer over the next 12 months?

And then the second question is just on CapEx. You highlighted that you're reiterating the 10% to 12% CapEx to sales guide for next year. Obviously, there's an element of deferral of CapEx from 2025 into 2026 that's lowered your guidance for this year. Does that deferral mean you're likely to end up towards the ceiling of the 10% to 12% CapEx to sales guide for next year?

Okay. Well, I will take the first question on access fee. Of course, this is nothing new here. We have observed a regular increase of the access fee. And in the meantime, due to the competition on retail prices, we observe a growing pressure on the profitability of the open access. Of course, the consequence for the operators and especially for Tele2 will be in the future to focus more on other channels -- other networks, sorry, rather than open fiber. But I believe that we face here a critical issue for the market and for the Swedish customer. It's as well related to the delay in the SDU regulation.

So that means that open fiber today is a technology that we need to address specifically as a complement for other solutions for the customer. And on top of that, of course, at a certain point, we may be obliged as well to reflect part of this access fee increase in the retail price. So that's one of the, I would say, battles that we are fighting and we will continue fighting in the coming months.

Regarding the CapEx, I will hand over to Peter. Just a comment. I would say the decision to lower the CapEx guidance was the consequence of the prioritization of our investment in general and especially in the mobile network. And I want to say 2 things. First, it doesn't impact the quality of the network. You probably noticed that -- and I stated that in my presentation that we have rolled out 5G on the entire Swedish network that we operate, and we now reach 99% of the population -- 99.9% of the population with an excellent quality of service, and our ambition is still to build the best 5G network in Sweden. And some -- and the second point is that it doesn't change our midterm guidance, but Peter, feel free to elaborate on that.

Andrew, I think you covered it quite well, but just to add a little bit on the -- as Jean-Marc said, it's the stricter prioritization that is helping us to being able to reduce our CapEx guidance for 2025, including then also impact on CapEx from workforce reductions, which is helping there. And then, of course, we always try to invest as late as possible, meaning that some pieces are deferred to 2026, but it doesn't change our ambition of being behind 10% to 12% going forward. And to specifically answer your question on what it means for 2026, where we will be in that range is too early to respond on now. We'll come back to our CapEx guidance for 2026 when we release our Q4 numbers in January.

It's really helpful from both. Do you have any sense of the scale of the headwind that you got from the open network fee increase and the competition that stopped you from kind of fighting back on that? Any sense of the scale that would be helpful. And I guess, Peter, on your answer on the CapEx to sales, you're not saying that you'll definitely be towards the upper end of that 10% to 12% because of this deferral. It's as you say, too early to say. Is that the right understanding of your comments there?

No, it's too early to comment on that. I believe that we observe a distortion of the market. Definitely compared to what's happening in other European countries, the market evolution, the broadband market evolution in Sweden is not in favor of the customer interest. We should see an improvement of the competitive situation and what we observe is the opposite. It's due to the dominant position of some local players. It's not new. We are flagging that. And in the meantime, of course, we are taking actions in order to offset this impact and find alternative solution to serve our customers. We'll come back to that in more details when we will comment on our full year results.

And on the access fee too, we're not providing a specific number on that impact, but it's, of course, something that is important to us in terms of costs.

Our next question comes from the line of Andreas Joelsson from DNB Carnegie.

Just a follow-up basically on the open network side. You cannot control regulation, obviously, but -- and you say that you will look at alternatives. But what kind of alternatives do you have that you can sort of -- because leaving the open fiber network would leave -- would mean that you would leave quite a big market size. And just curious about the alternatives that you see should this -- there be further delays to this regulation, for instance?

Yes. Okay. Let's be specific and give you an element of answer. But for obvious reasons, I don't want to elaborate further. Of course, it's all -- everything is a question of geography. But first, Tele2 operates on HFC cable infrastructure with DOCSIS, excellent Internet speed and customer experience. In some areas, a much better Internet quality than with fiber because some part of the fiber in Sweden is quite old. So this is definitely one part of the answer.

The other one is, of course, related to the recent expansion of our 5G footprint. We now provide 5G connectivity to the entire Swedish population with here again, an excellent quality of service as recognized by Open Signal. And this quality will even improve in the future. So that's the answer. So of course, there are some areas where we will be -- we'll have no access to the customers outside of the open fiber infrastructure, but there are many areas where we have multiple solutions. And so far, we were a little bit agnostic in the technology, but we cannot let the situation with open fiber degrade without responding.

