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Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Liberty Global's second quarter 2026 investor call. This call and the associated webcast are the property of Liberty Global, any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the express written consent of Liberty Global is strictly prohibited. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the investor relations section of libertyglobal.com. After today's formal presentation, instructions will be given for our question and answer session. Page two of the slides details the company's safe harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements.

Today's presentation may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical fact. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. These risks include those detailed in Liberty Global's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed Forms 10-Q and 10-K, as amended. Liberty Global disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect any change in its expectations or in the conditions on which any such statement is based. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Mike Fries.

All right. Welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us. We've got plenty to share with you today, so I'm just going to jump right in and then hand it over to Charlie. Of course, I've got the whole team here with me, so get your questions ready. We are speaking from slides today. I'm going to kick it off on slide five. I really like to start with this graphic. I think it demonstrates pretty clearly how we operate, how we allocate capital, and how we create value at Liberty Global. Our story is, of course, anchored by world-class telecom assets in Europe that generate $22 billion in revenue and $8 billion in EBITDA on the aggregate. You know that. While each of these markets has its own unique operating characteristics, Europe as a whole, in my opinion, is catching a bit of a tailwind, right?

Deregulation, sovereignty, the benefits of AI, they're colliding to change the narrative, I think we'll benefit from those trends. Now, you know what I'm going to say next. Despite the size and scale and growth prospects of our businesses, we believe our stock today reflects no value for these assets. I'll show you how I get to that conclusion in a moment. That belief is what is driving us to unlock the intrinsic value of our telecom businesses. Fortunately for us, unlike many of our peers, we're lucky to have both the financial and structural flexibility to achieve transactions like the spin-off of Sunrise, which by any measure created meaningful value for all of us. As we'll discuss in a moment, we're making outstanding progress on our plans to do the exact same thing in the Benelux with the Ziggo Group next year.

At the same time, as we reshape Liberty Global, we have pivoted resources towards our Liberty Growth portfolio, where we have demonstrated again and again our ability to create significant value in media, sports, infrastructure, and tech. The recent sale of our stake in EdgeConneX, which we talk about in this press release and in these slides, where we took out $750 million, 4x our investment over about 10 years, is just the latest example of that. Finally, we have reshaped our corporate or central structure to be both more agile, more efficient, and more focused on these two core platforms. As a reminder, we are generating today hundreds of millions of annual revenue into Liberty Global, the corporate group from tech, financial, and management services that we provide to both our telecom and growth operating companies.

When you factor in the recent restructuring of our operating model and reduction of our headcount, we've effectively brought down our net corporate costs by nearly 75% over the last two years. We believe we're on our way to a break-even position as early as next year. That's the broad picture. Let me jump into the three key highlights I think are most critical for you to know about this quarter. That's on the next slide. Number one, it was a strong quarter commercially and particularly in the Netherlands, where VodafoneZiggo continues to execute brilliantly, in fact, on its turnaround plan. This was our best consumer broadband performance in six years. I'll talk about that. As Charlie will outline, we're confirming all of our 2026 guidance across the board.

Second, our plan to spin off the newly formed Ziggo Group, which of course consists of our Dutch and Belgian operations, is right on track. I'll go through this in some detail, but importantly, our fiber sharing arrangement with Proximus that will result in a single fixed network across 75% of Flanders was approved by the Belgian regulator yesterday. This is a big milestone for both our operational and balance sheet initiatives in this market. I'm pleased to report that we will be closing on the acquisition of Vodafone and their 50% interest in the Dutch business at the end of this month. Lastly, we have, the only way to describe it, overachieved in our plans to monetize assets and generate cash from our Liberty Growth portfolio.

Year to date, we've raised $1.2 billion, well in excess of what we might have indicated, including $900 million from disposals of Liberty Growth and $340 million from an asset-backed loan on our Wyre stake in Belgium. I think it's important to point out that this $1.2 billion is above and beyond the EUR 1.2 billion-EUR 1.4 billion we intend to raise from asset sales in Belgium and Holland to reduce debt in those markets. As a result, we're increasing our year-end corporate cash forecast pro forma for the Vodafone acquisition from $1.5 billion-$2 billion. Essentially, we will end the year exactly where we started the year from a cash point of view. The next slide goes deeper on our announced plans to spin off the newly formed Ziggo Group.

The key takeaway here is that we are making substantial progress on all the key building blocks required to achieve this major milestone for shareholders. You'll see on the left side where we are on the three strategic and financial pillars that underpin the listing of Ziggo Group, and the tangible progress we've made across each of them. As I mentioned, we have all the approvals we need and are on track to close on Vodafone's 50% stake in the Netherlands by the end of the month. This is obviously foundational for the creation of the Ziggo Group, and it unlocks multiple other benefits, including the realization of financial and cross-market synergies. The completion of our NetCo/ServCo split in Belgium into Wyre and Telenet was another landmark achievement. This gave us four key things. A fully financed fiber build-out that is off the Ziggo Group balance sheet.

