Telekom Austria AG (TA1.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome you very warmly to today's Annual General Meeting for Telekom Austria. I hereby open the meeting. I'm very pleased to welcome our shareholders and their representatives back to our corporate headquarters. We are also live streaming our AGM up to the question-and-answer segment. And I would like to welcome all of those interested parties who are following this AGM via the Internet. I would also like to welcome everyone here on site who will be ensuring the success of this AGM. First and foremost, the gentlemen of the Management Board are notary [ Dr. Meyer ], who will ensure the proper taking of the minutes, the auditors from Ernst & Young and all of the backstage and technical staff. The members of the Supervisory Board are following the AGM via the live stream and some of them are here in the room. Today, we will be reporting on the most recent fiscal year 2022, and we will also be providing an outlook for the current year. In the 2022 financial year, Telekom Austria was able to achieve an extraordinarily positive result despite the difficult economic environment. Thanks to the outstanding commitment of our employees, we were able to demonstrate stability and continuity in times of crisis. Group revenues increased by 4%. By focusing on efficiency enhancement and digital transformation, the Group achieved 8% EBITDA growth and 40% net profit growth as well. The result is earnings per share of EUR 0.95. These excellent results also put Telekom Austria, among the leaders in the European industry comparison. And the dividend proposal to this AGM reflects this success. A dividend of EUR 0.32 per dividend-bearing share is to be paid for 2022. This is an increase of EUR 0.04 compared to the previous year when the dividend was set at EUR 0.28. The Management Board will report in detail on 2022 business developments in its presentation. I am sure you have all followed recent developments at Telekom Austria and the announcements regarding the tower spin-off in February of this year. Let me now summarize the most important decisions taken by the main shareholders, America Movil and OBAG at the beginning of the year. The shareholder agreement, which has underpinned the cooperation between Telekom Austria's 2 largest shareholders since 2014 was extended for another 10 years. It has proven its worth and will continue to provide the framework for long-term cooperation between AMX and OBAG into the future. This cooperation between the 2 main shareholders is an important basis for ensuring the stability and the success of our company. Infrastructure expansion is a particular concern for both partners. For this reason, Telekom Austria is planning to invest an additional EUR 1 billion in broadband expansion in Austria. This will put Austria well ahead in terms of fiber optic coverage in Europe. In so doing, Telekom Austria is providing a major impetus for Austria as a business location. Telekom Austria will continue to have its corporate headquarters in Austria and will be listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange. As in the past, OBAG will nominate the Chairperson of the Telekom Austria Supervisory Board and another member of the Supervisory Board as well. In the future, the Management Board will consist of only 2 persons with America Movil nominating the CEO of the Management Board; and the OBAG nominating his or her deputy. In line with international trends, Telekom Austria is planning to spin-off its passive mobile communications infrastructure, the radio towers into a separate company. This step will allow a more efficient allocation of capital and enable Telekom Austria to significantly step up its investment volume. The goal is for other network operators in addition to Telekom Austria to use the radio towers, thereby generating additional business. The new company will take over Telekom Austria's radio towers and make the infrastructure available to Telekom Austria via a long-term leasing agreement. The new company will result from a proportionate spin-off and will have the same owners. Accordingly, you as Telekom Austria's shareholders and our 2 main shareholders will also receive shares in the new company in proportion to your existing shareholdings. Both America Movil and OBAG have a long-term commitment to the company and see it as a strategic component to ensure the success of our core business, namely digital services. Accordingly, both main shareholders have also committed not to sell their shares over the next 5 years. They have reached a long-term agreement that largely corresponds to the shareholders' agreement for Telekom Austria that has been in place since 2014, particularly with regard to duration of the agreement and the nomination of rights. The shares of this new company are also to be listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange. We will convene a separate General Meeting for implementing this transaction. And there, we will present the details on this transaction and pass the necessary resolutions. Finally, I am pleased to report that at its meeting in May, the Supervisory Board voted to extend the mandates of Alejandro Plater and Thomas Arnoldner as members of the Telekom Austria Management Board. As of the 1st of September, Alejandro Plater will assume the function of CEO; and Thomas Arnoldner will act as his deputy, and very pleased that these 2 gentlemen as the team to whom Telekom Austria owes a great deal of success over the past years will continue to manage the company together. Accordingly, the contract extension is also an expression of recognition for the excellent work of the entire international telecom team that they have built. I would like to thank them for their fruitful cooperation over the last several years and wish both gentlemen every success for their new contract terms. It is to our regret that our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Siegfried Mayrhofer has decided not to stay on with Telekom Austria. I would, therefore, like to take this opportunity to thank Siegfried Mayrhofer for his many years of valued and service to our company. However, as CFO, Mr. Mayrhofer will continue to support and shape the spin-off transaction of the radio towers until the Extraordinary General Meeting. We will then take that opportunity to thank him formally as befits his contribution to Telekom Austria. Now, we return to the agenda of