Our next question comes from the line of Erik Lindholm-Rojestal from SEB.

So Jean-Marc, you mentioned exiting a major third-party retailer here in Sweden during the quarter and also making some changes on the B2B side with partners. And I understand the long-term positives from this, but would you expect sort of any short-term headwind to growth from this?

We will -- of course, we will prepare. We will not go unprepared to this big shift. But we have been preparing for a while. We are opening regularly new stores, own stores. For instance, next week, we will open 2 new stores in Sweden in G vle and Borl nge and then we will continue with others. So we are progressively increasing the number of stores. Once again, we are not going to go crazy with the stores, but there were gaps in our footprint that we want to fill. It's important that we have stores in all the major areas where we see a commercial traffic that we can take advantage of. In the meantime, we are improving the performance of our websites, investing in the future of the websites. We are as well doing a lot of changes and improvement in our customer operations. And we are determined to -- I have to say, to eradicate the questionable sales practice that we observe in the market.

The Swedish Consumer Agency flagged some practice observed in the telemarketing area during the summer. It's not the only area where we observed this kind of practice. So this practice results into an artificial churn, which penalized the operators. That's why we believe that we need to take control of our relation with the customers. We have stepped down from one of the retailers, a minor one that I don't want to disclose the name, already this year. And we are preparing to take more control on our distribution.

Today, we are very happy to see that the contribution of our own channels is increasing in our commercial activity, and we want to continue pushing that, not only in B2C, but in B2B as well. That's why we took the decision to, I would say, reform, transform our sales partners for SMEs. And here, we reduced the number of our sales partner by around 60% in order to focus on high-quality partner that we can trust to deal with our customers.

So for us, it's definitely a long-term investment. And of course, we don't want to make an hasty decision. We are in permanent discussion with all the partners, but we know where we want to go. And of course, there will be -- there may be from time to time, commercial hiccups, but we are absolutely certain that this is the strategy to follow and to deliver for the long-term value creation in the market.

All right. So -- but do you expect any meaningful impact to sort of gross adds in the short term or maybe for next year?

That's why we are taking the time. We are just showing the path, but we are moving step by step. We don't expect to make any crazy move. We just want to consolidate, strengthen our own channels progressively and make case-by-case decisions.

Our next question comes from the line of Maurice Patrick from Barclays.

If I could ask a follow-up question on CapEx, please. I appreciate you've indicated the 10% to 12% midterm range for next year and you don't want to narrow that. But just to understand a bit around the key projects that remain pending. If I'm not wrong, you've signaled today you pretty much finished the mobile 5G upgrade and swap outs. You've signaled earlier in the prepared remarks, I think, a need to or desire to increase the investments in the Baltics post the TowerCo sale. I think in previous calls, you had suggested Remote PHY as in the cable upgrade was more on hold as such. So could you help us understand sort of what additional projects beyond just maintenance you have in mind for '26? Is it just the Baltics? Or is there anything else we should be thinking about?

No, no, I believe that there is no hidden agenda or hidden project that we have kept in our wallet out of the sight of the investors. I believe that the revision of our CapEx guidance is just the consequence of some replanning that we had to do and that we were able to do considering, I would say, the evolution of our rollout. So this is a very ambitious rollout that we are in. Of course, our goal is to complete the largest part of this rollout by the end of the year. But in the meantime, as you can easily understand, the more we move forward, the more difficulties we collect in the building of the sites because they are remote. Sometimes we have issues to connect the energy to the sites, some permit delay and so on.

So the decision to revise our CapEx and sales guidance is just the result of pragmatic replanning of the rollout with, I would say, some sites that will not be built at the end of this year, but completed and switch off -- switch on, sorry, at the beginning of next year. So the impact of delay is minimal, but still impactful considering the size of the investment that we are making this year on the Swedish mobile network.

And of course, one of the reason for this delay is called Swedish winter because in December, January, it's a little bit difficult to dig into the Swedish ground for obvious reasons. So not a big deal. Next year, we'll have some, I would say, some additional sites to complete but with a minor impact on the CapEx for 2026. The main part of our investment next year will remain the modernization of some part of our Baltic operations with, of course, the impact of our TowerCo company as well.

And for the rest, I confirm that we will stick with our new strategy for the modernization of our cable network. Also, of course, we believe that in the current context of the fixed broadband market, there is a competitive advantage for us to push our mobile -- sorry, our cable HFC network. We don't see the point to systematically modernize the network. So we stick with our reactive modernization strategy that we have decided at the beginning of this year. So that we don't foresee any acceleration of the Remote PHY investment.