Secondly, the rationalization of the fiber market in Flanders through our cooperation agreement with Proximus I just referenced. Third, the opportunity to raise capital and reduce debt through the sale of a portion of our Wyre stake, and the rebalancing of debt between Wyre and Telenet, which will result in a less levered Telenet with a declining CapEx profile that goes into our Ziggo Group structure. Finally, we've of course, announced Stephen van Rooyen as the CEO of Ziggo Group and Jany Fruytier as the incoming CFO. You should know we are making significant progress to round out the balance of the team, which we'll let you know about in September.

Final piece of good news here, we have already increased in our own minds, we haven't publicly increased it, but internally increased our estimate of the synergies from this transaction and expect to be meaningfully higher than the $1 billion NPV we announced previously. Stay tuned for more details on that. As a result of this progress, we are a bit more ambitious on the timing of the spin-off, and we're currently saying mid 2027 versus H2 2027. Let's see how things transpire here. Could be even faster. Let's see. As we said in the past, the equity story is built around two things, reducing leverage to 4.5x and driving free cash flow to EUR 500 million in the 2028 timeframe. The bridge to EUR 500 million of free cash we talked about on our last call.

Of course, the deleveraging is further supported by asset sales of the EUR 1.2 billion-EUR 1.4 billion I just mentioned, all of which are underway and we're making substantial progress on and you'll probably learn about before our next call. The right-hand side of the slide is the money shot here, as they say. I'll take a moment to walk through these valuation metrics. They break down into three main components. On the bottom right, you'll see our current stock price, roughly $11 in the orange bar. We believe this represents a 20% discount to the fair market value of our cash and our Liberty Growth assets alone, and those are valued by independent appraisers, of course. Perhaps even more importantly, though, I'm going to say here, it implies essentially zero equity value attributed to our Liberty Telecom operations. We don't need to debate that conclusion.

Everyone, some of the parts may look a bit different. It's not the main point of the slide. Moving up the scale, about 19 months ago, we spun off Sunrise, which we now believe represents $12 per Liberty Global share. That's the red bar. Sunrise, as you know, is traded on the Swiss exchange between around 10.5% and 13.5% free cash flow yield or roughly 8x EBITDA, and has really unlocked substantial value. We believe over time, on a fully distributed basis, the Ziggo Group itself should trade on the Euronext at a value of up to $14 per Liberty share. Assuming we reach or can confidently guide towards the $500 million free cash flow target and the 4.5x leverage, and the market applies similar free cash flow yields to Sunrise. That's what we're playing for here.

It means that from an $18 stock, when we announce the Sunrise spin-off, we have a clear opportunity to create $37-$40 of value for shareholders, you should assume we are squarely focused on just that, delivering that value, and we're making great progress on that goal every day. Our confidence in that goal or the Ziggo Group is bolstered, of course, by the great turnaround story at VodafoneZiggo, which we highlight on the next slide. Just going to go right to the chart on the right-hand side of that slide. You can see in Q2 last year, 2025, we lost 26,000 broadband subs and 5,000 mobile subs. Quite frankly, that was after quite a long period of declining performance.

Through a combination of commercial strategies, including new pricing structures, new broadband bundles, new converged propositions, new premium sports content, and importantly, a strong campaign growing the quality of our broadband network. Stephen and the team have delivered quarter after quarter of improved results since then, culminating in our first positive broadband quarter in Q2 since, I think, Q4 2022, and as I said, the best performance in six years. That goes along with 32,000 new postpaid mobile subs. Great progress on the operating performance there. The next slide shows you that performance, I've just discussed it, I'll just jump to the ARPU stats here for VodafoneZiggo. Fixed ARPU was stable, both sequentially and year-over-year, around EUR 56. That's despite new front book pricing and can attribute that to both price indexation and some moves around content.

We saw more or less the same outcome in mobile ARPUs, which were largely flat sequentially at EUR 17.60 and down 2% year-over-year. On the bottom, you'll see operating results for Telenet in Belgium, which continued its recent commercial turnaround with improved broadband and mobile net adds versus last year. There's lots of commercial drivers at work here, including new campaigns promoting our BASE brand and a revamped FMC offering, allowing customers to tailor really their own packages like an à la carte menu, which is well-received. Broadband mobile ARPUs are both up sequentially in Belgium and stable year-over-year. Moving to the U.K. Before I jump into the operating results for VMO2, let me just spend a minute highlighting where we see this business today and the core drivers of value tomorrow.

First of all, it's important to remember that Virgin Media O2 is the only scaled challenger in the U.K., one of Europe's largest markets, with the number one mobile network by connections and the number two and most reliable broadband network, according to recently released research, which we agree with. By the way, our fixed network currently reaches just under 19 million homes, nearly half of which are already fiber today. Now you can add to that incredibly strong brands like Virgin Media, O2, giffgaff, which support over GBP 10 billion of revenue, annual revenue, and facilitate regularly the launch of new services like O2 Satellite, which we were the first to do, or broadband with giffgaff or Volt, our new FMC product, and a host of other commercial initiatives. That's a strong foundation that we have in the U.K.

