Deutsche Telekom AG (DTE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. A warm welcome to our AGM here live and online, and I'm also saying hello to those who joined us on the stream. As you just was on the trailer, today, it's all about sustainability. That's the #1 subject today. It's also about responsibility, our responsibility as Deutsche Telekom, and we will also be talking about successful entrepreneurship today. As you can see our green T here. There is no investor and no customer who does not rate our performance based on the responsibility that we show in managing this company. And with this in mind, I would like to present a couple of practical examples to you to illustrate how we can reduce our electricity consumption and how we can improve our carbon footprint. Do you ever ask yourself what happens on the network when nobody is awake? Is the network turned off? Or is it sending a signal all the time? And here, you can see the classical antenna setup at Deutsche Telekom. By the way, we have 35,000 of those all over Germany. And you can see there are a couple of illuminated icons there. There's a spectrum point 2.1 gigahertz, 2 to 3.6 gigahertz in the 5G network and loads of other spectrum points. That's the spectrum that we need in order to ensure large bandwidth and high transmission rates everywhere. And even if nobody is on the network and we are still sending a signal, then that would be a waste of energy. And that's why we installed a kind of motion sensor. If nobody is on the network, then we can scale things down. There is less electricity being used. And if more people use the network, then it's going up again. Let me show you how it looks. At night in an industrial area, we are reducing our radio performance maybe to just 1 or 2 spectrum areas. And then on Monday morning, when everybody goes back to work, then the network is ramped up again. And then we are showing a full performance in terms of the signals being transmitted. Football stadiums, business parks, shopping centers, rural areas, if the network always goes into sleep mode or standby mode at night, then this helps us to significantly reduce our electricity consumption. 10% over the electricity requirements of our antennas are cut by that. 13-gigawatt hours in Germany alone are safe. And that's the electricity consumption of more than 10,000 households per year. And this is what we are saving per year. By now, we have like 16,000 antennas, almost 50% of all our antennas, which are equipped with the state-of-the-art technology. And all over Europe, we have 25,000 antennas that have been equipped with this technology in order to reduce our electricity consumption. Another example, the circular economy. Do you know how many mobile phones are lying in your draws out there? 200 million, 200 million mobile phones. And the question is, how can we basically reintegrate all these devices into the circular economy? How can we recycle them? And by the way today and also here, we are collecting old mobile phones. You might want to buy a new mobile phone from us, that was my little commercial, then you might want to leave your old mobile here, and then we can have it recycled. Last year, we collected 170,000 mobile phones in Germany, 70,000 of which were recycled as secondhand devices, and you can buy them either from us or from other providers at much lower prices, and that's also good for the environment. 100,000 mobile phones. These -- that's the number of devices that we recycled last year. And when you look at the things that you find in this mobile phone, 32% of glass, a lot of metal, 17% plastic and 6% of very interesting additives, for instance, rare earths, which are also part of these devices. So look at all the things that we collected last year. It's 660 kilograms of copper, 10 kilograms of silver, 1.7 kilograms of gold incidentally, that is worth more than EUR 100,000, 0.2 kilograms of palladium and platinum. This is what we collected as part of our recycling effort, and all this was reintegrated into the circular economy. In the fixed network. So your routers or your TV box, there recycling is even better, much better. We have a lot of least devices out there. So these least devices are coming back to us sooner or later. By the way, 2 million routers and receivers come back to us and more than 60% of them are recycled. And of those, we have recycled 1.2 million to a point where they can be used as secondhand devices. All the others are shredded or dissected and then you have this very fine granular. And you end up getting this new classical DSL router that you've certainly seen before. 90% of recycled material. This is our contribution to protecting the environment. Just another practical example, which brings me to my third example. And actually, this is the most important example and the most important future project for us at Deutsche Telekom, when it comes to cutting back on our electricity consumption. And we are doing that by switching off the old copper network. We are rolling out the optical fiber network across the board. And at the same time, we are still running the old classical copper network. And it only works because you have certain impulses that are supported by power, by electricity. So we have 2 parallel networks, which is expensive and it's a waste of energy. And in the long run, we want to switch off the copper network and only use the optical fiber network. How is that possible? I don't know if you ever asked yourselves what's to be found in these great cabinets out there in the street? So let me show you what you find here. We have the DSLAMs in there, which make it possible for the Internet signals that are coming from the network to be transmitted and distributed across households. And in the middle of it, you have a so-called line card, and that is taking up the signal and is then distributing it to the DSL routers in your homes. Today, we have 20,000 of such line cards in our devices. And on every line card, you have one home connection, as you can see here. On this very card, it's 48, but we have other line cards with 96. And all of these line cards are run using power. And if we don't need these line cards any more, then we can save a lot of power. And of the 20,000 line cards that we already took out of operation last year, and if we use that energy or if we were to use it for electric cars today, then we could have 1 electric car and have a drive 36 million kilometers just once all around the globe. But we do not only have 20,000 line cards, we have a total of 750,000 in fact. So if we or when we switch off the old copper network, then the electricity consumption of a city such as Bonn, including its environment, the whole of Bonn will then be covered in a much more effective way because we can save so much energy using the state-of-the-art technology. What do we need for that, we need politicians who are ready to make the relevant decisions because it has not yet been decided that we switch off the copper network. Politicians are expecting us to continue running 2 networks in parallel. So we need to find a solution here before long that helps us to save energy and improve our carbon footprint. Sustainability to us is the task of each and every telecom employee. And it's not just something for our top executives or something that you find on Page 272 of our annual report. So these are 3 examples that I wanted to show you today to illustrate how we are protecting the environment and improving our carbon footprint. Thank you. [Presentation]

Ladies and gentlemen, I'll begin this year with big minus, minus 278 gigawatt hours. That's how much energy we saved last year in Germany only. This is minus 11% in a year. Otherwise, filled with a lot of pluses. Revenue, plus 6.1%, EUR 114.4 billion. Earnings from operations up 7.7%, EUR 40.2 billion. Free cash flow up 30.2%, EUR 11.5 billion. Investments clear increase up 16.9%, EUR 21 billion only last year were invested and the share spends a EUR 22.38 this morning, its highest level for 22 years, including the dividend. The return for 2022 was 18.6%, ladies and gentlemen. But that's ladies and gentlemen worse in same period, down 12.4%, clearly worse. And just listen to that, your telecom is mobile valuable than Vodafone, Telefonica and Orange together. Ladies and gentlemen, we act with a long-term focus, we act soundly, we act responsibly. You could also say sustainably. The term sustainability is often bandied about -- you hear very often few people know exactly what it means. The term originally comes from the forestry sector. But you may remember, some words of mine, Deutsche Telekom is the power horse of digitalization. So let me explain sustainability like this. A sustainable farmer looks after a long-term yield. Their harvest is organic. They meet the basic needs of many people. And that family is comfortable too. What sustainability mean for Deutsche Telekom, I have 6 hypotheses. First, sustainability means protecting the environment and the climate. In November, I fulfilled the childhood dream of mine. I sailed the Atlantic Ocean in a sailboat from Gran Canaria to St. Lucia. It further opened my eyes to nature and its fertility too. We cannot simply look away, ladies and gentlemen. And that is why we need to do more as a company as well. And I've tried to show you a few examples of what we are doing as a company. But that is only part of what we want to do. We emit 94% fewer CO2 emissions than in 2017. And we aim to be fully climate neutral by 2025. Our network is already green. It runs on renewables. Our next step is to convert our fleet of vehicles and safe energy and buildings, and that is what we are doing at the moment. We also want to become more independent in our energy supply. To this end, we conclude direct agreements with the producers of renewable energy, operators of solar and wind parts. The technical term is power purchase agreement. Today, they already cover 28% of our energy for our networks. By 2025, we want to rise this to 50%, which makes us autonomous in our energy production and consumption. But we also look beyond our own carbon footprint. But also, at that of our suppliers, we want, for example, that cellphone production will be done climate neutrally. And for our procurement, we have introduced a new system. When we select a supplier, we do not only look at the price, but also on the CO2 footprint on the environmental impact. Both should, of course, be low. And anyone who fails to achieve green production will eventually be removed from the lineup. We import devices, but we export our environmental protection standards. By 2040, the entire supply chain of Deutsche Telekom aims to be fully climate neutral. From the production of devices to the power consumption, everything shall be climate neutral. You might say 2040 is a long way off. That is why we now have clear interim goal, minus 55% of carbon emissions by 2030 compared to the year 2020. And we are already talking to our suppliers how to achieve their climate targets. But how do we help our customers to become more sustainable? One example, companies can store their data on their own computers in the basement. A better way is to use data centers bringing to the cloud. It's not just secure when it comes to hackers the cyber criminals, but it also saves CO2. Energy consumption of cloud is much lower, but 80% compared to storing data in your office. The bridge from economy to ecology is efficiency, which brings me to my second hypothesis. Sustainability means solid finances. Ladies and gentlemen, we, Deutsche Telekom, if we are successful and nobody will doubt that. But a year ago, this success was the cause of some concern to me because we were faced with a dilemma. Actually, it was a trilemma. I called it internally a EUR 50 billion problem. First, we wanted after the T-Mobile and Sprint merger, we wanted to reach another milestone to secure the success sustainably because after the merger, our stake was only at 43%. We did this deal without first money, only on share basis. So we had to buy more shares to get above the 50% hurdle. In total, 150 million -- 120 million shares. These were EUR 8.5 billion, which were necessary at that time. At today's share price, these shares would amount to EUR 16.5 billion. Secondly, we said we want to have good credit worthiness. And for that, we will achieve a good ratio of that earnings in pursuit of this namely no more than 2.75x. And thirdly, we want to invest massively. Fiber and 5G in total EUR 21 billion. And we want to have even more fiber in Germany and Europe, fiber everywhere, which will cost us another EUR 25 million to EUR 30 million. And these are investments over the next years amounted to more than EUR 30 billion. Today, we have resolved the EUR 50 billion problem. We squared the triangle, if you like. We increased the capital SoftBank, received 225 million treasury shares. And in return, we received shares in T-Mobile U.S., amounting to EUR 5.3 billion. Our stake in T-Mobile went up by 3.7 percentage points. So the gap to majority is clearly smaller now. We then sold T-Mobile Netherlands for a price totaling 9x earnings. The -- this is called multiples. This valuation of our share in T-Mobile was twice as high as the European telecommunications companies at the moment. So we got a great price, EUR 4 billion were received additionally. And last but not least, we also sold our cell tower business in Germany and Austria at a 51% stake. This year, again, we had another yield of EUR 10.7 billion. And ladies and gentlemen, the money is there. At the same time, we are growing across all our businesses. In 2013, free cash flow was EUR 4.6 billion. That is the money left over after investors that have done everything, EUR 4.6 billion. In 2022, it was EUR 11.5 billion. This year, ladies and gentlemen, we expect free cash flow of EUR 16 billion, almost 4x the level of 10 years ago when I stood here for the first time. This will enable us to meet our 3 targets: the majority in T-Mobile U.S.; solid finances; and at the same time, keep high investments into the future. Dear shareholders, I'm happy to announce great news. Yesterday night, we achieved the majority stake in T-Mobile U.S. We have the majority in the largest and the most valuable telecommunications company of the world, T-Mobile U.S. Since 2013, the value of T-Mobile U.S. has increased considerably. Do you know about how much by EUR 153 billion that was the increase of the value of our subsidiary in the U.S. and -- which means for you as shareholders amounting to more than EUR 70 billion. That is not easy to copy. The benefits from the business combination weigh the costs clearly. We expect less than EUR 1 billion this year. But the benefits of $7.2 billion to $7.5 billion are clearly synergies. In addition T-Mobile has announced treasury share buyback program with a volume of up to $60 billion by 2025. This share buyback program shall be implemented. This will improve the liquidity in Europe coming from the U.S. So talking to my U.S. colleagues, I can always say, thank you, guys. Ladies and gentlemen, we will continue to grow. And if you want to grow, you have to invest into the future, which requires a good ratio of debt to earnings. At the year-end, it stood at 3.07x earnings, but it's trending downward. We want to reach our goal next year a maximum of 2.75x earnings and solid finances, also safeguard the network build-out in the future, which brings me to my third hypothesis. Sustainability means always building the best network. Our networks are digital lifelines of the societies in which we live. And the pulse of the time its fiber and 5G. In the United States, we provide 98% of the population with 5G, 310 million people in the U.S. More Americans than the former top [indiscernible] of AT&T and Verizon, we are the #1 made in Germany. And European subsidiary, we are also growing. Here, the figure is 47.4%. And in Germany, where we are the clear market leader, we have a coverage of 95% of 5G technology. 80%, ladies and gentlemen, of all new cell sites in Germany built since 2019. We're not [indiscernible] by Vodafone or 2 or by one at one but 80% of the cell sites were built by your Deutsche Telekom in Germany, 4,800 new cell sites in Germany. Last year, the Connect Magazine awarded us the scope for the first time of outstanding for our network [indiscernible] also awarded us our network as the Best Network in the Czech Republic, [indiscernible] where they provide home load confirms that we have the best network. And the same is true for Greece and Austria, best coverage, best data connections and best voice quality. Our ambition is to be the #1 when it capsule that we in all markets, and that is what we are achieving in all markets. The first sequences that the path leads customers to us. We won over 1.7 million new contract customers in 2022 in mobile communications in Europe. And in the United States, the increase was 6.4 million postpaid customers. In the German fixed network, we have 5.7 million households with -- which have a connection to the new fiber optic network and more than 8 million customers we have in our European market. That is the clear growth market of the future. Fiber rollout is finally gathering steam. And now ladies and gentlemen, we are building massively. And what can we read in the papers? Now our competitors are complaining saying we don't want you to build where we are building. They want to have so called monopoly. For many years, it was said we need infrastructure competition in Germany. Now we passed infrastructure competition, and now we here please protect our networks. Ladies and gentlemen, at Deutsche Telekom, everybody knows what you will get. First, we built as fast a particular [ Scandit ] up to 3 million households this year. We'll build more than 3 million, but we doesn't know it yet. 25 million to 30 million households will be connected by 2030 with pure optic fiber. A large part of this will be built just by us. But we also get investors on board. For example, the Australian Investment Fund, IFM, to invest with us together into GlasfaserPlus. They built with us, in particular, in rural areas. And thirdly, we are cooperating with public utilities in Münster, in Callbach, in Bochum, and also in and around Stuttgart or in Nöttingen everywhere where somebody would like to share a network with us or making a network available for us, we are interested in establishing these cooperative initiatives. And we -- [ fourthly, ] we are cooperating, but it has to pay off for all sides. With partner company for Deutsche Telekom, but ladies and gentlemen, first and foremost, for our customers, Deutsche Telekom stands for quality, a promise we keep delivering. And then our partners also have to be able to deliver it, only then we can really work with other local partners. So we will not build [ scrap ]. We lobby for fair competition, we stand for fair cooperation, and we offer, for example, to lay competitors' fiber cable [indiscernible]. But if we do this, then I also expect if they build, but we also have the opportunity to add our fiber cables would it be fair, which brings me to my next point. Sustainability means being a dependable partner for customers. Ladies and gentlemen, you know how important quality is for us. And you know that we have turned our service upside down. Telekom was now winning every test. And we should not be afraid of being compared with other industries. [indiscernible] numbers of complaints at Deutsche Telekom, minus 90% since 2017. Forever on hold, not at Deutsche Telekom. On average, it takes just 1 minute and 12 seconds to reach an agent. Never available, not at Deutsche Telekom. Around the clock, 7 days a week, we are there for our customers, and our technicians also make Saturday visits. Last example. And never ending to and fro not at Deutsche Telekom. 67% of all inquiries of customers are resolved directly on the first contact with customers how long it may take. Ladies and gentlemen, I know not everything runs smoothly. Human error is a fact of life, and Deutsche Telekom can often be all too human, but we listen. We are getting better permanently, and we make changes where needed, and we stay grounded. That's a promise. Last year, I had an encounter that left me feeling particularly proud. I met one of our customers, and he asked me, why can't other companies be like Deutsche Telekom? I must admit that felt really good. After 24 years at Deutsche Telekom, I am hearing that from a customer. Being leader and turning customers into fans that is our ambition. Let's now look at business customers. Deutsche Telekom already generates EUR 15 billion in revenue with business customers, mostly with mobile and fixed. But what else do companies need? A partner who can make them more digital, more competitive. This partner is more and more Deutsche Telekom. Did you know that Deutsche Telekom in Germany is generating EUR 1.3 billion in revenue from this in the context of digitalization, software. 2 examples, first eliminate chaos. The company [ LudwigMasters ]specializes in [indiscernible] and tool technologies. 15,000 customers from a small company to a big company are sending their orders to this company. Unfortunately, never in the same format. We have developed a text analysis solution, artificial intelligence, it processes the orders automatically, standardizing them more than 300,000 a year. Second example [ Vale Oil ] delivery chain. The company, global foundries manufacture semiconductors in Dresden, the microchips. And individual components roll to the factory on conveyor belt in a dusty environment, the belts require servicing, the less often, the better. Our technicians came up with a clever idea. The conveyor belts emit unique noise like an acoustic fingerprint. Just a single grain of dust in the mechanism changes its tone and our system raises the alarm. Solutions like this are developed by companies like MMS, our subsidiary. It's where our inventors work. And as SMEs in Germany need more of these solutions, we have now integrated MMS into Telekom Deutschland because in Telekom Deutschland, we serve the most SME customers. 60,000, by the way, trusting us. And we are helping them to find digital business solutions. We want in this business fees to here have double-digit growth in the future. This also applies to the systems. It serves corporate customers like Mercedes. And it too develop digital solutions, especially for the automotive industry, the health care sector and public administration. Dear shareholders, Germany and Europe left behind when it comes to digital transformation. Whether it be cloud, in artificial intelligence, in almost all categories, Germany and Europe are not world leading. But it is not sustainable for Germany to live for its reserves. The quality seal made in Germany is showing cracks. And that is why we need to work together to revamp it. We need to leave the comfort zone. The basis for digital transformation for software, our networks, our infrastructure, we need them, but we also need political support for that. Approval processes of 2.5 years for a cell antenna for cell tower simply too long. I hope, for example, that Corona-Warn-App which is installed on 50 million devices across Germany will not simply fall asleep. It could become the basis for all of us for a public health for prescriptions or other things. We shouldn't pass up this opportunity of digitalization. And of course, the companies need to get better at working together. And that is why we are actively implementing it. 21 billion per year, which brings it to our fifth hypothesis. Sustainability means taking on social responsibility. What that really means is do good things and talk about it. Well, I'll stick to an old slogan from the [indiscernible] to keep it short. Deutsche Telekom demonstrate social responsibility on many levels. Could I get a copy of the text, please. Now we need to improvise not everything that is digital is working at Deutsche Telekom. We offer 5G for all budgets. You might have seen, ladies and gentlemen, we have developed our own cellphone, the T-phone. It can't be that the device or devices or some of iPhone cost more than EUR 1,000 and ordinary people cannot use 5G. And that is why we developed our cellphone so called T-phone for EUR 269 for all customers in the network of Deutsche Telekom. And we are training 2,000 young people this year at Deutsche Telekom. We help whenever there's emergency. Currently, the earthquake in Turkey and Syria or the dramatic hurricane in Florida, we immediately made all calls and data traffic free of charge. We also supported refugees from Ukraine with free SIM cards so that they could stay in contact with their families. Ladies and gentlemen, we take care of those in needs. For example, the T-Mobile U.S. has 5 million school students with three data rate plans and devices for their studies. And that is always value driven and that is why so precious. Emergency aid special discounts support for those in need. Last year, it all adds up to services with an equivalent value of EUR 2.3 billion, which benefits 41 million people and organizations. And for our social responsibility also includes diversity, but this is not an end in itself. It's all about performance, that's what counts. Deutsche Telekom employees are no clones. They are a vibrant mix of different people. No other DAX company is as diverse as Deutsche Telekom's Board of Management and Executive. And we want to extend this across all Deutsche Telekom. The share of women in upper and middle management is currently at 21.8 -- 28.1%, excuse me. At the same time, we are becoming more international, around 12% of our managers, say, from a different country to the one they're working. And there's one matter of particular concern to us, Deutsche Telekom stands for connecting people. We want a free democratic Internet based on the rule of law. Sadly, the web can sometimes bring out the worst in people, but we can counteract this. Our sense of community, our curiosity and our creativity against hatred in the Internet. And if you're interested, we have just launched a big campaign with by Munich. Artificial intelligence poses a whole new set of challenges for us. The opportunities are huge as also risk. Deutsche Telekom already uses artificial intelligence, and we will expand it further massively. But we are led by one belief throughout. People are the priority. They are in the center, and human dignity shall be inviable and digital dignity should also be inviable. That is what the T stands for more than any other brand. People trust us, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know if you've seen it. Since last year, we have become the most valued brand worldwide. And at the same time, we are the most valuable brand in Europe, worldwide, we are now #11 of all big brands the industry. Thank you very much for your confidence. Many Deutsche Telekom employees were magenta, loud and proud. But more importantly, they put our T and what it stands for into practice. And above all, that means being there for customers, and dear colleagues, listening, thank you for your excellent work in 2022. Dear shareholders, only financially strong companies can act socially, responsibly. Part of this responsibility is to include you in our success. Since our IPO in 1996, we have paid out a [ 5 year ] dividend per share, and that shall continue. 40% to 60% of our recurring earnings per share, we want to pay out as a dividend. This year, our earnings per share were EUR 1.51 per share. Without onetime effect, it would have been EUR 1.83. And we are proposing a dividend of EUR 0.70 per share. That equates to 46% of our recurring earnings, which brings me to my last hypothesis. Sustainability means willingness to change. Dear shareholders, as I walk over to this phone both here, it makes me a bit nostalgic. You will all have your personal memories, all must have spend hours sitting on the phone book [ latch ], smoking by the way. On the phone to my girlfriend at the time, and onetime the [ latch ] broke off. I hope the statute of limitations have expired on the fact of vandalism. This year, we switched off these phone booths because virtually no one use them anymore. They [indiscernible] energy, over 6 million-kilowatt hours a year. The decision wasn't easy to pull the plug. The phone booths are a piece of Telekom's history, but it was a sensible and sustainable decision to do that. It's fun to reminiscence. But it's not a forward-looking strategy. And Deutsche Telekom is living proof. Not everything was better back then. We look to the future. We want to turn customers into fans by connecting them, by making lot easier. The overarching having for our strategy is digitalization. I hope you could see this. In the film, the digital network requires less hardware, but a great deal of software, computer programs. It identifies errors automatically. It recognizes new devices. It eliminates complicated set of processes. It receives new functions at the touch of a button. And when businesses connect a new location, it's done in minutes. rather than weeks and not locally but globally, because software is also global. Once developed, we can deploy it worldwide. It makes the company more efficient at the same time. The digital customer contact is also more personal because we know our customers better, we create individual offerings based on data provided we have their consent. We do this using artificial intelligence. And if customers want, there's plenty they can sort out themselves using the app. At the touch of a button or buy an app on their cellphone. No matter what we do, it's driven by digitalization and better software. And as we are changing, we will continue to grow sustainably in the future. Despite inflation, ladies and gentlemen, despite supply chain challenges, despite the lack of expert, despite a threat of recession, we are confident, we can achieve even more for the business years, 2023 and 2024. Revenue is expected to increase again by an average of 1% to 2% each year. Adjusted earnings are expected to grow by 3% to 5% per year, EUR 40.8 billion for 2023. And with respect to free cash flow on the Capital Markets Day for 2024, we announced EUR 18 billion. For this year, we expect an increase of around 40% over EUR 16 billion. We expect this. And we expect adjusted earnings per share, which is particularly important for the dividend we expect for 2024 more than EUR 1.75. And for this year, we want to reach EUR 1.60. Dear shareholders, at Deutsche Telekom, sustainability is no passing trend. We have been acting sustainably for years. We do what we have to do. Maybe we are a bit conservative, but that's how trends work. Suddenly year end demand again. Look at our T-share, I'm happy that Deutsche Telekom stays true to itself. We connect people, we are grounded and decent and we look ahead with confidence. We don't cling to the path. We shape the future by deploying new technologies, by developing new skills, by trying new ways of working, in short, by taking a curious view of the world in which we live and in which we enjoy working. Sustainability, ladies and gentlemen, means never sticking with yesterday instead always working for tomorrow. Thank you. We won't stop.