For the rest, of course, we are progressing on the modernization of our IT, centralizing as much as we can the platforms across all our product lines in Sweden, and we have as well some project to centralize some platforms between Baltics and Sweden. But I would say all this has been already anticipated. And compared to the network investment, it's a relatively minor part of our investment policy. So that's why we are quite confident that the replanning of our CapEx in this end of year will have -- will not change our midterm guidance, which is to keep the CapEx and sales ratio between 10% and 12% over the next few years.

Our next question comes from the line of Owen McGiveron from Bank of America.

McGiveron from Bank of America here. Question on costs. So on headcount, you said over 600 by the end of September versus the over 500 by the end of June. Could you give us a sense on the phasing of this reduction and when the incremental cuts will feed through into your numbers. And then a quick 1 on marketing spend. Just thinking about the weighting of Q3 versus Q4, trying to weigh the initial cost of the launch where you said that there was a substantial increase in marketing spend in Q3 versus Q2 versus a more competitive Q4 where you'll do more advertising.

Yes. Maybe I will ask Peter to complete. But keep in mind that compared to H1, we have -- 3 areas where we had foreseen, I would say, slightly higher spending in H2. The first 1 is definitely marketing areas where we have reintroduced Frank with a, I would say, an obvious result and the traffic in our stores on our website. But I would say, a recognition of the Tele2 brand, which has improved I'm referring here to the ID center KPI to improve significantly compared to H1 with a tripling of the recognition by the customers.

So that, of course, has some impact on our cost, but it was foreseen because we had kept the -- we have planned the rebranding at the very end of June 2026. We have the access fee impact which, of course, is a variable cost and something that we -- you probably understand is that, of course, we are impacted by access fees in proportion of the acquisition of customers we make in this area. And something that you cannot -- we cannot forget either is the increase of our network OpEx, which is proportional to the rollout of the network. So the more sites we build and we are on a good path to complete the rollout of our 5G network, but the more maintenance OpEx, we need to support. Peter?

Yes. Thanks, Jean-Marc. I can add maybe a little bit on the -- you asked specifically about the timing in the workforce reductions. And I think it's 2 aspects of this. One is that we, of course, try to optimize gradually and find improvements every day, but there was a bit of a larger portion in towards the end of the quarter, end of September, where a bit larger piece of the reduction came through, which means that -- and when it comes to the cost for that, you can see in our restructuring costs, a bit of elevated costs in Q3. And so that's all reflected in the Q3 numbers, the severance payments for those reductions.

And on marketing, I think it's quite well covered, but maybe call out as well that the big impact then from the sequential EBITDAaL trends is that we were very, very low in Q2. So in Q2, we had a large tailwind in our EBITDAaL year-on-year from low marketing. We saved our money for the rest of the year with the rebranding and also a little bit of a more intense sales season. I hope that answers.

Our next question comes from the line of Fredrik Lithell from Handelsbanken.

I thought maybe we could have -- if Stefan would like to talk a little bit about the trends in business-to-business. You have really good growth there. If you could sort of dig into the details a little bit more what's really going on in the business-to-business marketplace would be interesting to hear. And then secondly, Jean-Marc, if I could ask you, it seems like EQT is putting GlobalConnect up for sale. We don't know. It's news comments at this point. But if that would be, would you see that you have some pockets where you sort of could fill up your assets on long-haul fiber or anything? It would be interesting to hear your elaboration on that, if possible.

All right. Thank you, Fredrik, for your question. Always a pleasure to talk about B2B. And as we've seen, it was a good quarter. I think the profile of the revenue development in Q3 is very similar to Q2. It's a broad-based improvement year-on-year for the quarter in all of the -- basically all product lines. We see the stabilization on the fixed part, driven by broadband and data net services and the deals that we've done in that domain.

On the mobile side, we continue with good growth, both on the larger segments, SME and the larger segments on RGU development. We had a growth of 10,000 RGUs and also the previous quarters, of course, are helping us in the quarter-on-quarter growth of the mobile RGUs. IoT is a little bit better than in Q2, actually on quarter-on-quarter growth, a couple of millions better.

So overall -- and then we have the solutions area where we have continued good pace on the network security part, but also on Cloud PBX, which is more of a modern solution. So it's very similar to Q2 actually, a little bit better, I would say, everywhere.