As we speak about every quarter, this is a highly competitive market. It's becoming a street fight in the consumer retail sector, particularly with alt nets and MVNOs, which means we have to continue getting sharper, becoming more agile and more innovative. I like the moves we're making to achieve that. I've listed just a few of them on the right-hand side here. First and foremost, we've just hired Lyssa McGowan, our new CEO of Consumer. Now has the entire consumer division reporting to her. She spent 10 years at Sky launching broadband, mobile, and Sky Glass, and in two weeks is already making a difference in our commercial strategy. Stay tuned for her keen eye and her strategic perspective on our consumer business.

We have great potential in wholesale, first in mobile, where we generate today over GBP 800 million of extremely profitable revenue, and will shortly launch Monzo to our list of MVNO customers, and in fixed wholesale, where we are striving every day to capitalize on our scale and our growing fiber footprint, which the Netomnia acquisition will only advance once that's approved. Lutz and the team are well underway with their AI-driven efficiency and growth programs. I'll talk about that in a minute. You're already aware of our commitment to advancing our networks. For example, our 5G reach is now 88%, and even before fiber, we have 1 Gb broadband available across the market. These commitments will pay dividends both in our B2C and B2B business. Finally, just a word on our capital structure in the U.K., and Charlie's going to address this more specifically.

The most important message I want you to hear from me is that both Liberty and Telefónica are completely aligned on our commitment to this business long term. While we appreciate the leverage today exceeds our original targets and as a result of slower growth and our decision to reinvest more in our networks, I would urge you to remember that we have many tools at our disposal, if necessary, both organic and inorganic, to drive greater free cash flow, stronger operating performance, and lower leverage over time. More on that with Charlie in Q&A, if you like. Turning to VMO2's quarterly operating results. On the next slide, you can see that while our broadband and mobile net losses were better than a year ago, we are still encountering significant competitive activity and increased churn.

I believe that the initiatives I just referenced and discussed on the prior slide, as well as the new consumer management team and structure will address these challenges. Meanwhile, mobile ARPUs are up sequentially and flat year-over-year as we focus on retention efforts there, primarily maintaining value over volume. Fixed ARPUs were flat sequentially, but down 4.6% year-over-year. That's largely in line with overall pricing in the market. Lutz is on, and of course, we can dig into these results further during the Q&A. Turning to Virgin Media Ireland, you'll see that broadband net adds have been steady over the last five quarters, and that's supported principally by our wholesale fiber business. Good example of what we can do with wholesale.

It's worth mentioning that our fiber rollout is on track to be substantially complete at the end of the year, and we'll be expanding our retail footprint [off] footprint, both of which will help our business moving forward, particularly reduction in fiber CapEx. Fixed ARPUs have been very steady at EUR 61, and mobile post-paid net adds remained positive. Those are supported by a EUR 15 offer and retention strategies. I'll end with just a bit of commentary on AI. I think the headline is the message here. The telco sector, in my view, is ready-made to realize AI benefits, which over time should be transformational for us and our peers. For starters, we sit on the assets, the very assets AI needs most to succeed. What am I referring to?

Large amounts of data that can't be replicated, massive cost structures like call centers, field ops, and networks that are built for automation, millions of daily touch points with consumers, and the infrastructure like connectivity and data centers that support the distribution layer for AI. Not surprisingly, we are looking to benefit from the very same opportunities that our peers are attacking. Namely, driving margins through cost efficiencies, driving customer revenue growth through hyper-personalization, driving demand for our infrastructure, including power, space, and cooling, and driving interest in our stock as investors rotate into sectors that are net beneficiaries of AI and not candidates for disruption. We learned a lot of lessons, like everybody. A big one for me has been finding the right balance between building and buying solutions.

Increasingly, we're finding that partners, many of them listed here on this slide, are able to help us integrate faster, launch sooner, and scale much more effectively. On the top right of the slide, we've shown some examples of what we're doing today and the results we're generating in things like reaching 65% of our VMO2 customer base with our personalization engine, generating 75% call containment rates through our agentic AI pilots in the Netherlands, reducing fraud, optimizing CapEx, and lowering truck rolls and technician costs. To be candid, these initiatives, I have to be honest, are table stakes for every telco. Don't get me wrong, I'm proud of it. We're proud of it. On balance, we're realizing strong marginal improvements to our economics, our customer interactions, and our network quality. As we've said publicly here, we expect to generate annual savings in the hundreds of millions.

Everyone on this call knows, certainly I know, we are just scratching the surface here. Based on some work we did with McKinsey and Google, we analyzed some of our core operating expenses across the group to assess both the proportion of that cost which could be addressed by AI over time and what some more ambitious savings targets might look like. You can see this on the bottom right of the chart. Shows savings of between 20%-40%, even as high as 70% on things like customer care. We're not providing guidance here. These are just indications of what we think could and should be achievable over time. These are not fanciful numbers in my view. They look more realistic to me every day. Why is that? A lot of things are working in our favor here.

On one hand, of course, we're implementing our own AI solutions with sophisticated and skilled partners to drive benefits. Equally important, on the other hand, we're seeing our largest suppliers, typically software and outsourcing partners, looking for early renewals in exchange for passing along to us the significant AI savings they themselves are realizing and must realize to stay relevant. We're getting it on both ends. Obviously, as we develop these initiatives more fully, we'll share more detail. Remember, this example just covers OpEx, right? There are significant revenue and CapEx benefits to be realized as well. Finally, on my last slide, we're not only taking advantage of AI in our telecom and growth businesses, we're also prioritizing opportunities to invest in AI companies through our existing tech portfolio as part of Liberty Growth.