Thank you, Hottges, for this excellent presentation. And comment that I was especially happy about the yellow phone booth. Not magenta, because we've got a joint past, and we are proud of past. And I also would like to thank the Board of Management and all the employees of Deutsche Telekom for their work. And I think this is also supported by you, by the shareholders here in this room. Well, if you start, as a Chairman of the Supervisory Board, you, of course, grateful if you see such an excellent company with such a great workforce and then it's easy to lead the Supervisory Board. So thank you very much. And this, ladies and gentlemen, now this brings to the report by the Supervisory Board and in the interest of the meeting time, I will keep it short. Please see the comprehensive report in the annual report. The Supervisory Board intensively supported the Board of management and the management of the business. We had 31 meetings in total, 7 plenary meetings, 1 off-site meeting for 1.5 years, 23 committee meetings. The attendance rate was 98%. The cooperation with the Board of Management has been excellent and based on trust. The high number of meetings ensure close exchange at regular intervals. The main basis for meeting the legal requirements with the oral and written reports provided by the Board of Management. The Supervisory Board discussed the current situation of the company in its meetings at a regular basis. The Board of Management always met its obligation to inform the Supervisory Board about important business transaction. The content and the scope of the report is fully met for given requirements. So we always got tentative reports, and I also had regular exchange with Mr. Hottges which is quite easy because we both live in Bonn. Based on its reviews and the auditor's report, the Supervisory Board came to the conclusion that there are no reasons to raise objections to the adequacy and effectiveness of the internal control system established by the Board of Management and the Risk and Opportunity's Management system. The business transactions and measures that the Board of Management submitted for approval in fiscal year 2022 based on the list of transactions, subject to codetermination were discussed and reviewed in detail and we then approved the measures suggested. The external auditor audited the financial statements and consolidated financial statements as well as the combined management report and gave an unqualified audit opinion. The Supervisory Board approved the financial statements and consolidated financial statements after its review in the meeting dated 22nd of February and the statements are thus adopted. The year 2022 was a year of many challenges and major success for Deutsche Telekom. It was, again, a record year. Let me briefly list the main focus points of the work of the Supervisory Board in the fiscal year. Of course, we dealt with the financial statements and consolidated financial statements. We also dealt with the business strategy and development in USA, including spectrum acquisition and capital allocation. And the implementation of the group's strategy was also always on the agenda. The market situation and also the financial situation and the debt situation, we dealt with this intensively. Then ESG, sustainability-related responsibilities in the company E for environment, S for social and G for governance. We, again, intensively discussed all the sustainability issues. As Mr. Hottges just described, this is a very important topic also for the supervisory report. Personnel matters, I will come back to this later on, but we have 3 appointments of [indiscernible]. Budget and Finance plan 2023 midterm plan for 2023 to 2026 and regulation in Germany was on our agenda. The impact of the global semiconductor and supply chain outages and subsequent activity. Divestment of the 51% share of GD Towers business in Germany and Austria to a investor consortium. And this was, of course, discussed both in the committees of the Supervisory board as in the plenary and we're happy with the measures taken. Foundation of a new joint venture on fiber rollout in Austria and realignment of the B2B business at T-Systems and Deutsche Telekom Deutschland. So very complex topics and very intensive discussions with the Board of Management. Now the situation and development of the company. Fiscal year 2022 proved to be another record year for Deutsche Telekom -- I already said, in spite of the challenges caused by geopolitical tensions, increased energy prices, high inflation and the COVID pandemic. Revenues increased by 6.1% to EUR 114.4 billion. The adjusted EBITDA after leases also saw a significant rise by 7.7% to EUR 40.2 billion. Net profit doubled to almost EUR 8 billion, and I think we can be very happy. The group is on a solid growth path. The operational business developed very positively in almost all areas. The year was characterized by the consistent execution of the group strategy and the continuous transformation of the company in times of digitization and technological change as Mr. Hottges just described. Fiscal year 2022 was exceptional in many respects. The Board of Management signed many transactions and the investment portfolio was further streamlined. In the U.S.A., as we just heard, the Board of Management managed to gain the control of the company in Germany and in Europe, the market position was further improved. With stable networks, the company made an important contribution to managing the diverse challenges in Germany and in Europe. I can't repeat it often enough. We all know how important stable networks are for the economy, for the industry and a successful country. The accelerated fiber rollout home-connected made an important contribution to Germany's future. But Deutsche Telekom reached its rollout target of another 2 million households to now 5.4 million households. All in all, Deutsche Telekom invested EUR 21 billion globally. And this is also repeating what Mr. Hottges already said, but it's important to mention the figure again. In Germany alone, the investment was EUR 5.7 billion. In spite of the challenging framework conditions, the company laid the foundations for future success. The excellent results confirm that the Board of management did a good job. I already thanked the Board of Management and the employees, but I also would like to do it now on behalf of the Supervisory Board. The fierce competition in the telecommunications industry and by Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon will remain challenging for Deutsche Telekom. While most of the telecommunications companies in Europe have difficulties to withstand the pressure Mr. Hottges already said that Deutsche Telekom has a better position than 3 major companies, and we are well positioned, with its strategy to develop Deutsche Telekom into the leading digital telco. The company is well prepared for the opportunities and challenges of the future. Based on the results achieved in fiscal year 2022, the Executive and the Supervisory Board suggests to pay a dividend of EUR 0.70 per share in line with the announced dividend policy. Now it's important to consistently execute Deutsche Telekom's strategy that was just described by Mr. Hottges in his speech. I'm confident that the Board of Management and the employees succeed in maintaining the strength of Deutsche Telekom in the future. This leads me to personnel matters. Ladies and gentlemen, we had some things to report in the Board of Management and in the Supervisory Board. First, the Board of Management. There were no changes at the management board level in the last fiscal year, which is a good sign because we have a stable management Board and 3 of the members of the Board of Management prolonged there contract. As already mentioned, Mr. Al-Saleh was reappointed for another term of office as Board member in charge of T-Systems, taking effect on the first of January 2023. In May 2022, we reappointed Dr. Illek for another term of office as CFO starting on April 1. And we finally reappointed [ Mrs. Lira ] with effect as of first November 2023 for another term of office as Board member in charge of Europe. I'm very happy that you stay with the company. And this also makes our work in the Supervisory Board easier. Yes, this is a well-deserved applause. And this leads me to the changes among the shareholder representatives in the Supervisory Board. We had the following changes in the fiscal year 2022. As you know, [ Mrs. Hessel ], [ Mr. Wintel ] and I myself were elected as members of the Supervisory Board during the lash shareholders meeting following the shareholders meeting, the Supervisory Board elected me as Chairman. Thank you very much. And I'm also happy to see [ Mr. Lenah ] who is my predecessor, which makes it also easier to see him here. Under the critical eyes of my predecessor, and I will listen to his feedback after the meeting. With today's AGM, the terms of office of Mrs. Margaret Sucala, [ Dr. Gunter Brownish ], and [ Mr. Harald ] will come to an end. And I'm quite happy that Mrs. Sucala and [ Mr. Kruger ] are ready to be reelected. We are proposing them. And we propose [ Dr. Reinhard Plus ] as a new member to the Supervisory Board. First Mrs. Sucala. She has been a member of the Supervisory Board since the 28th of September 2017. Until 2017, she served as a Board member of BASF SE. She holds several positions in various Supervisory Boards. Previously, she worked for Deutsche Bank Mobility and Logistics AG in Berlin. And she trained as a lawyer and has a very high expertise and experience in the fields of HR regulation and corporate governance and thus, she is well qualified for our Board. Additionally, she is an accepted expert in ESG matters. So I'm very happy, Mrs. Sucala that you intended your willingness to stay if you are elected. But I am confident that this will -- then Mr. Kruger, he has served on the Board since 17th of May 2018. He is the former CEO of BMW AG, has a lot of experience in top management positions, special knowledge in the fields of innovation management and technology make him an ideal member for our Board. Mr. Kruger studied Mechanical Engineering and graduated as an engineer. There he is, thank you very much Mr. Kruger that you also indicated your willingness to stay. The Supervisory Board proposes the reelection of Mrs. Sucala and Mr. Kruger by the AGM as we want to retain the expertise and experience. And this brings me to Dr. Reinhard Ploss, whom we present as a candidate for election today. He is a graduated engineer and the former CEO of Infineon SE, an excellent semiconductor producer. He has a lot of experience in top management positions and is an ideal candidate for Deutsche Telekom Supervisory Board based on his expertise, which has placed both at the national and international level. So well qualified. And now I would like to ask Mr. Ploss to briefly present himself.

Thank you very much, [indiscernible]. Ladies and gentlemen, a few facts were already mentioned. And in order to make it a little bit more tangible for you, I would like to tell you a little bit about myself. I spent 36 years working for Infineon. And I really started -- I really saw the big success of mobile communications, the dotcom boom and then the cruel end of the dotcom boom. I saw the change from mobile to smart telephony, the Lehman crisis and now also the change towards artificial Internet, the Internet of things, our -- which characterizes our life today, and you already heard a lot about this today. Of course, in this time, I was also changing from technology-orientated company to a systems-oriented company, and a company which was really defined by the benefit that we bring to society, something that we heard from Mr. Hottges today, an essential thinking about what is the real benefit that our companies think. And in our industry, it has been important to think about what will happen tomorrow. What will the future bring? If you see the disruptions in the supply chain, the dependence in the global footprint, then many things today cannot really change quite easily. So you have to really look into the future and predict what will come in the future. So I was very happy when Dr. Appel asked me whether I would like to join the Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom because here, many of these things, these topics come together, and I can only underline what Mr. Hottges said. Digitization is essential, but especially regarding benefits. We have to look ahead. And I hope that I can make a contribution with my expertise if you decide to elect me and this is really exciting because this is a topic close to my heart, and Deutsche Telekom is one of the companies. First of all, one of the most successful and valuable brands, but it's a company that can bring about change in Germany. A change in digitization, and this is very important for me, but it's also a very great pleasure for me because at the end of the day, I'm an engineer and I'm not only an engineer, but I also grew in the course of my career, and I know that it must be possible to take people in, to convince people of what is good and also to listen to people making suggestions how we can improve, and I would be happy to be a part of the future of Deutsche Telekom. Thank you.

Thank you to you, Dr. Ploss. I am very happy to see your willingness to take this office, and I hope that you will be successfully be elected because you would be really valuable for the Supervisory Board, and this is in your interest as well. He can really provide a lot of expertise, which is lacking at this level of the Supervisory Board. You'll find the CVs of the candidates in the invitation to today's shareholders this meeting and the CVs were also made available on the Internet. The selection of the candidate was based on the competence metrics developed by the Supervisory Board, ensuring that the essential fields of expertise are covered. All 3 candidates are well suited for the Supervisory Board based on their respective technical skills, please refer to the skills metrics in the documents presented for today's shareholders' meeting. And this brings me to the changes among the employees' representatives. As you know, Mrs. Spohr resigned from her office at the end of last year's shareholders' meeting, her successor was [ Mrs. Schekur ] as a deputy elected by the -- and she was elected by the AGM last year. Now I would like to thank [ Dr. Broiner ] who will resign as a member of the Supervisory Board at the end of today's shareholders' meeting for his valuable work for Deutsche Telekom. I had a good cooperation with [ Dr. Broiner ] here and at the Deutsche Post Supervisory Board. And so it is quite sad that he's leaving, but thank you very much for the excellent work you have done for our company. And finally, I already said this, I also would like to really thank all the Supervisory Board members for the constructive cooperation and for receiving me for welcoming here in the mid. Big thank you due to the support of the Supervisory Board, it was quite easy for me. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now move on to talk about corporate governance, which is also a very important topic. As published in the annual report, Deutsche Telekom has complied with the recommendations of the German corporate covenants code in 2022 since the submission of its declaration with the exception of recommendation C5. And in the current fiscal year, we again, comply with the recommendations with the exception of recommendation C5. Recommendation C5 states that the management board members of listed companies should not have more than 2 mandates as Supervisory Board members and other listed companies or similar functions and should not be chairpersons of listed companies. The principle underlying this recommendation is that each Supervisory Board member has to ensure that they have sufficient time to carry out their responsibilities. The reasons for the exemptions were already explained by Professor Lena in the last shareholders' meeting. If affects my double role as CEO of Deutsche Post and Chairman of Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom for a limited period. I can assure you that I have fully met my responsibilities as Chairman of the Supervisory Board since my elections. I participated in all meetings of the Supervisory Board plus almost all committee meetings. And I also took part in other meetings because I wanted to know what is happening in the company and gain a good understanding. I have intensively studied the corporate strategy, the business model and the challenges of Deutsche Telekom and had regular discussions with Mr. Hottges. And this meant that I worked more over the weekend than ever before, but it's a matter, of course, if you take the task seriously, and this is what I wanted to do. And we the end of the shareholders' meeting of Deutsche Post on the 4th of May, I will resign as CEO of Deutsche Post, so I shall focus even more on the position of Chairman of the Supervisory Board, and I hope that Mr. Hottges will not feel hindered by this. Well, the compensation system for the Management Board in 2022, the shareholders' meeting approved the remuneration system and the structure has not changed since we have submitted our report in the annual report. Ladies and gentlemen, please allow me to summarize my report on 2022 as follows. The Supervisory Board intensively supports the Board of Management on the basis of compliant and effective Deutsche -- corporate government. Deutsche Telekom is well lined strategically. It is clearly on a growth path operationally and it's well positioned. People always ask about the high indebtedness, but this is very much based on leasing liabilities. So the indebtedness is lower than shown in the KPIs. So you are really owners of a very strong financial company. I would like to again thank the Board of Management for their excellent work because they have laid good foundations to master future challenges. So this is my report as the Chairman of the Supervisory Board. Thank you very much for your attention.

I now call on agenda items 2 to 8. Please find a wording of these agenda items as well as the corresponding resolution proposals of the management in the invitation to the AGM published in the federal because with regard to agenda item 2, I would like to add the following. Within the framework of share matching plans, treasury shares, i.e., shares in the company were transferred to plan participants in the current financial year. As a result, the number of shares entitled to dividends, dividend-bearing shares has increased compared to the number on which the invitation was based. The Management Board and the Supervisory Board have therefore adjusted their proposed resolution on the agenda item 2 as announced in the invitation to the AGM for this case. The Board of Management and the Supervisory Board then proposed to resolve the net profit of EUR 6,699,750,283.04 generated in 2022 will be used as follows: Distribution of a dividend of EUR 0.70 per dividend-bearing NOPAT value share totaling EUR 3,482,722,242,030. And carrying forward the remaining amount to new account totaling EUR 3,217,028,040.74. The proposed resolution on the appropriation of net profit as adjusted and this way can be viewed on the company's website and at the speakers' registration counter. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to comment briefly on the resolution under agenda Item 7, Hereunder, an amendment to the Articles of Incorporation shall be resolved by which the Board of Management shall be authorized for a limited period of time to conduct the shareholders' meeting of DTAG as a virtual shareholders meeting. We've summarized the underlying considerations of the Management Board and Supervisory Board and Appendix 2 to the invitation to the AGM published in the Federal Gazette. Irrespective of our appreciation for a face-to-face meeting, such as the one held today, it is our wish that in the future, especially in the emergency situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has a flexible and digital instrument of action at its disposal in the form of the virtual format of the shareholders' meeting. This is also in line with Deutsche Telekom AG's position as a digital pioneer in the telecommunications industry. I am now announcing the current attendance, 5th of April in bond. At this AGM, we currently have EUR 3,696,880,292 dividend shares. This corresponds to the relevant amount that I just read or 74.14%. The numbers are now shown on the screen. The shareholder capital is shown here. We also had postal votes for 24,306,817 NOPAT value shares. They will also be taken into account when counting the votes later on. And this means that -- we have a total of 3,721,115,150 NOPAT value shares represented here, which corresponds to 74.62% of the shareholders' capital. Ladies and gentlemen, we now come to the general debate, which I hereby open with some organizational information. As Chairman of the meeting, I am also guided by the German Corporate Governance Code to ensure that an ordinary AGM ends after 4 to 6 hours at the latest. Especially if it's the AGM of a company managed as well as this one. With this in mind, I will ensure that today's AGM is completed swiftly. In order to do justice to this in the interest of all shareholders present, I would like to ask that the speakers take no more than 10 minutes for their speech of their questions. Previous experience here and that other AGMs has shown that 10 minutes is sufficient to deal adequately with even complex issues. And I hope that you will support this. However, I would like to emphasize that this is not yet a general restriction. I reserve the right to impose a formal general restriction on speaking and question any time, if necessary. However, the management Board will respond to the questions of a small number of speakers. In the interest of all shareholders and to keep the minutes the meeting focused questions with the same content from different shareholders will only be answered once in summary. I would like to ask shareholders who have a concern in their capacity as a customer of this company not to raise it in the general debate, but to contact customer service representatives for this purpose. Please contact the information desk in the foyer on the entrance level. In the interest of all shareholders, we will not answer questions that are not relevant to the agenda in the general debate, which brings me to our first list of speakers. And I would like to ask Mr. Henrik Schmidt, Ingo Speich and Henrik Pontén, as the first 3 speakers to come upfront. Mr. Schmidt, you have the floor.

Members of the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, My name is [ Henry Schmidt ]. I'm representing DWS, one of Europe's largest fund companies as well as our customers whose shares we are representing here. And I am glad that this year, again, we are having a face-to-face AGM, which means there is a direct exchange between management, the Supervisory Board and us, as shareholders. We are a long-term oriented investor and trustee, and therefore, such AGMs are of great entrants to us. And we are not the only ones to believe that face-to-face meetings are much better than virtual ones, I'm getting this impression when I'm looking around here. First of all I would like to thank all the members of the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management and a special thanks goes to all Deutsche Telekom employees who showed such a dedicated performance in the past year and therefore, made a major contribution to the record results that we are celebrating here today. Mr. Hottges, I would ask that you pass this on to your staff. The overall economic environment was difficult in '22, but still, it was a very successful year for the company and we very much welcome the major improvement in free cash flow and the outlook, EUR 16 billion we are hoping that next year, we will actually achieve that mark. However, the question is, there is still a high level of inflation. To what extent does that impact on your business? And what parts of the business are particularly impacted? And what countermeasures are you taking to deal with this? There are a lot of competitors in Europe who have risen their prices by now in order to offset the pressure on prices or higher cost. Deutsche Telekom strategy here. The investments in infrastructure have also increased considerably over the past few years. What are your priorities for '23 in this context and beyond? And what is your medium-term outlook. The sale of the 51% stake in Deutsche Fontem [indiscernible] has now been completed. The question is, what does this mean for the continued network rollout in Germany? And what are you going to use the proceeds for? You already well talked about the squaring of the triangle, so to speak, saying that you want to use them in a dedicated way, it would be nice if you could elaborate on that. However, what are the risks of the continued rollout of the infrastructure in terms of data security? And how does that transaction go together with your goal of establishing an Internet and cloud architecture, not just in Europe but also beyond. Don't you think that you are giving away too much control as a company here? What is the effect of the review of Huawei technology and what could be the financial implications, and this brings me to another couple of questions that also received a lot of media intention, namely usage of components of provider Huawei. Critical infrastructure naturally also includes telecommunications, and it's a declared goal that this critical infrastructure become safer against attacks from outside. And here, the player Huawei brings up certain questions. There is a contract between Telekom and Huawei that goes back to 2019. On the storage of the spare parts and what is the status of this contract? Was it automatically extended by 2 years? Was -- did the federal government know about this and did the Supervisory Board deal with this contract throughout the term of the contract. Is this contract with Huawei or with other providers still in place? Please tell us. Then the optical fiber rollout. This was also mentioned and over the past few months, there have been more and more reports about an overbuild of current infrastructures by Deutsche Telekom. And Mr. Hottges, you already mentioned that, but you might want to explain to us what kind of strategy the group is pursuing here. And against the backdrop of the higher costs. The question is if you believe that the cost will be shared with other providers or whether Deutsche Telekom intends to take on an even more active role? Which brings me to Gaia-X, which is something else that has been mentioned several times. The Gaia-X project is designed to improve data sovereignty and data security in Europe, and it's designed to make us more independent from what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic. However, it is still kind of a mystery. And nobody really knows what's behind it. Last year, we already asked a couple of questions about the progress made and Deutsche Telekom also has appointed Max Ahrens as the Chairman of the Gaia-X Supervisory Board. Then the T-Mobile U.S. The takeover of Sprint was successfully completed, and you now gained the majority in T-Mobile U.S. in fact, yesterday. Mr. Hottges, you mentioned that, and we would like to congratulate you on this because we believe that this important asset will continue to generate growth and will certainly also help us to improve the brand value of Deutsche Telekom even further. However, unfortunately, your U.S. subsidiary is also creating headlines in other fields, and that is specifically data security. According to an article from Handelsblatt, dated the 23rd of January. T-Mobile U.S. was struggling with the 8th hacker attack in 5 years. Data from 37 million customers were hacked as a result. So how do you respond to the increasing cyber attacks in the U.S. market? There have also been reports that U.S. subsidiary has not ratified the latest data protection regulations. Is that true? And if so, why? Is your Supervisory Board dealing with this issue, Dr. Appel. And when can we expect the situation to improve and how can the Board of Management ensure a better control, hacker attacks, cyber attacks and attacks on the cloud. From our point of view are the biggest risks in the field of telecommunications, also for us as customers. And therefore, this is something that the Board of Management should be responsible for directly. Talking about the dividends. It was a record year, and there is a record dividend. After EUR 0.64 last year, we can now look forward to a slight increase to EUR 0.70. However, measured against the improvement of 1.83 almost doubling the earnings per share. This is not really a great deal, is it? And you are not in line with the distribution quota of 40% to 60% of net income. So after a lot of mega years and given the current success, I think it would be time to share your success even more with your shareholders. Please tell us why you have stuck with the range that you've defined before? And are there any plans for share buybacks in the future? And how can you combine that with your goal of bringing net debt down? Which brings me to corporate governance. Dr. Appel, you gave us some ample information on this field. And as Chairman of the Supervisory Board, this is the first time that you are presiding over an AGM here. And I understand that you've attended more than 30 meetings -- well, you actually attended 23 meetings yourselves or various committees. We definitely condone that. It shows that you have a -- show a high interest in this company. Once you are leaving Deutsche Post as CEO, we will no longer have a problem with overboarding. By then, you will have even more time to spend with Deutsche Telekom. And it will be very nice if we could then find the time to continue our investors' dialogues that were once introduced by your predecessor Ulrich Lehner. As part of such an exchange, it would have been nice to talk about today's elections or to talk about the qualification metrics, which, to be quite honest with you, in its current form is not really meaningful. When you look at the information, you will find that the competence profiles are very complex. And there are like 30 different buzzwords on these competencies and it's very hard to understand. Overall, it would be much better for us if the individual competencies be allocated more clearly to the individual members. Maybe you could do that subsequently and tell us what qualifications have been derived from the competence profiles for what member of the Supervisory Board. For instance, who is mainly responsible for data protection, who knows the most about that and has expertise in this field. From our point of view, anyone holding a Supervisory Board mandate should know a lot about customer expectations, innovation, the telecommunications market and data protection. It is also quite striking that the Nomination Committee only held 2 virtual meetings at which they discussed the expiring to mandate. Mr. Kruger and Mrs. Sucala were 2 members mentioned here, and there's a new member, and we welcome that. But it would have been nice if we had received more information about that, for instance, Dr. Ploss, did you use any external consultants for that? And what were the results of your reviews. [ Dr.Bonish ], I would also like to thank you very much for your long-standing support of Deutsche Telekom, which has also been in vest of interest of our shareholders. We wish you all the best for the future once you've led the company and we'd like to thank you very much. And I think this deserves a round of applause. Unfortunately, however, we will not be able to approve the actions of the Board of Management today. Let me tell you why. We already critically remarked last year that the Audit Committee, Hazard Chairperson, Mrs. Coleman, who is not really independent. Mrs. Coleman, you've been a member of the Supervisory Board for more than 10 years, and that is the threshold for us by which you are no longer deemed to be independent. And it would be interesting for us to know when you intend to pass on the chair of this Audit Committee to somebody else. In addition, we believe there is still reason to be critical of the other mandates that you hold for instance, Citigroup Coca-Cola, Paysafe, there are other companies where you hold a Chair of the Supervisory Board, can you please tell us by what, by when you intend to resign from these mandates. Now let me talk about the changes in the articles of incorporation. Generally, we believe it's good that Deutsche Telekom decided last year that AGMs be held face-to-face again. It is different, isn't it, rather than on just meeting up virtually? And under Item 7, we will talk about amendments. And I think we need to look at them in a differentiated way. On the one hand, it's about the general authorization to hold virtual AGMs. But then there is also an amendment with regards to attendance of Supervisory Board members. On the one hand, we believe it's good that there is a 2-year time limit. It would have been even better if the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board had said to what extent they -- and how they intend to ensure that the shareholders' rights be complied with. And you also said that members of the Supervisory Board can attend virtual AGMs without the shareholders actually being present. And there seems to be no limit for that. We believe that shareholders are co-owners of the company, and that is good and important for us to meet up at least once a year physically. And it's important for you to actually be visible in a virtual format where you only see the Supervisory Board members on a screen that is kind of difficult. Now the problem is that these agenda items have been summarized under Item 7, and that there will be only 1 vote. Therefore, we will abstain on this item, even though generally, we could have supported this proposed resolution. So with the exception of the approval of the actions of the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board. And the other exception that I just mentioned, we will approve the other decisions proposed. And we support what has been proposed here, and we are looking forward to a continued positive trend of the company's share price, and we are now looking forward to the answers to the questions we just brought up. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Schmidt for your comments. Now Ingo Speich will be the next speaker followed by Henrik Pontén. I hope that you won't have to spend 50 minutes speaking just as a previous speaker. Please stick with the 10 minutes.

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Ingo Speich. I represent Teka investment, one of the largest investment companies in Germany from the savings bank, and we are representing 51 million telecom shares today. Ladies and gentlemen, I also would like to start my speech with a great phrase. Phrase, because you have a face-to-face meeting here going on today and the Board really set a new standard. And we thank you very much for this. Please also hold it up for the coming years. Ladies and gentlemen, after 2 decades, Deutsche Telekom is star again for the shareholders best value development among companies in 2022, and you also developed better than the stocks -- the communication index by more than 30%. Mr. Hottges, you managed to get the company back on track and the enthusiasm of the management team now also reached the customers. Focus on the stable markets in Germany and the U.S. is bearing fruit. You don't have many adventures in strange regions. And you focus on your core business, and this is something that the stock exchange is also honoring and the T share is, again, a high-quality share. We are happy about the share price development. The dividend is also quite good, but more would be also good for the coming years, as we already heard. But if you look at the cash flow for the coming years, then the dividend seems to be quite meager. And also the development in the United States does not reach out to the shareholders here in Germany, T-Mobile U.S. doesn't pay a dividend, buy back shares, but this does not help us as telecom shareholders. At the end of the day, we also have to ask ourselves what is the share in T-Mobile U.S. that Deutsche Telekom wants to have at the end of the day. And you also have to provide some information on SoftBank and your policy there. Deutsche Telekom will have to invest billions in the U.S. in the future, and this money is not available to the shareholders here in Germany. So please be careful and also make sure that you create value for the shareholders of the T share. Mr. Hottges, what can we do in order to make sure that the dividend rises fast and that people are also benefiting from the developments in the United States? And you are also in the Board of T-Mobile U.S., what are your demand from management and when will you finally get a dividend there? We can see excellent developments on the other side of the Atlantic, but we now also see some uncertainties in this country. Operationally, the best network and high customer satisfaction is moving in the right direction. But the cable companies are getting more and more aggressive on the basis of prices and the success story might come to an end very soon. So we hope that it's not only for a short period to come. How can you make sure that you are successful in the long run, will you need more investment in the future? And what are you thinking about the competitive situation in the United States? What are you doing in this respect? Let's move on to Germany. The capital market of course, watches fiber rollout and the costs linked to it. In 2022, you increased the speed, and you are optimistic for this year. Are you happy with the current speed? Can you also control costs in a good way? The operational business is without any problems, but the competitors make your life easy. Will the change in Vodafone's Management Board now may give you the chance to also do more and will you be able to increase prices again. Deutsche Telekom is now feeling geopolitical risks based on their supply chains, the use of electronic components of Chinese manufacturers is getting more and more difficult? And is it possible to change your Y components in the critical infrastructure? What would be the cost involved? And how far do you expect sanctions by the United States if the geopolitical tension increase? The [indiscernible] was good to sell, the sell towers. It gave you a lot of money. We can only hope that the contracts are water tight. It should not be a boomerang coming back to us and having a negative impact on the long-term strategy. What is your investment strategy with your 49% share? Do you see possibilities for consolidation in Europe? Do you want to have a higher share in towers in the future in 10 years' time? Well, we can see some difficulties in the balance sheet structure. You have a number of risks. In 2022, the net debt was EUR 142.5 million. And this is EUR 10 billion more than level in 2021. Here, you have to act very carefully, otherwise, this toxic topic can impact your growth strategy. You have to reduce debt -- regarding the debt ratio, including leases, you want to be at 2.25 to 2.75 multiple of the EBITDA. And if this is achieved, then you can also buy back shares, and this can be a positive catalyst for the share price. When do you plan to buy back shares? Or do you rather want to use this for dividends? What are your plans regarding debt, including growth strategy regarding fiber-to-the-home, 5G expansion and investments into T-mobile U.S. You also have risks regarding the goodwill. You are in the ranking in the [ DUCs ] and you have more than EUR 20 billion of goodwill, and this is simply too high. The ESG aspects are aspects which are also taken into account in impairment tests nowadays. And how far do you take it into account in your goodwill calculations? And how far do you expect negative impact by a new environmental law in Europe? And what -- and how far are you linked to the Paris climate go? Well, Deutsche Telekom has a new ambitious sustainability strategy, and we welcome this. But now the employees also have to back up the strategy, can you already report the first success. Further improvement potential is also available regarding the transparency and the weighting of sustainability goals and we would like to see this reflected in the compensation. Ladies and gentlemen, let's move to the agenda. We are against Item 7 of the agenda. The changes of Section 14, 15 and 17 of the Articles of Association. The periods are too long, and they are going beyond what we would like to see for a shareholders meeting. As you already stated in the invitation, you want to open up to new digitization and you want to be a pioneer. We have an idea that is already successfully implemented in other countries. If you want to have a virtual shareholders' meeting, then our favorite is hybrid meetings where the shareholders can decide whether they would like to join in person or not. Last year and today, here in [ Born ], you show that such decision is not really necessary. So please take to the face-to-face meeting because shareholders are not just one stakeholder group, but they are the most important stakeholder group in the company. And this is something that was also reflected in the formats of the meetings. For all the other items of the agenda, we will support the motions or the proposals for the resolution. We wish you a great deal of success and we are looking forward to face-to-face or hybrid meeting next year. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Speich. Now we'll have Mr. Henrik Pontén from Union Invest, then we will have the first round of answers. And in the second round of speakers, we'll have Fredrick Benkendorf for [indiscernible] the first speaker. But first, Mr. Pontén, please.