Then on the Micro, we see a stabilization. It's something that we have seen with the recession that is impacting the growth. So we're still looking for the smaller segments or the smaller customers returning to better growth overall in the Swedish economy. So hopefully, we'll see that. I hope for that last year, but we didn't see it this year. But hopefully, that's something that we will see next year. I hope that gives you some color on the B2B and where the growth is coming from.

Yes. And maybe to complete what Stefan was commenting, the reason -- one of the reasons why we can accelerate in B2B is because, thanks to the transformation of this activity that Stefan has delivered in H1, we have no profitable growth. We can now secure a profitable growth in all the segments, including the solutions. So that's, of course, a key lever for us for the acceleration of the revenue. And I will not comment on GlobalConnect.

As commented by Peter, yes, we have, I would say, an excellent balance sheet so far, but we have stated at the beginning of the year, and I will stick with this statement that the decisions about the use of the cash flow will be taken after the full delivery of our transformation this year. So we still have a quarter to go. And therefore, I will not preempt any discussion that will be at the Board level that will take place at the Board level in January.

Our next question comes from the line of Nick Lyall from Berenberg.

Can I just ask 2, please. Firstly, on the contracts with suppliers. Could you remind us how far you are through your negotiations with your suppliers so far? And could you help us by giving us some sort of target to quantify the savings you might make from that over time, please?

And then secondly, on the access cost point, trying to avoid access costs or alternatives to access costs, how does that fit with the idea that you're going to be just reactive on Remote PHY and the coax network and also sort of tailing off spending on 5G as well. Those 2 don't seem to tally. So could you tell me what I'm missing there, please?

Peter will answer on the contract and the savings.

Yes. Nick, yes, on the number of contracts, we have now renegotiated around 225 contracts and keep working on them in full pace, of course, also going forward. We are not providing any specific financial targets on this exercise. It's, of course, an important component in our EBITDAaL improvement, but we stick to what we aim for on our EBITDAaL and CapEx guidance. So that's what I would say on the contract negotiations. And then Jean-Marc, I don't know if you want to comment again on the access cost in Remote PHY maybe.

No, I was consulting with Petr Cermak. I don't believe that there is more to say about the access fee. We are observing, I would say, a negative evolution of the market in terms of profitability. This evolution goes in the opposite direction compared to all the other operating countries. We observed that PTS has been blocked in the SDU regulation. So there is a problem with the market structure. Of course, we will fight in order to get better market condition for the customers.

In the meantime, I would say, we have other cards to play. And I believe that the consequence of this increase in the access fee, which is not motivated by any reason, but the -- I would say, the collection of an additional fee by the intermediary operators, the local intermediary operators is to motivate the operators to use other networks.

And once again, we have more than 1 million households served by our excellent DOCSIS network, providing 1 gigabit per second Internet to MDUs across all the country. And in the meantime, now we have our 5G technology that we can use in order to serve families and homes with 5G connectivity and no need to elaborate too much on that, but we observed that mobile broadband is becoming more and more popular amongst our customers, especially the new generation as the main access to Internet. So that's it.

So meaning that we observed this increase in access fees, and we are taking the consequence. And fortunately, we have other cards to play, and that's it. We are just commenting on access fees because it was obviously one of the, I would say, the components that may have been underestimated from external observers on the Swedish market, but we are not the only one impacted by that.

Our next question comes from the line of Ajay Soni from JPMorgan.

My one just goes back to the marketing costs. Obviously, you've called them out stepping up a little bit in Q3. Are you expecting this to continue into Q4 and then 2026? And is this driven by a more competitive environment? I understand some of the pricing, especially within the second brand has become more competitive. So maybe a comment on the pricing environment would be helpful as well.

I believe that Peter commented already that the seasonality dictates that we spend more in marketing in the second half of the year than in the first half. But do you want to elaborate on that, Peter?

No, I can just repeat that one. So it's not that we're -- just to be clear, it's not that we are intensifying our marketing spend. It's more that we reduced our marketing spend in the first half of the year and especially in Q2. So it's not an escalation in any sense. It's more that we had a very large tailwind from that in Q2, and now we don't have that tailwind. So we will keep discipline in how much marketing we spend. That's what I would say there.

Our next question comes from the line of Felix Henriksson from Nordea.

I think beyond the FTE reductions and the vendor contract renegotiations, you've highlighted that the decommissioning of some unprofitable B2B services and sort of automating the service delivery is sort of one of the key drivers for profitability transformation. So could you just please provide a bit of an update on that work stream? That would be very helpful.

