Proximus PLC (PROX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon, and welcome to Proximus' Q3 2020 Results Conference Call. [indiscernible] this conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Nancy Goossens, Director, Group Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome, everyone. I hope you and your family are all keeping well and healthy these days. We will start the call with some slides presented by the CEO, Guillaume Boutin. After the introduction, we will turn to your questions. So the other participants on our side are Katleen Vandeweyer, the CFO AI; Jim Casteele, the Chief of the Consumer Segment; Anne-Sophie Lotgering, the Chief of the Enterprise Segment; Dirk Lybaert, the Chief, Corporate Affairs; and the CEO of BICS, Daniel Kurgan. They will all be very happy to take your questions in a moment, but first, Guillaume will take you through the main messages of today. Guillaume, please go ahead.

Thank you, Nancy. And welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us on this Q3 results conference call. I will take you through some highlights of the quarter, but, first, a topic that concerns us all: The last few days have been marked by a fierce revival of the COVID-19 pandemic. We take our societal role very seriously, and the health and safety of our employees and customers remains our top priority. Therefore, we have decided to close our shops as of Monday. Customers can, of course, still make an appointment or interact digitally with our sales staff. We are also taking some initiatives to support our customers through the crisis, be it a bit different from what we have done for the first wave. We especially want to ensure that everyone can study or work from home without worries, so we decided to temporarily remove download limits for all our residential fixed Internet products. We also want to support specifically the health care workers. They will be provided an additional 10 gig of mobile data so that they don't have to worry about staying connected. We hope that we can make this difficult period a bit easier this way. Although the sanitary situation is alarming, our operations have proved their resilience so far, and I'm very proud of the results that we have achieved in the third quarter. As you could read in your release of this morning, we have closed a strong quarter of our Domestic operations with our Domestic revenues even very slightly positive, and this in spite of the ongoing loss of roaming revenues due to the COVID-related travel restrictions. The significant sequential improvement from the more than 4% decline in the previous quarter resulted from a combined better revenue performance across all of our Domestic segments. Especially, the Consumer segment showed a nice turnaround with Q3 revenues growing up by 2.3%. As the revenue improvement was for a good part driven by high-margin services, the Domestic direct margin showed as well and improved year-on-year trend, turning flattish over the third quarter in spite of the COVID-19 headwinds. At the same time, we continued to manage our Domestic cost base. We explained at the second quarter results that the potential of cost savings in the second half will not be at the same level as for the first half. Nonetheless, we still achieved a 2.6% cost reduction this quarter. This was driven by lower workforce expenses, down by 4%. All this combined brings us to a solid Q3 Domestic EBITDA of EUR 438 million, a 1.9% improvement compared to the same period of the previous year. Now turning to Page 4. The sanitary crisis continued to impact our financials yet not fully to the extent we expected. The most important impact on direct margin, by far, remains the loss of roaming margin due to limited traveling. As we can see on the indicative graphs, roaming traffic within the EU was over the third quarter back to fairly normal levels. The traffic outside of the EU, however, remained significantly below last year. As for our ICT business, the consequences of the health crisis so far remains limited. There are even some opportunities, as we can support our professional customers and bringing business continuity solutions. Revenue from hybrid cloud, advanced workplace and smart networking, for example, progressed compared to last year, be it mostly low-margin product revenues. What is more, since the lockdown mid-March, we have seen a change in customer behavior with a sustained higher usage of telecom services even when we stopped the free usage we gave during the lockdown earlier this year. We have seen this for mobile data usage and fixed voice. As the last point on this slide. Some of the consequences of COVID-19 actually bring some benefits, for example, in terms of continued higher digital sales and lower costs for sponsoring and media production. Turning now to Slide 5, a word on our operational results which -- with a continued strong customer growth for both our Proximus and Scarlet brands. We are holding quite strong in the Belgian market in spite of the competition, with a solid share in the total market growth. I'm very proud of this achievement, as it shows that the efforts that we have done in terms of customer satisfaction and brand image are really showing in our net adds. We see for the Proximus brand a strong commercial traction on the consumer side, boosted by our new convergent offering Flex launched in July 2020. And our Scarlet brand continues to thrive, offering the most compelling no-frills offer