Yes. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Henrik Pontén, and I am responsible for Union investment for the topic, sustainability and active investors, and we are one of the big shareholders of Deutsche Telekom, and we are representing the interest of 5.8 million shareholders. Mr. Hottges, with the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile, you really made a great year and that you are now really playing an important role in the United States really make the T share one of the champions in the chairs in Germany. Thank you very much for this. The total earnings based on dividends and share price development was plus 33% in recent months. The [ DAX ] only had plus 6% in the same period, and the entire earnings in the European telecommunications sector was even negative. You also focus on the interest of the shareholders in the format of the shareholders' meetings. And as the only [ DAX ] company, you were courageous enough last year to have face-to-face meeting. Now some companies followed you, and this shows that you set the right example. Thank you very much for this as well. Mr. Hottges, the development of the T share is bound or is linked to the development of the U.S. business, 2/3 of the revenues and half of the profit is earned there. And the biggest risk for telecom shareholders from our point of view is restriction of the competition in the U.S. mobile market. What do you think about this risk? And what are the precautions that you are taking Mr. Hottges? What are the risks based on the use of worldwide technology because the government now also takes measures, telecom needs Chinese technology and American customers. How can you bring this together? What is the role Deutsche Telekom will play in the European consolidation developments, what countries are you focusing on? What are your priorities regarding debt reduction, investments and dividends, Mr. Hottges. I heard your explanation on the trilemma and the triangle or the square. So perhaps you can give some more information and shed some more light on this. How important is your business and your in your home country, Germany, compared to the United States where you have the highest growth rate? Ladies and gentlemen, as a sustainable investment company, we mainly focus on ESG-related criteria. Regarding a sustainable transformation and we measure companies based on this, Deutsche Telekom has made a lot of progress in the recent years. And in your speed, you focused on energy efficiency and circular economy, and you gave 6 hypotheses explaining in great detail that you are not only successful now, but that you are also willing to continue on this growth path. And we can only support you. This is not just a fashion trend. Now this is a mega trend, which is here to stay similar to digitization. But ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately, there are a number of governance deficits, and this brings me to our plans to vote. We will vote in favor of the approval of the activities of the Management Board, not however, for the Supervisory Board because of the Audit Committee, Mrs. Coleman, my colleague, Mr. Schmidt already mentioned thi. Mrs. Coleman you have been in the Supervisory Board since the -- since April 2012, and you can no longer deemed independent, and we will also vote against Item 7 on the agenda because there are no further explanations under which conditions the Board of Management would like to use the opportunity to have a virtual shareholders' meeting, and you don't have any written explanations on how you want to design virtual meetings in the future. And we also think that the physical presence of Supervisory Board members is necessary on the day of shareholders meeting. Also, with the compensation report under Item 8, we will reject, but we agree to all the other items on the agenda. Let me end with a question to you, Mr. Hottges and Mr. Appel, We, as Union Investment represents 5.8 million customers. But what are these customers? The customers are the center of our society. They are in the midst of our society. And here, it's difficult to explain that we are paying salaries of more than EUR 9 billion, which then later on for 2 more years are increased in the double-digit area. If you look at the compensation of your competitors? Will this be sufficient in order to also get the support of the population, the mid of our society? This is a question that I would like to address to you.

Thank you, Mr. Pontén, then we will have the first answer. And after the answers, we will first have Mr. Fredrick Benkendorf for DSW and then [indiscernible] for SDK. Mr. Hottges, over to you.

Thank you, Mr. Appel, and thank you very much for your nice words. I would like to thank you on behalf of the entire workforce. Question regarding the shares of DFMG Digital Bridge and Brookfield. Well, by selling our cell towers in Germany and in Austria, they were part of the package. We do not see any impact on data security. The sale divestment was only for infrastructure, passive infrastructure. This is the towers and the antennas. It's not the active technology, which is owned by Deutsche Telekom. The so-called backbone network, the antennas, the links of the sites are always under the control of Deutsche Telekom and are not owned by a third party. Mr. Schmidt, you also asked about the priority for our infrastructure investments in 2023. In the group, all in all, we expect a reduction of investments from EUR 21 billion that I mentioned before to EUR 16.8 billion, always excluding spectrum because spectrum is not coming every year, but the EUR 16.8 billion result, mainly result from the integration of Sprint in the United which is now mainly concluded, and we had enormous one-off investments in recent years. And in parallel to this, we also have accelerated the rollout of 5G in the United States, which is now getting back to normal. So investments in Germany and investments in Europe will remain at the high level of recent years. The investment volume in the United States, however, will go down. The goal is always to ensure technology and market leadership in the individual markets, and you already saw the free cash flow figures. Mr. Schmidt, we do not expect any impact of this sale of our seller portfolio in Germany and Austria on our Internet and cloud architecture. The sale is only -- the sale of passive infrastructure. This is similar to the premises or the hardware or hardware that we are selling. So software, cloud and all the other services are still under the control of Deutsche Telekom. Then you asked about Gaia-X. And as an active member of Gaia-X, Deutsche Telekom is committed to the development and implementation of the European cloud and data sovereignty. This is the target of the Gaia-X initiative, especially the development of connectors for Catena-X, one of the lighthouse projects was promoted by us. Catena-X, well, Gaia-X is a concept which is operationally implemented in the form of projects and Catena-X is one of these projects. Catena-X is the sovereign platform for the data exchange in the automotive industry. We are 1 of 28 founding members in the operating company, and we are in both here and T-Systems make sure that we link companies in data rooms based on European standards. It's mainly about the value chains of automotive companies. And this will, for example, help us show the CO2 footprint. In the same way, we also are investing into another platform. And this is manufacturing X. And here, we have a huge product presentation during the [ Hanover ] Fair. The approach while we are getting involved here, it's based on the demand for scalable data management solutions, the major cloud supplies established this on the market and under the European, and we need to have them running under European data security rules, which means that the data has to be in Europe and not based on American cloud providers. This is the background of the Gaia-X initiative. And you also asked about our fiber rollout. And here, especially the general over build. So we are building everywhere, not only in regions where the demand is highest in the cities, but we are also building in rural areas. And by 2030, we want to have 30 million households supplied with fiber connections. And as I already mentioned, this includes partnerships, for example, with GlasfaserPlus, our joint venture. We will be very pragmatic in this sense. Some of the partnerships that we established, we are building together with the competitive in other areas, we are doing this alone. The overbuild, ladies and gentlemen, the overbuild now effects 2% of the entire activities of Deutsche Telekom. I do not want to say that people are likely exaggerating this topic, but it's only a fraction of what is happening right now. We are saying in areas where we overbuild, we either do not get access to the infrastructure of the competitor or the conditions were so bad, so poor that it makes more sense to have our own rollout activities. It can't be that we just let our customers down and allow our competitors to cherry pick only roll out the network wherever they can make a lot of money, whereas customers who today are using copper and DSL don't have access to a state-of-the-art infrastructure. In this case, and only in this case would we also accept an overbuild, meaning that we are overbuilding our competitors' infrastructure. But this, it's just a small minority, and it is not actually our goal because we want to support our customers as quickly as possible. And wherever we don't have direct access, we will resort to overbuild. Mr. Schmidt, you talked about the data protection regulations. There are binding corporate rules, which were not designed by T-Mobile U.S. itself. T-Mobile U.S. is an independent listed company in the U.S., which means that they are taking their decisions on the Board of Directors independently. The Board of Directors only acts on behalf of T-Mobile US. If the Board of Directors there decide that it is not in the vested interest of the company and its shareholders to be the only telecommunications company in the U.S. to become subject to European data protection laws in addition to U.S. data protection laws, then this is to be accepted. We can't change that or overrule it. Of course, we are making some pressure that standards be increasingly standardized, but this also requires a political solution. Then you asked about the data security program at T-Mobile U.S. Let me just say this. Yes, there were 2 incidents where the systems were hacked, which is annoying. And we've set up special committees to look into that. We are discussing things at length with our security experts at Deutsche Telekom, and we are currently establishing a security program, which goes way beyond what is in place at T-Mobile U.S. today. And this will be monitored continuously by the Supervisory Board and the Board of Management. We want to make sure that our data protection regulations also apply in the U.S. for our customers. Then you asked about Huawei. We are not aware of any intention to change the legal framework. Therefore, we cannot comment on any potential financial implications because this would depend on a variety of different factors. We are meeting our own legal obligations. You asked about an automatic extension of the Huawei contract dating back to 2019. Well, our supplier contracts are handled in line with the business continuity requirements of our industry, which means that there is the possibility of extending contracts automatically. But such contracts are a matter to be handled by the company itself. Not the German government, which is why we would not discuss it with the German government. The Supervisory Board of Deutsche Telekom also has 1 member representing the German government. And hence, the German government was informed whenever there are problems in terms of the resilience of our networks, we are discussing that on the Supervisory Board and are introducing relevant measures. Then you asked about contracts with providers of critical infrastructure and the supply of spare parts. All that is handled as part of standard requirements in our industry, and we have relevant contracts in place with all our suppliers. It was not a specific Huawei contract. Then you asked about the Huawei contract dating back to 2019. As an operator of critical infrastructure, we need to meet certain legal requirements in terms of the availability of our network infrastructure. Incidentally, at the end of 2019, when COVID-19 was looming. We asked ourselves, what's going to happen if there is a lockdown across the board. And as a result, we made spare parts available from our warehouses in order to also survive a long-term lockout. And our network proved to be much more resilient than that of other network providers. And one of the reasons was that we made the necessary resources available, including spare parts that were needed for the continued operation of our network, ensuring such supply it was very important, and we manage it very successfully. You asked about measures taken by T-Mobile U.S. to fight cyber attacks. I already answered that. We put a new security organization in place. And we have set up various in-house committees in order to improve IT security and network security. We also put in place [ Max Zeba ] as the main person in charge of IT security. In addition, we brought in KPMG for the economic aspects and Mandiant, which is one of the world's largest security companies. They will now help us to detect additional IT risks to test our network and to then derive additional measures. We are right in the midst of the implementation of this comprehensive program, and we are investing 3-digit -- millions of euros in the 3-digit range.

Thank you. Let me now answer Mr. Schmidt's question on the sale of the majority of our tower business and whether this had any negative implications for the network rollout. As part of this transaction, we concluded a long-term master lease agreement over more than 10 years. And this describes how we want to continue with the rollout, and there are no negative implications. Then there was a question, what are we doing with the proceeds? This money will be used to reduce net debt. Second question, how are we handling price changes in Europe? Generally, we always make such decisions depending on the relevant market position and depending on the situation of the relevant NetCo. So far, there were mainly price adjustments in Austria and the Czech Republic and 2 other countries within Europe. And yesterday, we announced that in the fixed network in Germany, prices will also be adjusted by EUR 3, and that refers to the S2L product range. Then you asked about the impact of inflation on our business. Basically, there are 3 major factors. First of all, energy costs; secondly, staff costs; and thirdly, interest expenses in the future. In Germany and in the United States, there is a fairly moderate trend because our supply contracts on renewable energy have largely been hedged. And in the U.S., in particular, we have -- there was a wage increase. But at the same time, there were some staff reductions, and that mitigated the effect. In Europe, we had a bigger effect, especially in terms of energy and staff. And that is the reason why the Europe segment was first to increase prices in order to fight inflation, which brings me to interest expenses. Mr. Schmidt, you said that our net debt amounts to EUR 142 billion, and we have EUR 70 billion of interest expenses in the United States and the remainder in Europe. We have a fixed interest rate, which means there is no risk attached to that. And therefore, we don't -- we're not expecting our interest expenses to rise. In Europe, we had a variable interest rate of around 50% and the fixed interest rate of 50% as well. And in the long run, we will reduce our exposure. The additional interest expenditure outside of the U.S. is at around plus EUR 200 million. Generally speaking, we are also introducing countermeasures to fight inflation. For instance, we cut our electricity consumption in Germany by 11%. And we are concluding long-term power contracts to hedge our prices in the long run. Right. Now, Mr. Schmidt, let me answer your questions. First of all, on a general note, I would like to thank you for the information you provided. This qualification matrix is new, and we appreciate your input on how to improve further. Secondly, yes, I will be available for a chat. I think I have to arrange a date with Investor Relations. And I'll be pleased to organize such a meeting. I think it's an important task to discuss the corporate governance issues that you mentioned directly with investors. So thank you for your offer to arrange such a meeting will definitely make it possible. Now to your questions, you said please explain what specific requirements were derived from the confidence profiles of the individual Supervisory Board members, who is a main expert in terms of data security, et cetera. So let me come up with a more general answer here. There are several dimensions. In terms of financing, we have a lot of qualifications. We have 5 former CEOs on board, who obviously know a lot about that. Then we have several Supervisory Board members, Mrs. Kalman, Mr. Vince and Mr. [ Bonik ] and others who also used to work in the finance sector. And therefore, we are very well prepared here. In the strategy sector, we have also 5 members who are experts. ESG is becoming ever more important, and this place is a special expertise of Mrs. Sukal. But it is also responsible for anyone bearing general responsibility on our committee. Then data protection, Mr. Schröder has been one of our leading representatives here. In fact, he even published books on the subject, and we've set up a so-called Data Privacy Advisory Board, unlike a lot of other companies and we have a lot of finance experts, who have also treated data privacy as a very important asset for years. So we do have the right expertise on board. But like I said, if this has not been made sufficiently transparent, then we will do that later on. Then you asked about whether we use external consultancies? Yes, we did. How does this work? Mr. Höttges and myself talk about this sort of thing, of course. Of course, the CEO cannot pick a Supervisory Board member for that. But I do know quite a few people. So we set up a long list, then the Nomination Committee drafted a short list based on that. And then relevant talks were held and ultimately, I think, it was Mr. [ Hein ], who was my favorite. So we came up with the right candidate right from the start. And I think we now have someone on board who's got -- that's Mr. Ploss with the right expertise, not just in Europe, but also in the U.S., and we appreciated that he was willing to join us immediately subject to your approval today. The next question was how did the nomination committee deal with defining the profiles? I think I already answered that. We looked into the members technology expertise, U.S. expertise in connection with T-Mobile U.S. Then to me, personally, it was a very important how much people know about that. I'm a CEO, myself and, therefore, it was important to find a successor here. Then we have a list of criteria. We identify candidates. You talk to them, some of them say they're interested, others not. And then ultimately, we came up with what I just explained. Then you asked, are there any intentions of Supervisory Board members to resign from their mandates, and you said that you are not going to approve the actions of the Supervisory Board. Well, I myself have gained insight into 5 companies, Deutsche Post DHL, the finance and audit committee there, for instance, I've been a member of 4 committees at Post Bank as the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Adidas, Fresenius and now at Deutsche Telekom. And I can tell you that Mrs. Kollmann, correct me if I'm wrong. I can tell you that Mrs. Kollmann is doing a great job as the Chairwoman of the Audit Committee. Of course, there are formal criteria to be met. But the way Mrs. Kollmann has managed this committee and looking at the questions that she has asked, have made it very clear that at least completely independent. I know that there are formal criteria that have to be met. But I know what makes for an independent and a dependent Supervisory Board member. I can tell you that Mrs. Kollmann comes up with tricky questions. Mr. Illek is not always amused. And Mrs. Kollmann is very independent. Then as a result, we put an excellent system in place that makes it possible for us to discuss critical issues that are of great importance to the company. So maybe some formal criteria are not met. I do understand that, but I can assure you that from my point of view, and I'm saying this against the backdrop of the experience that I have gained in 5 companies. Mrs. Kollmann is doing a great job, and there would be a shame, if you failed to approve the actions of the Supervisory Board just because you do not support Mrs. Kollmann. And well, there are no plans to -- for any Supervisory Board members to resign from their mandates in the short run or in the medium-term. But of course, the Supervisory Board will keep track of that. We'll discuss it at regular intervals. And when the time comes, we will inform you about any new developments. Are there any further answers? Apparently not. Then let me continue with the second question from Frederik Beckendorff for DSW. Then another, then 2 more speakers that will be shown on the screen here before long. So first of all, Mr. Beckendorff then, Mr. Hanselman and then Mr. [ Bush Kevin ].

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Frederik Beckendorff. And I'm here on behalf of those shareholders who are exercising their voting rights on behalf of DSW, who have transferred their rights to us. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm particularly pleased that we can hold this AGM and bond today at a physical event. And Deutsche Telekom is now becoming a pioneer in terms of making it possible for its shareholders to participate directly in the company's success. In fact, you are best in class. We would like to thank you for that, and we would like to encourage you to continue along the same lines in the next couple of years.

Ladies and gentlemen Deutsche Telekom, once again, achieved record results in the past year in 2022. In addition, you made some very important strategic decisions on your way to becoming the leading digital telecommunications company. First and foremost, the sale of the 51% stake in GD Towers to DigitalBridge and Brookfield. This as of the first of February '23, and it meant that you received EUR 10.7 billion in cash. And this will have a positive impact on the reduction of your net debt by the end of the first quarter. When you announced this transaction, Mr. Hottges, you also said that you want to become the kingmaker of the consolidation of the towers business in Europe. Please elaborate on that further? You now sold our 51% stake in GD Towers. And you said that in the medium-term, you might want to regain control in this company. Do you think this is really an option? If so, how? And then let's take a look at the U.S. on the side of the Atlantic at T-Mobile U.S. Last but not least, as a result of the most recent share buyback program and also taking account of T-Mobile U.S. treasury shares, you now achieve your goal of becoming the majority stakeholder last night. There are call options in T-Mobile U.S. To what extent are you intending to exercise such call options, some of them fixed other variable? And are you prepared for any changes with regards to Sprint? Back to Germany. In Germany, the rollout of the optical fiber network has picked up speed. And before long, you will be able to cover 10 million households. However, capacities in the building sector are scarce and costs are rising. Actually, the costs are at around EUR 1,000 per FTTH household. How can you cope with that? And how has so-called take-up rate developed compared to your competitors since last year. What are the biggest obstacles to a better market penetration of the optical fiber network? The current transformation program at T-Systems has been in place since 2018. On a non-adjusted basis, T-Systems continues to be loss-making and adjusted for special factors, the EBITDA AL margin, well, is supposed to be 9%, but I think will be very hard to achieve or very slowly. And I have a hard time not believing that this business is being taken apart. T-Systems is trying to establish itself as a partner to big companies with T-Systems Security and T-Systems Media Solutions have integrated into the German business. According to your annual report, Mr. Al-Saleh, the Board member responsible for this business has been reappointed. And the question is, if you were to leave the company, what would be -- he be paid as a compensation, if his Board mandate were to become obsolete? Is it fair to assume that T-Systems in the long run will no longer be an independent member of your Deutsche Telekom portfolio? For years and years, companies such as Amazon, Meta and others have been responsible for more than 50% of global data traffic, and there have been more and more requests to make sure that these companies have a larger share of the cost burden. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. One of the speakers said that we need to put in place fairer model for cost sharing for the network rollout. Do you think that the so-called over-the-top players will have to get a fairer share of cost? And how will this be implemented?

Before I talk about today's agenda, I would like to also take a look at the good share price development. Well, in 2023, after 2 decades, we could reach EUR 20, but now the Telekom share even reached EUR 22, and this without any problems. What do you think is the reason for the positive development of the T-Share in recent months? And what do you think would be a fair value of the T-Share? Ladies and gentlemen, let me now talk about the agenda of today's meeting. You are suggesting a share of EUR 0.70. And based on the dividend policy, 40% to 60% of the adjusted -- that should be distributed. We have the 1.83, and this means that you only distribute 38%, there should have been more for us shareholders. And you are saying that the many positive effects had to be taken out and the dividend suggestion is based on the sustainable result of EUR 1.51. And this means there is a distribution of 66%. We have discussions like this in previous shareholders' meetings. Please explain to us in how far you now changing the dividend policy again and which effect will be not considered in recent years? One-off effects were taken into account in the calculation last year, what were the -- what was the impact? And what is then the fair percentage of the distribution? Mr. Hottges, you wrote a letter to the shareholders, and you promised that they could rely on Deutsche Telekom in difficult times. But reliability also means that you should not any escape routes in order to reduce the dividends, in order to make sure that it seems to be in line with dividend policies. And to be honest, you shouldn't need to do these tricks. The candidates under Item 6 for the elections to the Supervisory Board, we fully support these candidates. And we are very happy that with Dr. Ploss, another former CEO of a very successful Dutch Group is willing to work in our Supervisory Board. There's no talk again -- talk about having a soft bank presentative in the Supervisory Board. And he hoped that governance requires a competence matrix. You have presented a competence matrix based on the self-assessment of the candidates and the Supervisory Board members. I can only congratulate for this. I have never seen such a competent Supervisory Board before, but there still is a question, and this is whether the form in which you show is that you do not show any sub competencies whether this is really meaningful and shows the true competencies of the Supervisory Board members. So I would like to see individual information on the individual members of the Supervisory Board, so that we can be really sure about the competence and expertise. Then Item 7 virtual shareholders' meetings, there should have been 3 motions for the resolution so that we could vote on them separately. First, in the reasoning of the motion on 7A. It's not quite clear with the authorization for virtual meetings. It's not a step back from face-to-face meetings. So on which concrete conditions do we want to use this authorization? And how do you design -- do you plan to design these through? How do you want to make sure that you really protect the shareholders? And also, how can you make sure that any restrictions to the shareholders are ruled out under 7C. We asked to say that the shareholders are restricted in follow-up questions in a virtual meeting. And here, we've got very high doubt. I already mentioned that you are best-in-class in the Dutch right now, and I hope you will stay best in class. Under Item 8 on the agenda, the management and Supervisory Board again present the compensation report to be approved. The compensation report for 2021 was received approval of 21.39% last year, but then you are writing in your reasoning that it's necessary to make any changes in the remuneration report. Taking into account the structure of the shareholders and taking into account that the federal government also has a lot more insight into the remuneration. I doubt this statement. Based on new analysis, what was the result of the voting last year? Why did you have so many no vote objections last year? And why do you still continue to have these high remunerations, although it would be much easier to present a better overview of the remuneration and how it is composed of? And how far can -- do you have target values and you've got third waiting for the financial results, please explain the changes made last year for the target compensation for the Board of Management and which rate -- resulted in decrease in the variable components? And so ladies and gentlemen, some comments on the current business year. For 2023, you are planning further growth, and this is in line with your midterm forecast until 2025. Now we have seen that you are always fulfilled or over fulfilled your goals. And now the forecast for 2023 is rather conservative? Is there room for improvement? And then how far do you think that the capital market would be disappointed, if you do not overfulfill your targets next year? And now finally, I would like to thank all the employees and the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board for the work done in 2022, and I would like to wish you all the best of success for 2023. Thanks for your attention.

You talked a little bit too long. The other speakers were much better in keeping to the times. And now I would like to hand over to Mr. Hanselman from SDK. I would like to ask him to keep in the time allotted.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, dear members of the Supervisory Board and the Management Board, my name is [ Ryan ] Hanselman, and I am the speaker of SDK one-off here, large associations of shareholders going to all the shareholders meetings. And I would like to also thank all the shareholders who trust in us and gave us their confident. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very happy that we have a face-to-face shareholders' meeting today. And at the same time, I have to deplore that for many other companies, this is not the case. And I'm very happy also about the figures that you presented because this shows a great success of the company plus 6% in revenues, EUR 114 billion, an improvement of free cash flow by 30% to 113. And the adjusted share price, 183 adjusted 151. This is quite pleasant and as good as the figures seem at first glance, I also have to say what does this mean for the dividend. On the one hand, we do see an increase in the dividend in absolute figures to EUR 0.70, and they are tax-free with all the implications this half. But on the other hand, we also have reduction in distribution of profits. 46% of the adjusted earnings. And if I now take a look at the IFRS results, it's only 38%. Please explain why you only want to pay 47%, staying in the low end of your target corridor of 40% to 60%. What are the strategic motivations and what guidance can you give us for the coming years?

The business development. Well, this is now very much dependent on the development in the United States, T-Mobile U.S. accounts for more than 60% of revenues and 60% of earnings as well. The U.S. business used to be a problem tile, but now have become the motor of the success of the company. Those who have followed Deutsche Telekom for a longer period of time, however, know exactly that the VoiceStream acquisition at the time, very expensive cost us a lot of money and also a lot of nerves. But if you take this decision and if you decide to use the scale advantage of the United States, then coming you at the same time also have a high trading margin with Huawei products.