today's AGM. As to the invitation, I hereby note that the invitation was published in the Wiener Zeitung on the 6th of May 2023 and distributed electronically via EQS and S&P Global. All required documents have been posted on the website of the company since the 12th of May 2023. I also note that there are no proposals for additions or amendments to the agenda. Therefore, today, we can only discuss and decide on the agenda items announced in the invitation. Now, just a few housekeeping remarks on today's AGM, we will first present the reports and the proposed resolutions on all agenda items in the block. This will be followed by a question-and-answer session. Then we will have the request to speak on all agenda items. When all questions have been answered, we will vote on all motions without further interruption. If you wish to speak during the question-and-answer session, please fill out the request to speak form and hand it to the ushers in the room. If you have already prepared questions in writing, we are also welcome to hand them into the ushers. We appreciate your compliance on these matters. We will now move on to the agenda. Item 1 on the agenda: Presentation of the annual financial statements, including the management report, the consolidated financial statements, including the group management report as well as the consolidated corporate governance report, the consolidated non-financial report, the proposal for the appropriation of profits, and the report of the Supervisory Board for the fiscal year 2022. All of these reports have been available on the website as documents for the AGM since the publication of the annual results and since May 12, 2023. The annual financial statements and the consolidated financial statements were audited by Ernst & Young Wirtschaftsprufungsgesellschaft m.b.H and received an unqualified audit opinion. The management report and the Group management report are consistent with the annual and consolidated financial statements. I would now like to inform you of the work of the Supervisory Board. There were a total of 6 meetings, including one Strategy Meeting held in the reporting year. The issues of particular interest in the meetings included the strategic alignment of the Group, in particular, from the point of view of sustainability as well, planned investments and financing, the spin-off of the tower business to create a new company and the approval of the 2030 budget in December 2022, following an in-depth discussion of the strategic opportunities and challenges as well as the options for action aimed at optimizing business performance. The following changes occurred on the Supervisory Board in the past year. Christine Catasta, Daniela Lecuona Torras and Carlos Jarque were reelected to be a Supervisory Board at the Annual General Meeting that was held on June 27, 2022, Werner Luksch resigned from the Supervisory Board as of December 31, 2022, and he was succeeded by Franz Valsky. This concludes my report on the work and issues covered by the Supervisory Board in the 2022 fiscal year. The Management Board will now report to you in detail on the 2022 financial year. And I would like to first ask CEO, Thomas Arnoldner, to take the floor.

Ladies and gentlemen, Management Board, shareholders, in particular, our valued customers, I'm very happy to report on a very promising and positive fiscal year that we had last year. And I'm very happy to be able to do this to you -- with you in person. Without a doubt, our last fiscal year was a very challenging year, but I think we have very convincing results that we're happy to present to you. On one hand, this shows the resilience of our business model. On the other hand, then you will see this in just a moment, this shows our very strong performance in a sectoral comparison. I would also like to express my express gratitude to all of our employees throughout the Group that contributed to achieving these results. We have yet another year of growth behind us, so we have been able to increase our overall revenues by 5%. And for the first time in a long time. And Mr. Mayrhofer will show you this in detail, we were able to exceed the EUR 5 billion revenue mark. This was the last time in 2008 that we exceeded that mark. And for the several years, we have been hovering around the EUR 4 billion mark. And since then, we've been able to push past that barrier and to move towards the EUR 5 billion mark. And we've been able to post growth in all of the markets across the board where we are active. EBITDA grew by 8% despite a very challenging cost structure. We saw rising energy costs and rising staff costs, particularly against the backdrop of ramped inflation. We were able to invest almost EUR 1 billion into our Group. This was primarily earmarked toward fiber optic and 5G rollout activities. And despite this very high level of CapEx, we were able to step up free cash flow by 24%. We also have a very strong balance sheet structure with an improvement in our credit rating. We were upgraded here, and this is the best financial rating that we have enjoyed in the history of the A1 Group. Also in terms of sustainability, of course, I will be talking about this in greater detail later on. We see the setup activities compared to the past. These were taken in the last 2 to 3 years. And this also have been recognized. Perhaps we can indeed admit to the fact that we've had to play catch-up on these, but this excellent result also shows that we are on the cusp of a very positive development. Indeed, we have set a milestone in the regulatory development in Austria with a complete deregulation of the Austrian wholesale market in the retail customer segment. This is an enormous paradigm shift that will help boost our activities in the fiber optic segment. And as was already mentioned, our main shareholders have decided to support the separation of our tariff business and to extend our shareholders' agreement. In terms of our customers, we are also very proud of the fact that we have seen growth in customer numbers, particularly in our mobile customers in the last several years, as you can see here on the slide, we have seen continual growth of about 3% over the last several years. We have also seen a very positive development in our contract subscribers. And this is primarily owing to Internet of Things and machine-to-machine, but ARPUs, the average revenue per user have also risen, this is also thanks to upselling of 5G