in the market for cost-conscious customers. But now a bit more on our Flex offering. The launch of Flex was very successful, and we see the offer living up to expectations. As shown on the previous slide, it gave a boost to our mobile postpaid base, thanks to an attractive multi-mobile offer. The increase of our mobile -- multi-mobile customer base positively impacts the average revenue per customers, which was up by 1.3% year-over-year to EUR 59. And as shown on the bottom right, Flex supports further growth in our convergent base. Hence, we saw for the third quarter our revenue for convergent customers growing year-on-year by 4.1%. Now turning the next slides. With our #inspire2022 strategy, we want to innovate and grow by building partnerships and bringing relevant content to our customers in a simple and attractive way via our TV platform Proximus BICS. An excellent example is our agreement with Disney+, making Proximus the only telecom operator in Belgium to offer access to the Disney+ streaming service directly via the Android TV decoder. More recently, we also decided to join forces with On Rewind, a young subsidiary of the Euro Media Group. Thanks to these partnerships, Proximus customers subscribing to all-sports package will benefit from an innovative interactive video player and an intense football experience that is unique in Belgium. As for our fiber project, we are progressing very well. Today, we are deploying fiber in 14 Belgium cities, and in mid-October, we have reached over 400,000 homes passed. As we announced in July, we plan to go even broader and faster with 2 partners. I'm pleased to announce that we have signed the final agreement with Eurofiber this week. A new joint venture between Eurofiber and Proximus will be set up allowing the JV to connect at least 500,000 homes and businesses to fiber in Wallonia. The JV will cover the designs, build and maintenance of the network. The fiber network will be open and accessible to interested wholesale customers. The file will now be submitted for approval to the competent authorities. For Flanders, the contract negotiation is progressing well. We will update you on our fiber network strategy after the closure of both contracts so we can give some more insights. Now turning to Slide 10. In meantime, we also got some more clarity on the fiber regulation. The BIPT published its draft decision in which it compared our wholesale prices with their own cost model. The BIPT concluded that the rates we currently apply are reasonable and in line with the regulation as was set by the BIPT in 2018. The final decision is expected in the first half of 2021. I'm on Slide 11 now. Earlier this month, we also announced the selection of Nokia and Ericsson as our partners for the modernization of our mobile RAN and core network. Our choice is based on the combination of operational, financial and environmental criteria. As the selection process was very competitive, we'll be able to realize this essential element of our network strategy at a lower cost than what we anticipated in our Capital Markets Day plan. The cumulative saving on total mobile CapEx projection for 2021 until 2023 is therefore expected to be up to EUR 80 million, this in spite of more ambitious rollout than initially foreseen. Now that the election process has been completed, we can further embrace the potential of 5G and innovation. Moving to the BICS segment on Slide 12. The COVID-19 effect on worldwide traveling had a significant impact on the direct margin and comes on top of the progressive in-sourcing by MTN. The resultant direct margin loss was somewhat compensated by a continued strong performance by TeleSign, providing solid growth in the domains of mobile identity and authentication. Also on the positive side, the numbering business of BICS did well with more sales and -- of [ local dial-in ] numbers to cloud players like Skype and Zoom. On a different note, as we have communicated before, there is a sales process of BICS ongoing. There is no news to share today on this subject. Several parties are involved in this process, and obviously BICS shareholders are looking to get a fair value. We'll, of course, inform the market as soon as we have an agreement with a suitable partner. This brings me to Slide 14 (sic) [ 13 ], on our guidance which we have reviewed upwards. Our projections for the year indeed improved mainly as a result of better business trends in our Domestic operations combined with the lower-than-anticipated COVID-19 impact. Based on our achievement until so far and remaining vigilant for the volatility caused by COVID-19, we feel comfortable in raising our full year 2020 guidance for group underlying EBITDA minus CapEx to at least EUR 830 million. As for our group CapEx for 2020, [ football ] licenses and spectrum excluded, we estimate these to be below EUR 1 billion. For our shareholders, I'm happy to announce that, in line with our 3-year dividends intentions, the Board approved yesterday to return an interim dividend of EUR 0.50 per share, which will be paid on the 11th of December. As a very last point before turning up to your questions, I just wanted to highlight our newly signed sustainable RCF. It's our first ESG-related funding facility. It is thanks to the pursuit of our sustainability goals that we obtained this, and it highlights the commitment we have taken on our ESG ambitions. With this, I have covered my introduction, and I suggest we take your questions now.