Well, I think this doesn't really fit together. And this is why I come to my second question. In view of the risk concentration regarding the earnings contribution of T-Mobile for the total group, is there really the possibility to stick to the business relations with Huawei? What are the risks regarding for the company based on this business relationship? And I especially would like to mention that you buy network components from Huawei. It's not just some hardware or some devices that you can then throw out easily and solve this problem. And there is a slightly different problem in the group as well. And its same procedure as last year or rather the same procedure as every year. Because again, you did not manage to have a realignment of T-Systems. And as you could read in Handlesblatt and management Margrethe, there is discussion about sale and Deutsche Telekom has to pay this burden. And without this burden, the business has low margins is high in workforce. And I think we are lacking the necessary size to participate in the market. And from an economic point of view, sticking to the company that does not really bring about a lot profit has more and more losses should no longer be part of the group. Wouldn't be the right thing to now draw a line and to really try and sell this subsidiary, does capital intensive infrastructure supplier has to afford such a company providing low margins and needing more and more restructuring over and over again? And apart from that, regarding T-Systems, I would like to know for what reasons last November, the sales attempts were stopped? Does -- do the Boards really think that the realignment of the company with some accounting trips in the balance sheet can really now manage a turnaround? Now about the sale or the divestment of the tower company. Well, you completed this divestment. And I could now say instead of selling T-systems, you are -- now selling your crown jewels. We've got 4.5 ROCE in the group. The contribution T-Systems made, well, is probably rather negative. The Tower company, however, provide the high value. And here you sell 51% of the voting rights. From an economic point of view, it's negligible indebtedness of EUR 142 billion -- EUR 142 million. It is rather negligible. In the carve out of the tower business, didn't you run the risk that you can no longer control the company and that you've got a higher technological complexity, can Deutsche Telekom afford to have a minority share and still participate in the asset? And also the net debt increased to EUR 140 billion. And we can see that more and more value is generated in the United States. Do you think that you also have to give more profit there? And I already mentioned ROCE, you use it to control the business at a ROCE of 4.5%. I cannot really see whether our company has really produced value last year. So perhaps you should also share some information on our capital costs? And finally, I would like to talk about the agenda. Here, we will follow the proposals made by the Board in most points regarding the approval of the activities of the 2 boards and also they suggest the proposals for candidates for the Supervisory Board. But Item 7 on the agenda is more complex, not only because several points are voted on at the same time, but especially as you are asking for an authorization for a virtual shareholders' meeting without providing a lot of information on the conditions when it should be possible -- whether this should only be possible if the government forces -- imposes this on you. So we will not grant you this, and we will not vote in favor of Item 7. Changes in the articles of incorporation for virtual shareholders' meeting can only be supported by us if it is done in emergency situations only because SDK says that virtual shareholders meeting that we had during the pandemic should not be a blueprint in order to reduce the share help the democracy. And especially in what we had this year, I just would like to remind you of TÜV and Siemens Energy, they raised some mistrust against the virtual shareholders' meeting. And so my final question to you is for what reason does the company want to pave the way for virtual shareholders' meetings? And do you really think that virtual meetings equal alternative to a real discussion with the shareholders in a physical meeting? Thank you for your attention, and I'm looking forward to the answer to my question.

Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Hanselman. And before we move to the answering of the first questions, we would now like have Mr. Michelle [indiscernible] and Martina [indiscernible] and then Professor [indiscernible], but first Mr. [indiscernible] please. Mr. [indiscernible], are you here? Apparently not. Now Professor [indiscernible], I just saw you. But probably you have left. So let's start with the answers.

Mr. [indiscernible], you had a question to Dr. Kollmann where you intend to waive part of your Supervisory Board mandates. I said how I assess her work and whether she would reduce and it's important that Mr. Colbert attended to all meetings of the committees of the Supervisory Board. So an attendance ratio of 100%, and Mrs. Kollmann does not intend to reduce her mandate never don't see why she should because she has duly fulfilled all her duties. I will ask in fact, he'd ask about our for our stake in T-Mobile U.S. First and foremost, yesterday, night, we achieved our goal to achieve the majority, but you know that a true up. So if the share price, which is a certain amount of soften will get certain instrument which is paid out in shares once we will have to pay this, we will have to buy a certain number of shares to keep the majority, and they're also participating for employees. So our target is clearly to keep a clear majority of T-Mobile U.S. to be able to exercise our voting rights with respect to majority and the Board and to keep control. If we will increase our share, we haven't decided yet. We will have to discuss this. But one thing is sure, if we take not part in the share buyback then our share will go up because we then shares will be bought back from minorities. When we will be part -- take part in the share buyback, we will get money then our share will remain the same, but then liquidity will come to us, which is as much is as valuable as a dividend paid from U.S. to Europe, which in text terms it is more attractive. And that is what the share buyback for us is the preferred program. I will -- we focus on shares on liquidity towards the parent company. Now the question on the share buyback program, there is one by T-Mobile U.S. with the total volume of $14 billion, which was published. That was the program for -- which was launched at the end of 2023. For 2023, it will end in September 2023. And the first part was paid out in 2022, $3 billion. In the first month of 2023, T-Mobile U.S. and bought back further shares on the market and the program was decided on that we were part of it, and we supported it, and which brought us into the position to achieve the 50-plus. From the point of view of Telekom with the share buyback program, we feel very comfortable. But as I explained, it gives us the opportunity to decide shares or liquidity for us, and how we will design this as of September this year will have to be discussed in our Board. We haven't yet decided it. You asked about the perspective for the dividend payment, so it's a good dividend payment. I agree with this. And that is for the business year of 2023 compared to the previous year. We increased it by 10%. This reflects the increase of sustainable adjusted profit. EUR 1.51, there were special effects of selling companies such as the T-Mobile Netherlands. If the dividend was paid out based on this high amount, then we would see a decline next year. And shareholder love to have a continuously rising dividend development. So we had a special effect look at the sustainable performance of the company. And based on that, our dividend payment policy, which has the objective to go up continuously that is EUR 1.51, so the adjusted figure is the basis for the dividend payment this year. And we want to achieve EUR 1.75 on -- this year, EUR 1.60. And that hopefully will make sure that the dividend will continue to have a positive development for shareholders. Christian to you.

Let me continue with debt and reducing that share buyback. And how do we want to invest in the future. It's -- these are several questions by various shareholders. And as [ Tim ] said in his presentation, we have a debt corridor, which we think as we were net debt should not exceed a factor 2.25 to 2.75 of the multiples of EBITDA and we have a debt ratio of 3.07. And because of the rising free cash flow for the EUR 5 billion, almost EUR 5 billion distribution is going at and by selling towers, we will further reduce our debt. The commitment, which we have given on the Capital Market Day that the 2.75 will release at the end of '25 and it's still our target and share buyback [ Tim ] just said something about the share buyback in the U.S. at DTAG level it's different. At DTAG level primary tool is to make our shareholders benefit from the growth is the dividend that we have a dividend policy. But nevertheless, which we certain forget, we have an authorization for share buybacks at the DTAG level, but haven't yet taken a decision yet. There is the option, which I think 1 or 2 years ago was approved at the AGM. How -- what we do with investments or strategy as we heard this morning will remain the same. We want to remain market leader, innovation leader in fixed and in 5G, consolidation. And we will continue to invest to make sure that we can remain market leader. The recline investments in the U.S. and residency is mainly due to the fact that the integration was [ Sprint ] and network level has been concluded that is why investment of EUR 14 billion in 2022 went down to EUR 10 billion in 2023. In Europe and in Germany, the investment level will be rather constant or going slightly up. And please take into consideration what's sold will be sold, then we will no longer invest there, and it will be part of OpEx. And now on financial liabilities and the structure and that has been answered. I don't need to repeat that. Now the dividend payment quota and that is taking up a [ Tim ] said what will the special effects, which brought us to EUR 1.83 to EUR 1.51. One was the T-Mobile Netherlands, so the contribution to the profit, and we had positive results of 2 fast [indiscernible] instruments, whether the call options and the [indiscernible] want the forward, we had the so-called held for sale effect, where I keep up depreciations, when I sell a business such as the towers, which have a positive effect on the result and with an effect of pricing interest rates. And also for the Brampton cases, so it could go -- we brought down the back, but had also had a positive effect, amounted to 32 effect. We that -- it has had anything to do with the operational effect. It's a negative effect. It will also be adjusted for. So if we have a negative contribution of financial effect, so it would bring up the EPS sustainable. So it's an thematically. If it's positive, we will take it out. And if it's negative, it will also be credited. So now Mr. [indiscernible] question with reflect to the agreeing with potential risk selling the majority of the towers, why didn't we sell everything is quite clear. We still believe in the category of Tower's business, and we want to participate in rising values, and that is why we continue to have 49% of the business, but we have long-term agreements, making sure that network -- build out and network modernization in particular in Germany, are being supported continuously to maintain our mobile market leadership in Germany. If there will be other effects in the European context, you know that individual tower businesses and the Europe segment were carved out. We will look at it if that will increase our value. We will look at it. Is there any -- has any decision being taken or no, that is not the case. And now the question on ESG, and in how far EU regulation has an effect on our performance and our profit and what will happen to our goodwill, such as our goodwill at the years? It has to pass an impairment has still there, has no impairment been -- impairment this year. We do this to impairment as a [indiscernible] auditor. And in this impairment, we carry out [indiscernible] with rising interest rates or lower EBITDA expectations are taken into consideration and that is why we do not see any risk that there will be a goodwill impairment. And the percentage is not that high, by the way. And the second aspect, the climate targets of the company and we are following the scientific and political framework. So we were approved that our climate protection target will contribute to the Paris Climate agreement and second into consideration of our planning. So that is still the part of our forecast, and our client request is expected.

Thank you. And with this Professor Strenger has returned and then Mr. Maximilian Abel. Next speaker Ms. [indiscernible]. And we will have a floor before and then Mr. [ Peter Osvaldik ]. Professor Strenger please.

No need to hurry. We've got plenty of time. Thank you, Dr. Appel. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Christian Strenger. I'm a private shareholder and Professor for corporate government at the Private University, Frankfurt School for Finance and Management, Director of the Corporate Governance Institute there. My words will focus today on good governance and the way in which you deal with essential issues. Today, it's true more than before that the duty is respected by the members of supervisory in particular by the Chairman and also by chairs of committees are of high relevance. First of all, however, Mr. Höttges, my compliments. You and your team are doing an excellent job. However, you also had this technical hiccup, and I had one myself. I wanted to read my speech on my iPad. But I didn't have any WiFi connection. There is WCC, but Deutsche Telekom HV 2023 WiFi wasn't there. And even your colleague at the information desk wasn't able to provide me with WiFi. So there's still room for improvement because you want to be sustainable. So I should have written every single paper actually, but okay. So we've learned our lesson. But first, on corporate governance. Simple things -- conflict of interest on Supervisory Board, an ongoing issue, very important, as we read in the management report there wasn't any in 2023, but we can also read if necessary, there will be a vote, probably it will be aligned with you, Mr. Appel. So what's the need for votes? And if so, what was the occasion and what was the reason? And second point, the only deviation on the corporate -- German corporate government codes, which is the buy-off of good governance. So the Board, so they would [indiscernible] in Germany, but you're much better than that you're not just administering things, but the Boards are given the reason that it would be more appropriate or duly proper to look at individual cases because then enough time would be available. Time enough is not alone, it's not enough. And probably you had enough time for meetings, but not to talk to the large German investor, you probably didn't have enough time. So you might not only have blaming to Investor Relations, but ask before and what comment. That is what usually new Chairman of the Supervisory Board do, so that they look what the situation is like and discuss or the proposals for election. And then Mr. Appel, you mentioned that this discrepancy, which concerns you was still valid? Does it mean that after leaving your [indiscernible] at Deutsche Plus, another member of the Supervisory Board or the Board of Management would give reason for a declaration of discrepancies. And the third question is for the nonfinancial declaration, slightly technical, but not quite that in view of the rising importance of sustainability will be decisive for comprehensive reporting to look at this, is the responsibility of the Supervisory Board. Unfortunately, it ordered only unaudit with a limited level of certainty. What does it mean? So we didn't see anything or nothing contrary to what we read there, but that is certainly not enough because the job is quite complex. Sustainability is very diverse and there are a number of rules and regulations. And that is why I think with the limited assurance, it's not enough, and I would recommend and would like to ask you, where is it not you would want to have a full audit by Deloitte this year. It's not yet compulsory, will only become compulsory in a couple of years, but I think that is problematic. And without a full audit, it shouldn't be done. I as a member of the Supervisory Board at the contrast to the auditors are not part of the company's auditors might have an off pace. They're always there and Supervisory Boards meet every now and then that may ask questions, but I think it would be better to have a full audit it might cost a bit, but so if you trust Deloitte to do that, and but is not the big problem in all auditing firms how to get the experts on board. So if you trust that I can do it. So please choose a full audit. And now my fourth and last point we are taking into consideration of sustainability in the variable compensation of the Board of Management. Mr. [indiscernible] mentioned it as well. It's not enough, I think, ESG Environmental, Social Responsibility and G for Governance. And there are only 2 measurable criteria in the bible for the remuneration of the Board of Management, the key performance indicators, KPIs. In the short-term, compensation is additive consumption and CO2. Certainly very important, but you could do more and even more importantly, that sustainability is a very long-term commitment. So it should be taken into consideration in long-term variable remuneration. Here, the definition is customer and employee satisfaction, which we had for a long time, which is certainly correct to do that, but it's not enough. Mr. Höttges rightly said, Social responsibility, the S and the G Governance could certainly be taken into consideration in a more clearer way for the remuneration of the Board of Management. So my question to you, Mr. Appel is, as you will have even more time for our Supervisory Board soon. Will you give this question of a clearer and better-defined remuneration matrix as key performance indicate and start looking into this in 2023? And with this, thank you very much for bearing with me.

Thank you, Professor. The next speaker is Maximilian Abel and then [ Florian Ela ].

Thank you. My name is Maximilian Abel. I represent shareholders [indiscernible] is here and with this fantastic to stop after 3 questions or 3 speakers, it will make organization easier before you will answer the questions announce this, then we will now thought here. As I'm not really important to be given so early the opportunity to ask my question. Thank you very much for that. And with this, I would like to underline what [indiscernible] said with respect to the questions of the 2 candidates of the Supervisory Board. And I was surprised to be called earlier. And -- well, what after more than 15 years, I wanted to thank Mr. Höttges. I was still a T-Mobile customer because I got a personal e-mail from him in which he said that he was sorry. And after a lot of discussions, Telekom was very generous and well, now thank you very much for it. And Mr. [indiscernible], you talked a lot. Unfortunately, there weren't that many numbers. So please tell us in how many countries Deutsche Telekom AG is active and which revenue is generated in Germany and Europe and worldwide. And you also talked about CO2 neutrality and climate protection. And I would like to know in how far the big corporation, Deutsche Telekom, really mentioned to reduce CO2 emissions, in real terms are there concrete measurements. It's always nice to talk, but it's better to have numbers which make things comparable and can be used as evidence. We heard fact, fact, fact in the past, which is also very important. And what is still on my mind, what will Deutsche Telekom AG do when [indiscernible] will sell more shares of Deutsche Telekom AG, which is understandable and I remember having heard last year, 5G and Deutsche Bank AG. So I happen to read on the Internet that Deutsche Telekom AG cannot do anything about 5G, Deutsche Bank, I don't know if that is true forever, but at the moment, it's nothing Deutsche Bank really wants to have. I don't know in terms of revenue that will have a negative impact for you. And I would like to know what your plans are for the future. It's fantastic to have a physical Annual General Meeting and which is fantastic. You're really a role model for that. But I would, of course, be happy -- but as you said that we would get also more presentations from the different members of the Board of management on HR, on finances. It would be bit more diverting too and also to see the faces and hear the voices of those having the responsibility for these segments. And the video clips, which are shown. It's great to have these breaks after 3 questions. We could also add some videos to make things more lively. Otherwise, it seems to be more show than real. Let us share this experience and ask [indiscernible] CEO of a big company such as Deutsche Post DHL and if you really have enough time for another -- well, we discussed it last year. We don't need to repeat this. So separation might be better. It's always good to be ambitious, but it can also be detrimental, and you might fail. And Deutsche Telekom AG will hopefully remain a very good, generous and social employer and to maintain or keep the location of Bonn. And I hope that you will always be able to find the right skills for all areas. I don't know if there are any HR bottlenecks. We haven't heard anything about that yet. And I also hope that you have 5% of employees, which are -- who are severely disabled as you talked about social responsibility, so if you are severely disabled, it doesn't mean that you get fully qualified work for the benefit of the entire group. And a part of that, I think it's great but you give people 10 minutes to talk and ask questions. Other companies are not that generous, unfortunately, which shows your respect to shareholders and representatives of shareholders. And I would like to thank again, even though I'm not important but the order of speakers is according to registration. So first come, first served. And also compliments for the excellent food and beverages and also for environment-friendly cups and plates. And last year, there were many more people, but [indiscernible] produced last year. And would you please come back to the items on our agenda. Well, this is also part of the AGM and this year, as you provided reusable cups [indiscernible]. Thank you for that [indiscernible] on the AGM. And I'm happy to hear that Mr. [indiscernible] and I am optimistic that his two candidates will have the opportunity to introduce themselves. And we're talking about competition when you elect members of the Supervisory Board and with this, I wish the remaining AGM a lot of success. And thank you again for giving real people the opportunity to take the floor and also in the future. And my toast to this. And with this, I would like to thank you for your attention.

Next in line is Mr. [indiscernible].

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is [indiscernible]. I'm a small investor at Deutsche Telekom AG. And as you can tell, I've come here with a longer list of questions. After some talks with legal integrity, however, I've agreed to only raise 3 questions at today's AGM here. And all the remaining questions, I shall discuss after this AGM, more specifically, I will be getting the answers in writing from the Board of management. So let's get started. This is a beautiful day, and we don't want to waste our time. First question to the Board of Management. In the past fiscal year, were there any contracts between Deutsche Telekom AG or a subsidiary with a company from [indiscernible]. My second question to the Board of Management is this, what was the subject matter of the relevant contracts and its relevant additions? And my third and last question for today is, is there any indication of breaches of the corporate governance code, the code of conduct or the internal company guidelines with regards to this communication software? Is there any indication and what sort of indication would that be? These are the 3 questions that I meant to raise at this AGM. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. And I hope that you will stick with the agreement and answer my remaining questions in writing after this event. Have a happy Easter, and I wish you all the best for the future.

Thank you very much for being so brief and concise. The next speaker is [indiscernible].

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. It's been -- my name is [indiscernible]. I'd like to add that one of my first names is actually [indiscernible], which was forgotten here. But my 2 grandfathers had this nice first name. And then there was the First World War, then the Nazis, and unfortunately, we never had a chance to really meet up. As a warm-up, I would like to mention something else. Both Mr. [indiscernible] mentioned that our company has a higher enterprise value than that of 3 of our competitors combined. Now in the letter to the shareholders from Mr. [indiscernible], 4 companies are actually mentioned. So what's correct here? I must admit, it's just a minor thing. But on the other hand, and I don't hope that this is actually true. But if you need to go to an oncologist, and he forgets to cut out something that should be taken out, then that wouldn't be so good. So the matter really is everybody has said everything, just not me. And I'll follow that matter now. And first of all, I would like to thank Investor Relations. Within a matter of 24 hours, of course, in cooperation with a company that Dr. [indiscernible] was responsible for, for a long time. So within 24 hours, I received the annual report and the invitation in writing as a hard copy. Thanks for that. And I would also like to thank the Board of Management and the other committee members who have made today's AGM possible. However, I would also like to get back to some of the comments made by the previous speakers. Yes. I looked at the minutes of the first and the second reading on virtual AGMs. And I realized that all parliamentary groups with one exception seemed to be very hostile towards small investors. And in the run-up to that, there were a lot of nasty statements regarding small investors, saying that all we care about is eat and drink. I mean we're not eating kilograms of potato salad and we're not drinking liters of [indiscernible]. You said that you are strictly opposing any hatred against people online. That should also include any nasty statements against small investors. The second thing that I'd like to say is even more important. The Federal Minister of Justice was saying, when a relevant law came up. Well, you don't have to travel from Hamburg to Munich for an AGM. Well, I think this shows a lack of respect in terms of shareholders and democracy alike. And I think it said. I mean he is a member of the Liberals and it doesn't really make sense for him to make this sort of comment. At the same time, we can see that a lot of the members of the Buschmann cabinet are flying around. I mean the federal chancellor goes on a 24-hour trip to Tokyo. He spends 8 hours in a hotel alone and 1/3 of all the ministers are going with them. And they are like 24 hours airborne. That doesn't make any sense for the environment. Does it? And before that, Mr. [indiscernible] together with this body [indiscernible] came back from the Brazilian Rainforest and on his flight back home, Mrs. [indiscernible] then flew to Ottawa in order to get some information on the migration policy there as if we didn't have an ambassador there, which brings me to this company. According to Nobel Prize winner, [indiscernible] sustainability is not a clear notion. You don't know what it really entails and what it's all about. And that also holds true here. Even though Mr. Hottges briefly referred to it in his talk. So what I'd like to say here is, if you as a company, fully back the idea of sustainability, if you really do, then I think it would have been good for us as shareholders to get a free ticket for public transport to actually come here today. The fact that we didn't get that sort of public transport ticket for free, doesn't seem to be in line with your sustainability policy. And I mean whenever you are traveling to the United States, are you using a normal plane? Or are you using some sort of private jet where you're getting fancy food, et cetera? That would also be interesting to know. And then you talked about your efforts to cut back on your power consumption. That's good, but you're 50 years late. No offense, but I'm saying this with a view to the past elites. And we really need to do the right thing now. If you are not a member of the X, Y, Z or Snowflake generation, then you may remember the Sundays in November of 1973, where on a Sunday, it wasn't possible to use the Autobahn, which means that people were out there and were using the Autobahn, the motorway for stroll. That was very nice. And for the [indiscernible] among you, I also remember that in the prelude to the Godesberg Program of the Social Democrats, they were appraising nuclear energy. I mean, maybe they should have said something like socialism can only be achieved using nuclear energy. And I think today, we are doing the same with hydrogen because the protagonist of hydrogen apparently don't even seem to be aware that some molecules basically convert oxygen into detonating gas or oxyhydrogen. And that is a tricky thing, and we need to keep on working on that. Something else under the heading of sustainability. I'm afraid I don't have enough to talk about [indiscernible] the Nobel Prize winner, and I'm not going to comment on the strange gender jargon that we are using here. Instead, let me just talk about sustainability under yet another aspect. This is not only about sustainability. It is also about this change of eras. And I think these old regulations on bonuses really should be abolished. I mean you can also see when you look at the terminology that it no longer makes sense. Have a cup of coffee and think about it. I really believe that most office can't really describe how this works in simple sentences, maybe a graduate from Harvard Business School, I don't know. But I mean we are still fairly moderate here. But let me just remind you of 2 aspects that are really not sustainable at all as part of this policy. At Deutsche Bank, about 2/3 of all trains are not on time, but the Board of Management get a bonus of EUR 1.2 million nonetheless. And I mean I would not -- and so the Deutsche Bank is getting EUR 1.2 million and bus drivers are getting [indiscernible]. And there were other cases like companies that are loss making. They are losing billions but still the managers are paid millions of euros. There used to be an imaginary radio station in the Soviet Union where Soviet citizens were able to formulate their grievances. And one of the questions was, can you introduce socialism in Switzerland? Well, yes, you could. But why would you do that? It would just destroy Switzerland. But [indiscernible] Credit Suisse, that's the second example I'm referring to. They did just that. And I mean, okay, maybe the managers thought, okay, we can find a new home here in this new entity but what we really need is attractive fixed salaries and the profit is distributed evenly across managers, employees right through down to the doorman. That would really make sense. You launched a prospect for a big festival in Bonn. You said we are here to support the region, and we are sponsoring a lot of sports and music festivals. Can you be more specific about that? Secondly, how much are you donating to the Telekom Baskets? They are good right now, even though Alba Berlin is going to be the champion, don't worry about that, but how much are you donating to the Telekom Baskets? And thirdly, when will Telekom finally exit from Bayern Munich? I mean they're a joke. Aren't they? Okay, fair enough. With Manuel Neuer and others, you have the ones who were responsible for the disaster at the World Cup in Qatar. Why should they still be rewarded? And then you said if the German government as the major shareholder were to sell more shares, then this would negatively impact on the share price of your company. Is there any indication that this is what the German government is intending. Thank you. And I wish you all happy Easter, maybe a nice Easter Bunny, and thank you.

We will now answer the questions and then I will ask [indiscernible] and the other speakers to follow up. The list of the next speakers will be shown in a moment. But let me now continue answering questions. First [indiscernible]. Our 5.8 million customers, are they part of our society? It is hard to explain to them why top salaries amount up to EUR 5 million. And how does that compare with the salaries paid by your competitors? Well, first of all, this is what the AGM last year resolved. They resolved that the maximum compensation of Board members should be EUR 5.3 million and EUR 9 million, respectively. Approval rate was 90.54%, so a high level of approval. That doesn't mean to say, of course, that this is what Mr. Hottges is getting, that would just be the maximum compensation hypothetically. And there are a lot of different aspects to this remuneration, and the Supervisory Board regularly looks into this. And certainly, we will look into it this year again. But this is a formal process. It needs to be approved by the AGM. Any remuneration system is subject to approval from the AGM because this is a highly complex venture. However, we have to state as a Supervisory Board that Mr. Hottges' maximum compensation is fairly low compared to what is customary on the tax. You may be surprised to hear that, but that's a fact if you compare us to other companies. And that doesn't mean that he is getting that. According to our annual report this year, Mr. Hottges got a very good compensation, but our results are also excellent along all the various dimensions. So it makes sense. And therefore, the Supervisory Board approved this compensation, which is in line with the level of target achievement. But of course, the Supervisory Board deals with this just as the Board of Management, we always need to strike the right balance here. But like I said, the remuneration of the Board of Management is not at the upper end, but at the lower end of what is customary in our industry, even though Deutsche Telekom is one of this country's most successful companies. Over to you, Mr. Hottges, to answer more questions.