All right. Thanks for the question and Stefan here to respond on the automation and IT transformation. As we've been alluding to before, I mean, we are doubling down on IT transformation for B2B this year, and it will go on into next year. We're actually in the middle of the work -- of the scope work of that. So we're doing the requirement design, all of that, but we haven't come into production yet. The first phases of production will come next year. We won't give you a specific quarter, but we will see specific product segments being handled by the new end-to-end IT ecosystem, which will really, really, really will be something different, much, much more efficient than the ways we are working on today. So really looking forward to those launches which start next year.

Our next question comes from the line of Max Findlay from Redburn, Atlantic.

This is Max Findlay from Rothschild & Co Redburn. Firstly, going back to the FTE question, just checking where in-quarter reductions were removed, I assume Sweden. And any clearer ideas where you might land in your 600 to 700 FTE reduction range would be very helpful. I appreciate you've already been asked questions on contracts already, but the last couple of quarters, you've provided a percentage of large contracts renegotiated, but I could not find that this quarter. So any color on that would be very helpful. And then finally, just checking that there were no one-off cost savings in Q2 that dropped out in Q3, maybe as costs were deferred during contract renegotiations.

Okay. I will let Peter answer the last 2 questions on the FTEs. As we commented, we have reached the lower end of the target already. We believe that we will land -- we'll finish the year, I would say, very close from the full year target that we gave ourselves, which was between 600 and 700. We are now in an execution phase for the long tail in some specific reorg. And we're on a good path. Now we have completed the discussion with the union and so on to deliver all these workforce reduction, including in the Baltics, where we still have some minor workforce reduction ongoing. But we will be -- we will deliver workforce reduction in line with our target.

Yes. And on the workforce reduction, most of it then maybe a repetition, but was towards the end of the quarter, in end of September, and it's majority in Sweden then the workforce reductions in Q3. On the contracts, it was -- altogether, we have renegotiated 225 contracts now year-to-date. And that's a decent portion of our large contracts, but we're not done yet. So we continue working on that. And when it comes to one-offs, no specific one-offs in Q2 that was pushed in any way towards -- over to Q3. Last year in Q2, we had a one-off related to bad debt, which helped our -- or made our comps a bit easier in Q2 this year, which we have called out earlier, but no major one-offs in Q2 and Q3 this year.

Our next question comes from the line of Abhilash Mohapatra from BNP Paribas.

Sorry to come back on the open network access fee question, but just trying to understand, has the impact been sort of greater than you had anticipated earlier in the year when you're sort of setting out the guidance? And so therefore, should we see this as you've been able to keep your guidance despite sort of greater-than-expected impact from this cost headwind? And how do you sort of see the time line of this evolving in the coming months? You mentioned sort of talking to the regulators. How do you see this sort of evolving?

And then the second question was just around shareholder returns. You flagged that leverage is now down to sort of 2.2x, and you mentioned you'll be sort of examining this over the coming quarter. But as we think about your leverage target range, 2.5 to 3x, what are the sort of puts and takes of where you would want to end up compared to that sort of target leverage range, low end versus high end? What are the factors there? And does this development would be sort of open network access fees change that thinking at all?

Okay. So there's a lot of questions about access fees. We don't want to emphasize too much this topic. But okay, to answer your question, what can we add on top of what we have already commented. We observed that the situation is becoming a little bit critical. But once again, it's not -- it's the result as well of the fragmentation of the fixed broadband infrastructure market in Sweden. So the reaction of the different landlord association, for instance, are not the same depending on the network swap that we are considering. And we see that, for instance, some landlord association are reviewing the condition -- the terms and conditions of their agreement. They -- some of them realize that there is a limit to the current model.

And of course, that translates in some decrease in the broadband penetration in their networks. And of course, this is not what they want, and this is not what we want to see. So I don't want to elaborate too much, but it's a very fragmented situation on the broadband market. We see the result with some, I would say, greed from some landlord association that has some consequence for all the operators. We have to deal with that. That's our job. So Peter, can you comment on the 2 other questions?

Yes. On the shareholder return and the leverage targets, of course, we recognize that we noticed that we are below our target range of 2.5 to 3. As Jean-Marc also mentioned previously in the call, we will not preempt the discussions around where we're moving. We will have the discussion with our Board ahead of the Q4 release to see how we should proceed in terms of shareholder remuneration and how to deal with our strong balance sheet. It's a pleasant problem. We're happy with the strong profitability and cash generation leading to a very strong balance sheet position at present. And we'll come back in Q1 -- sorry, when we release Q4.