[Operator Instructions] The first question, Nicolas Cote-Colisson from HSBC.

Two questions, please. The first one is on the cost savings and workforce. What's the natural attrition rate for the next few years? And how do you see recruitment needs in the same period? Just to find out if there is scope for further savings without a new plan. And my second question is around the new government. There are [ a few arbitrage ] pending at present, including the 5G auction. Could you indicate if you have been in touch with the minister and find out what's priority for the sector? And if you have any wish lists you may have for [ her ], please.

So as to the workforce, I think in 2020, in the first quarter, we have, of course, seen a very important decrease of the number of workforce with the Fit for Purpose plan and the last wave of the ELP -- plan. Now going forward, we do see further opportunities for decreasing our costs, but this without having to have a new plan. And I think this has to do with the change in the type of functions that we will need because, as you know, we're accelerating the rollout of fiber. And so what we will have is that we will have a lot of new functions needed for fiber route, but at the other hand, some less-future-proof functions, they will have to be decreased. And all this can be achieved without having a second Fit for Purpose plan, thanks to the fact that we still have a lot of external workforce which we can redirect.

And just to complement. I think we are sticking to our commitment to have a decrease of OpEx costs by -- in between minus 1% and 1% to 2% CAGR for the next 3 years. On the government priority, of course, we have several interactions already with the government; and the minister, the new minister. So of course, in terms of the wish list, it's difficult to give all the details that we shared with the minister, but what I can say that -- for the auction process, I think that's indeed foreseen as for -- as being quite an important priority for us, and to organize that as soon as possible, but you know that it will take some time. And we cannot expect to have those auction process started before end of next year. And probably, it will be between end of next year and beginning of 2022. Of course, the discussion and the conversation we have with the minister is to create a framework, an environment in which we can really invest in the new infrastructure in the best way we can. You know that we have committed to invest massively in fiber to build the fiber infrastructure for Belgium. And this is quite important also for our new government because it will be clearly a platform to help the economy recover as fast as possible. So I think that we are really in that mindset to -- how to make sure that the framework in which Proximus will evolve will be a framework that is favorable for infrastructure investments.

And Guillaume, if I may follow up. It seems that the 5G auction is not possible, obviously, as you said, but how does it change your plans in terms of investments in 5G? Because obviously you're keen in 5G, but you don't know how much the license will cost. So how do you deal with your investment plans for the next 18 months?

That's a good question. First, we are rolling out 5G on our existing infrastructure with light 5G. So that, we'll continue to do in Flanders. We have [ more than 100 ] sites deployed on light 5G, but of course then the question is more on the consolidation of the network. You know that the new-generation 5G will be also developed in sync with Orange. So it means that, at what moment we need to accelerate the consolidation of our sites, our mobile sites, that's really the question regarding the timing of the auction. So we are really monitoring the best we can at what speed we need to consolidate and combine the 2 networks so that we will be at the right moment and making sure that we are not investing too soon to roll out that joint network with Orange.

Next question, from David Vagman from ING.

Yes, 2 question from my side, please. First, on the multi-SIM discount and the success of the Flex offer, can you tell us what has been the momentum in September and maybe now even in October, especially taking into account the competitors' reaction? So I'm talking about Orange Belgium reacting, extending the -- its own discount on multi SIM; and maybe to some extent the promotion from Telenet. So that's my first question. And then secondly, I think all 3 players, all 3 operators, have now reported very decent broadband net adds in Q3. Do you think the Belgian market, I mean in fixed, the Internet penetration, is actually increasing because of COVID? Or do you think this is pent-up demand? And could -- yes, that this momentum could basically fade away then in Q4.