We discussed this on and off in the past, but let me get into a bit more detail here. As a reminder, we've had a pretty good track record investing in tech. Typically, companies in their scale-up phase and where we see some strategic value to our existing businesses. Good examples would be Plume or Aviatrix or Samba TV. Our track record has been good. Since inception, we've invested a total of $700 million into our tech portfolio and taken out around $600 million through distributions and exits. We're funding our investments with proceeds. With about net $100 million in today, we're sitting on a market valuation of $400 million, so we're in a good spot. Recently, we pivoted to AI-driven investments where it makes sense. I'm not talking about OpenAI or SpaceX. Good examples would be ElevenLabs.

Maybe some of you know this company, a leader in voice AI with advanced automated customer service solutions that we're actually using today. XBOW in cybersecurity and Skan.ai in data and automation are two good examples of companies directly addressing the operational backbone of a telco. We're enhancing network security, optimizing processes, and driving efficiency there. Arkessa is optimizing the next generation of network infrastructure, a perfect fit for the rest of our infrastructure businesses like AtlasEdge. If you look at these businesses and you look them up, you'll see that we're typically investing with the smartest VC firms and tech companies. We're not alone here. We're partnering with smart money on these things. Going forward, we'll remain focused on AI infrastructure like models and voice and video, cybersecurity, AI applications in things like customer care, sales, and financing.

All things that we think could be useful to us and also very successful. Lastly, I'll just point out that our infrastructure vertical within Liberty Growth is playing the AI space as well through our data center investments in AtlasEdge, of course, we have hundreds of millions committed there, and our alternative energy investments. We're taking a 360-degree view of the AI opportunity, which we believe is the best way to innovate and transform our business over the long term. I think it's going to be one hell of a ride. I'm excited about the stuff we're doing and happy to get into any questions you may have. In the meantime, Charlie, over to you.

Thanks, Mike. Turning to our Q2 financial highlights. Our OpCo performance continues to track against 2026 guidance, as I'll get into starting on the next slide. We closed the quarter with $2.4 billion of corporate cash, supported by proceeds from our EdgeConneX disposal and additional corporate liquidity provided by a new Wyre stake asset-backed loan. We've completed $4.1 billion of financings year to date, including the imminent separation of the Telenet and Wyre capital structures following the recent approval of the fiber sharing agreement. The next slide sets out the Q2 financial results for our Benelux companies. As a reminder, we now present Telenet's financial performance excluding Wyre to provide greater clarity given the full separation of the two companies and their capital structures, which as Mike just presented, is set to happen following BCA approval of the fiber sharing agreement in Belgium.

Turning to the financials, revenue trends of VodafoneZiggo sequentially improved during the quarter, supported by fixed customer volumes returning to growth in line with the How We Win plan. Whilst repricing remains a headwind today, we anticipate that impact to reduce as we move into 2027. Adjusted EBITDA declined in line with our guidance, reflecting the in-year impact of the How We Win plan and some one-off investments in network resilience, which we identified when we gave guidance. Cost reduction initiatives remained firmly on track and continue to support our expectation of returning the business to EBITDA growth from 2027. Adjusted EBITDA less P&E additions were lower year-on-year, primarily reflecting higher CapEx in the quarter related to the network resilience investments.

At Telenet, revenue continued to be impacted by our strategic decision not to renew Belgian football rights for a season and a one-off adjustment related to a VAT dispute, partly offset by higher revenue from the new Wyre management services agreement. EBITDA growth was driven by the Wyre management services agreement and lower Wyre wholesale fees. Looking ahead, we will see adjusted EBITDA impacted by the return of costs associated with the new Jupiler League contract in the second half. Turning to the U.K. and Ireland, Virgin Media O2 service revenue was broadly in line with our expectations. Competitive intensity in the fixed market remained elevated, whilst the O2 business continued to rationalize parts of its portfolio to support long-term growth, resulting in a reduction in headline revenues. This was partially offset by wholesale revenue growth in our market-leading MVNO business.

There was also an improvement in mobile service revenue trends sequentially. Adjusted EBITDA declined by 2.9%, driven by lower revenue but supported by further cost efficiency measures. At Virgin Media Ireland, service revenues modestly declined, impacted by continued competition in the consumer fixed markets, but because of this, adjusted EBITDA declined by 4.7%. Turning to the next slide. We remain committed to our disciplined capital allocation model, rotating capital into high-growth investments and strategic opportunities that drive long-term value creation. Capital intensity at our key opcos remains elevated, but all within guidance ranges for the full year. Virgin Media O2 continues to see elevated CapEx driven by higher investments in mobile capacity, including spectrum integration from Vodafone, the ongoing fiber upgrade program, and IT digital spend to put us in better position in terms of seamless FMC offerings.