rates. And of course, our net tubes, these are WiFi routers that we also sell. And we've also taken other measures to help boost these figures. We've also seen a return of roaming following the pandemic. We've also seen overall growth, as I said, in our customer base across the board. This is also primarily due to our international markets. We've seen changes in our structure here, moving away from classic voice telephony, of course, but we've seen increased growth in broadband. And in television, we've seen average customer revenue remaining stable. But if you look at the details, you see structural changes taking place, particularly with the rising share of customers in Eastern Europe. I touched on this just briefly, but allow me to go into a little bit more detail. It's also important to put all of this in a context. So you can see how our competition has fared in the last year or the last several years, we want to compare apples-to-apples and not apples-to-oranges. We have seen organic growth year across our board. And our Eastern European growth has been significant as well. Here, you can see a comparison over the last 3 years in the last 5 years, both in terms of revenue as well as EBITDA. And we've seen growth here of about 3% in revenues and approximately 3% growth in EBITDA in the last 5 years and/or even greater if we look at that according to other parameters. But we also have a very strong balance sheet, as I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation. And of course, this has led to the best financial rating that we've had in the history of our Group. We are rated A minus. There are 2 other telcos in the Group that has a better rating. But they also have benefited from a very strong participation of estate holdings. So this strong balance sheet is also underpinned our investments in the last years, and these are absolutely central. Of course, we have to focus primarily on the expansion of broadband in Austria. This is the largest fiber optic investment program that we've had in the history of our company. And I think this is the largest fiber optic program that we've seen in the history of -- as I said of Austria in general. Here we have 96% of all municipalities have been reached at least with one line. We have 627,000 homes passed, at least to the home, at least fiber to the home or fab to the curb. Here, you have almost 70,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cable has been installed. And just to give you an idea of what this means, around 2,000 people are working on construction sites right now here in Austria to help expand our fiber optic network. This is indeed a challenge to all of us because there's a great deal of contraction going on. And of course, the pace of the expansion has been influenced by temperatures and weather conditions as well as the capacities of the construction companies as well as the availability of skilled workers. But this is not just important for the expansion of our fixed line network, but also for expanding our 5G network, which also forms the foundation of our activities. We need the fiber optic network to do this. And then what we achieve, everything that we want to achieve for our retail customer sites. We have the largest fiber optic network, and at the same time, we have the strongest and most extensive 5G network. And these are the results of our activities. As of the end of 2022, we had about 79% of the population covered with a 5G network. And now we offer 5G in all of our A1 plans. And I think by the end of the year, we will be able to cover almost all of Austria, at least, 95% of the population with A1 5G services. And of course, this means that we shoulder our due responsibility for Austria and making our contribution for this country, I think it is quite significant. Indeed, the expansion of a network has also meant the creation of 16,000 jobs. So 7,300 directly with the A1 and the rest are in the supply chain. Every year, we have been able to invest about EUR 600 million in digital infrastructure in Austria. And in the last several years, we have also stepped up our efforts in security with a EUR 40 million investment. We are the largest data center operator with 12,000 square meters of data center performance. And of course, the excellent quality of our network has been recognized by many leading tests. So you can see those listed on the slide. These investments are very important for us economically. They created the basis, the foundation for our activities because, as I mentioned before, we have seen a significant change in the regulatory environment in Austria. This is a very important milestone, probably one of the largest in terms of the regulatory environment. This is the result of a several year market analysis by the regulator. We have wholesale agreements with a number of providers, bilateral agreements because it is in our interest to promote the fiber-optic network, the one that I, of course, have been touching on for the past several months. So it's important for us to pull these efforts and to provide customers with these services, whether they are directly our customers or through other providers. And the regulator was convinced of the value of these efforts. And they saw that there is indeed a thriving competition in Austria. For that reason, the regulator has decided to completely deregulate our wholesale market for broadband customers. We will continue to be observed, we'll be under the microscope on this. But I think that it is very much in our interest to support these efforts. And to work together with our -- with the market and the regulator to expand our fiber optic network in the interest of our company and in the interest of our country. So, here you can see the advantages we have a better use of the network. We're able to operate it more efficiency. We can cooperate with others better. We can respond to changes in the market to the changes of customer needs, for example, and how we adjust the prices, and we can adjust our product portfolio accordingly in order to gain customer and market share. And I think that everybody will benefit. It's a win-win situation. Allow me to address a very challenging issue at the moment. Of course, this is the situation in Belarus. Allow me to point out, first of all, that our operating performance in Belarus has been very good. Mr. Mayrhofer will be showing you more details on that when he gets to the financial statement. Our local