So this is Jim Casteele on the -- speaking. So on the first question, linked to Flex, we are indeed very satisfied, as Guillaume already mentioned in the introduction, on the commercial performance that we have realized with Flex. The Q3 results are actually a combination of again a strong back-to-school campaign joint offers and the Flex launch as of July 1. That has also contributed, of course, to our very strong postpaid results. In terms of competitive reactions, actually we feel that the market hasn't really reacted as such to Flex, which for me confirms the message that we gave also last time that we will market conform, when you look at multi-mobile family offers in the premium market segments. We have seen indeed quite some commercial traction which is typical for the end-of-year campaign coming up, so we see it more as part of that element. And at this stage, we don't really see -- we continue to perform very strong on our sales with both our own commercial campaigns, again a combination of Scarlet joint offers and Flex. And so we continue to see good traction of those commercial elements. So that was on the first question. And then on the second question, linked to the operational performance of the market over the last months, especially then on Internet. Indeed it's true that, if you look over the last 9 months -- because I think it's better to look over a longer period because, as you know, with COVID we had quite some challenges on our quarterly operational numbers and the way it balances from 1 month to the other. So if you look over the last 9 months, we have seen indeed with the results also of the other market players that the market on Internet has been better performing in growth than last year. And we think indeed that COVID has definitely reaffirmed the relevance and the importance of a good Internet connection. And it might be that indeed in certain segments this has led to adoption of Internet products that were maybe previously a combination of mobile data and Internet on another place. So I think the fact that people now study from home and work from home in certain segments has probably led indeed to an adoption of Internet that was not there before. It is difficult to have a good feeling on how this will evolve over the coming quarters, but indeed over the last 9 months, we have seen that market having a better traction.

And maybe a very quick follow-up on Consumer and the direct margin. Could you explain us actually the or give us more detail about the evolution of this direct margin in Q3? And basically how much of it is really Q3 specific or COVID specific? How much is related to, let's say, you, let's say, selling more online or digital, leveraging indeed more digital sales?

So the Consumer direct margin was, of course, still impacted by COVID and especially in the roaming revenues, but in contrast to Q2, we no longer had the effect of the easing measures. And as to the very good performance of the Consumer direct margin, I can also highlight that we saw a lot of increase in mobile traffic as well as fixed traffic. And so this was supporting as well the Q3 Consumer direct margin. And on top of that, I think, like in previous quarters, we had the e-Press, which supported the direct margin; as well as the inflation; and the very good operational results.

Next question from Emmanuel Carlier from Kempen.

Three questions from my side. The first one is on the guidance. You upgraded the guidance, but could you give a bit more color on where you expect EBITDA to land? Because based on your guidance, the full upgrades could also come from CapEx, which I think is lower quality as it's more a timing effect. Secondly, on Voo, what do you expect to happen there in the coming months? And how are you preparing to limit the financial impact? And then lastly, on your broadband net adds, they were better than expected, but if you look at what your peers have reported, they look somewhat soft, I would say. So it looks like you have been losing some share, I think. So just wondering if you have any idea how -- who is performing in that segment.

So the first question, the -- on the guidance. I understand there is some questions a bit on how to understand our guidance upgrades, so I will try to give you a little bit of color around that. So we raised our company estimate for this year based on better business trends. That's first. And also a milder COVID impact than what we expected, but of course, we are remaining quite careful in our projections. I think that we all agree that today the visibility is a little bit lower than usual, and seeing the remaining uncertainties around COVID, we really are keeping a prudent approach. The fact is that we have seen some positive business trends in terms of usage. To what extent, as Katleen mentioned, these positive usage trends are here to stay and for how much remains to be seen. Also, while so far the impact of COVID on our business segments has been rather limited, it could turn. So from our perspective, the guidance upgrade to at least 800 million and 30 million -- EUR 830 million, sorry, group EBITDA minus CapEx, and the "at least" is important here, is based on better EBITDA. Now looking at where the consensus is today, our guidance upgrades means that the consensus on CapEx should come down a little, while the consensus group EBITDA should move up a bit. And logically, with CapEx moving down a bit while group EBITDA a bit higher, this also positively impacts the free cash flow. This -- I think this is the best visibility I can give you at this stage, but I hope it gives some more color of our guidance upgrade. So just to be quite clear: We don't see that as a timing effect on CapEx. On Voo sale, how do we prepare? So honestly, we are really focusing on our own strategy. I think that we are trying to do the right things both in terms of portfolio, both in terms of brands and, of course, in our investment that we do in our networks. So we are really focusing on our own execution. And we see in that quarter that it's starting to pay off. So I think we should really continue to focus on our own strategy, own execution. And I think this is the best way to prepare for a change of ownership at Voo. At the same time, it's Belgium is a small market. So of course, when doing and executing our strategy, we have all this in mind. All competition is important for us, but really at the moment we are focusing on growing the Consumer business, transforming the Enterprise business and investing massively in our network to continue to have that network superiority on the long run because we are truly convinced that this is one of the key lever for us to continue to grow and to thrive on this market.