VodafoneZiggo CapEx was driven by network upgrades, including the DOCSIS 4.0, digitization efforts, and one-off investments in network resilience and service reliability in 2026. CapEx has meaningfully stepped down at Telenet as the 5G network upgrades are now largely complete, as we complete much of our investment in our digital platforms. We expect this to continue to trend down further next year. Virgin Media Ireland CapEx continues to step down in 2026 as we largely complete the fiber upgrade of around one million premises. We expect Ireland to be free cash flow positive because of this in Q4 for the first time since the beginning of the upgrade program. Moving to the Liberty Growth walk in the top right. The fair market value of our growth portfolio decreased to $2.9 billion in Q2.

This was mainly driven by the successful sale of EdgeConneX, which I'll detail more on the next slide, and UPC Slovakia, partially offset by modest investments in Formula E, nexfibre, AIO and Pepper within the growth portfolio. The key fair market value adjustments were an increased value for EdgeConneX on sale and an increase in the Lionsgate stock price. Turning to our cash walk on the bottom right, we ended the quarter with a consolidated cash balance of $2.4 billion. This was mainly driven by the proceeds received from EdgeConneX and UPC Slovakia transactions. This excludes the $340 million of additional liquidity provided by our loan facility backed by our Wyre stake, half of which resides outside the Ziggo Group according to the terms of the Vodafone transaction.

Next, I want to spend a moment on EdgeConneX, which was an excellent outcome for our growth portfolio and a clear demonstration of our strategy working as intended. We first invested back in 2015, taking a minority stake in what was then a relatively early-stage data center business. Over the following 11 years, we funded its growth consistently and rationally with around $177 million of gross equity in total. We supported the company as it scaled without over-committing capital. Today, EdgeConneX is a truly global platform with over 50 data centers across more than 40 markets and four continents, spanning the full spectrum of edge and hyperscale developments. Our exit strategy reflected the same discipline that characterized our investment approach. We monetized the position in stages, crystallizing value while maintaining upside exposure.

We achieved a full exit in Q2 2026 with $604 million of proceeds from the final stake on top of $122 million from earlier sales. The headline numbers speak for themselves. $177 million invested, $726 million of total proceeds, and roughly a 30% IRR and a 4x multiple of money. Beyond the financial terms, the outcome of our EdgeConneX investment validates our right to play in digital infrastructure and data centers. We now have more than 10 years of hands-on experience in this space, and we're applying that playbook to our AtlasEdge investment. Moving to the treasury slide. Overall, we have successfully refinanced more than $4 billion across our credit silos year to date.

In Belgium, we are now formally separating the capital structures between Telenet and Wyre following BCA approval of Wyre's fiber sharing agreement with Proximus. Wyre now can draw down the $5 billion fully underwritten facility to repay $2.3 billion intercompany loan with Telenet and a $0.4 billion Wyre dividend as part of the wider debt rebalancing. Telenet will use the proceeds received to repay $2.5 billion of 2028 maturities. At VodafoneZiggo, we were able to refinance $1.3 billion, leaving us with no 2028 maturities and reducing 2029 maturities. As Mike noted, we remain opportunistic here ahead of the spin-off and as Mike noted, are on track to execute a number of de-leveraging steps pre-spin. At Virgin Media O2, we remain opportunistic in the debt market as we look to continue to push out our 2029 maturities, we acknowledge recent trading levels.

As Mike discussed, we are committed to a stable long-term capital structure of VMO2. We in Telefónica recognize that leverage is above our 4x-5x target and that credit spreads are currently elevated, but we both believe that we are making the investments today that will deliver EBITDA growth to deleverage that company back towards our target range. We're investing CapEx at 22% of sales. It's actually 25% of sales if you exclude hardware sales, which is significantly above the average through the cycle for a telecom company to support this strategy, including significant near-term investment in the mobile and fixed networks to improve customer experience and competitiveness, as well as in digital IT transformation to realize the cost reduction opportunities presented by AI.

The small dividend projected to be paid to the shareholders will be reinvested into the Netomnia transaction, which is a key transaction for Virgin O2 to keep investing in its fiber plan, which we believe will further strengthen the product offering for VMO2 and help establish a credible second fiber network to compete with BT and unlock wholesale revenues. Both shareholders continue to look at inorganic opportunities to further strengthen the competitive position and financial performance of Virgin Media O2, as we did with both O2 Daisy and the Netomnia transactions. Both shareholders recognize the importance of credit providers, which is why they're making these investments and acquisitions to support the long-term future of the company. We remain on track to deliver against this strategy, we'll update investors as we always do in February of next year.

Finally, turning to our full-year guidance for 2026. We are reconfirming all guidance metrics of VMO2, VodafoneZiggo, and Telenet, as well as our guidance for corporate adjusted EBITDA. In addition, we're upgrading our full-year corporate cash target from $1.5 billion to $2 billion, supported by the EdgeConneX proceeds and Wyre asset sale loan. That concludes our prepared remarks for Q2. Over to you for questions.

The question and answer session will be conducted electronically. If you would like to ask a question, please do so by pressing the star or asterisk key, followed by the digit one on your phone. In order to accommodate everyone, we request that you ask only one question. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. We'll pause for just a moment to give everyone an opportunity to join the queue. Your first question will go to the line of Joshua Mills with BNP Paribas. Joshua, your line is open.

Hi, guys. Thank you for taking the question. I'll keep it to the U.K. [inaudible]

Hello, operator?