management has over 3,000 employees there, our 2,000 employees have done wonderful work despite supply chain problems, despite economic challenges, of course, significant fluctuations in the foreign exchange rate, et cetera. And I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our employees at our company at our subsidiary in Belarus. As you can see, our exposure with Belarus, it is rather limited, we're talking about 9% of our revenue, 12% of EBITDA accordingly and a book value of EUR 257 million as of the end of 2022. It is a very important matter to us. It's very important to us to stress that we are making a significant contribution to civil society in the country. We are the largest alternative telecommunication company in Belarus with 5.6 million customers. These are retail customers from the private sector, and we are able to provide them with access to the World Wide Web. And we uphold Western compliance standards. And this has been very important for me to stress in my talks with civil society in Belarus. We're one of the leading companies in terms of ESG and sustainability in that country. And let me also to stress that it's very clear that we will uphold all of the applicable sanctions. We have several processes in place, both on the Group level and on the local level that guarantee this compliance. We are convinced that we wish to remain in place for our 5.6 million customers but also for our employees. Dr. Hlawati has already touched on this. In February, we decided to spin-off all of our towers in all the markets with the exception of Belarus. We are keeping abreast of international trends on this. Many of our competitors have already taken corresponding measures. Many of them have sold off their towers. And we have opted for our own structure in this. In Austria, we have already sold our towers to private international investors. Just to remind you, we talked about this at the last AGM. But just to remind you, we're talking about the passive infrastructure. Here you can see that on the chart. So you can see the gray area, for example, these are the steel masses, these are the concrete foundations, the containers, for example, whether the technical equipment is located and operated. We're not talking about the active components. This is the infrastructure, for example, that transmits the signals where the data is transferred. This infrastructure, our Classic 3G, 4G, 5G network will remain in the hands of the Telekom Austria AG. It is only the passive infrastructure, these locations, everything you see here in the gray box that is to be spun-off. And they will be at least from third-party landlords. We not selling this to international financial investors. We've decided to go down a different route. Each of you who are our shareholders, will receive a share -- proportionate share of this new company. And I think that this will bring advantages to everybody for our company and particularly in refocusing on our core business. We will be able to free up capacity for our -- the expansion of our fiber optic network. The main shareholder structure will remain in place as well. Our 2 main shareholders have decided to undergo a long-term commitment to Telekom Austria. Dr. Hlawati touched on this just a minute ago. For you as shareholders, you have the choice. Once this company has been listed, you are free to remain -- to also obtain a share in that new tower company or remain simply a shareholder of Telekom Austria AG. We will be creating a new attractive title on the a Vienna Stock Exchange. There are very few tower companies in Austria that will be listed publicly. And our customers will continue to benefit from our excellent network quality. The environment will also benefit from the joint use of such infrastructure. Here, we're able to operate more efficiently in terms of resources. We have a joint use that is also increased. As I said, this is better for the environment. And this is a very streamlined regulatory regime. We have a telecommunications law here. And this also will apply to the towers as well. And as I said, the transaction will be finalized in the second half of this year as Madam Chair said there would be an Extraordinary General Meeting dedicated to that issue where we will outline all of that in detail. Just a few words here about our strategy. We have a strategy process that we have been pursuing the last several years. You will be familiar with this from our AGMs in the last several years. And here, we're pretty much on the same track. Here, you can see the graphic design here. You can see the core business remains our focus, connectivity plus. We want to maintain the high quality of our network. We're not looking at technical network KPIs, but we want to focus more on what our customer experience is. We also wish to focus on customer orientation. We've decided to turn this customer journey. We want to move away from our product-driven focus and move toward focusing on our customers. We also have a very complex internal IT and network infrastructure, and we want to dramatically simplify and downscale, this we want to modernize it at the same way in order to remain relevant for customers. But we also want to look toward generating more growth. We want to selectively expand our portfolio. We want to work together with partners, perhaps even look to other acquisitions. We are also looking to enhance and bundle and pool our competencies within our Group in order to bolster the implementation of our strategy. And at the very core of this is our employees, people, of course. These are our most important resource. And for that reason, we have put them at the very center of our strategy. And we have turned this human at the center. Why are we doing this? Because employees are, as I said, our most important resource. In the pandemic, we saw that the lines between work and personal life were blurred, and we had to look at our employees as a whole. For that reason, we took a deep dive into this issue. We wanted to know what is required of us in terms of our behavior in addressing our employee needs in various dimensions. And we also wanted to look at what the overall framework, what kind of framework was needed in order to achieve our goals. We wanted to focus more on learning. We wanted to promote cooperation beyond the areas at work or in the home office, for example, and also look at the separation between our various companies and how we can overcome those. And