And then on the third question, linked to the broadband -- are you hearing me? Yes, linked to the broadband net adds. So indeed we are very satisfied with our commercial performance on Internet in the third quarter. And based on, of course, the available market information -- because not all the competitors are disclosing their numbers, so it's not easy to have a full view on the market, evolution of a market that is in a mature environment, but based on the way we see the dynamics for the moment, we are convinced that we have our fair share in the growth of the Internet market for the third quarter with the results that we have posted now. Thank you.

And probably of our fair share in terms of TV subscriptions.

Next question, from Paul Sidney from Crédit Suisse.

I had a couple of questions, please. I was really interested to read your comments, Guillaume, on Proximus moving to establish distant working as the norm even after COVID-19. And there are sort of 2 parts to my question. Presumably, is that what you think the majority of Belgian enterprise customers are also thinking? And secondly, is there an opportunity for you to save some pretty material OpEx and CapEx if you need substantially less office space going forward? And then my second question is you mentioned that the BIPT draft fiber wholesale pricing is very supportive, which I certainly agree with, but which operators would you expect to be willing to sell your fiber products? Is it just Orange and the cable operators, or are there others we should be thinking about? And are you in discussions currently with these potential resellers?

So on the first question, moving to what -- there is a conviction and a think -- thought process of enterprises in Belgium regarding distance working and teleworking. I think we are probably a little bit leading the pack in terms of the reflection. You have also to know that we have announced 2 weeks ago that we have concluded a new collective agreement where we are moving from 2 to 3 days of home working for a large amount of our teams because we are convinced that those ways of working are not detrimental to our ability to execute our plans and to deliver a lot of great results. And I think that is -- no way you can think about coming back to a pre-COVID situation, I mean, next year, when the -- hopefully, the COVID situation will be -- will have improved. So we are taking that opportunity to fully rethink, reset the way we are looking at the ways of working, also the future elements of organization but also, of course, the buildings because we need to reinvent our buildings and the way mobility is organized within the organization with more local hubs, more smaller places where you can work and share and meet with your colleagues closer to your home. I think that's quite important and also in the context of CO2 emissions. I think this is also in a way to improve the level, emission, that we want to produce. i.e. we don't want to produce CO2 emission. We want to reduce the impact of CO2 emission that will -- that Proximus will have. And last but not least, it's also a way to fully really reduce the cost of ownership of our current buildings, and that's obviously part of that discussion. And I think that we are combining a -- better ways of working for employees, a better impact on the environment and better financials at the same time. So I think it's a great and exciting project to reinvent the way we work. And it's good to lead the pack because, I think, we will not be the only one to think like that in the coming months. But we are really now engaging in that process to -- with -- hopefully, it's going to be a long process. It's going to be at least a 2- to 3-year project to get to our new ways of working and new buildings and new setup of regional hubs amongst Belgium. On the fiber and the fiber initiative of Proximus. I think what is quite important for us is to be able to roll out that fiber network as fast as possible and to be able to reach as many homes as possible the fastest way. And that's why we are really accelerating our own development in dense areas. That's one. And now we are 4 digits a day in terms of home passed since last week. So we are really ramping up the ability to roll out fiber quite intensively. That's one. Second, if you want to further accelerate, now you need to partner because Belgium is a very specific country in terms of cost, also to roll out fiber in less-dense areas. This is why we signed that agreement with Eurofiber. And we have a good discussion with another agreement in the North for 1.5 million of plugs. And here we are convinced again that, at some point, a lot of players might be interested to join our network. And I'm not limiting my reflection at only Orange. I think this could be more than Orange. That's for sure. And last, we have already said that we are also in discussion with Orange to see how they could join those initiatives at some points.