Hello.

Hello. He can just try again. Who's that?

Yeah. Straight over, please.

Hi, there. Yeah, thanks. Hope you can hear me. Can you hear me, sorry?

We can hear you. Yeah.

Yes.

You're kind of going in and out.

Yeah. Great. Sorry.

Give it a try.

Okay, thanks. I just want to ask, firstly on the U.K. ARPU trends. I think in the past you've talked about the issues faced from declining legacy revenue, things like voice and TV. Today you're talking more about the declines being related to front book price competition. It sounds to us like it's no longer just a legacy issue, it's more related to market conditions as they stand today. My question on this ARPU trend is, firstly, is that a fair characterization? If so, do you think that we're at trough ARPU declines and trough service revenue declines at the moment, or could things continue to get worse in the second half given the level of competition we see in the market?

Secondly, on the volume side of the equation for the U.K., in the past, when you've had these kind of sub-losses in markets like the Netherlands and Switzerland, you took the quite bold step to rebase customers aggressively, proactively on cheaper tariffs to try and stabilize the base. It looks from today's strong results on VodafoneZiggo and that's had a good effect. Is it something you'd consider doing in the U.K. as well, or do you think that you're going to remain happy with the level of subscriber losses in the near term, as long as you don't take too much of a hit on ARPU? Thank you.

Go ahead, Lutz.

Yeah. Thank you for the question. I mean, when we did the guidance for the year 2026, we expected the market to be very competitive. Remember, I said that 70% of the service revenue guidance of -3% and -5% will come from fixed consumer, which exactly is now kicking in. That's number one. Number two to your point, is the market more competitive? Yes, it is. Just one number, compared to Q2 2025, the average selling price is down 4% in the market. I think your observation is right. Now, where is this 4% or 6% coming from? The biggest driver for it is our own prevention. I think what we are not doing is radically recontracting customers and forget about the ARPU.

Remember, we have built a very sophisticated retention machine where we know down to every 60 homes what customers want and offering them that. We have now built the same prevention machine. The biggest driver for the ARPU down is prevention already, but in a very targeted way. We have now more than 80% of our customers on contracts with significant remaining term. We will keep doing exactly that in the future. Is this now worth bottom or not? That is hard to say because I don't know how the market really works. Market is very hot. There are some new promotions announced from Openreach. Ofcom has to accept them. If they will kick in from October this year, the market will be even more competitive.

If not, I would expect the same competitive level, then our prevention will help us a bit more in the future. It is hard to say. I hope that helped.

Next question operator.

Thank you, Josh. Yes, thank you. Our next question will go to the line of Robert Grindle with Deutsche Bank. Robert, your line is open.

Hi, everyone, thank you. Well done on getting the BCA approval. I think it's taken a bit longer than you thought, probably been prepping away in the meantime. What's the timeline from here on the cyber collaboration and the separation of Telenet, alongside that, the monetization of Wyre? Would you hope the monetization announcement is a 2026 one is that in next year now because things have gone a bit more slowly? Thank you.

Thanks, Robert. It has taken a while to get to this point, but as I tried to articulate in my remarks, it's a building block. It's a foundational piece of the building block. Now that has set it opening up a lot of key next steps. You mentioned one. Telenet is already split out. Wyre and Telenet have been really separate businesses for a while. Since the second quarter, I believe we've actually reported on them separately. That's happened. What the BCA approval allows us to do is essentially rebalance the debt stack on each of those two entities, and proceed, importantly, with the sale of a stake in Wyre, which is well underway.

We've got actually, I think, six to eight people doing the work, have hired advisors, we will be diligently proceeding with that transaction through year-end, it's possible that even as soon as year-end, but perhaps Q1, we will have concluded that transaction. That's well underway, and it's one of many things that the BCA approval unlocks, all of which, in our view, are very positive and helping accelerate our timing on the ultimate Ziggo Group spin.

Thank you—

The banking process will take place next week, it will access the $4.35 billion of Wyre financing. Just for clarity. To fund the dividend.

Thank you, [John]. Thank you, Robert, for your question. Our next question will go to the line of Polo Tang with UBS. Polo, your line is open.

Thanks for taking the question. It's just about VodafoneZiggo and broadband. Can you clarify when you will be able to start offering broadband in the DELTA Fiber footprint? Also, what do you think has had the biggest impact in terms of helping stabilize the VodafoneZiggo broadband base? Was it the ESPN content offers? Was it pushing harder on recontracting customers? Was there a notable tailwind in terms of the Ziggo data breach, or was it something else? Do you think that you can see improving or positive net adds going forward, or is stable a more likely outcome? Thanks.

I don't know if Stephen was on and then off. Stephen, let me know if you're on.

Yeah. Hi, Mike. I'm on.

Welcome to take those.

Yeah, great. Hi, Polo. Thanks for the question. Let me deal with the DELTA question first. We're planning to roll out in the DELTA footprint where we are operating in the second half of the year. We're not far from that now. We expect to see that turn up in our numbers in the fourth quarter. In terms of stabilizing, look, as you've seen progressively over the last six quarters, it's not one thing that we've done. It's a sequence of a number of things we've done, including bring our front book pricing in line with the marketplace, investing in the core proposition, increasing our speeds. We're the only ones offering 2 Gb across most of the country today. Differentiating both with Wi-Fi guarantee and now latterly with this ESPN bundle. Changing our marketing, focusing more on connectivity and competing harder than we had previously.