of course, we have 3 strategy enablers. These are absolutely essential in order to achieve this strategy. Here, you can see a very strong brand, which has been rolled out in all of our 7 markets. And on the right-hand side, you see security is very important. Cybersecurity, of course, is -- comes under that heading. And in the center, you have ESG sustainability, of course. Remember, I already mentioned at the beginning that we are on a journey. So what I'm trying to say here is that, for example, in '19 -- in 2019, 2021, we increased our ambitions. So we have raised this to another more ambitious level. Roughly 3 years ago, we defined 6 core issues. And those issues were then included in our target catalogs, and you will be able to see our performance in those issues in a minute. But at the beginning of this year, we identified a new ESG strategy in 13 strategic areas where we increased our ambition and other areas which we deem to be very important, such as our supply chains will be focused on more strongly. And I already mentioned at the beginning that we all so get external acknowledgment and recognition. Now we were ranked among the world's 1% in the carbon disclosure project, which is really the best rating. There is and also Sustainalytics ranked us #7 out of the international 219 telcos. And here, we are really the leaders on an international scale. I do not really want to present all of the figures here on a detailed basis. We can come back to that later on. But what you see here is really our ambition. So what you can see here is a market progress in comparison with the previous years. In 2021, we managed for the first time to substantially decrease our carbon footprint. That was a trend that has been continuously continued circular economy, for example, you see here that we clearly exceeded the target we set ourselves when it comes to the recycling of all devices. Another issue that is very important to me is social factors here, which is to say digital training, digital education, but also diversity. And here, we are closely monitoring the share of female employees in the Group. And also, we take our best efforts really to get an external certification really for the level of female employees working in our Group. Within the scope of the strategy process, we carried out a materiality analysis, which is to say, we surveyed more than 2,000 stakeholders out of 6 countries, and we asked them to rank substantial material issues. Some of you may have been among those. And we defined 13 issues, and they have been included in our strategy process. And now they have been included in our catalog. I'm not going to mention all of them, but just pick out a few. When it comes to CO2 emissions, for example, the focus is not just on the emissions that we directly cause, but also on those emissions that are created within the scope of our supply chain, which is Scope 3 emissions. Also, we have stepped up our efforts when it comes to educational initiatives, training initiatives and also energy efficiency. Another thing that we are trying to achieve is a zero-waste to landfill policy. That is how experts referred to this. And another commitment that we have made is reducing the gender pay gap within our Group. And in the medium term, this should be abolished altogether. Also, we have set up a very comprehensive program as to how we can monitor those sustainability criteria. And also, of course, we want to include our suppliers so much on sustainability. Now, I would like to give the floor to Mr. Mayrhofer, who is going to talk about our financial results. Thank you very much.

So let us move on from non-financials to financials in 2022. We managed, as mentioned at the beginning, to increase revenues by 5.2% to more than EUR 5 billion, that is primarily due to the increase in service revenues really in all country segments. Also, equipment revenues rose in 2022, especially in Austria, Serbia and Bulgaria. Now here on the chart, you can see that almost 60% of our revenues go to wireless business and roughly 40% in -- all right, and roughly 40% to the fixed line business. Also, I would like to mention that both sectors fixed as well as our wireless business grew 5.6% mobile business. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see the regional split. Austria here is still leading the field, still makes the strongest contribution to Group revenues at a rate of 55%, followed by Bulgaria 13%. Growth in Bulgaria was the strongest within the Group. Now if we have a look at the income statement, you will be able to see that operating expenses grew despite our strong focus on cost management, so we recorded a steep increase when it comes to electricity costs, but more about that later on. I should like to add that Austria profited really from electricity supply contracts that were concluded before the war in Ukraine broke out. So we profited from those old contracts, if you will. We repaid bonds, and we managed to reduce our net debt, and therefore, we improved our financial result, the share -- the result per share increased by almost 40% to EUR 0.95. CapEx were in the amount of EUR 944 million. And subsequently, our free cash flow also improved, and this was really supported by positive changes really in working capital. On to the segments, first half, let's have a look at Austria, and then let's move on to international segments. Now at the beginning of the year, rather, let us say, mobile communications market was characterized by low churn rates and also fewer customer gross adds. And this was partly due to the scarcity of available high-value handsets, but also to lower subsidies that was a general development we saw in Austria. In the second half of 2022, we saw increased activities in all tariff models of all of the operators. For example, 5G offers were introduced in almost all new tariffs in the fixed line business, demand remained relatively unchanged year-on-year. So we saw upselling to higher broadband products. This continue to be noticeable in the market and also a new regulatory environment, enabled our Group to accelerate the fiber rollout in Austria. Now, we have a new portfolio in fiber to the home and fiber to the building product, and this is what we launched in order to be able to meet customer demands really, customers are asking for more bandwidth here. Now in the International segment. Here, you can see a survey of the performance in 2022. On a very pleasing