Next question, from Ruben Devos from KBC Securities.

Just to follow up on the previous question with respect to fiber. It appears you’re progressing well, now passing more than 400,000 homes and businesses. I was wondering, with the rate of fiber deployment increasing, whether you could sort of give an indication of how many you aim to reach next year and what that could mean for the overall CapEx envelope. That's first question. And the second one actually relates to the mobile network-sharing agreement. It's been a while since we've had an update on that end. I think we -- the competition authorities gave their advice a while ago, and I was wondering what your thoughts are at this stage from a legal standpoint. Is there a risk in your view that you would need to award concessions of any kind? I believe in Italy, with a similar JV construction between operators, we've seen that cooperation is not allowed in cities with a population over 100,000 people. So just curious to hear your take on this.

Yes, on the first question, we will not disclose today the level of acceleration that we want to achieve next year in terms of fiber plugs. I think what we said is that we will do an update, fiber update, to you when we will have closed [ our ] deal. So we need now to have the approval of competent authorities. And after that, we'll come back to you with a full fiber update so that you can really understand the -- all the details around our fiber rollout. And of course, the fiber ambition for next year will be part of this update. What I can say, though, is that in any case it will be within the envelope, CapEx envelope, that we have shared with you during the Capital Market Day. On the mobile, I will -- networking-sharing agreement, I will give the word to Geert.

Yes. So we're in the phase of receiving questions from the Belgian Competition Authority, answering those questions for the moment. We don't have a discussion on a potential remedy. So we are not there yet. We are really in a preliminary phase where the competition authority tries to understand the full extent of the deal.

Okay, okay. And then just to come back quickly on the -- on fiber. Anything more you can share there in terms of you're passing 400,000 homes? What is the sort of activation rate, the ARPUs churns -- churn that you're seeing versus the homes on the legacy network?

As I said, all those details will be shared with you when we do the update, but it's going well.

Next question, from Ulrich Rathe from Jefferies.

It's Ulrich Rathe from Jefferies. So I have 3 questions, please. And the first one is on the quad play versus triple play intake. It looked like the quad play was sort of quite markedly negative, and the triple play intake was markedly strong. So what causes that mix shift in the sort of bundle intake? Second question is the guidance seems to imply a reasonably soft fourth quarter of the year. So not giving specific EBITDA and CapEx guidance but sort of just taking in reasonable numbers, it just looks as if EBITDA could be quite soft in the fourth quarter, so I was wondering. What headwinds do you see for the fourth quarter in EBITDA? And my last question is if you -- I mean there are different scenarios here on fiber, and it seems a bit like a bit of a race for all operators, as you have covered up a bit, but if there is a scenario where, Flanders, you would see Telenet and Fluvius and Orange Belgium to sort of roll out a combined vehicle, would that trigger you to sort of go into a race? Or would you say on -- in that scenario the returns for fiber for Orange -- for Proximus will be just too low and you probably have to take a step back? I'm just trying to understand what your preferred approach to these competitive projects are, [ whether it sort of ] get into a race and see who wins. Or is there even a scenario where you just try to take a step back in particular regions?

So on the first question, on quad play versus triple play. So indeed, structurally we see a declining appetite for fixed voice in the Consumer segment. If you look at our new Flex offer, we actually anticipate on that evolution by moving from a product approach to an experience story. And Flex today, for instance, our second tier is not about fixed voice only. It's also about having a better WiFi experience at home. It's also by bringing the first digital tools to be able to manage your family life in a better way. And we believe that this is the way forward to continue to have a relevant story around the current fixed voice as we know it today. As we see this growing pressure, of course this has done an impact on the quad-play customer base as you have seen it in the results of the third quarter. This trend, we expect, will indeed continue. As I said, we try to move now to experience and create additional value around fixed line to reverse that trend. Now what is important to note is that -- the way we look at our ARPC today. We still see a growing ARPC over -- with 1.3% despite, for instance, also the impact we have seen on COVID...