I think it's a combination of things that I think have helped us get to this point. As a result, I think it's fair to say that we are pursuing sustainability of that growth. In terms of providing guidance going forward, because we're putting, I think, a number of pillars that will help us continue to build the momentum that we've seen. Our expectation is to continue to grow through the second half of the year.

Thanks.

Thank you, Polo. Our next question will go to the line of Nick Lyall with Berenberg. Nick, your line is open.

Thanks very much. I hope you can hear me. Hello, guys. Just a quick question again on the U.K. to follow up on Josh's, please. What makes you think this isn't a long-term decline for the U.K.? I'm just interested. Your pricing is quite a bit above BT's and substantially above the [alts] still. I take Lutz's point that he's got a lot of customers locked in for now, but why should you be able to sustain this pricing point? What helps you get there? Is it rolling out fiber and completing the fiber footprint or something else? Is this a problem maybe for the longer term that ARPU just keep on slipping for many quarters? Just a second point, Charlie, can I just clarify what you said about inorganic options in the U.K.?

That sounded like you were thinking about potentially buying assets, not selling to reduce debt. Have I got that the right way around or have I misunderstood that? Thanks very much.

Charlie, you want to go to this first one?

I think that the point we're trying to make is both Telefónica and us are firmly behind this company. We're very committed. We're investing at very elevated levels to secure the long-term competitiveness of the business, we have been ready to do inorganic moves, whether it's buying and indeed selling. As you know, we've sold stakes, for example, CTIL. Not to be specific about whether we're buying or selling, it's more to say, look, we are right behind this company, we think the company's in the right direction, performing to the plan we set it for this year. I look forward to giving the update to everybody in February on the next phase of financial development.

Can I just add to that the Netomnia deal would be an example of an inorganic transaction that we think on balance is beneficial to VMO2 from both a credit and equity perspective for all the reasons we've articulated along the way. Inorganic could include really everything that's not simply driving cost reduction or revenue growth or free cash flow in the operating business. It's a wide definition. Lutz, do you want to address the first question?

Yeah.

Lutz, you might be on mute.

Sorry for that. Yes, I was. My answer to your question is the following. We have three very strong brands, right? It's not only Virgin Media, it's also O2 and giffgaff. Ultimately, we will be able to sell any product with any of these three brands. We've just launched giffgaff broadband, and we are starting to gain traction there. High level, three brands addressing different target groups, and on average, every second household is a customer of ours. There's only on average one to three products for us. While we have very strong mobile connectivity, very strong broadband connectivity, very strong video products for different segments.

Therefore, even if you get fiber very cheap, I think the combination across everything to get this in a very good value for money, with good service, this is our strategy, and we will progressing us in that way, and we have to be prepared that the competitiveness stays like it is today.

I think also—

I understand.

The flip side of that equation is, of course, things I was mentioning around driving transformation in our operating model, our operating costs, and ultimately, a declining CapEx profile. We're focused, as you should be, on the profitability of these businesses, the ability to generate free cash over the long term. We've just been describing revenue. Certainly, that's a big piece of it, and Lutz didn't mention the business side, enterprise as well as wholesale. There's many levers to drive the top line. Far more levers to drive profitability between there and free cash. A significant part of the company's time, effort, energy, and shareholders is to ensure that we are optimizing the P&L of the business. Lots of levers to pull to drive what we think is the most important metric, and that's long-term free cash flow.

Only one of which is revenue, and I think Lutz has addressed that pretty well. Thanks, Nick.

That's great. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Nick. Our next question will go to the line of Ulrich Rathe with Bernstein Societe Generale Group. Ulrich, your line is open.

Thanks very much. I wanted to ask on the quantification of the AI cost benefits. That was quite interesting, I thought, Mike. The question I would have is, how confident are you that you can hold on to these kind of benefits? Point being, cost benefits that are available to the industry have kind of diffused away. You mentioned McKinsey's involved, and those kind of companies are a mechanism for diffusion, one of them, but there are others. What are the reasons why such cost benefits are ultimately good for the bottom line in the longer term? That would be interesting here as well. Thank you.

If you mean good for the bottom line or if you mean sustainable, I think you asked both questions. I'll repeat what I said on the call, which is that it's coming at us from both directions, sort of self-induced, organically driven efficiencies, improvements, all the things that we know AI can do. You're reading about it every day. We're on that. The list of projects is way too long to put on a slide. Every company in the group, both in the Growth and the Telecom portfolio, is implementing today solutions that are making them more efficient, faster, better, more profitable. That's happening organically as we speak. I'm really thinking through and addressing the longer-term impact because the trend is only going one way, right? Models are getting smarter.