Well, first of all, I would like to answer the most important questions, which were asked by Professor [indiscernible], on network coverage, Well, right here, I did a network test. And we have 477 megabytes download in the network. So it's not a Telekom problem. You might want to check what software you're using. So through the WiFi network, I mean, 477 megabytes, that is really good. Now on the question on network investments, asked by Mr. [indiscernible] question was how will we continue in the United States here? In the U.S., we also want to be the #1. We are already the #1 in terms of network test. In terms of network coverage, 310 million customers are using our network plus the quality, which is down to the 2.5 gigahertz spectrum that we acquired at the excellent quality of our network, which gives us a major competitive edge over AT&T and Verizon. And I think the Americans have now become aware of that. Just think of where we came from. We used to be the #4 asset in the States, and now we are the #1 in America. And we are the leading 5G provider with a network coverage of 98% in the U.S. Of course, that doesn't apply to the rural areas yet, which is difficult to achieve given the various size of the United States. But nonetheless, we are continuing to roll out the network even there. As for the integration of the Sprint network, that was a major investment for us in the U.S. It took us 3 years to fund it. We spent USD 9.6 billion in investments in property, plant and equipment. No, this is actually what we're going to spend in 2023. And in future, this will also be more or less what we will be investing in the U.S., around EUR 10 billion. We have shown over the past few years that we know how to cope with our competitors in a very challenging macroeconomic environment. And therefore, the success recipe for us is the same in all markets. We are investing more in infrastructure than our competitors, 5G and fiber. Whoever has a better infrastructure is winning over new customers because customers want to be with a winner. So that's why they're coming to us. And incidentally, customers are also willing to pay more if the network is compelling, which generates revenue, and this revenue means that we are making profits. And if we manage to retain customers, maintaining customers is becoming ever more important, through our excellent service, then our revenues are not only stable, but they are growing, which means that our market share is growing as well. The more customers we have, the more revenue we have. This boosts our free cash flow, which we can then reinvest in infrastructure. So that is a circle that we have established in all our markets over the past few years. And as a result, we can see this very strong growth. You also asked what are the prospects for growth this year and beyond? In the U.S., this year, we want to gain 5 million to 5.5 million new postpaid customers, not just prepaid. This is our goal. And by the way, this is exactly the same number that we also defined for last year for the United States. At the end of the day, however, we came out at 6.4 million new postpaid customers in the U.S., far more than what was actually planned. Let me now get back to the subject of Huawei. Needless to say, we can replace Huawei. Question is, though, why should we do that? Well, every iPhone that you may have is put together in China, using Chinese components. A mobile phone is nothing but an antenna that is sending and receiving signals. It's pretty much the same as one of those antennas that you can see in the back of this room. This antenna is the only Chinese product that we are using in our mobile network. Wherever an analog signal becomes a digital signal wherever an analog radio signal is translated into a conversation, we are using components that do not come from Chinese manufacturers, for instance, from the likes of Ericsson and other players. Of course, these hardware components, these antennas can be replaced. But from a legal point of view, they are not deemed to be a risk to our critical infrastructure and, therefore, we can continue working together with suppliers as before. So would it make sense to replace the hardware? That would take years. You can't do that overnight. It's a very complicated process to actually replace this technology. And therefore, we are not planning to replace these components now. 5G roll-out for mobile and fiber to the home [indiscernible] our core elements of our strategy, and I think [indiscernible] again and again, what do we need to achieve growth and increase our value. If we stop investing into our infrastructure, we will stop growing. And that is why we look very carefully what to do in -- for our fiber roll-out to become faster here. And also in this context, to bring costs -- high costs for fiber build-out can be brought down. Just to give you one example, in Spain, fiber roll-out of one home costs EUR 200. You might have seen it. You have a lot of on-the-road fiber. Well, in Germany, home connection costs EUR 1,600. The reason is construction regulations, in particular, we have to dig deep in the streets and roads, paying high construction costs. So the target should be to reduce construction costs in order to make fiber available to all our customers. And here inflation, if not really helpful, and Mr. [indiscernible] will talk about this later, but we have taken remedies. Originally, for 2024, we had planned an annual roll-out number of 2.5 million homes per year. Now we are adding more than 3 million homes per year, to our fiber network. And if we accelerate the licensing and approval [indiscernible] and reduce costs, we can be even faster. What is extremely helpful are our cooperations outside of [indiscernible]. We are competing with each other to see if others might be cheaper in laying fiber than we can do it ourselves. And that is why we are cooperating with [indiscernible] pension fund from Australia with which until 2028, we want to add 4 million homes in rural areas. And we are a big shareholder in this joint venture and are building independently, but this, of course, is infrastructure-linked. And so our object to have more than 60% of fiber market share in 2030. And we are moving towards this, and we see that our competitors find it difficult at the moment. We are building, building, building, even though in the short run, such as inflation and [indiscernible]. Now your question on Vodafone. First, we are focusing on our own targets and not on our competitors. In the last years, we have been very successful in this competition. I remember AGMs where we mainly talked about how to react to cable suppliers. Today, we are gaining market share from the cable company, Vodafone. In the past, it was an extreme threat. And thanks to the excellent work by [indiscernible] team, publishing new tariffs, [indiscernible] up to EUR 500 of loyalty premium for loyal Telekom customers. This help us to gain more market share. ARPU, you asked about this. And here, we have growth rate of 3%. The main driver for this growth or revenue per household is the demand for higher bandwidth. We see that customers want to have more bandwidth. They do not yet want to have [indiscernible] the computer freaks and gamers [indiscernible] customers want to have 1 megabit per second. But we are seeing increasingly but there is more and more demand in Germany, which brings our revenue with the line per household, and that is the way forward, higher speed, more bandwidth, better quality leads to more revenue, which will help us to pay back the investment to our infrastructure. You asked about climate neutrality. I was very explicit when I talked about our climate targets in my presentation. So let me briefly summarize it again. So first, the target for our own business. Our own business is considered to be Scope 1 or Scope 2. Our target of climate neutrality for Scope 1 and 2 is 2025. And by the way, we are faster than international climate targets for Deutsche Telekom. We are more ambitious and since 2017, we've have reduced 94% and are making progress. 6% are still missing to be CO2 neutral. What does it mean? It is primarily the fleet of vehicles of Deutsche Telekom. The [indiscernible] visiting you at home. And we are working on using only E-cars [indiscernible] which are still using diesel. So as of next year, all executives, if they have a company car, they will only be E-bus. We're no longer buying classic cars with combustion engines. And we think we want to achieve 100% -- to have 100% green renewable energy for Scope 1 and 2. Much more complex is Scope 3, ladies and gentlemen. So it might be the user of telecommunication services, if you use your mobile phone, you consume a lot of energy. The production of a mobile phone consumes a lot of energy. And we want to do this also in a CO2 neutral way as presented today. If a supplier uses a lorry and delivers something to our Telekom site, then CO2 is emitted, which has to be done in a climate-neutral way. And that is why we're working with the supply chain of suppliers and customers very intensively to achieve CO2 neutrality. Our goal is in 2042, in Scope 4 also be climate neutral. And by 2030, we want to define an interim goal so that you can monitor the progress, which is very ambitious, 55% compared to 2020. And we are also looking for options to reduce our general overall energy consumption. Demand for data is going up [indiscernible] every year by 25% to 30%. Cloud services are in volumes. So the consequence of higher electricity consumption. But our objective is the absolute electricity consumption which shall not go up. The absolute electricity consumption shall develop [indiscernible] but it will even be reduced, and we have managed last year as I said, to cut it by 11% despite rising data volume in our fixed network and our mobile network and for the clouds, and sometimes it's painful if the [indiscernible]. And to reduce CO2 emissions, it was covered in my presentation. I don't want to [indiscernible]. We have defined specific sustainability criteria for the selection of our suppliers here. Of particular importance is the CO2 footprint of our suppliers and to achieve the treatment of their climate goals. And we have implemented it with respective lists and catalogs. As I said, we do not only by according to price, but also according to their contribution to reduce CO2 emissions to bring the CO2 footprint down. These environmental targets are part of our management remuneration. [indiscernible] we are one of the very few companies which have sustainability and environmental criteria in the remuneration, not only the Board of Management, but the entire executive community of Deutsche Telekom is remunerated according to sustainability. Only if you feel it in your pocket, you will take sustainability seriously. And with this, we are a role model and a leader in our industry and in Germany. We are taking sustainability seriously. Thank you very much. Now Mr. Illek, please.

So 4 brief questions, [indiscernible]. First question, when and how far do you plan to use the call options on the T-Mobile U.S. section stocks? Effects, we have EUR 7 million of fixed price at USD 105, and we have 28 million floating options, which we can use at the share price on the date, these are American shares, which can be drawn and you [indiscernible] no cost will be incurred, which is quite unlikely when it comes to fixed price options. But we do not yet have any concrete plans when we want to do that because we have 2 effects. We have diluting effect because of M&A [indiscernible] 61% paid by shares, and we have employee shares and Mr. Hottges talked about this and so we do not yet know when we will use this option and we do not yet know, we haven't decided yet how much the target share will be at T-Mobile. Next question, what do you plan to do with the call option you have for your towers business? That is also something as we see 49%. We want to benefit [indiscernible] negotiated optionalities, and we said we want to keep this optionality, but they're not concrete deliberation [indiscernible]. Third question, why do we have -- or why do we think do we have this positive share price development? Put in my words, in the European business and also in the U.S. American business, we have a better performance than our competitors and that is for years. And the second thing is this year, we have a very strong free cash flow growth. And that also when it comes to debt reduction, there's a belief in the market that we make progress, what a fair price of the share is. So let's -- so the [indiscernible] target share price is EUR 26, and it has been reached step-by-step in last month. And the last question is here our forecast, whether it's [indiscernible]. To be honest, no, it's not because there's still some uncertainties and the general economic developments and what will happen to external effects such as inflation, et cetera. But you know as well, last year, we have just the forecast 3x with more visibility. But as of today, our focus is [indiscernible]. Now coming to [indiscernible] question. The risk of sanctions of the [indiscernible] Deutsche Telekom, the current sanctions of the U.S. are directed at Chinese companies. They may not be supplied with certain technology sanctions [indiscernible] Chinese technologies are not in place. And we don't see this risk of sanctions imposed on us. And beyond that, we do not have any knowledge on any planned future sanctions. And [indiscernible] also asked about the largest risk for Telekom shareholders and possibly for the severe and harder competition in the U.S. mobile market, how we are preparing for that. We are used to a very competitive environment. We are [indiscernible]. We are the one who for the last years, has lot of the competition in the U.S. So we don't need to be afraid. So we will just continue what we have done in the past. Of course, we need to clearly monitor the macroeconomic environment in the U.S. and that is why we want to have a mix of quality network and quality service plus very attractive offers and prices. We want to keep our record growth and that seems to be possible, and we are successful in doing that. By the way, America has 220 separate markets and one the largest market, Deutsche Telekom in America, it's now the market leader and especially in rural areas where we have started to roll out our market, our 5G networks. And here, we are gaining very quickly market share, another growth potential in America is the high-speed Internet, which is the supply of customers at home with the 5G router because in America, the fixed network is a bad quality. It's a new growth market and we're within almost 2 years, we have got more than 3 million new customers. What will be the role for Deutsche Telekom for the European consolidation and which countries are in the focus? The consolidation is a difficult topic for Europe. And it's nothing you can easily plan. Consolidation in the market. It's [indiscernible] because there should be 3 or 4 provider in all markets. So if you do the [indiscernible] how many conventions you will have, it's one of the big problems in our market. We have the [indiscernible] consolidation has been completed. The cross-country consolidation efforts fail very often not because of antitrust law, but because nation states are very interested in keeping control over the telecommunications provider. So they think in their territories and not about the European telecommunications market, you know, but I'm a great fan of having one big European telecommunications market in which a big infrastructure with economies of scale can be established. It's not only advantageous for the company to produce cheaper, but it will also bring cost advantages for customers [indiscernible] markets of the world, which is the U.S., but consolidation steps, concrete consolidation steps, I do not see. You asked about the risks because of Huawei technology, technical risk, which are true for all producers. We are addressing through comprehensive internal security approaches and our own tests. We have our own fiber defense center, monitoring our own systems 24/7. We rolled in close contact with this regulatory and also the federal agency for cybersecurity, information technology. They are regularly checking our security approach without any objections to reduce potential risk. Deutsche Telekom has, at the end of 2019, decided to take out Chinese suppliers of the particularly security relevant core network as I explained and to phase them out, Ericsson and Mavenir. Ericsson is a Swedish company and Mavenir is an American company, are now our main partners for the core network of Deutsche Telekom. In the U.S., T-Mobile has no 2G network and so that is why other systems can be used compared to Germany and America. Generally at T-Mobile, then no Chinese suppliers and they Ericsson and Nokia. You asked the question about the importance of the business in the home market [indiscernible] German businesses remain a key importance for Deutsche [indiscernible] and I find it painful to hear that it's all America. It's not true. Deutsche Telekom is growing in all markets and we've entered all markets. And the growth potential in Germany, by the way, was stronger than in the U.S. in the last quarters. And we have an excellent business here in Germany and in Germany, we have 25 -- for 25 quarters in a row, we have increased our profit. And that thanks to our brand, our service and mobile and fix and to top ranking, we get from external organizations. We are the strongest investor into the network in Germany. We are investing in Germany, about EUR 5.7 billion per year. Per year. And you can't see it because it's all underground and dig into the soil. And it will go on. As I said, 95% 5G [indiscernible] of LTE cap in Germany, 2 million homes last year, EUR 3 million now connected to fiber. And with a very strong market position and also in fiber, here, we are the largest investor in Germany and that is why I'm not afraid about our market leadership in Germany [indiscernible].

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] So Mrs. [indiscernible] is the next speaker. Mrs. [indiscernible], are you here?

Ladies and gentlemen, my name is [indiscernible]. I'm an economist and hold a PhD in this field. You see that's one thing. Some people are entitled to Professor, and you called me just Mrs. [indiscernible]. Why would you do that?

Mrs. [indiscernible], I'm sorry about that. I don't know if you told our staff at the speakers' registration counter that you hold a PhD. They probably didn't know.

Well, at the speakers' registration counter. I filed an application again. I've applied for a job with you for 20 years, and I hope that this time, it will work out. In addition, I think 10 minutes really isn't a lot for speaking time. At other AGMs, we can actually speak for 20 minutes because whoever speaks to you later than others, won't have less to say. And -- of course, how much time we have here also depends on the length of your annual report and the fact -- you've been talking a lot about sustainability and that you want to cut costs because you want to grow. Then you talked about the improvement in credit rating. You want to take out less external debt [indiscernible] to invest more. However, there's a very simple recipe for that, namely, low cost acquisition of capital, which means that the board of management compensation should also be changed because there are some executive boards of DAX companies that only get a basic fixed salary of EUR 60,000. And then in addition to that, our board members can get a maximum of EUR 51,000 in performance-based bonuses. And the AGM that I'm talking about took place in March, and the members of that Executive Board are not getting any additional money for their insurances, their pension obligations, et cetera. They can fund it themselves. And therefore, I don't find the maximum of EUR 5 million that you're entitled to acceptable at all. You said that you are still with your feet on the ground, but I don't think so. And then you said sustainability means that you bear responsibility and that you want to continue along these lines. But you are irresponsible in many respects. It was pointed out several times that allegedly, you are being so transparent. I don't think so because, for instance, when I signed up at the speakers' registration counter, your staff are very nice, very polite. And I didn't request any more information from them. I just asked them how many speakers had signed up before me. We never know whether you will actually stick with the sequence, but then they told me that they were not allowed to tell me. Why not? I wonder. At any other AGM, people would tell me there are another 10 speakers or so before it's your turn. And then there is something else that I find quite doubtful, namely, you also said the cloud is using a much more electricity. My comment is, why should I store information from my local PC in the cloud in the first place. Isn't it much more effective for me to save that information on my PC or to save it externally, in which case I can directly access my data. Then you talked about this big innovation of yours. Namely, you said that some technical equipment like conveyor belts can be controlled electronically, but that's nothing new. I mean that's been discussed at various trade fairs before for years. You also said that you want to support people who are put out at a disadvantage and that they should get some help. Well, people at a disadvantage that's pretty much myself. I have applied for a job on your Supervisory Board for 20 years, and I never got through. So that would -- if you change that, it would really illustrate that you are willing to do something about this. And then shares. You said that all shareholders are expecting dividends to continuously increase, but that's not actually true. Why don't you listen to what the shareholders are saying? What they want is they want to see the share price rise continuously, which would also mean that you can get capital at low cost. Maybe you should only pay out 1/4 of your profit. Oh, I can see that you are writing something down on your mobile. Really interesting what I'm talking about here, right? And then you said that you're not looking back. You want to be here for tomorrow. That also means, however, that you need to be sustainable and being sustainable, to you apparently means that you still think what you did years ago is good enough for today, like investments. I have submitted additional questions at the speakers' registration counter. It's roughly 10 pages, and I would appreciate it if you answered these questions in writing subsequently. There is one thing that really took me by surprise. I received your annual report, and I read the entire report, and I didn't find any more tables in there with specific numbers on the salaries paid to members of the Supervisory Board and the Executive Board. It was only verbal information. In the annual reports of the past, you would find information on the fixed salaries, the short-term variable salary, the long-term variable expenses, pension money and how many shares were bought or sold and at what conditions. And all that information can no longer be found in the annual report, which, to me, means that the annual report is not transparent. And there is something else missing. I didn't find any information on the tenure of the various members. Then the optical fiber build-out. I'm still talking about the annual report, Page 6. Optical fiber roll-out in [indiscernible]. Who are your partners for that? Did you do an RFQ? And there was one explosion in [indiscernible] which left 1 person dead. How did you handle all that? Page 11. There you gave some information on the employee survey. Did you conduct the employee survey yourselves? Or was it implemented by an external service provider? What were the specific questions asked and what were the results? Then on Pages 18 to 20, Mrs. [indiscernible] was mentioned, the annual report says that she is a businesswoman. I would like to hear what company she's working for? What is the name of the company? And why was there no detailed information on her various Supervisory Board posts because this is something else that I would have potentially criticized and apparently, you wanted to avoid just that. Then under sustainability. Why is it that the entire annual report was not printed on green paper but on a kind of shiny paper. Then SpaceX, mobile phone usage and satellites. Question. How many satellites are you operating yourselves or your U.S. subsidiary? What's the ownership of those satellites and how much do you have to pay in rental fees, if applicable? In the future, you want to invest more in the U.S., you said. For instance, through Evonik, using the subsidies that are offered there. What sort of subsidies did you get? On Page 39, it says group strategy adjusted after 7 years. Well, but certainly not a salary system. And the bonuses were paid even if the company was not successful. Page 43. Recruitment of 1,000 additional optical fiber experts. Where do they come from? Are you going to train them yourselves? Because I think you will have a hard time enticing them away from other companies. Page 52. There you said, in the United States, you are using completely renewable energies. I have my doubts about that because on another page, you are mentioning diesel generators, which didn't really make sense. And why aren't you using large batteries from interim buffers? And you are still using China -- oil from China, U.S. fracking oil. And you are also using kind of sand with a slate that is not environmentally friendly.

Mrs. Grinberg, could you please come to the point? Well, I would ask that you are not arguing. I don't mean to argue, and we've known each other for a long time, Mrs. Grinberg, so can I ask that you just ask your remaining questions now so that we can answer them?

Yes. I would also like to ask about value-added tax. How much VAT did you receive? And how much did you have to pay in pretax? Then in addition, in connection with your investments, how much money did you have to spend on your towers, which you then sold and what were the proceeds? And then there is the new remuneration system of the Board of Management. And I already said at the last AGM that the basis should be 7,500 based on the social insurance number, which means that no additional services should be granted. So there is only a service fee. And only if additional revenues are generated from the service business, then a certain margin could be paid out measured in percentage. If you are getting EUR 1 million as a bonus, then a salaried employee gets like 60,000 as a salary, that's the equivalent of 17 FTEs and their salaries. If I had your salary, then I would probably also be able to sail across the Atlantic. I would have loved to do that. But then again, I wouldn't know what to -- why I should do that in the first place. So thank you for listening. And I ask once again that the questions I submitted at the speakers' registration counter be answered in writing. And apart from that, I don't think it's right that you seem to be joking about me here. No, I mean, don't pretend to be astonished. I can see that from here. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mrs. Grinberg. Let's continue with [ Mr. Bachmann ], afterwards, [ Mr. Duffner ] and Mr. Luma. [ Gerard Bachmann ] is the next speaker.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Hottges. So I am actually Mr. Telecom. Somebody thought that I'm a telecom staff here. Anyway, how many of the buildings you own are actually yours? Are you going to stick with the buildings you have right now? What are you going to do with buildings you no longer need and how many buildings are leased? Then we've also -- you've made a couple of statements on the network overbuild, and this will be rearranged also on a legal basis possibly. Can you comment on that? Are you going to continue controlling that? Will this regulation lead to the establishment of a new agency that will be responsible for network lines? You also talked about Huawei. And you said that you are only using antenna components. In Berlin, politicians are considering to no longer use any Huawei components. The Chinese ambassador, however, threatened that if China were to be excluded from the German mark this year that this would have political consequences. According to media reports, 65% of your components are from Huawei. So the question is, does Huawei have an office or a service point with Deutsche Telekom? How many Huawei components have been used at Sprint in the U.S.? And now the U.S. regulator wants Sprint to be altered, what do you think about that? And what costs will you have to bear in connection with any changes to the Huawei components? What would be the business implications in Germany and abroad? Then BlackRock. BlackRock holds a stake in Deutsche Telekom. Will BlackRock increase its stake? Did BlackRock indicate that they share your view on Huawei? Then the service of Deutsche Telekom. I called at your headquarters the other day, and I wanted to speak someone who's responsible for shareholders. And they then asked me about my customer account number and I told them, I don't have it. I'm calling you as a shareholder, and I just want you to put me through. And this led to a very unpleasant conversation. Mr. Hottges, I think you urgently need to do something about your headquarters. Are you going to follow up on this? Then you said that 5G will make it possible for you to roll out the fastest mobile network. What is the rollout status right now? If you already mentioned it today, then you can ignore this question. What alliances or what partners did Deutsche Telekom find to work with here? And what stakes do you hold in them potentially? What antennas are you going to use in future for 5G? You said that Deutsche Telekom now only owns 49% of all the towers. How many of those towers have been sold? I understand that you are only leasing the towers for your own classified purposes, if I understood you correctly. On the subject of optical fiber rollout, you said that you are continuing with the build-out. You also said that you want to connect up to 30 million households to the optical fiber network. Is Deutsche Telekom rolling out the network exclusively? Or are you doing it together with partners? In order to achieve this goal, are you also leasing optical fiber lines from others? Who are the potential partners? Do you hold any stakes in the companies that may be part of this? Let me use the example of [indiscernible] now. Since 2016, there have been 16 optical fiber cabinets in the streets there ready to be used. What were the total costs of this equipment? And what is the local market penetration? In 2020, Deutsche Glasfaser came up and said that in this village, they want to gain a 40% market share as in other municipalities of the north of Hesse and they did. But years before, the electrical cabinets had already been in place. And as far as your activities are concerned, I've brought this year. I mean, we are getting letters from Deutsche Glasfaser by the day, which means that Deutsche Glasfaser, they go to the customers directly. What you do is you're just putting posters on your electrical cabinets, and your cabinets have been there for years and still, your competitors are taking over. So every month, I am getting 1 or 2 of those letters here. And they are even addressed correctly. And so your competitors are addressing customers correctly. What is your strategy to oppose that? You might want to think about that. And back to optical fiber. In 2020, Vodafone announced that they are not going -- that they no longer need optical fiber for the last mile. They said that thanks to state-of-the-art electronics, they would still be able to use 1,000 mb using a standard copper line. What is the current status here at Deutsche Telekom? Satellite communication was also mentioned here today. The rollout of satellite technology continues across the globe. What is Deutsche Telekom doing in this field? Will Deutsche Telekom also operate corporate satellites? How much would it cost? And how would it be possible to then set up calls from one mobile to another? And what role would the 5G rollout then play? Tax-saving model. How long have you been able to save money using tax havens? How much did you save on taxes in the past year? How will the planned subsequent taxation announced by the German Minister of Finance impact on your business? Who has thought of this notion of tax havens at Deutsche Telekom? Who came up with this concept? And what tax havens have you used? Who consulted you on it? Did the entire Supervisory Board consult you on this? Did all members of the Supervisory Board approve your usage of such tax havens? Who did not? Please specify. The big 4 audit companies, well, Deutsche Telekom selected Deloitte, and Deloitte is also suspected of having participated in the [indiscernible] transaction. There are some media reports about it. There were some TV campaigns ever since 2019. So how much have you paid to them or to Deloitte in 2021 or 2022 for tax consulting, for business consulting and for normal auditing of the annual accounts and financial statements? And what did you pay to law firms? And please mention these law firms, name these law firms that are working with these audit firms. Then civil servants. How many civil servants did you still have in 2021? How many did you have in 2022? Electricity consumption is a topic that you already mentioned before. I've got the question in this respect. What energy suppliers do you use at Deutsche Telekom? What is the energy consumption in terawatt hours for Internet data provision for commercial applications and for noncommercial applications?

Please also try to be as short as possible because your time is up.

Only one more comment. You're always talking about sustainability and clean energy. Yes, I can show you a photograph what it looks like. This is a landfill with wind energy converters. And I think we still -- will have to expect a lot of problems with these landfills. And one more comment on what Mr. [indiscernible] said. Elite is defined by the selection of the best, and you definitely won't find the best among the politicians.

Okay. Thank you very much, [ Mr. Bachmann ]. We will then move on to [ Markus Duffner ] for the association of critical shareholders, and then we will listen to [ Klaus Luma ] before we start answering questions again. [ Mr. Duffner ], please.

Ladies and gentlemen, Supervisory Board members, dear shareholders, my name is [ Markus Duffner ], and I'm the Managing Director of the Association of Critical Shareholders. And in today's shareholders' meeting, we represent the voting rights of 3,000 shareholders. Mr. Hottges, you already used your speech in order to positively report on Deutsche Telekom and to really give us a good image of the company. Yes, nothing against it, but I will now mention some more unpleasant aspects that were ignored by you, one case that has been around for quite a long time already. And I found it strange that nobody was mentioning this before. So let me do this. T-Systems and state capture in South Africa, and there is a very current development there. In last year's shareholders meeting, I already talked about T-Systems' involvement in a corruption case in South Africa. They capture in South Africa. T-Systems South Africa, which is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom profited from [indiscernible] corrupt system, the former President of South Africa. Mr. Hottges, I imagine that you can still hear it over the loudspeakers even if you're not sitting here on your seat. As you were responsible for accounting and controlling at Deutsche Telekom when this corruption case happened, I asked you to make some statements, and I received the following answer. "T-Systems South Africa cooperated with the investigation commission in the corruption case and has provided a lot of information to support their work between December 2021 and March 2022. The investigation commission has published a report in 3 parts, and the report does not include any recommendation to start formal investigations against T-Systems or to start criminal proceedings." This was probably the status as of last year, but what happened then after [indiscernible] of Shadow World investigations filed criminal case against T-Systems? Now Frankfurt -- the prosecutor in Frankfurt is investigating against T-Systems. I think this is worth mentioning. This is quite terrible. Mr. Hottges, what do you say about this negative development for T-Systems and for Deutsche Telekom? How can you explain to us, to the shareholders and to the German government that the compliance management of the company apparently does not work as well as you presented before? Let's now talk about supply chains, and this is also a topic that was only mentioned in passing, although since the 1st of January, we have had the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act in Germany, which also applies to Deutsche Telekom and all companies with more than 3,000 employees. The law obliges all the companies subject to this law to use their due diligence in their cooperation with suppliers and vendors. I am happy that Deutsche Telekom has made some positive comments on the Due Diligence Act, for example, in the annual report or on the website. And they said that standardized laws and regulations will give benefits to the companies because everybody will have to offer their products and services under the same conditions. And the customers and investors want to know about transparent processes. Let me say that the company has to terminate violations of human rights and use the appropriate measures. My question, Mr. Hottges, are you aware of any human rights violations by Deutsche Telekom or their suppliers? And if so, which measures were taken? And then for indirect suppliers, suppliers of Scope 2, the company has to submit the concrete plan for the avoidance and minimization of any violations. And here, I've got a similar question. Do you know about violations of human rights by your indirect suppliers? If so, what types of violations, in which countries, and what has Deutsche Telekom done in order to terminate this? And then for direct suppliers, and these are Scope 3, the company has to act if they -- if it is about any violations. And here again, my question. Have you heard about any violations by your direct suppliers? If so, in which country and what has Deutsche Telekom done against it? And then another question regarding the whistleblower system Tell Me by Deutsche Telekom. Did you receive any information on possible breaches of laws? If so, please name the 3 most important ones. And this aspect, of course, also has to be taken into account national security, and this is something that is not even mentioned in the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act. Deutsche Telekom, and this was already mentioned several times today, uses products by the Chinese supplier Huawei or technology by Huawei. The Secret Service is talking about possible violations. Are there any risks to the national security? Last year, the U.S. government mentioned unacceptable risk to National Security and also talked to Deutsche Telekom. And also NATO is warning against Huawei in the German mobile communications network. It's not only security, but also the individual privacy, which are under threat. My question to you, Mr. Hottges, is you -- a victim of blackmailing because you use Huawei? The federal government has responded very quickly. This also has some political reasons. Huawei was completely banned from the U.S. market and also to include the parliamentarians and in order to see how often you are asked about it, the Chairman of the Parliamentarian Inquiry Committee consulting for [indiscernible] said that it is simple, naive and negligent if components from China are used in the backbone of our society. This is something that he said about 4 weeks ago. And the CEO of Deutsche Telekom, was he also naive or was he negligent in what he did? 1 week ago, [indiscernible] that Deutsche Telekom is taking precautions against U.S. sanctions, but the link to Huawei could be closer than expected. And in order to avoid sanctions, Deutsche Telekom apparently has stored a number of components by Huawei. We already heard about this. And people criticizing this cooperation. The contract between Huawei and Deutsche Telekom is stated 11th of April 2019. And let me also quote the magazine there [indiscernible], the shareholder because this is a magazine that might be read by some of the gentlemen present in this room. So this magazine says Deutsche Telekom has a contract with Huawei and this could be a problem. The federal government as we heard and we also heard some rumors is threatening to throw out Huawei. So the most important shareholder of Deutsche Telekom is threatening the supplier that they want to throw them out. Is this true? Have you discussed this with representatives of government? Well, we are, of course, very much interested in the further developments in this conflict and whether this will just be warning against Deutsche Telekom or whether there will be some repercussions. And now let me also mention the Ministry of the Interior because in another part of the shareholders' meeting, Mr. [indiscernible] was present here, the former Minister of Interior. So he apparently is also quite interested to see what is happening here. So the Ministry of the Interior and Mrs. [indiscernible] that the use of already established components might be banned if their use is a threat to the public security of the Republic of Germany especially if the supplier of the critical component is not trustworthy.