As to your second question. We have seen as of end of September EUR 66 million of savings. And out of the EUR 66 million, there are EUR 40 million structural savings, thanks to the FFP program as well as efficiency savings, the rest of them being supported by COVID as well as one-offs. Now this being said, going forwards for Q4, we will, of course, still have those structural cost benefits, but they will be offset by some cost increases. And then we think that, the media costs, they have been quite low so far. And so far and -- we think that the production costs for the Proximus Media House will go up in Q4. Then as well, we will have [ extra ] customer connections linked to the commercial success, and this will generate some extra costs. And in Q4, typically this is a quarter where we have HR-related provisions.

And on the third questions. Today, it's not that easy to read what will really be happening in Flanders based on what has been publicly stated by the different players of the North of the country. So we really have to focus on our own strategy, and our own strategy is to accelerate the rollout of fiber in Flanders. This is why also we have that discussions with one partner to accelerate and to create a vehicle to roll out 1.5 million of plugs in the North of the country. So at the same time, of course, we will behave rationally. I think that the other players of Flanders will also behave rationally because we are a rational market in Belgium. That said, our ambition is to cover Flanders as fast as possible, as already stated several times, so we will really accelerate and focus on our own rollout and own execution for the years to come.

Next question, from Michael Bishop from Goldman Sachs.

Just 2 questions for me. One is just picking up on these usage points you're making in relation to COVID. Quite a lot of other European operators are obviously observing much higher usage but generally saying that that's difficult to monetize because most people are in bundles and therefore effectively not paying for metered usage. Do you think there's something structurally sort of slightly different in Belgium so you're seeing slightly bigger benefits from usage? And sort of second part of that question: As you think and you see customer behavior going forward, do you see people trying to sort of optimize into bundles? And how does that potentially impact your financials? Is that a positive or a negative? And then my second question is just picking up on the Enterprise trends. They were quite solid in the quarter. I think 4Q is a bit of a tougher comp, but could you just give us your latest thoughts on Enterprise as we go into next year given if I -- you were quite cautious on Enterprise more broadly at the Capital Markets Day?

So on the first question, linked to usage. So indeed we have seen also like in other European countries an increase in usage of our products. And some of them, we are able to monetize. Others are indeed more difficult to monetize because they are part of a bundle. And also, for us it's not yet clear to what extent this changing behavior is going to be structural because we are now all more confined into our homes which typically can lead to more usage of home-related connectivity. And it's not straightforward to see to what extent this is going to continue once we are -- hopefully, as soon as possible, have the COVID crisis behind us. On the second question, linked to people optimizing their bundles, I think the good news for Proximus is that we just launched our new Flex family offer, which is a very good moment to indeed have a conversation with our customers and explain the value of the different offers that we have. So we're quite confident that we have the right solutions and to have the conversation. As you know, we also have a 2-brand strategy, which also helps us going forward.

This is Anne-Sophie Lotgering. So Mr. Bishop, to answer your question on Enterprise. Indeed, the results were solid for Q3, mainly driven by the fact that our ICT revenues were growing organically this quarter but also because we saw a lower decline in our fixed voice and fixed data services revenues. In terms of our projection for Q4, I will say that, looking at the market evolution and looking at the potential lockdowns that could happen, this will have an impact on our [ one-stop ] projects. And therefore, we don't anticipate a similar surge in revenues that we might have had in previous quarters in this Q4 2020.

[ It looks like we don't have ] any more questions for the moment. [Operator Instructions] We have a new question from Matthijs Van Leijenhorst from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Just a quick one on BICS. You're currently in a sales -- sale process. Are you -- what's your intention? Do you want to sell your entire stake or want to -- do you want to keep a minority share? That's the question.

We are in the -- as we said, we are in a sales (sic) [ sale ] process, so we don't want to comment on that process.

We have follow-up questions. First one, from Nicolas Cote-Colisson from HSBC.

Yes. I have a question on BICS as well, but I think, this one, you may answer. Would the deal include TeleSign? Or TeleSign could be left aside from the transaction.

Again, Nicolas, the process is ongoing. I will not give any comments on that process, but the initial discussion was on the BICS group perimeter.