note, we can report an increase in all of the segments in terms of revenue, also when it comes to service revenues. And with the exception of Belarus and North Macedonia, we also saw an increase in equipment revenues. Bulgaria, once again, a very strong performance. Revenue increase was a bit supported through the acquisition of a company called STEMO, this is a local ICT company. Croatia, here, also, we saw an increase in revenue and on the basis of an increase in our customer base. This increase was facilitated, a particularly challenging environment was in Belarus. But due to the excellent work of the team, we saw a sound operating performance. This was also supported really due to an advantageous really exchange rate development. But also in local [ government ], both EBITDA as well as revenue grew in Belarus and Serbia, we were particularly successful in upselling, but also we see very satisfactory figures when it comes to equipment revenues in our smallest markets, Slovenia and North Macedonia. Well, we saw that there was great of pressure as far as the steep increase in electricity prices were concerned, but all in all, performance was satisfactory. All right. Let me talk a little bit about electricity costs throughout the Group. We saw a steep increase, an increase by 39%, even though really electricity consumption just went up by 2%. This 2% increase has to be seen in combination really with a plus of 18% in data volume, which is to say a 2% in volume versus an 80% increase when it comes to data traffic. Well, that is really an excellent figure, if you will, that really speaks to our higher energy efficiency. And roughly 80% of our electricity consumption goes to the operation of our networks. And within that, roughly 60% goes to the mobile business. Here you see the comparison of the individual countries. Of course, we all know that there are different regulatory conditions regarding the purchasing of electricity. So this really explains really the different impact in the individual countries. The second factor that is, of course, of great relevance here is our workforce costs, almost [ EUR 1 billion ], 66% in Austria. We have let us see an increase really in the wage increase is due to collective bargaining and therefore, also in 2022. And also in the next year, we will be forced to put great priority really in -- on workforce costs. Last but not least, I would briefly like to talk about 3 financials, CapEx, net debt and total assets. CapEx first, we saw an increase of 6% to EUR 944 million in comparison to 2020 when we saw an increase of 45%. Now, this money, if you will, this cash was mostly spent on the rollout of broadband infrastructure in Austria as well as the international markets. As far as frequencies are concerned, we invested EUR 10 million in the financial year 2022 and due to the strong free cash flow, we managed to further reduce net debt. Total assets in comparison with 2020, we saw a small decrease. The reason was that at the end of [ 2021 ], and in April 2022, we saw balance sheet reducing effect from the use of cash to repay a bond. Let us have a look at the development of our share and share prices. Our shareholder structure did not really change substantially. So no transactions with treasury shares. In 2022, the share price, the development, you can see the development here. We outperformed almost all of the benchmark indices. You can see here the ATX Prime for example. Now analysts gave a positive ranking to our share, 6 are on buy. The others are on hold. No recommendation to sell the shares to banks suspended their ranking because they saw a conflict of interest Citi Group and JPMorgan that had to do with the towers business. Now in conclusion, I would briefly like to give you an outlook on 2022. As far as revenues are concerned, we are committed to growing by 4%. Roaming revenues after the pandemic really in 2022, increased at a satisfactory level. As far as 2023 is concerned, we reckon with another plus, but really to a more modest extent in comparison with 2022. We assume that the Belarusian ruble is going to devaluate against the euro. We are planning to invest EUR 950 million, this also -- excuse me, EUR 109 million. And what is not included really is the frequencies in the amount of EUR 109 million. That is what we spend in Croatia. So that is something that will need to be added to the EUR 935 million that we plan to invest. Ms. Hlawati, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much for the Management Board report. And on behalf of the Supervisory Board, I would now like to thank the gentlemen of the Management Board that despite persistently difficult conditions, you have once again led the company to an excellent result. So I'd also like to thank our customers, in particular. And I would also like to thank you, the shareholders of Telekom Austria AG for the trust you have placed in us. I would also like to express my special thanks to all of our employees. You all deserve great thanks and recognition for your commitment and your performance in the past year. Now I would like to give you the attendance at today's general meeting according to the Joint Stock Corporation Act, you can see the number of persons attending the AGM today and representing the shares. This will be displayed on the screen presently. In any case, the results will be available for inspection at Dr. Meyer -- with Dr. Meyer, our notary public. Here, I would like now to read out the items on the agenda 2 to 8. First, we will come to agenda item 2, the resolution on the appropriation of the net profit shown in the financial statements for the fiscal year 2022. The Management Board and the Supervisory Board of Telekom Austria AG propose to use the profit of the fiscal year 2022 of Telekom Austria AG in the amount of EUR 634,585,000.00 as follows: Distribution of a dividend of EUR 0.32 per eligible no par share; i.e., total dividend payment of EUR 212,640,000. The remaining amount will be carried over to new account. The dividend will be paid out on the 15th of June 2023. Agenda Item 3: Resolution on the discharge of the members of the Management Board for the fiscal year 2022. The Management Board and the Supervisory Board of Telekom Austria AG propose to grant discharge to the members of the Management Board for the fiscal year 2022. Agenda Item 4: Resolution on the discharge of the members of the Supervisory Board for the fiscal year 2022. The Management Board