And please also try to be as short as possible Mr. [indiscernible] because your time is up.

In climate protection, just a few brief questions on this topic. In the corporate responsibility report 2022, we found information on Deutsche Telekom. But in this report, now the company is no longer mentioned. Mr. Hottges, what does this mean? Please explain the negative developments in the following KPIs: ESG, the enablement sector, ESG CDP supply chain program, ESG KPI return of mobile devices and sustainable products. Thank you for your patience. I'm looking forward to receiving your answers.

Thank you very much, Mr. Luma. Before we now continue, I would like to remind everybody that I will close the speakers' list at 3:00. So if you still plan to make a contribution here, I would like to ask you to do this in the next 13 minutes before I then close the list of speakers. And now we will have Mr. Luma, please.

Klaus Luma, I represent my own shares. Ladies and gentlemen, in my contribution, I would like to refer to the equity of Deutsche Telekom. Based on the annual report, there are EUR 87 billion. What -- how can I see this? Are these EUR 87 billion in one bank? Or do you have 6 interest deposits? Do you get any interest on this money that you deposited with bank? I would like to ask for your answer in a few sentences.

Thank you very much. This was excellent, a very short question, and it will be very easy for Mr. [indiscernible] to answer this question. So before I now move on to the answers, we first have Mr. Muller then there is Mr. Paul Rod, and then we've got Mr. Udo Ruta. And I would be grateful if you did not use your full 10 minutes because then I would not have to restrict your speaking time. But first of all, the questions by [ Mr. Beckendoff ] in some answers. The first question related to the compensation report and this says that for Mr. [indiscernible], when he was reappointed, there was an agreement on special conditions for a severance pay if his Board mandate was to be canceled. And then the question is this to be understood that in the way that T-Systems will no longer have any future in the group, clear answer, T-Systems has always been and will remain a main part of Deutsche Telekom. T-Systems is promoting the business of Deutsche Telekom and is one of the leading IT service providers in Germany. Then another question regarding the AGM 2022. What was the reason for the high number of objections against the remuneration report? Well, the reasons that what we heard by the shareholders was that there was criticism in the increase of compensation and exaggerated compensation compared to a peer group. And this is an extremely difficult question depending on how you define the peer group, you either have too much or too little money. And we think that the peer group that we use tax 40 is the right peer group, but of course, it's the right of shareholders and proxy advisers to come up with a different view. Next question, why do you -- regarding the granted remuneration. Why do you still stick to the inflow principle although another principle would provide much more transparency and would make it easier to draw a comparison between the development of earnings of the company and the compensation? Our answer, we did not see any change in legislation, so that there is no reason to change the disclosures. And we want to fulfill all the legal requirements, and we also additionally report about everything that is defined by the German corporate governance code. And we use all the tables in order to show our shareholders all the information that will be required starting next year. The next question was about the qualification matrix, and he asked for the individual competencies of the Supervisory Board members to be disclosed on innovation and is the way it is described, isn't it required that all the fields of competence are also presented? Well, indeed, and I would like to use this -- use the example of innovation competence. The competence profile of the Supervisory Board is consisting of a subset of different qualifications. 13 out of 20 Supervisory Board members cover at least one of these subtopics and thus also meet the requirements of the innovation competence. And you can also read about this in the reports of Deutsche Telekom AG. And I already mentioned this beforehand. We, of course, will take up your comments. It's a new exercise for us. And I think we now have to do it several times until we can fully guarantee transparency, just saying, well, I have this expertise, I have this competence. If you all will say, I have this, then it will be very difficult. And you can't find Supervisory Board members meeting all the requirements. What are the deliberation with the -- for the disclosure of the weighing of the remuneration? So we also want to create as much suspense which was necessary without creating complexity for which [indiscernible]. Last year, we were criticized that the remuneration report was very comprehensive. If we went even further, then we would have it more complex, and we might also divulge any corporate secrets. And that is why we opted for a very structured approach instead of having more information, but we are happy to take this up and consider the robust room for improvement. And last for Mr. [indiscernible] I have here, please explain the reasons for the adjustments in the remuneration [indiscernible] of the CEO, which has increased his basic remuneration and also of the variable components. I wasn't then the Chair of the Supervisory Board, but I know that there was a discussion with the [indiscernible] contract would be extended, and that is a situation when the Supervisory Board has negotiations with the CEO. And on top of it, Mr. Hottges has no proportional variable elements. So it was adjusted so that his structure is more in line with the structure of the remuneration of the other members of the Board of Management. Now Mr. Hottges.

[ Mr. Bettendorf's ] question, he talked about the number of the take-up rate and how many homes are connected to fiber. It -- currently end of 2022, the connection rate was 14%. It's still low compared to what our target is, but we're working on it. You should know that a lot of customers are factoring the super vectoring. And over time, they only want to book the speed of fiber later. And we are accelerating our fiber rollout. So the number of unused connections are -- have gone up, in particular for multifamily homes. So we have a mix of our rollout. So we have rollout in areas where there is also cable and vectoring. But of course, we focus with areas with no broadband, but we have a mix throughout the nation. Because of the nationwide availability of the existing VDSL and vectoring infrastructure, we have high level of acceptance and a very stable and loyal customer base. Number of customers with more than 100 gigabits per second has gone up by 7 percentage points, and now it's 40% of customers with this bandwidth. 10% of our customer base are using super vectoring. And you can see that step by step, we are going up from 50 to 100 to 250, 400 megabits. And then in the future, we want to reach 1 gigabit. It takes time, we know that, and that is taken into account in our business report. [indiscernible], you talked about the burden on FTTA rollout, but as the rising construction costs and because of scarcity in the contractor sector, you buy it, but we are on a good way to achieve our targets. And a lot of the construction companies have long-term contracts with us. So we -- they are binding relations. And we're talking about rising costs and see where we can help. But at the center, we try to improve the productivity of the rollout to reduce overall cost. And of course, as I say that rising construction costs are an issue, but we believe that in the target agreements or the forecast, which we have published, this is reflected. You asked about the opportunities whether there should also be a participation of over-the-top layer in the net infrastructure costs. Please consider today 6 tech giants of the Valley, Google, Netflix and the other big providers make up 50% of data traffic in the Internet. If you take the top 11, it amounts to more than 80%. And in the past, a model was created that the big carriers -- so the infrastructure carriers hand over the -- when I -- in the American network, they gave it to AT&T., and they give their data traffic to our network. And according to [indiscernible] this year when operators are concerned. And it works as long as the -- without the Internet companies. Then the Internet companies joined the game. And now the traffic volume, 80% of this volume comes from these big Internet companies, which at the same time, do not transport any traffic of -- so this has led to enormous asymmetries. So we are currently supplying these Internet companies. And at the same time, capacities have to be provided by us to make sure that their Internet providers get good services without bearing their share of the costs. So they say that prices for and customers should be increased. And we said we would have a fair deal and we want, but those companies, which, of course, 5% or more of Internet traffic make a contribution to part of our backbone infrastructure investment, which doesn't make me really popular in the Valley, but well, that's something I will have to bear with but for the customer and will also be beneficial for the extension of the infrastructure. European Commission has launched consultations to see if and how they can do or approve for regulation of these tech giants. We also would love to see bilateral commercial negotiations, but at the moment, it can't be done without a referee or any regulatory authority or any legal framework. Let's hope that Brussels will take a necessary decision, and consultations are going next year more on that. You asked about the opportunity to have virtual AGMs in the future. The Board of Management and Supervisory Board still favor very much physical meetings you need. Let we are great fans of meeting you once a year to have this exchange. Deutsche Telekom last year despite difficult circumstances because of the corona pandemic was the only Dutch company which decided to return to the classic format. But overall, we have seen that virtual AGMs can be a format which might be possible for the future, which might also have a possible hybrid meetings. When I see law has been created to guarantee shareholder flights comprehensively also in virtual format. Deutsche Telekom is open to a virtual format. The digitalization of AGMs and also aspects of sustainability, traveling expenses, et cetera, are plus points but it is required. We should keep all options open to be -- have all options at our disposal, also in case of a possible future crisis. And we will amend the articles of incorporation. Both the physical and virtual experiences can provide the platform for dialogue with the shareholders and take the necessary decisions. And Deutsche Telekom would also in case of a virtual AGM will, of course, guarantee full shareholders whilst including a live interactive general debate online. It's an option, and to be very open, I love to see you in person. [ Mr. Backendorf ], on your remarks that the dividend payment, we would use tricks, which would not be necessary. You won't be surprised to hear that we do not share your view. I talked enough about the dividend payment, I think. I think it's right and also sustainable if we focus on the adjusted results and not taking special effects basing the dividend payment on that. [ Mr. Honduran ], you asked about Huawei and our business, our U.S. business. First, I think you got the point. We do not have any Chinese supplier for our American network. And overall in our group for many years, we had a multi-vendor strategy. You can rest assured that everywhere where we are active, we are trying to avoid to focus just on 1 or 2 suppliers. We want to have a multi-supplier, multi-bundle strategy. Having a lot of opportunities to use our size, our scale in our procurement. And the same applies to mobile and also transport network and antenna network. And here, we also have various suppliers. We are working on Open RAN. Those who are interested, the antenna should become even more independent of its software. And then we will have many more possibilities to add further suppliers. We are working on that, and we're leading in this technology world band. In [indiscernible], we now have a field test, a big field test. And against this backdrop, we want to become even more independent by doing this telecom. At the end of 2019, decided to take our Chinese supplier out of the core network, and that also applies to our European shareholdings. That does not only refer to Germany. And we focused on new partners, Ericsson and Mavenir. And as I said with BMI, BSI and also with the Ministry of the Interior, we have a continuous exchange on which components can be used of Chinese supplies. I don't know if it's good and wise to say emotionally, all Chinese are evil. I don't think whether this will be helpful to export our [indiscernible] and other goods to China. But at the end of the day, it's a geopolitical or political decision, which we will then have to respect if this decision is taken. So far, we abide by the law, which define that certain critical components can only be procured by American or European suppliers. That is what we do. You asked us about the consequence of the management after selling the majority of our tower portfolio in Germany and Austria. We have a 30-year contract on using the cell tariffs with very good conditions which we negotiated and signed. We received an excellent ranking. I don't need to tell you. It's the 27.5 multiple of our earnings, which we received in the evaluation, which was just phenomenal what [ Mr. Langheim's ] team achieved. And of this valuation, we added liquidity of EUR 10.7 billion, which helps us, of course, to further reduce our debt, and we continue to hold 49%. And by the -- why is negotiation -- full negotiation with [indiscernible], we don't have the possibility that at any time, we can get a vote or we gain both majority. So we have an option at a certain date where we can decide to get back into control. Against this background the -- now we have business set up, a strategic set up. It's a service provider with service contracts, which clearly define how to serve Deutsche Telekom and the growth, and it has increased our value. One reason why the capital market, we received positive feedback was that we have signed. [indiscernible], you asked about the risk due to the Huawei technology. I want to refer to the answers given on this subject or I hope you agree. We spoke to climate neutrality, which is also very important, which we have discussed very explicitly today. You asked about the success of real CO2 emission reduction. As I said again and again, also in my presentation, 100% electricity of the network is already renewables. Since 2021 emissions compared to 2022 have gone down by 97%. Also without taking into [indiscernible] renewable, CO2 emissions last year were reduced by 11%, which increased our energy efficiency in the company. And we are on a sustainability chart. We presented our ESG targets. It's not only E. It's also S&G. You can download it and [indiscernible]. And we discussed for 5 hours with sustainability investors about our strategy. And this was financial indicators, which I cannot present here in total because of time constraints. [indiscernible] we can provide it later in writing. You also asked what do you do [indiscernible]. For understandable reasons, we'll sell further shares of Deutsche Telekom AG. We -- I don't know of any plans of KFW on selling further shares. We have a very broad worldwide shareholder basis. We have institutional investors. We also have a lot of private investors. So common to have transfers and [indiscernible] in our investor portfolios, which we need to manage [indiscernible]. We are happy to have KFW as a big investor on board and also as a partner, of course. 5G and Deutsche Bahn AG last year, the black [indiscernible] to provide the band, the train network, the rail network with 5G. FX business has -- things have improved, but we have not yet reached the point. You asked whether Deutsche Bahn is still interested. Nothing they will talk about, and you don't know whether that would have a negative impact on the revenues. We are currently providing LTG, 4G and 5G technology on all tracks. We want to bring the signal to the rail, and then Deutsche Bahn has the task to bring the signal from outside into the trains. There are various technologies, which help. These are repeaters in the trains and also the technology. But you have laser -- the windows and they become the projectors for the mobile network on the train. These trains are currently being supplied, and we have made robot to implement this project. And I don't know of any obstacle and whether the quota of 5% of employing severely disabled people are met, you know that inclusion is close to my heart. It's very important. That's what our brand sense for. And if you are for a brand which is inclusive, you as a company also have to work in a very inclusive manner. You cannot preach without living it. And our inclusion agreement for the group with the representative of the severely disabled employees has just been reduced, and we have a common action plan in [indiscernible] policing charge. We have updated this approach. We are exceeding the 5% ratio, and that for years in 2020, the number amounted to 7.7% of severely disabled employee. Thank you very much. And before Mr. Illek will come in, ladies and gentlemen, as announced, I will now close the list of speakers. We will not accept further requests to take the floor and with this to Mr. Illek.

Okay. Thank you. I hope that I can now conclude the topic of dividends. [ Mr. Mackendorf ], you asked about the nonoperational adjustments in 2021. This was EUR 0.03 in the share price. Based on the negligible effect, we then use the adjusted EPS as a basis for 2023. Then there was a question, why don't you just sell T-Systems? Well, I don't think that you can say that we do not have active investment policies. We sold our fixed line business in Romania, in the Netherlands. We then sold some of the tower companies. But for T-Systems, we found a different solution. We focused T-Systems on the areas of IT, cloud service, digital solutions and datacom. And the task of the T-Systems management team now is to generate cash contribution, improve the margins and make a cash flow contribution to the group. And it's our expectation that we will see a breakeven this year so that we then have an active value contribution by T-Systems. Then there was another question concerning the dividends. Why are you at 47% rather at the low end of your target corridor? We said that year-on-year, we will discuss with the Supervisory Board and define the right earnings distribution ratio. We still have a debt ratio of 3.07. And this is why we said it is right not to move to the upper range, but the lower range, and this is why we decided to use 47% this year. Next topic, net debt, EUR 142 billion. Don't -- isn't this a big exposure? I already answered this question this morning, EUR 142 billion, EUR 104 billion are interest-bearing, EUR 70 billion are in the U.S., 34% are ex U.S., and we will reduce the variable share continuously. Then [ Mr. Hanselman ], ROCE, 4.5%, isn't this too low? And what is the WACC, the weighted average cost of capital? At 4.5% this year, we expect to continuously move towards 6.5%. This is the commitment we gave at the Capital Market Day. For 2023, we expect our ROCE to be above our WACC and that we will improve this again in 2024. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, based on the large number of speakers on our list, I will now feel forced to reduce the speaking time in order to make sure that we can close at a reasonable time. So now we'll have 5 minutes per speaker, and I hope that this meet your expectations. So we first have [indiscernible] and Mr. Paul Rod and then Mr. Ruter. First off from Mr. Muller.

Mr. Hottges and all other persons here, a very warm welcome to all of you. I know about the advantages of a trip on the vision on lake and I am Mr. Muller, and I'm very happy that for 130 years, my company has been called companies [indiscernible] Muller. So I represent my own shares. And on item #2, I would like to say that I do not want to have the dividend paid in the euro currency, but that everybody should get one share for the [ radar right backing AG ], switching on board on the Berlin Stock Exchange and that this share is then be offered in a [indiscernible] for all the shareholders of Deutsche Telekom. And I suggest that the currency euro that you offer is an inflationary unit currency. And then in the further course of the agenda, I will also propose not to approve of the activities of the members of the Board of Management. And the reason is that I'm still very angry to you because many, many years ago, you forced me with violence to give up my T-Systems, the shares in a squeeze out. You have to go back on this. You have to return them to me. And then further on the agenda and not very important, I would like to propose on Item 4 on the agenda that none of the members of the Board -- of the Supervisory Board will be approved. And the reason for this is that I think you wave to -- or you did not do enough to abolish punishment in the world. Punishment will always result in violence. And I also would like to recommend to you to use a similar way to speak to me as I did. So that's everything.

Mr. Muller, we will definitely come back to this at the end of the meeting. It's a pity that you don't trust neither Board of Management nor the Supervisory Board, but we hope to gain your trust. Then I would like to ask Mr. Rod then Mr. Udo Ruta, and then we also have [indiscernible] before we answer questions again. First of all, Mr. Paul Rod.

Good afternoon. Can you all hear me? I would like to welcome all the people present here. My name is Paul Rod, and I talk on behalf of the [indiscernible] [ 4049044 ] and [ 034108 ]. Well, I wanted to take the floor because I am quite angry. We discussed what Deutsche Telekom does with customers who are not digitally native, those customers who do not have all the digital possibilities, digital devices. And then you force them and you threaten them and you even tell them we will cut your line. You will no longer have fixed line for me if you don't go digital and use AI within the communication with the customers. And here in this respect, I really have to say that the customer without having any agreement is suddenly sent a router and she doesn't even know what to do with this router and then the customer is asked to send back the router if he doesn't want it. But still all the hassle is with customers. And then the customer tries to complain against it, but then there is no address to send the complaint to. It really looks as if Deutsche Telekom no longer want to accept any contact with analog people. They don't want to communicate with them. And apparently, there is a rule that they want to get rid of all the people who want to communicate in an analog way. And then also, how do you use AI in communication? Have you ever read your own letters? Have you ever noticed how you are talking to the people? There is nothing personal. It is no longer empathy, but this is nothing you can use to find in your customers. It's just a rejection of your customers. And then you say that the customer is at the center of your policies and your priority. A different topic I would like to mention, 5G. In this context, I have not heard anything about satellite networks. As far as I know, the biggest 5G efficiency is possible if you use satellite networks. But here, we only talk about fiber. Isn't fiber a backward technology that you are betting on right now whereas other technologies would be much more important in the future, and then you are lagging behind again. That was everything I wanted to say. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you, Mr. Rod. Thank you for keeping it short. And now I would like to ask Mr. Udo Ruta and then Mr. Gerhard Bachmann again. But first, Udo Ruta.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, in the Board of Management and the Supervisory Board, dear shareholders. My name is Udo Ruta, and I represent my own shares in the shareholders' meeting. I would like to mention one topic that you already commented on, Mr. Hottges. And this is the format of the shareholders' meeting and especially Item 7 on our agenda today. Last year, you made it quite clear already which of the formats you would favor. And this is a face-to-face meeting. And this is a statement that we really heard from you last year and you are having another face-to-face meeting this year, and this is a good sign for the German democratic system. You have to see it against the background of the fact that in the last 2 years, in 2020 and in 2021, we also saw that we need an additional format for special situations, such as a pandemic, where we, unfortunately, could not meet in person. And this format, unfortunately was exploited. The regulation that was devised by [ Mrs. Lambrecht ] was then exploited by the Board of Management and Supervisory Boards of some companies in order to keep the shareholders' meeting silent to make -- to take away the rights of the shareholders' meeting. And I think this should not be possible, and this is a point that also should be discussed today again. It's up for debate again. I would have thought it's useful if the wording of the resolution in Item 7 would not have been as it was based on the legal regulation. I would have preferred if you had said that these exceptions would only be -- or these regulations would only be applied in circumstances where we cannot have a physical face-to-face meeting. Unfortunately, the wording is different. And in the past, we also had to see, unfortunately, that the companies who only want to have virtual meetings to the disadvantage to the -- of the shareholders, even ask the proxy voters to pass the resolution, pass the motion without any restrictions. And this was especially done by the German Chair Institute by [ Mrs. Bortenlanger ]. They just wanted to say that the rights of shareholders will be restricted for the future as well. And this is a point that is completely against the tradition of shareholder democracies in Germany, and we want to use these rights in the future as well. Another point which is quite important, especially regarding the face-to-face meetings, well, in virtual meetings, you won't get any feedback. When you say something, you will not see the response, the feedback by the shareholders. You will not see what is well received by the shareholders and where the shareholders are more critical. Because the criticism normally does then -- not come from the whole auditorium, but only five or six representatives in a virtual meeting, and this is not the feedback that you would receive in a normal, in a face-to-face meeting. And it says that the shareholders in a shareholders' meeting should meet to December, but you can't do this in a virtual space here. We can get together. We can discuss with you, but we can also discuss amongst ourselves, amongst the shareholders and agree on what we want to achieve. Then I've got another few points, which I would like to mention. First of all, you already mentioned net debt. Net debt is quite high in the company. And I would like to know specifically what to do about bonds. You say in the annual report that there are bonds to the tune of [ 93.8 million ] And I would like to know which of these bonds will have to be refinanced in the coming years and what the conditions are and what you do about the refinancing. And then regarding the sale of the towers business. What were the proceeds? What was the book value of the company to be sold? And what were the divestment proceeds, the profits or the losses? And the same, I would like to know for the fixed line business of former Sprint to [indiscernible] And here, the -- it will be in mid -- in mid '23. So what was the book value? What were the profits? What were the losses? In T&L, here, we've got cash injection of EUR 3.6 billion. And I would like know about the exact values. What were the book values which were sold? And to final point, I can see that my time is up already, but perhaps you can give me one more minute because it might be quite important. You also talked about T-Mobile US, at present 153 billion worth and you also talked about the share buyback program which is imminent or which was already started. You said if we participate, then we will get cash back. So the cash flow is increased. We will get some money back. But on the other hand, we also hand over some shares again. And we already heard that we have just managed to go beyond 50%. And the decisive question is, if we hand back in its buyback program, won't we fall back to below the 50%? And what are you planning? And then I have another question. What is happening with the shares which are bought back? Will they be automatically withdrawn from the market? Or will they be used as a currency for further acquisitions when T-Mobile US wants to buy other companies? So what are the rules here so that we can make a proper assessment? These were all my questions and comments. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you, Mr. Ricardo. For the second time, [ Mr. Bachmann ] and then we will have a break to answers the questions, and then [indiscernible] will come after that. But first, Mr. Bachmann.

My name is [ Gerhard Bachmann ]. I would like to add a few questions on 5G. Mr. Hottges, people look into 6G or there is 6G technology. And have you been working on a [indiscernible]? And do you need additional cell towers and antennas? And will a 6G rollout will only then selectively market situation? My question is, which fixed market share do you want to keep with copper? Because not all consumers are ready to switch to optic fiber or are not able to use it, so it is over-technologized for a lot of people, if you like. The grid -- the electricity grid. You have green electricity. You have photovoltaics. You have wind. But there are also risks. So my question on the current situation, how long can Deutsche Telekom currently cover a blackout? And what are your priorities in case of a blackout? And which telephone areas you can continue to operate if there is blackout? And thirdly, has Deutsche Telekom enough emergency generators, of which kind? For which areas? For how long? How -- what is the feed in? And is it centralized or decentralized? Fifth question. Just Deutsche Telekom extend its emergency power supply? To which extent? What are the reasons? What are you doing substantially as we see more blackouts? Because of the green energy policy and electricity consumption for 2022, what is the terawatt consumption or percentage for Internet and data traffic for commercial applications and noncommercial applications? And last comment, especially to Mr. Appel. New times Mr. Appel at an AGM, I expect to get better food. I only had a soup -- was enough. If at [indiscernible] at the AGM, you get much better food. So you should use this as an example because as you are paying the bill, you can decide what is served.