Okay. And if I may, would you be able to give at least a rough indication of the revenue achieved at TeleSign? We know it's growing very fast. Anything you could provide?

Sorry for that. We do not give any numbers on -- specifically on TeleSign. Sorry, Nicolas.

Next follow-up question, once again from Ulrich Rathe from Jefferies.

Yes. I wanted to ask about e-Press. You mentioned that earlier as a driver of upside. Now the e-Press impact, if you simply calculate it standalone, was probably quite material this year. So I have 2 questions regarding to that, regarding that. The first one is, has there been any seasonality in this? Or has this essentially come on, on the 1st of, the beginning of the year, and essentially this went through and it was just overshadowed in the trends in the first 2 quarters? And now we're seeing it more, but it was all there the time. Or is there a reason why e-Press sort of unfolds and there's a seasonality in the support? The second question is, am I right to assume that this is simply a 1-year effect and this uplift will then be there and annualized in 2021? And how do you think about it vis-à-vis top line trends and EBITDA trends and the impact in 2021?

So as for e-Press. Like we already announced, e-Press will generate a couple of euros per customer, but not all customers have access to e-Press. And so about 40% of our customer base has access to e-Press, and so this generated revenues as of Q4 last year. And for this year, we have no seasonality. And as for next year, I think you're right. This will annualize in '21, except if we have an increase in the uptake of number of customers.

We have another follow-up from Matthijs Van Leijenhorst from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Yes. It's regarding your dividend. At the time of your capitals -- or markets day, you announced that you will use part of your balance sheet in order to finance the dividends. And you also will sell some assets. Given the current context with COVID-19, are you still confident that you are able to get the estimated proceeds from selling certain assets? Or are you looking for alternatives? That's my question.

We are fully confident that we can reach our objective in terms of the proceeds from asset disposal.

And we've -- and we don't need, neither, the proceeds of Voo's asset disposals right away. Like you said, we have a very strong balance sheet. And so in the first years, we can very easily finance the fiber rollout by raising debt. So we're not impacted right away by the COVID crisis.

Okay. Can you remind me, if we discuss long term, how much you plan to raise through selling assets? Rough estimate.

As announced at the Capital Markets Day, we are planning to raise cash by selling assets up to EUR 700 million.

And in which time period?

And the time period, that's over the next few years. We don't give any specific time periods.

Okay, so what you're basically saying is that you are able to use your balance sheet without selling any assets, at least for the next few years, and you will be able to keep the dividend safe, right?

Yes.

And last follow-up for the moment, from David Vagman from ING.

[indiscernible] sorry. I was on mute. Sorry. Can you come back on the evolution of the ARPU in Consumer, so in fixed? And especially, on TV revenues, did you see an increase in [ TVOD ], so an increase in consumption of TV packs, et cetera? What has been driving basically the growth in the ARPU in Q3?

So the ARPU on fixed is growing year-over-year, of course, with the contribution of e-Press. You also have a lot of accounting mechanisms that drive the ARPU evolution of the different products, specifically zooming into the TV part. VOD actually is more challenging over the last months than it used to be because, as you know, a lot of movies have been postponed, which means that the really premium VOD is currently not arriving. Or at least on -- most of those are not arriving on the platforms of Proximus and other operators, so we see actually a challenging trend on VOD for the moment that we hope will pick up and that, as soon as possible, Hollywood can start reproducing their hit movies so that not only the cinema theaters but also our [ VOD ] business can grow again.

And on the TV -- let's say, on the data consumption, is there any, let's say, consumer, yes, actually upgrading or asking for higher data pack on the fixed side [indiscernible].

On the fixed line, we actually have a very simple offer with 2 products. And luckily for us, a majority of our customers are already on that high-end product, which is giving unlimited data. So there's no real upside from data consumption. Of course, the moment that we go to fiber, the story changes again. As you might have seen, in our Flex fiber offer we are able to introduce new elements of value tiering where we can start reducing speed, for instance, as an additional element to create value on the fixed Internet side.

Thank you. We don't have any more questions, so back to you for the [ conclusion ].

Thank you. Thank you all for your participation. Should you have follow-up questions, you can contact the investor relations team. I wish you all a great weekend. Bye.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.