and the Supervisory Board of Telekom Austria AG propose to grant discharge to the members of the Supervisory Board for the fiscal year 2022. Agenda Item 5: Resolution on the compensation for the members of the Supervisory Board for the fiscal year 2022. The Management Board and the Supervisory Board of Telekom Austria AG propose that the following remuneration or compensation is to be granted unchanged versus the previous year to the elected members of the Supervisory Board for the 2022 financial year: for the Chair, EUR 40,000; for the Deputy Chair EUR 30,000; for every other Supervisory Board member, EUR 20,000; for the Chair of a committee, EUR 12,000; and for every other committee member, EUR 10,000. The compensation for committee members is limited to 1 committee mandate. Accordingly, committee members are only entitled to a compensation once even if they belong to several committees. The staff count representatives on the Supervisory Board shall be entitled to an attendance fee per meeting, but not to additional compensation. Compensation is paid on a pro rata basis calculated daily if a member of the Supervisory Board or committee did not belong to the Board or the respective committee to the financial year. I would like to add that the employee representatives on the Supervisory Board perform the function on a rate basis. They do not receive any compensation on an attendance fees. The OBAG representatives on the Supervisory Board transfer their compensation to OBAG. Agenda Item 6: Elections to the Supervisory Board. As of the end of today's AGM, the mandate of Ms. Karin Exner-Wohrer, Ms. Christine Catasta, Mr. Carlos Jose Garcia Moreno Elizondo, and Mr. Alejandro Cantu Jimenez, Mr. Oscar Von Hauske Solis, and myself will expire. Mr. Stefan Furnsinn is to be elected to the Supervisory Board to replace Ms. Catasta. The remaining mandates are to be extended. According to the Articles of Association of Telekom Austria AG, the Supervisory Board consists of up to 10 members to be elected by the Annual General Meeting. The extension of these 5 mandates, plus a newly elected member will keep the number at 10. As previously mentioned, the existing shareholders' meeting -- agreement was extended in order to ensure that the agreements reached between the main shareholders can be actually implemented. AMX and OBAG have agreed that 8 capital representatives will be nominated by AMX and 2 shareholders representatives by OBAG and will be subject to a pooling of voting rights. The candidates nominated for today's election are independent of the company and its management Board as required by Rule 53 of the Austrian Corporate Governance Code. It is often demanded that Supervisory Board should also be independent of shareholders. However, this would impair if not make impossible the pooling of voting rights provisions in the shareholders' agreement. We also make a number of references to this mode of appointment in our corporate governance report, as we have in several years past. Based on the separate resolution adopted the Supervisory Board, the shareholders' representatives and employee represents must fill agenda quota independently from one another. The gender quota continues to be upheld. The Supervisory Board, therefore, proposes to elect to the Supervisory Board to take effect as of the end of this AGM. First of all, Ms. Karin Exner-Wohrer. Secondly, Stefan Furnsinn, Carlos Jose Garcia Moreno Elizondo, Oscar Von Hauske Solis, all of them until the end of the AGM results on the discharge for the 2025 fiscal year. Fifthly, Alejandro Cantu Jimenez until the end of the AGM that results on the discharge for the fiscal year 2024. And finally, myself, until the end of the AGM that resolves on the discharge for the Supervisory Board for the fiscal year 2026. The candidates have the submitted declarations pursuant to Section 87 para 2 of the Stock Corporation Act, which are published together on the website with their CVs. We will vote separately on each nomination. On behalf of all 6 candidates, I would like to express their gratitude for the trust you have placed in them if they elected and that they will gladly accept the election. As Ms. Catasta is no longer standing for election, I would like to take this opportunity right now to thank her very much for her contributions to our Supervisory Board. There is no need to present the candidates individually as they are active members of the Supervisory Board of the company and therefore known to you, of course, with the exception of Mr. Stefan Furnsinn. For that reason, I would like to ask Mr. Furnsinn to introduce himself to you.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, shareholders. In [ life ], we generally have -- we never have enough time and of course, it's important to spend the time that is allotted to us with something that you are interested in and something that is relevant to millions of people. And with your support, I have the opportunity to make a contribution to Telekom Austria. And I couldn't tell you that I am more thrilled and excited to do this. Allow me to give you a few examples of this. The technology and the services of Telekom Austria enable a digital life that is part of our everyday life that is almost inconceivable to us. We want to be network to millions of people throughout the world. We have television experience with streaming that we would have dreamed of as children or it would have been difficult to even conceive of -- as children, and we have very high-speed Internet. And of course, during the pandemic and during these very difficult years, I was able to communicate with my parents, thanks to these digital services. And I was able to support them during that difficult time. Of course, children are the most enthusiastic when it comes to these services. So my oldest daughter is in high school. I took her to school today, and I asked her what was on the schedule for today. She said it was a math exam. And she asked me what I was doing, I said I'm about, hopefully, to be elected to the Telekom Austria Supervisory Board. And she said, they're the ones with a very cool music in the fiber optic ads. And she said, "Dad, it's a really cool thing that you're about to do, make sure you're up for it." So there's a lot of excitement here. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet with the sales team in the 22nd district of Vienna, and we tried to enhance the Internet experience of a number of people here, and I was very happy to be there on site with them. And I was happy to see just how passionate the technicians were in enabling this experience for their customers. And I'm very happy to make my own small contribution. I have a great deal of international management experience over the last 20 years as the CEO and partners of a very leading corporate consulting companies. I've been involved in finance, marketing strategy. I've been able to gain a great deal of experience and work together with a number of employees. So in very simple and easy days and then also a very difficult days. So Telekom Austria is a very international company, and I can rely on my 15 years of international experience from Africa, India, Canada and of course, in Europe, just to name a few. And of course, I can bring all of those -- that experience to the table. I am familiar with the Supervisory Board activities from many other roles that I have occupied and I will be able to rely on that experience as well. So what is relevant to the Supervisory Board role? It's important to monitor and supervise the Management Board in order to provide your opinion at removed one step, so to speak, from the heat of the debate, and we're able to discuss and help resolve problems together with the Supervisory Board and the Management Board in the interest of the company. And I promise you that I will bring my excitement and my expertise to the table as a member of the Supervisory Board, and I hope that I will be able to rely on the trust and your support as well from the shareholders.

Thank you very much, Stefan Furnsinn for this -- for introducing yourself. So now we come to Agenda Item 7: the election of the auditors of the financial statements and the consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year 2023. The Supervisory Board of Telekom Austria proposes to elect Ernst & Young Wirtschaftsprufungsgesellschaft m.b.H, Vienna, as auditor and Group auditor for the fiscal year 2023. Agenda Item 8: Resolution on the Remuneration Report. The remuneration report provides in our opinion, a comprehensive overview of the remuneration granted and owed to the members of the governing bodies in the course of the last financial year. To illustrate this better, allow me to remind you of the logic behind the remuneration of the Management Board. Management Board remuneration is based on 3 pillar model, which is shown here on this slide. As you can see here, there is a basic salary. That is based on the level of salaries as listed of some companies and corresponds to the scope of duties and responsibilities of the respective management board member. In the short-term variable remuneration, the STI or short-term incentive is based on our strategy. It includes financial and strategic performance indicators in line with our capital market positioning and our ESG strategy. The Remuneration Committee sets corresponding performance criteria for each fiscal year. The STI [ 2023 to 2022 ], incorporated financial and ESG targets based on the amount of [ FIRE ]. The STI can be a maximum of 150% of the base salary. The long-term variable compensation or LTI, has a 3-year review period per tranche, the so-called performance period and is based on the allocation of notional bonus shares. Payment is made in cash rather than in shares. And only if the key performance indicators set by the Remuneration Committee for 3 years have been achieved. The targets used for the LTI are key performance indicators relevant to the capital markets. Non-financial and ESG targets are also to be given greater consideration in the LTI. The LTI is capped at a target achievement of 175%. On the 2022 remuneration report itself, and let me just say the following. We the Management Board and the Supervisory Board have based our preparation of the remuneration report on the statutory requirements and the capital market trends relating to executive compensation. It has always been a concern for the Supervisory Board and the Remuneration Committee to create a performance-based compensation system with a high proportion of variable compensation. This report provides the transparency for shareholders on the target criteria and the target values of the variable remuneration components at STI and LTI. The total remuneration of the Management Board decreased by 9% in the reporting year 2022 compared to 2021. By contrast, the company's net income increased by 40% year-on-year. The decrease in management for compensation is based on a slightly lower STI and LTI target achievement compared to the previous year. For STI, to those who need the financial targets, namely revenue target, operating cash flow target and [ above and all ], target we achieved for the total of 113.3%. The achieved target achievement, which included in the overall target achievement via the modifier was at 102.4%. The achievement of the environmental target is once again very positive, the CO2 reduction target and the circular economy target were significantly exceeded at 212% and 15%, respectively. The overall STI target achievement, which is calculated by multiplying the financial target achievement by the modifier target achievement was, therefore, 116.1%. Furthermore, LTI remuneration also decreased with a reduction in 2022, mainly due to lower expected target achievement compared to 2021. For 2022, the expected LTI target achievement is 102.7%. In 2021, it was 112.8%. Actual target achievement in 2022 will not be known until the second half of this year and will be presented in the 2023 remuneration report. The structure and amount of Supervisory Board compensation has remained unchanged. We have just reported on the amounts under Item 5 of the agenda. Finally, I will read out the proposed resolution. The slide, please. Is this a new jingle for Telekom Austria, this is what is being proposed at the AGM? No slide. Okay. So I will read out the proposed resolution. Unfortunately, we do not have a slide on this. The Management Board and the Supervisory Board proposed that the remuneration report as published on the website be adopted. The vote on the remuneration report serves as a recommendation. This concludes the presentation of the reports and proposed resolutions on all agenda items. We now conclude our Internet broadcast. I would like, therefore, to say goodbye to all the participants who have been following the AGM on the Internet, and thank you for your kind interest and attention.