Thank you. Now we come to the answers. And after this question, Mr. [indiscernible] and then Ms. -- Dr. Horst Peters and Mr. Josef will ask questions. Now first, [ Ms. Springer's ] question. In the annual report that was written that word was taken. So what has happened? A conflict of interest of Supervisory Board, members did not materials, and that is why there was no need to have a vote on this. Why wasn't it that you didn't have time to the largest German investor? I answered this question, but I'm happy at any time to talk to the largest investor or German or other investors, which did not take place last year is a cause for pity, but we can certainly do this now. And next question was Mr. Appel. You said that this discrepancy still applies. Does it mean that after you will leave Deutsche, another member of the Supervisory Board or the Board of Management will be give reason for this declaration. I decided to have this rule because there was 4 months of overlapping period. I do not intend another executive role. So I don't want to be active on any other Board of Management. But we did it to be very transparent. So companies presents in a different way. We opted for this, as we said. There is this conflict for 4 months and 4 days, and that is why we wanted to be transparent. And the next question was, will there be a full audit on sustainability for 2023? And do you believe that Deloitte is able to do that? It's something sustainable or audited was limited assurance by Deloitte? And the two, ESG, KPIs, energy process and CO2 emissions were audited receivable assurance, and the limited assurance audit for sustainability has been proven -- tried and tested for most companies. Generally speaking, we are obliged to that there is a good cost-benefit ratio. And the Audit Committee of the Supervisory Board looks into this. We would trust Deloitte to do this in principle. As a matter of fact, it's very dynamic, and we see a lot of development. As a matter of fact, most companies still use limited assurance, and that is due to the complexity of the problems. And the financial KPIs, we've owned this for years. You need some time, but -- so rest assured that the Board of Management is working on this and in dialogue with the Supervisory Board. First, I would like to answer Mr. Horst questions. Mr. Horst, I understand when you talked about your customer count or we did something wrong. So if we did anything wrong, I would like to say that I'm sorry. And I ask my colleagues to contact you to understand what went wrong. The customers in the center, and we're working on this. And there are a million of contracts every day, which we manage every day. So if we weren't able to address you correctly, we need to understand why and we will try to be better next time. But the numbers we are working on [indiscernible] show into the right direction, but nevertheless, perfection is still a certain way. That texts are customer-friendly. Well, it's a matter of taste. I will say, I look at the texts personally. Sometimes the organization checking the hats. And what else do you want to do? But I think it's important, and I try to use common language, a friendly tone and to be also a bit jokingly, even though it's a formal text. I wouldn't say that Telekom has the legacy of an old bureaucracy. And sometimes, this is still reflected in its wordings. So there's still room for improvement, and we are constantly working on addressing you in a more customer-friendly way. Which brings me to [ Mr. Bachmann's ] questions. You asked about the cost for replacing [indiscernible] technology sets us again to get. So at the moment, we do not have any cost calculation, which we could present because there's no reason to replace the antennas, which are considered to be noncritical infrastructure by completely new ones. And I also believe if that is a geopolitical decision to do that, then it should be the responsibility of the state to bear the cost. It's not that we would be doing anything wrong or that we become dependent. After lengthy decision-making process, we decided on the best technology for us in the legal framework given. And you asked if Huawei have service hub at Deutsche Telekom, how many components Deutsche Telekom has? We do not have any service office and not by Huawei. So they have their own offices. Just throughout the corner, Huawei has a big office in Bonn. And we do not have any Huawei components in the U.S. So the answer is no. You will continue to ask about buildings and investments. And the ownership share amounts to 80% for which we -- and if we want to keep this in the minimum long term, yes. And free buildings and lands have rented then the lease contracts are terminated or if we own them, we let them or sell them. So we are currently massively reducing our real estate. One reason is that upon the request of our employees, we are increasing the time people work from home. That is why we need fewer office space, and we do not use the entire office space and which we will reduce which increases productivity and efficiency. And you continue to ask if 5G rollout will be continued and accelerated, where it technically makes sense at all that we will use 5G? And you asked, where you use 5G technology? The answer is everywhere. So we'll make sure that we can roll out as much 5G as possible. And a large part of the site towers, which is the Deutsche Funkturm, the obligation to use 5G technology and equip them accordingly. The 5G covers, [ Mr. Bachmann ] in Germany is, as I said in my presentation, 95%. That is where people live. And we are also working on reaching areas which are more rural, more distant. We have also 5G coverage there. Also motorways, roads and railroads. And we are doing this, but I talked about that at lengths. We have a clear leader here in the rollout, vis-a-vis our competitors, but you know they're still white spots and we're trying to close them. Selling towers. You sold the towers, and you're only leasing them for your antennas. Is that correct? Yes, it's correct. The sale refers to the passive infrastructure, mass and the antenna carriers. These are the things which we now rent. It's like moving into a building with our antenna. The antenna [indiscernible] technology on top is owned by us. Let's now come to [ Mr. Olec ] Mr. Olec asked about the contracts with the company groups [indiscernible] called. Yes. They are contract with [indiscernible] However, there are no contract relations with the [indiscernible] who will matter for those who are not familiar with these so-called CCAR solutions. It's a contract center as a service solution. These are so-called cloud service customer experience solutions, which we are using. We have a 100% reselling ACD port service automatic call distribution service sales at Comstar, and what was these companies are marketing and agency services. I hope that has answered your question. You continue to ask in the contracts whether we know of any violation of the corporate government contract or internal regulations in view of the communications where you mentioned, we are looking into all information and hints of possible violations. Also of our business partners in view of the communication software, we couldn't find any violation. But if there -- we receive any information on a possible violation, we will, of course, look into. But we are not aware of any. Mr. Heller asked about contracts with [indiscernible]. Well, I have a fiancee here for the second time, but I answer this already. Now [ Mr. Gomberg's ] question. By the way, I listened to you all the time and I didn't smoke. And you asked about a print -- a printed copy of the business report is provided in the [indiscernible] for today, we have printed a few copies for you on recycled paper. We try to be as paperless as possible, but you know that we are not always possible. And with respect to the fiber rollout, we are cooperating in Bochum with the Glasfaser Ruhr, which is a subsidiary of the Stadtwerke Bochum, the public utility of Bochum. Whether -- you asked whether was a tender? There wasn't because it was a private business cooperation, and there is no context to the so-called explosion. It has got anything to do with us. But happened when the network of a competitor was built, not our network, but bad enough. You asked about the employee survey. And for years, we have work with an external service provider, which is quest back for employee service and the outcome on the commitment of employees we've been assessing for years. It's one of the most important instruments, which we have to take extremely seriously and which is also part of the remuneration of all executives, including the Board of Management. There's tools. This externally measures tools of how do you feel? The so-called pulse service of our employees. It's an extremely important tool to understand how certain departments, units, area, segments, and how the entire group is developing since 2020. The outcome has developed very well in particular due to pandemic, we've had excellent feedback. We had an approval rate of 75% in 2020. When people were asked, I feel good at 77 in '21 and 78 in 2022. And also compared to other companies that is very, very good. If I'm right, I think it's in the top percentile on this -- the question on Mrs. Colman, you can [indiscernible] she is an entrepreneur, what is the name and what is the job? Why don't we have any detail, Mrs. Colman is a shareholder in a family-owned business of the same name and now her activity was lined and her membership in other supervisory boards or similar bodies can be found on the home page of DTAG as for all the other members of the supervisory. [indiscernible] continue to ask of the 1,000 additional fiber experts till the end of March 2023, 880 have been recruited. Ladies and gentlemen, listeners, we have been reducing FTEs for years. So we should be happy to have recruited 1,000 new employees because of our fiber rollout. And these experts are coming from all over Germany and were recruited externally on the market, and we have launched comprehensive campaigns in all relevant media. It's running well. We have more than 10,000 applications for these jobs helping us to accelerate fiber rollout. [ Mrs. Gomberg ], you asked about investing into the mass and preselling them to GD towers. When we saw the GD Towers have material as amount to EUR 1.6 billion on their books. [ Mrs. Gomberg ] you also asked about the satellite SpaceX Starlink and others, which is an exciting question, which will be on our agenda. And if in addition to the terrestrial mobile provision, if there will also be an integration of satellite technology. The newest iPhone 14 have an emergency function. So if no network is available, but you can at least make an emergency call using satellite technology, we should think whether we want to integrate this service, we look at this in detail. In America, we have already a partnership with Starlink, with Elon Musk company, and we have not yet decided with whom we want to partner in Europe to operate our own satellite or to buy shares in these companies is not our intention. [ Mrs. Gomberg ], you asked about renewables at T-Mobile US. Power consumption there and in the group is based 100% on renewable sources. In addition, there are still emissions from using other kinds of energy, as I mentioned before. The technologies of large batteries are still in their infancy. By the way, we are experimenting with our mobile antennas. We want to install a battery and solar cells there. And in this way, we can cover peaks. Whenever electricity is too expensive, we can use our own batteries, hence, making a contribution to a reduction in emissions. And we are talking hundreds of antennas where this has already been done, and we hope that we'll be able to achieve a breakthrough with the large batteries that would be a major progress for us, particularly in connection with our mobile antennas. And we need to continue maintaining the generators as a backup for a case of emergency and such diesel generators make sure that even in the event of a major blackout, we'd be able to run our network. In the event of a long-lasting blackout, for instance, a natural disaster, we would, of course, have to resort to a diesel generator or backup generator. For instance, we made such generators available when the region was hit by the disastrous flooding. And yes, it's diesel, but there you need to prioritize and their security is more important than the environment. Mr. [indiscernible], you asked about a public transport ticket for the [indiscernible] region for shareholders. Shareholders are responsible for organizing their journey to the AGM themselves. They're coming from all parts of Germany, sometimes from abroad, which is why in [indiscernible] ticket was out of the question for us. You also asked, does our company have a higher enterprise value than that of three of our competitors? And the annual reported actually says four. Well, the market capitalization of your company is higher than that of Vodafone or -- and Telefonica combined. And the same held true if you included British Telecom on top of that. But to be quite honest with you, I didn't mean to brag about it, which is why I only mentioned three. So please bear with me. But think about it. Ten years ago, we were the #4, about the same size as Orange. And look at Deutsche Telekom's market capitalization today. Well, I'm getting kind of emotional here, and sometimes I have to rub my eyes. Then you talked about the flights to the U.S. You said when our Board members are flying to the U.S., are they using a standard airline? Or are they traveling in a private jet? Or first class? Well, we decide on that on a case-by-case basis. It's about availability, financial aspects, time aspect. I just spent 9 days in the United States, and I tried to organize myself in such a way that I'm not only going there to meet colleagues from T-Mobile US, but can also go to the Valley to see some of our big partners there. And last week, I was using Lufthansa to fly to the United States and back. How much do we donate to the Telekom Baskets? Well, Deutsche Telekom is important for regional and local marketing. And we've been supporting the Telekom Baskets since the early 1990s. We have invested more than EUR 80 million in bond as a location for basketball. And we've extended our name sponsoring until 2024 by another 2 years. I would also like to say though that such a Sports Club should always try to find several sponsors and should not only rely on one sponsor. We are supporting the Telekom Baskets in this difficult phase. But it's important for us to see that others are also supporting such sports organizations [ Mr. Shichman ], you asked when we are going to stop working with Bayern Munich. Well, there are no plans to quit the partnership. On the contrary, we actually extended our contract with Bayern Munich by another 4 years until 2027 last year. And we are quite proud to be a partner of FC Bayern Munich. We've sponsored sports events for about 20 years. It's an important communications platform. Football is the most important kind of sport for German customers far and away. And interestingly, people who know that we are sponsoring Bayern Munich have much higher market shares and tend to be much more satisfied with us than those customers who are not aware of the fact that we are sponsoring Bayern Munich. And that's probably because people are associating us with the winner, which is Bayern Munich. And there is no other player who is quite as attractive as Bayern Munich. You see the Bayern Munich jersey in the headlines time and again. And therefore, Bayern Munich for us is a very important partner. By the way, this is also part of our claim. Regardless of what we do, we always want to be the #1. We always want to be leading. And I'd also like to say that Telekom baskets are also trying to become the #1. They don't want to be in the middle league, they want to make it to the top. Okay. Are there any plans on the part of the German government to sell Deutsche Telekom shares? That was another question. And would that negatively impact on the share price? This is a question to the German government really. I can't answer it. But right now, we are not aware of any plans on the part of the German government to do that. Next question. How do you fund music, sports and culture in the region? Well, I could spend 30 minutes dwelling on the subject because I am deeply convinced that the brand, which is Deutsche Telekom, has always played an important role in the world of arts and social life. I will actually co-open a big arts exhibition in Leipzig before long. This will be the world's first digital arts exhibition in the city of Leipzig. And in the telekom forum, right across from here, which is now one of the biggest sports venues, we will be organizing the over-the-border festival. And we've been supporting the [indiscernible] in [indiscernible]. We are sponsoring the Beethoven Festival. And we are proudly co-hosting the telekom Beethoven competition, which is one of the largest festivals of its kind. And we are sponsoring a lot of educational and social projects. Relevant representatives of these projects are present here today. We are also doing a lot to foster digitization for young people. We've set up partnerships with schools in Bonn. So let me put it this way. If Deutsche Telekom failed to live up to its responsibility and bonded the surrounding area than around 5 million of euros would not be spent, which are currently spent on all these projects. Thank you very much. Now Dr. Illek will continue more questions.

I hope that not all shareholders insist on giving us shake of hands before they leave. Anyway, so what's the revenue split across the various countries within Deutsche Telekom's footprint? We have a footprint in over 50 countries, and it is broken down like this: 66% U.S., 22%, Germany; roughly 12% Europe; and the remainder is split across the other countries. Then [ Mrs. Grinberg ] asked, how many subsidies did we get in 2022? That was EUR 435 million in the past year for the optical fiber rollout. And then how much did we have -- how much did you get in taxes? EUR 4.5 billion, and we spent EUR 3.2 billion in taxes last year. I have two more questions here from [ Mr. Gibela ]. The first one was on ESG and variable Board remuneration. Will you Dr. Appel, bring up this question or tackle this question as early as 2023? Answer, ESG targets are part of our short-term and long-term variable compensation. 1/3 is about carbon emissions and energy reduction. The target values of the ambition level can be found on Page 10 of the remuneration report. Needless to say, the Supervisory Board regularly deals with this issue. And if there are any changes, then we will inform or propose this to the AGM accordingly. Second question from [ Mr. Eberle ] Can we organize the next AGM such that the divisional Board members present their Board divisions themselves? Well, of course, that will be possible, but I think it would be better if we continue as before, that I, myself, and the CFO and the CEO answer all the questions raised. Now the last four comments. [indiscernible] and then Mr. Eichman, Mr. [indiscernible] is first.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Hottges already answered a lot of the questions that I wanted to raise because he made a lot of comments on sponsoring. However I have a couple of follow-up questions. First of all, however, I would like to extend thanks to the Telekom foundation because if you are working with young people, if you know a lot about education, then you know that a lot of things would not be possible without support from the Telekom Foundation. And I think it's good that Telekom Foundation only gives us some start-up funding, and then leave it up to the organization to continue. I like this approach because that leads to new ideas being pursued. Let me be more precise about my next question. How many of the proceeds that you are getting is reinvested in the work of the foundation and sponsoring? And of course, we are all struggling with inflation, which means that every measure is becoming more expensive, so to what extent are you planning to give more money to the foundation, to compensate for the inflation depending on the economic situation? And then allow me to say this, Bayern Munich was in the headlines today, but that is not exactly a seal of quality or not necessarily anyway. And tonight you'll have the opportunity to reconsider whether it might make sense to actually sponsor another team. They are playing against Strasbourg on the EuroLeague tonight. Might actually be worth watching it. Thank you.

Thank you. [ Mr. Eichman ] is next, followed by Mr. Peter. Mr. Eichman, you have the floor.

Okay. First, I need a sip of water. My doctor, Dr. [indiscernible] says hello. Basically, he always wants me to drink enough, which is what I'm doing now. Right. So the countdown's on 300 seconds. This is the 28th AGM that I'm attending. So it's an anniversary kind of thing. One of the AGMs I attended was not an ordinary one, but an extraordinary one, and that was in 2009. There were two AGMs, and they were not face-to-face, which makes this the 25th ordinary face-to-face AGM that I'm attending. And therefore, I'm saying this is kind of an anniversary to me. We just dealt with item 7 on our agenda, and that's about the amendments to the articles of incorporation. And decision will have to be made by August 2025, whether it is admissible to hold virtual AGMs. Well, I hope that the pandemic is over now. So are there still any plans to hold a virtual AGM at '24 and '25? That's what I gathered over the last couple of hours, but a lot of people already made it clear that it would be much nicer to have physical AGMs. But are there any plans to the contrary right now, I think there's no reason to assume that we will be forced to hold a virtual AGM again. And it will be nice if the next AGMs were face-to-face again. And I hope that the amendments to the articles of incorporation won't prevent that from happening. We have four entrances here. And on the fourth entry, there is a sign which in German reads [Foreign Language] using the English word counter for speakers' registration counter. That was probably a mistake because we have this mix of German and English, Genglish, and that's not really good. Okay. I already spent around 50% of my speaking time. This year, it's been 25 years that we've been out there in the free market. And in the past, we always had to allow our competitors to use our lines, free of charge. And the throughput fees, well, it wasn't free of charge, but the throughput fees weren't high enough to help us cover our costs. And every CEO, be it Dr. [indiscernible] Mr. Obermann or Mr. Hottges, no CEO of this company condone that, of course. And a couple of years ago, I talked to a Board member here, and at the time, the regulator demanded that the throughput fees even be lowered further even though everything is becoming ever more expensive. And that Board member told me that they were able to stop that. It was getting less and less anyway. So my question is, don't you think it would be possible to make sure that your competitors have to pay throughput fees that help you cover your costs? I think Mr. [indiscernible], at the time, mentioned something like 280 million per year, but I don't know if that's enough. Have we reached a point by now at which your competitors have to pay fees that really help you cover your costs? Maybe even more than that, so that we can make a small profit from it? Well, I have 56 seconds left, 53 seconds actually. And I would just like to use them to say thank you.

Thanks a lot. This brings us to Dr. Horst Peters. And then Mr. Josef [indiscernible] as the last speaker. Mr. Peters, you have the floor.

Mr. Hottges, congratulations on your successful venture in the United States. it's quite impressive how you have developed this company into some sort of a shooting star. And there are only a few German companies who have achieved a similar success. My question goes to Dr. Illek. How much did the last mile cost, meaning from 46% to 51%? You have a Japanese partner and on this business model, Professor Springer, made a comment at one of the last AGMs. And it's highly sensitive. And there was news recently that he was having real estate problems in China, which comes with risks and opportunities. My question is, how are you dealing with this on the strategic gap that you mentioned, Mr. Hottges? There are the carriers and they are the content providers. And when you look at the capital market, then you will find that the gap is actually widening. You can also include the cloud here. My question is, are you planning to also add content to your networks in future? Or will you find ways of making content providers share your costs? Because this is the strategic gap. And the longer you wait, the more this gap will widen, the bigger it will become. I was in [indiscernible] a couple of weeks ago to see a company -- representatives of a company that was mentioned here today. It was about potassium. And I asked them whether research is working on them. G5 is over. G6 is ready for the rollout, and they are still working on G7. My question is, are we lagging behind here? Another question. On the flooding in the Ahr region and also in Ukraine. Elon Musk used his Starlink system to fix the destroyed telephone lines within a couple of days, offering spreaders and satellite baselines. So my question is, before you're looking into how to connect homes in the various municipalities here, don't you think it would also be good to lease one of those lines from Elon Musk? It would be cheaper and it will help you save a lot of money. Mr. [indiscernible], you were praising your network this morning. And -- well, when I was trying to go online this morning, it took me 20 minutes until I was able to go online. Pretty close to my company, and that was not an individual case. It happens quite often. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Peters. And now finally, Mr. Josef [indiscernible].

Hello. Good afternoon. My name is [indiscernible]. and I am a minor shareholder from the [ Algo ] area. I would like to ask a question concerning the sale of the tower company. Competitor wind had an IPO very successfully with their tower. So why didn't you choose an IPO for the business? Earning a lot of money, and giving this money to the telekom shareholders? I would like to give you a very understandable example, I think. Years ago, I bought some Fiat shares at a very low cost. At the time, Fiat was really rock bottom. And then there was somebody called Mahoney, a great manager guy, and he did not only restructure the automotive business of Fiat. But as usual, today, he did not sell the other divisions, for example, agricultural machines, fire vehicles, trucks, construction machinery. No, he restructured each of the divisions. And then all these divisions were sold or he went from an IPO, and he then gave the money to the shareholders. And for 10 of the Fiat shares, I got 1 Ferrari share. And this Ferrari share, well, I can check the current share price. I think it's EUR 240. It used to be EUR 270. So this is almost my pension. So Mr. Mahoney really did a good for the shareholders. And I think many of the telekom shareholders would be thrilled to see the same development. Well, I do not want to belittle the work that you have done in recent years. You did a good job, but the telekom share was very popular ones, and there are our shareholders who, unfortunately, paid EUR 30 for one of the shares. I do not want to compare you to Fiat, but I just want to mention that Mr. Mahoney, he then had an operation surgery in Switzerland, and he went to a bad hospital and then he died. But he did a great job, and he's still a prime example for me. Deutsche Telekom still have the possibility to do something for the shareholders using the towers because you still own some of these towers and according to my information, the company that bought the towers is a listed company, very successful. So my suggestion to you is you should then take over the shares -- just give -- buy the shares of this company and give these shares to the shareholders. Well, this is just my suggestion, but I made many proposals before hand. Normally, these proposals will not be taken up. It's without any results. It's not really very useful because I tried before, and well, there are some reasons why it's not possible. In the Supervisory Board, there is a lady who used to work for Morgan Stanley, in this Morgan Stanley, I think it was 2 years ago. It was a Morgan Stanley Infrastructure Fund, and I have received a good offer for shares. I was offered the shares, EUR 4, and they send the offer over and over again. They wanted my shares, but I didn't sell my shares. But I sold it later on for EUR 20. And now I bought an apartment in a sheltered housing area in [indiscernible] and I did not sell to Morgan Stanley, Oh, no. Can I say one more thing or is my time up? Don't take too long. Just briefly on the U.S. business. I have very bad experience with listed companies who also had companies in the U.S., Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank, for example, they paid so many fines in the U.S. Always, they had problems. They, unfortunately -- apparently never complied with the American laws. What about Deutsche Telekom? Do you know what you are doing in the United States? I'm afraid that you will have similar experiences in the United States as well. The U.S., politically speaking, we are seeing what is now happening with Mr. Trump. What is happening if the U.S. then also cheat us politically? What will they do? Unfortunately, we had a sad anniversary, it's now 20 years ago that the United States -- well, what's name again? Invaded Iraq. Yes, there was the invasion in Iraq. And not even our German media did call it a war of aggression. And now in the Ukraine, I hope that the war will not be as massive as the war in Iraq. And on the capital punishment, our Foreign Minister organized the conference against the capital punishment, but now I think the United States are still doing capital punishment. And another topic, China. Why? We already heard about this. Yes, I know that the German government is now really fighting against Deutsche Telekom. And similar to Russia, they are the usual suspects. Well, Mr. [indiscernible], perhaps you could come to your questions. Yes, yes, I will finish very soon. Just back to China. This problem is [ Mr. Xi Jinping ] He will not wait as long as Putin, when he says, "I will throw Germany out of China, then we are gone from there." Two examples. The lockdowns in China, the COVID lockdowns. They were well thought through. China knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted to sabotage the supply chains. And what is the damage to us? I'm talking -- I know what I'm talking about. For us, it was disastrous to have the supply chains collapse. For China, it wasn't a big problem. Or another example, in Russia or the German automotive companies had their sites. But now they withdrew. And I know this 100% in all these sites now Russia is producing, Russia is producing electrical vehicles. So they are now using the European former companies to produce electric vehicles, and I can promise you one thing. If our automotive industry has to withdraw from China, this is our death. And finally, I can only appeal to you to managers and to civil society, make sure that our politicians do the right thing because otherwise, we will be lost.

Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. [indiscernible]. This completes the speakers list. And before we move on with the answers, I would like to point out the following: ladies and gentlemen, after the closure of the general debate, we will start the voting procedure. And then you no longer have the possibility to give proxy votes or to send us post the votes or the instructions that you already gave can no longer be changed. Now first, over to Mr. Hottges, to answer the first block of questions.

Question by [ Mr. Bachmann ]. A question about Deutsche Glasfaser and the rollout efforts. Deutsche Glasfaser is actively advertising their product. We are only sending or advertising this on our cabinets, and we only inform about our strategy on the cabinets. The rollout strategy, I already described it. We want to achieve 10 million households. We want to equip 10 million households with fiber. We built 2 million, 3 million is what we plan this year, and we are also cooperating with utilities and joint venture partners. But we do not only use letters when we market our products. First of all, we do have the ads on the cabinets, that is true. Secondly, we have mobile sales offices, which means that we go to the public squares in the areas. We've got a lot of bands that we especially equipped. We've got tents that we build up in order to market our products. And we also have our own sales team traveling the country, and we've got the rangers. The rangers that are very often criticized. People who go from door to door and talk to people. I spent a day with the rangers, and the rangers really have a very important function because there are many people who will not go to shop somewhere. In order to get informed about fiber, they don't even know that construction is taking place in their streets. And they will be informed by our partners. So we really have a 360-degree marketing campaign for fiber. And we are not only doing it once, but we are doing several waves. If we were not in your area yet, [ Mr. Bachmann ], I would be quite surprised, honestly, or you can expect us to be there soon. Then fiber rollout. Vodafone had full fiber rollout for the last mile. They no longer need any fiber. That's bulls***. Especially Vodafone is overbuilding the last mile with fiber. Sometimes they even pretend as if they already had fiber, but we can see that they are currently really revamping their copper lines and try to put them on 1 gigabit. And they also massively invest in fiber rollout. So we have the same economic challenges. Currently, we offer rates up to 1 megabit per second -- no, sorry, 1,000 megabits, I wanted to say 1 gigabit per second. And the FTTH technology is much more future-proof than any other technology. And we use pure fiber, so we will have a competitive edge compared to the cable operators in the future. Then you ask about electricity consumption. Who are your energy suppliers? We buy electricity based on our internal PASM unit. It's a subsidiary, PASM, Power and Air Solution Management GMBH. And this company is buying from local producers and distributes the energy to the sites of Deutsche Telekom. It's a huge list of energy suppliers. The entire electricity or power consumption of Deutsche Telekom in Germany, including the storage and servers in 2022 was about 2.3 terawatt hours. Group wide, it would be more than 10 terawatt hours. So we are one of the largest energy buyers. We are bigger than most of the industrial companies and this is why sustainability important for us. [ Mr. Bachmann ], you also asked whether we are doing the fiber rollout on our own. I think I already mentioned this at length, 20 joint ventures and partners we are working with. Then you asked who is your co-partner and what types of investments do we have in this area. We already commented on this at length. The most important partner is IFM. This is the joint venture with the Australian pension fund but we also have a 50% joint venture with EV, Etel. This is in the northern part of Germany, around Oldenburg. And we have several joint ventures with mutual capital injections. Then you also asked about overbuilt and you said that Berlin is thinking about new regulations. If you talk about the ministries. We are not aware of any such thoughts. Most of the members of the House of Parliament in Germany are not asking for legal changes. And this would be difficult anyway because the European directives that are -- that our legislation is based on would be against this, would not allow this. So I think we now fought for infrastructure competition for 25 years now in Germany. Now we've got this competition and we should be happy that you've got different parties that are building infrastructure. And we cannot build the fiber network completely on our own, but we want to make sure that we protect our investment for the future, but other companies also have to do their share. Satellite communication, will Deutsche Telekom have their own satellite? No. And thus, I do not have to answer the question, what would it cost? We don't want it. And how would mobile-to-mobile communication work then in the future months? We will definitely try and answer the question how we can support our terrestrial service with satellite communication. But you also have to know that the classical end devices, terminal devices are not yet in a position to use satellites or only at high power consumption and this would only be a LEO satellite and not GEO satellites. And there was another question about satellite on the 5G network. These are completely different technologies. And as at today, it's not possible to exchange the satellite communication, can -- may -- can add to mobile communications in remote areas. And if you've got a satellite dish, then in areas where you don't have any mobile communication, no fixed lines, you can already set up your own Internet link. And you also asked whether Deutsche Telekom can be blackmailed because they use Huawei components. The clear answer is no. I already mentioned this. We've got a multi-vendor strategy. We massively and decidedly work to improve the Open RAN technology. No, we cannot be blackmailed. [ Mr. Duffner ], you asked about new supply chain [indiscernible] you asked about compliance with human rights in the group and direct or indirect effects for the cooperation with our suppliers. Compliance, with any such standards is continuously monitored by us. There is the human rights impact assessment, which we are performing on our suppliers plus so-called social audits. In addition, we are providing detailed reports as part of the CR report. You might want to check it out. We implemented 83 audits with external companies to find out whether our suppliers are meeting the relevant social standards directly and indirectly. Therefore, we have a lot of material to analyze. As in previous years, our audit of activities focused on Asia. And here, in particular, on China because China continues to be the main manufacturer for IT products and IT components, or China, more specifically. But we are also focusing on Europe Africa, Oceania and other areas. We audited IT hardware, software services and terminal devices as major fields of action. Amongst others, we did not become aware of any major breaches of working conditions or human rights. Whenever we come across major deficiencies, relevant measures are introduced and the effectiveness of these measures is monitored for instance, as regards compliance with relevant industrial safety regulations. For instance, sometimes we go to see some of our suppliers in order to see for ourselves whether the relevant rules are complied with. Then you asked about Scope 2 of the Supply Chain Act. I would like to refer to the comments we previously made on our compliance in this section. Deutsche Telekom meets all legal obligations as part of the Supply Chain Act, which came into effect as of the 1st of January this year. Then you asked whether Deutsche Telekom is aware of any breaches of the Supply Chain Act? I already answered this question by saying no. [ Mr. Duffner ], rest assured that we are not naive or negligent when rolling out our networks. We have put in place comprehensive safety concepts, which are regularly monitored by third parties and we are also in a close dialogue with the relevant authorities. Then you asked about carbon catcher. Well, [ Mr. Duffner ], there is a litigation here from the prosecution and Frankfurt against T-Systems. We don't know what made Paul Holden file criminal charges or press criminal charges in Frankfurt. So far, the prosecution and Frankfurt has not allowed T-Systems to inspect the relevant documentation. Therefore, we are not aware of what persons are actually affected by this case. And maybe -- the old allegation was that there was something wrong about the system that we use to identify any deficiencies. That is still being looked into. [ Mr. Duffner ], then you asked about another case. We are not aware of any threats on the part of the German government in connection with Huawei. The Federal Ministry of the Interior only said that it will look into the possibility of banning Huawei components from security-critical infrastructure. But this will still be analyzed and we will continue to work with them. Then there was another question on TellMe and the whistleblower system. The question was, did you get any tip-offs on possible breaches of legal regulations? If so, please specify. We are not aware of any legal breaches in connection with. TellMe. You asked about the usage of satellite networks. Mr. [indiscernible] I already answered this question in detail to [ Mr. Bachma ] and I hope that [ Liz ] also answered the question for you. That said, I'd now like to hand over to Christian Illek.