Our next question comes from the line of Ondrej Cabej ek from UBS.

Two questions from me, please. One is on just refocusing a bit on the top line in Sweden, where almost across the segments, you saw an acceleration of trends. I was wondering, from your perspective, because you are the first to report, how much of this improvement are you attributing to your own commercial initiatives, which you say obviously stepped up into the second half? And how much of this is some kind of market repair, which I believe we have seen since the summer. So that's one question.

And then the second question on contracts, please. So as you say, I think you mentioned the number 225 contracts have been kind of renegotiated. I was just wondering in terms of the actual impact when we're starting to see this, is it all -- or rather, can we assume that all 225 of these have already started to have some impact on the financials? Or is there a part of these which have been renegotiated, but for example, only have an impact starting 2026 or later?

Okay. I will let Peter to answer on the consumer revenue. But definitely, we see the impact of Frank being back, the iPhone launch, the own channels, Petr?

Yes. No. So we see an improvement in the connectivity quarter-on-quarter, both through both for the offers we have, but also through the focus on the own channels. So we are focusing our own stores, customer operations online. That's our main focus, and we are trying to tone down the rest of the external distribution. We see good traction of our TV offers that we launched in April. So the flex model is something the customer wants. We see good traction on it, and it partly compensates our decline in TV. This is entirely driven by Boxer. So Frank has -- the relaunch of Frank has helped to improve our commercial momentum since summer. And it continues and we will continue what we are doing right now. It's a mix of pricing, some acquisitions and the focus on own channels.

And Peter, do you want to take the other one again?

Yes, I can take that again, but maybe in a slightly new angle to the question. Again, 225 contracts has been renegotiated. When it comes to timing of this, it is a mix. In some cases, we were able to reap the benefits directly. We saw quite much of that in the first half of the year. But of course, depending on the nature of the contract and what we're negotiating, something is coming later. So some pieces will also come from 2026. So it's a gradual effect of what we're doing that you should expect.

Our final question comes from the line of Siyi He from Citi.

I just have a question on the cost side. I think Jean-Marc, in your CEO letter, you talked about that Tele2 are ready to gradually increase the efforts to optimize your teams and optimize your process. Just wondering if you can comment on maybe the kind of savings that it could have and when it could -- when should we expect it to hit the financials? And I also believe that you decided to take away the midterm targets at the beginning of this year. Just wondering after you complete the staff reduction should we expect the reintroduction of the midterm guidance at the full year result?

Sorry, I didn't understand the last.

The second one, if we have a midterm financial guidance.

We don't. We -- apart from the -- for the CapEx, we don't have a midterm guidance. On the CapEx, we already mentioned that our ambition, and we say this ambition turns into more and more kind of commitment, but we will be between 10% and 12% of the sales. But to come back to your initial question, I would say that the cost optimization or the transformation in general translate into 3 major benefits for the company.

The first one, of course, is overall cost reduction. We see the impact today in our cost structure of the payroll OpEx improvement as well the renegotiation of some contracts. But it's as well the benefit of, I would say, making the company more agile. And this agility comes with profitability. We gave the example of B2B. We had some issues with the profitability of some line of business. So we have transformed the process. We have reviewed the portfolio.

Now we can accelerate the growth in B2B. And in other areas as well, I give B2B just as an example, because we have secured the profitability and we have simplified the process. And I would say that this simplification is as well something that we benefit from globally in order to respond to the market. That's why, of course, when we observe that some part of -- some segment of the market are not evolving in the right direction, we are now able to react much more promptly that is, of course, what is happening today in the fixed broadband.

And I would say the third benefit of this transformation is that thanks to the strengthening of our -- and the simplification of our processes, we are able to take a stricter control on our distribution channels and prioritize our CapEx much more. So that translates into the reinforcement, the strengthening of our own channels, the detriment of the third-party ones that will translate in the future into better value for Tele2 because we will increase the stickiness of the customers. We will increase the ASPU, and we will decrease the acquisition cost. And this is only possible because we have made the company agile and adaptive again. So that's my summary. Do you want to add something?

Yes, maybe add one thing on the question on the guidance. As Jean-Marc pointed out, of course, right now, this is where we stand because we don't have a midterm guidance. I think also the question were about if we will have it going forward, and that's too early to say. We'll talk to the Board ahead of the Q4 release and take it from there. Right now, we're here and now and focus on the guidance we have submitted for this year.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.