Yes, let me continue with questions from [ Mr. Bachman ]. Does BlackRock intend to gain a bigger stake in Telekom? [ Mr. Bachman ], unfortunately, we don't know whether BlackRock want to gain a bigger stake in the company or not. And well, you asked about BlackRock's opinion. We don't know and we have not discussed the issue of Huawei with them. Then talking about optical fiber and [indiscernible] and the distribution cabinets that were set up there in 2016. Well, these are not actually multi cabinets for optical fiber but for super vectoring, meaning a product that offers up to 250 megabits, these are the gray cabinets that you mentioned. The total cost for the 18 multifunctional cabinets amounted to EUR 1 million. Optical fiber will not be rolled out there locally because it would not be profitable for us. The next question was, how much did you pay to Deloitte and the other members of the Big 4 in '21 and '22 for tax consulting and the audit of financial statements? So let me start with '21, then '22 and then the various providers. Let me start with Deloitte '21, EUR 31.3 million, [ 20 35 ]; Ernst and Young, EUR 7.7 million in '22; KPMG, EUR 95.2 million in '21 and EUR 95.9 million in '22; Pricewaterhouse and Coopers EUR 40.1 million in '21 and EUR 30 million in '22. [ Mr. Bachman ], you asked, how many civil servants we had at the end of '21 and '22, respectively? At the end of '21, we had 16,637 civil servants. At the end of '22, it was 14,474 civil servants. Then on tax savings and tax havens, how many taxes did we save last year and where are our tax savings? Just like last year, we can say, we are not saving any taxes in tax havens, which is why our committees did not have to even deal with this subject at all. And the question is whether there will be follow-up taxation? I'm assuming that you are referring to the 15% of minimum tax mentioned by German Finance Minister, Lindner . We are assuming that this will not really affect us. The next question was about law firms, like Deloitte and others made [indiscernible] transactions, you said. Well, we're not aware of that. We don't know whether Deloitte really did that at all? And if so, what law firms were possibly included in any such transactions, which brings me to a question from Mr. Luma on equity.

You said you had EUR 87 billion in equity. Is this at a bank? And how much is owned by us and where's that money?

Well, it's not actually on an account. But when we have liquid funds then of course, they come with interest. Then the sale of the tower business. What were the proceeds, what was the net carrying amount? There was an enterprise value of EUR 17.5 billion. The net carrying amount was roughly about EUR 1 billion. And as we -- the proceeds were EUR 10.7 billion because we only sold 51%. The next question was, what part of the bonds shown in the annual report amounting to some EUR 93 billion need to be refinanced? In '23, we are assuming for the business outside of the U.S. that it will be EUR 3.4 billion that need to be refinanced and EUR 3.2 billion in '24. And at T-Mobile US, it's going to be USD 5.1 billion in '23 and USD 3.4 billion in '24. The average interest rate, well, I can't tell you what it's going to be specifically for this year. But in the past year, outside of the U.S., it was just under 3% and in the U.S., 4.5%.

The sale of T-Mobile Netherlands and the cash inflow of EUR 3.6 billion, can you break this down? And what was the de-consolidation profit?

So we got EUR 3.6 billion. We paid back a shareholder loan. And we had a consolidation gain of EUR 900 million after selling this business. Then what were the proceeds from the sale of our part in Cogent, the former fixed network part of Sprint? This has not yet been completed. There's a sales -- well, we agreed the sales price or purchase price of EUR 1. We also committed to use so-called transit services from Cogent amounting to EUR 700 million. Overall, we had to do an impairment of EUR 800 million for this transaction and there's no longer an asset value. Then the T-Mobile U.S. repurchase program. Are you expecting to return to the threshold under 50%? Well, we are currently buying back shares. They're not completely shredded. They are part of the balance sheet as so-called treasury shares and we'll have to sort out how to deal with them in the long run. As the share buyback program is continuing, we are not assuming that through the buyback, we will return to a value below 50%. Our shareholding is actually expected to go up. So we are actually expecting the share buyback program to help us increase our share rather than having to decrease it.

Right. Let me continue. [ Mr. Bachman ], you're really keeping us on our toes here today. You asked about the responsibility -- climate responsibility report. The report from '23 does not take into account any companies from the telecoms industry. So we are not taking part in this. We can only speculate why we are not part of this. Then you asked about the development of some ESG law firms, the so-called enablement factor. This KPI has decreased in importance because the situation for our connected car project has changed and was not considered. And our competing solutions were used less as the pandemic eased. Then there is the supply chain program. The decrease here can be explained by the fact that the reference area was focused on Germany T-Systems in Europe last year, which means that there is a smaller coverage. Then taking back mobile devices. As a result of longer delivery periods, our recycling partners did not provide us with the relevant data in time. Together with our partners, we are working to optimize processes because this KPI is very important for us in the context of our ESG activities. And then number 4, sustainable products. As in previous years, the KPI is at a high level, namely 42%. [ Mr. Bachman ] you asked about the fixed network market share. Do you want to maintain it using copper, not everybody is willing to use optical fiber instead? Ultimately, the underlying technology is not the vital criteria when it comes to the market share. Needless to say, we want to be the market leader when it comes to broadband connectivity in households. And whether we are using vectoring, super-vectoring, optical fiber or copper to achieve that doesn't really matter in the first step. In the longer run, however, we want to become the best and fastest and most modern provider of the latest infrastructure. And therefore, we are going to replace the old copper infrastructure step by step. By the end of the decade, we will likely only have optical fiber in all our households incidentally with different bandwidth. Maybe 1 household only needs 50 bandwidth, somebody else, 400, and then another household 1 gig. That will be determined by the market. And all that will happen using our optical fiber infrastructure of the future. The vital factor for us is what is our market share in broadband, not in copper. Our goal is to make sure that we can maintain our current market share or increase it. And by the way, that is quite an ambitious goal because we used to have a monopoly with our copper network. And now we find ourselves in an optical fiber market where we have to compete against others. And therefore, we need to assert our position before long because well, I think you can -- rest assured that in future, we will be able to maintain our current market share on the basis of our optical fiber network, unlike most of the other telecoms companies. 6G. To be quite honest with you, I'm not dealing with 6G at all, like 0. Let's make sure that 5G is working 100%. Let's sell it, and let's make sure that 5G becomes profitable so that we can make it available to all our customers. And now somebody comes up with this marketing phenomenon of 6G. I don't even believe the Chinese already have 6G because there is no standardization yet. The relevant standard setting body said that they want to have it standardized. So I don't know what they are trying to sell there 6G. I can tell you this, this will take years the standardization process. What we are offering right now with our networks and our 5G functions and features a state-of-the-art, so let's make sure that we can make some money with it rather than trying to focus on a technology that doesn't even exist yet. [ Mr. Bachman ]. Then you asked about Deutsche Telekom's electricity consumption. I already commented on it, but you asked quite expressly what this means for the various access networks. I already said we have 2.292 terawatt hours of electricity consumption in Germany last year, of which 436 gigawatt hours are the mobile network, 720 gigawatt hours for the fixed network and 386-megawatt hours for the central data center network, the so-called core network of Deutsche Telekom. The remainder is split up across services and buildings that we are running. As the -- we have both data and voice networks, the share for Internet data transmission cannot be shown separately. I mean, we already use the IP network for telephone calls today. Therefore, it's very hard to look at this separately. Then you asked about the risks of a network breakdown, a failure and how we can protect ourselves from that? I already commented on that, but let me say this. In different we have put in place several backup energy facilities that make it possible to use batteries to replace individual solar cells just for 2 hours. And we put other equipment in place that makes it possible to bridge the gap for 72 hours through some of our central data centers. And underground, we have huge diesel generators with huge tanks that make it possible to resort to back up electricity coverage whenever needed. Of course, we need diesel for that, which means that at some stage, you would have to refill the tanks. The sequence is based on the energy needs of the respective locations. So if the network was not available all over Germany ones but the network is running using diesel, then at some stage, the problem for the customers is that they can no longer recharge their devices. So even if the networks are still running, the customers must still be able to use their terminal devices. And I have my doubts as to whether that will still be possible if there was a nationwide blackout. In addition, we have a 3-digit number of so-called mobile backup network facilities, and we are mainly using them in the event of major flood events, for instance, as the one in the [ Atal ] region. You asked about our priorities in the event of the network failure. This is based on legal obligations. So roughly, it is first the fixed network, then the mobile network and then the Internet. That's what happens according to the emergency plans of the German government. It's also important to note, though, that the telephone lines of the customers also have to be protected using backup systems to make sure that both the networks and the devices can still be used. By the way, last year, I introduced a network broadcast system to you. And by now, it has been rolled out all over Germany, and it has been tested pretty much everywhere.

Is Deutsche Telekom expanding its backup power systems? If so, what are the reasons?

[ Mr. Bachman ], well, there are all sorts of scenarios that we are dealing with in connection with possible large-scale blackouts. We performed a last check on that on the last summer, and I already made ample comments on it. We are well prepared, and we are meeting our legal obligations.

[Indiscernible] you were asking about our foundation and our sponsoring activities. Last year, EUR 231 million were invested in to sponsoring and EUR 6 million were invested into our foundation. And this has a capital base of EUR 160 million, EUR 175 million. Regarding the foundation money, well, we plan to remain on the current level. AGM '24, '25, will we have a face-to-face meeting? This is a question by [ Mr. Eichman ], and we already had a question by [ Mr. Ruter ]. At present, there are no plans yet. For the shareholders meetings in the coming years. We now have our face-to-face meeting and we are leading in this area, and this is also supporting the exchange culture. And I see that there are a lot of firms of such event, but there are also people coming a long way to on or who come from abroad, and they said that they would love the opportunity to join online. So with the authorization, we just want to make sure that we fulfill the expectations of our shareholders. My own preference is a face-to-face meeting, but we would like not limit ourselves. Then you also asked about the costs of T-Mobile US to increase from 46% to 50%. Well, at the time when I gave the speech, it would have cost us EUR 6.5 million. If it was happening now, it would have cost us EUR 16.5 billion. So the 50.2% that we currently have, I do not see whether you saw this. This also gave our share price a push. Our share price is above EUR 23 now for -- since a long time. So we also did a lot of good work for the shareholders for this year. Then the financing of the share price is, of course, financed by the sale of T-Mobile Netherlands. These were share options from SoftBank for $2.4 billion and the rest was financed by -- not participating in the share buyback program of T-Mobile US. And this perhaps needs to be explained better. In the moment when a company buys back shares, and we do not participate. So if we do not offer our shares, means that our share will increase. But if we always sell the same percentage as the independent shareholders, our share will stay stable and the money that the company is prepared to pay for the shares, we get it in liquidity without our shares being diluted. And this means that our dividend or potential dividend is replaced by a share buyback program. And this is exactly what we are currently doing, and this is also how we will get more liquidity for the company. You ask another question for the interconnection fees. This was a question raised by [ Mr. Eichman ], the classical questions of the past. Not easy to answer because very complex and because there are many preperformance prices. Since summer 2021, it's no longer the federal network agency but the European Commission, which is responsible for all the network operators. The EU price cap will not be based on the actual costs of the operators, but it is fixed on the basis of a hypothetical cost model. In fact, these fees, however, are not very relevant for the fee services in Germany, especially the bitstream product for FTTH. The fees are now agreed in commercial agreements, and we negotiate these prices with our customers without any interference by the regulator. The regulator has some sort of a police function. We are sitting together with Vodafone or 1&1, and we are negotiating the agreements, what it would cost them to use our lines, if there is no solution than the federal network agency has the possibility to intervene. But at present, it's possible to come to bilateral solutions. [ Mr. Peters ], you asked whether we are lagging behind with 5G. No. I already gave you my clear acquisition on G6. International standardization for 6G has not been completed yet, and this will definitely keep us busy in the coming years, but it will take years, and we assume that it will take at least until 2030 before 6G is even discussed. Elon Musk and Starlink, you said that within a very short period of time, they could restore mobile communications in the Ukraine, yes, this is a technology, which still requires special dishes and special end devices. It always helps, of course, if something like this is available in emergency situations, but I can also tell you in the Ahr valley, the presence on the work of Deutsche Telekom was exemplary. And we also had excellent cooperation with people on site, and we could make sure that the networks were up and running again after one day. Now let's move to Mr. [indiscernible] question. The question whether we really carefully thought about the sale of the tower business. Sergio Marchionne of -- by the way, the former Fiat manager, unfortunately passed away, was helping me a lot in my previous job before I joined Deutsche Telekom. He was an excellent manager, and he definitely saved Fiat. But on the other hand, Fiat, Fiat Stellantis doesn't exist any longer. And I'm not sure whether we are not perhaps even better than Fiat was with our run on the Telekom share. Now back to the targets. We took some time. And last year, there were many people who asked us now come up with a solution for the tower business. I really have to tell you that I don't want to have an IPO and a minority share because then we will have consolidation of the tower company, and this is not possible because of indebtedness and some other reasons. So we thought about merging with one of the big tower companies. But if you see that the tower companies had a very turbulent time because of the interest increase and loss value, just imagine that we would have exchanged invested shares and the shares would have dropped in value. For you as shareholders, this would have been a good deal, and this would have happened had we gone this route. The sale of 49% on a fixed price before the inflationary tendencies and the interest increases affected the market were the best and greatest deal for Deutsche Telekom, 27.5x the multiple. None of the variants, even not an IPO could have produced this amount of money and this value increase for Deutsche Telekom. Now investments of other German companies in the past and the difficulties when they invested in the United States. Yes, German companies always struggled to gain a foothold in the United States and to position themselves. And I also tell you that I'm very happy and proud that we really managed to do so well. And you mentioned a figure, we increased the value of T-Mobile by $150 billion since we entered with Sprint and the merger. Now the company is worth $178 billion. So you never know. Finished, there is no certainty in the business. You cannot take anything for granted. But at this point in time, I think things look pretty well and also the framework conditions, the market conditions are quite good and also the political environment. Then you asked about our content strategy and how far we differentiate ourselves from the content suppliers? First and foremost, we see ourselves as an aggregator. If you use MagentaTV, and I hope you do, you'll see that we do not only have linear TV, not only streaming services, but also the Netflixes, the Amazons on our platform. The idea is that the customer has one platform where he can access all services and all products. And hopefully, he also has a price advantage if he uses the aggregator function. So we would like to integrate the global content on one platform so that every customer can then choose their content. We can then sometimes also have -- buy a program or some sports events, then this is an icing on the cake, but it's not our strategy per se. We offer connectivity and infrastructure and networks, and we will not be the Netflix or the next Amazon Prime, but we will try to create added value for our customers using the other people as a partner. And this is why we are not investing billions into the content, but we are the ones helping to make sure that content reaches our customers. And this leads me to the last question raised by [ Mr. Peters ]. He's asking about the cooperation with SoftBank, also bearing in mind interest developments and the Chinese real estate business. SoftBank definitely is a more exciting company than Deutsche Telekom. We are very conservative. SoftBank is the largest investor into high tech, and I don't have to tell you how volatile the high-tech business is. And one of the major investors into Alibaba in the Asian and the Chinese region -- also with an extremely high debt ratio. So I think the cooperation with SoftBank gives us huge opportunities because they are a very interesting company, great expertise. They are also shareholders of Deutsche Telekom based on the capital increase we did for the T-Mobile shares. We have an intensive partnership also in the leadership of T-Mobile US and Masa Son as one of the most visionary people in the world, but if you invest into high tech, you also run risks. And with Deutsche Telekom, you are definitely having a safer partner.

Thank you, Mr. Hottges. Thank you, Mr. Illek for the comprehensive answering of the questions. Can we now assume that all these questions have been answered.

No, I still have a question.

Okay, [ Mr. Bachman ], then please go to the microphone. Apologies by the interpreters. [ Mr. Bachman ] is not using a microphone, and we can't hear the question.

I can perhaps give you the sheet of paper. Okay. Let me ask again. Can we assume now that all questions have been answered. This seems to be the case. So let me now say that all the questions have been answered. It always took longer with [ Mr. Linard ]. Well, I will close the general debate. And I would like to thank everybody to more or less keep the time limits. This definitely helped. And I would like to thank you very much. I would like to thank all the speakers for answering the questions. And now we will soon move on to the vote. Based on our Articles of Association, I can define the way in which the questions are asked and the votes are taken, and we will do this based on mobile devices, and we will read in the QR code on your voting card. Then the ones [Indiscernible] has been used in, we will -- votes recorded will be transferred and to this transfer and the subsequent counting are monitored by a notary public. The addition method is used to establish the result of the vote. The yes and no votes are counted separately and are added to determine the number of votes cast. Abstentions will not be counted. In order to ensure a notarial supervision, you can only cast your votes here in the main conference hall that is in the New York hall including the gallery, which is accessible to you from the outside. If you would like to participate in the voting, please move to the main hall now and have your AGM card ready. For the record, please note that the voting by the company's proxies as well as that by financial institutions and shareholder associations, which have taken advantage of the option of using virtual voting cast will be carried out in deviation from my previous comments. The votes are cast by way of approval of the electronically stored votes on the part of the voting proxies present or the representatives of the respected financial institutional shareholder association present here. Following this approval, the votes cast will also be fed into the IT system used for counting the votes. In addition, some shareholders used postal -- the postal-vote option, these votes have already been stored electronically and will be taken into account by the computer system when counting the votes. I will now announce the current attendance figure. And this is now the latest information. The number of shares for which postal votes have been cast has changed in the meantime. Now we've got 3,696,979,236 share caring dividend rights represented. This is EUR 9,464,266,844.16 or 74.1%, which is 4,988,458,596 shares, and you can see the figures on the chart. And we also have the postal votes covering 24,405,787 shares. These will be taken into account when the votes are counted. This means 3,721,385,023 shares are represented in the AGM or represented by postal vote, and this amounts to 74.63% of the share capital. Now I would like to point out based on Mrs. [Indiscernible] proposal to elect her to the Supervisory Board that I will first -- that we will first vote on the management's proposed resolutions. If this is accepted, there will be no further vote. We can now proceed to the vote on the management motions regarding agenda items 2 to 8. The resolution proposal of management agenda item 2 is put to the votes in the updated version that I already presented when the agenda items 2 to 8 were caught upon in the run-up of the general debate. The deviations from the proposed resolutions contained in the invitation to the Annual General Meeting, results from the increase in the number of shares carrying dividend rights compared to the numbers stated in the invitation. The dividend to be distributed in accordance with the proposed resolution is as already announced, EUR 0.70 per no-par value share carrying dividend rights. For agenda items 3 to 8, the proposed resolutions of the management are put to the vote with the wording resulting from the invitation to today's AGM published in the Federal gazette on February 23, '23. With regard to agenda item 3 and 4, I would like to point out the suspension of the voting rights pursuant to Section 136 of the German Stock Operation Act. In addition, for the record, I would like to point out with regard to item 5 on the agenda that anyone wishing to reject only 1 or 2 of the appointments of the Lloyd proposed items A to C must vote against the entire draft resolution. If this draft resolution is rejected by a majority, I will hold a separate vote on subitems AB and C. For agenda item 6, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that you can decide on the election of each candidate separately in this resolution by way of individual voting. With regard to agenda item 7, anyone who wishes to reject only 1 or 2 on the amendments of the Articles of Incorporation proposed under sub-items A to C must vote against the entire draft resolution. If this draft resolution is rejected by a majority, I will hold a separate vote on subitems A, B and C. The resolutions on agenda items 2 to 8 require a simple majority of valid votes cast. The resolution on agenda item 7 additionally requires a simple majority of the share capital represented when the resolution is adopted. If you wish to vote for or against one or more of the resolutions proposed by the administration on agenda items 2 to 8, you should now go to the main hall here to this New York hall, including the gallery accessible to you from the outside and have your AGM card ready. The votes are combined. This means that the votes are taken separately according to the items put to the vote, but in one collective round using the tablets. You decide independently to what extent you will participate in the voting processes by casting your vote and whether you vote yes, no or absent. After opening the ballot, please give a clear show of hands to the staff assigned to -- will receive your vote. A staff member will then come to you. First, present your AGM card to him or her, so that the QR code on it can be recorded. Then for each of the management's proposed resolutions on agenda items 2 to 8, inform the staff member whether you wish to support the proposed resolution vote, yes or whether you want to vote no. If you wish to abstain from voting on individual items on the agenda relating to the management's proposed resolutions, please indicate this, too. Then check the voting request is placed -- displayed on the tablet, confirm with the staff member that your voting request is correctly displayed. And after this confirmation, the staff member will cast the vote. If you wish is to abstain from voting on the all agenda items relating to the resolutions, you do not need to notify our staff. If you have any questions about the procedure, our staff will be happy to help. I will now ask our staff to take the votes here in the main hall. The vote is now open. [Voting]

With this, here, I close the vote as all the votes have been cast. I will announce the results of the vote as soon as I have the results, we will now have a short break. [Break]

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now proceed. I have the results of the vote. The Annual General Meeting at [Indiscernible] propose resolutions of the votes on agenda items 2 to 8 with the required majority. The detailed voting results for each resolution will be shown immediately on the screen. All shareholders interested in these results can also obtain them at the registration task or see them afterwards on the company's website. If you agree, I will, therefore, limit my comments on the resolutions to the fact that the required majority was achieved for each resolution proposed by the Board. Are there any objections? If that's not the case, so I can do the following -- the results now. I will announce the results on the proposed resolutions on Items 2 to 8. The Annual General Meeting has -- with the presence of 3,696,911,967 no par share taking consideration for [Indiscernible]. This amount 74.63% of no par shares of the share capital. Here, you can now see the numbers on the screen. On item 2, I don't have the summary. Now I got the wrong script currently. So now I've got the brief version. So on item 2, 99.8% of the votes have approved the resolution on the appropriation of net income with the numbers you see on the screen. And the information is also available here. On item 3, the AGM approved the proposal with 99.66% the resolution on the approval of the actions of the members of the Board of Management. And with this, I would like to congratulate the Board of Management. On item 4, the AGM voted with 90.54% of all votes cast and approve the actions of the members of Supervisory Board [Indiscernible] thank you very much for the trust. And on the item 5, the AGM approved the resolution proposal with 99.78% to appoint the -- as the auditor, Deloitte GmbH [Indiscernible] for the group audit and also for the review of the condensed financial statements and the interim group management report for the financial year 2023, and there's an order for any review of additional interim finance report the 2023 financial year and the first quarter of the 2024 financial year. And then item 6, 99.53 % of all votes cast, elected Harald Krüger as a member of the Supervisory Board. Congratulations to Mr. Krüger. Now the election of Dr. Reinhard Ploss, with 99.62% of all valid votes cast. Dr. Reinhard Ploss was then elected member of the Supervisory Board. Congratulations. Now the election of Margret Suckale with 98.65% of all valid votes cast, which is simple majority. Margret Suckale was elected member of the Supervisory Board. Now on to item 7, AGM approved with 88.91% of all votes approved the resolution the amendments to Paragraph 14, 15 and 17 of the Articles of Incorporation, approving the proposals made by the Board. And now on Item 8, with 84.6% -- 84.46% of all votes cast, which in a simple majority approved the remuneration report for 2022 financial years. So all proposed resolutions were approved with simple majority. So that is why it's no longer necessary to have a vote on the countermotions. Ladies and gentlemen, which brings us now to the end of our agenda. I would like to thank you also on behalf of the Board of Management, the Supervisory Board for your attendance in this year's Annual General Meeting. I would like to thank the staff who have been involved in the preparation organization of the meeting and contribute to its proper conduct. Finally, I would like to point out that the next Annual General Meeting of Deutsche Telekom AG is expected to take place on the tenth of April 2024 in Bonn to which all shareholders will again be invited. I wish you a safe journey home, goodbye. And with this, I close today's Annual General Meeting. Thank you. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]