More and more companies are arriving on the scene, taking advantage of that intelligence, driving solutions at scale for companies like ours and others. We don't see anything on the horizon that would change that trajectory. If you just extrapolate from where intelligence is moving and how costs are evolving in that space for beneficiaries like us, it's just going to get faster and cheaper. As we apply that logic to more and more of our business, we just see nothing but upside. We're only 20%-25% in the cloud. I repeat that, 75%-80% of our business is still on-prem. There's so many things our industry, and we're not different than any other telco, has yet to implement and take advantage of, that I think it's almost irresponsible not to be that ambitious.

I'm pounding the table every day with my team to tell me why we can't be that ambitious. It's nice to have third parties who are along on that ride with us, whether they're consultants or technology companies. You have to be thinking that broadly, and I think that aggressively over the next, let's say, two to three years. It's moving that fast. That's how we're approaching it. It's great to do the things we're doing. I'm proud of our industry, I'm proud of my team, but it's just the start. There has to be a rethink of our operating models, how we're managing our businesses, talent and all the technology and software required to drive these kinds of step change improvements. I think it's real, I think it's sustainable, and we're anxiously working to deliver it.

Thank you, Ulrich. Our next question will go to the line of Matthew Harrigan with StoneX. Matthew, your line is open.

Thank you. On the industrial kind of blocking and tackling AI, you kind of answered about 80% of my question, but I assume you don't have the issues with token costs, which are surprising some people in terms of what is being charged now. There's even some talk of a bit of a bait and switch. Talking with some of your U.S. peers, I think they feel like there's a touch of discernible benefit in 2027 on a net basis, and then after that, you really get an inflection point. Do you think you're going to see a decided inflection point in 2028, 2029, late decade, or is this just kind of a gradual process? Lastly, you talked on costs, which are very quantifiable and predictable.

On the revenue side, I assume that was also addressed by McKinsey and Google, you'd rather kind of keep that closed kimono because it's a little harder to realize, and you don't want to go too aggressive on it. Thanks.

Yeah. I'll ask Enrique to jump in here too. Look, on the revenue side and the CapEx side, those numbers generally are not as high as the ones we put on the slide, but they're still tangible and significant and worth pursuing. You should not assume that because they weren't on the slide, we're not looking at those things very aggressively, and many of which we're already putting into action, right? In Lutz's case, his personalization engine is driving churn reduction, driving next best offers, driving all kinds of revenue benefits just today as we speak. We intend and are doing that across the board, but we figured one piece at a time. I think it is gradual. I don't think in one quarter all of a sudden everything hits. It will be gradual, and I think for us, that's the only way to do it.

Why is it? Because as you hear from others in the industry, it's not simply the technology, it's not simply a great partner, it's also your organization, your talent, your operating model. No point in having all this great stuff and you're not able to implement it. You don't have the people, the structures to implement it. It is a journey, but everybody's on it. We're on it from end to end, really. I don't know, Enrique, you want to talk more about the economics of AI tokens and how we see that progressing?

Absolutely. Thank you. First of all, like anybody else in the industry, we're watching the evolution of both token costs and the resulting benefits pretty closely. I can say categorically, we don't see a major issue with the increase in some cases of token costs because we've been, I think, pretty disciplined in making sure that we're applying those tokens against business cases that do bring us net benefits. I do believe that this will be a continuing story, but I see a significant net benefit even though, like anybody else, we do see an increase in the usage of tokens and the related costs.

Great. Thanks, Mike, Enrique. Enjoy the rest of your summers.

Thanks.

Thank you, Matthew. Our next question will go to the line of James Ratzer with New Street Research. James, your line is open.

Yes, thank you very much indeed. Yeah, good afternoon. The question, please, around kind of Virgin Media O2 is if I look at your partner, Telefónica, they're seeing declining revenues in Germany, and just two days ago, they announced a major cost restructuring program. Obviously, Telefónica has just helped to appoint a new CFO at Virgin Media O2. I'm wondering whether you see the scope to take similar action at Virgin Media O2 and to kind of take on a more radical approach to cost reductions as we've seen your partner also announce in Germany. You talked about kind of looking to support the business, and at the same time, you've just raised your cash target at the TopCo now to $2 billion. Would you consider injecting any of that cash back into Virgin Media O2 to help it with its deleveraging? Thank you.

Thanks, James. Listen, premature to discuss capital allocation. We think the business is obviously generating free cash today and we think can generate significantly more free cash tomorrow. On your cost reduction question, certainly that is something we are looking at as well. We're in the business planning phase right now. This is when Lutz and the team are sitting down doing the work on our long-range plans. Of course, when we mentioned organic and inorganic tools to continue to drive free cash flow and reduce leverage, that is, as you state, a very realistic one. You should assume that those are the kind of things we'll be looking at as we should. I don't know if Charlie wants to add anything to that.

No, James, I think, look, the business is on track with the plan that they set out at the beginning of the year. They've reconfirmed guidance. We're going through planning exercise. We do understand leverage is outside the range, and we take it seriously. Give us the time to continue the works with the manager and the right next steps, which could involve cost reductions, and we'll come back to you in February.

Do you see any kind of scope there for? Sorry. Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you, James. Our next question will go to the line of David Wright with Bank of America. David, your line is open.

Hi guys. I hope you can hear me. Thank you for the presentation and the opportunity to ask questions. Mine is a little around the accounting change in VMO2. It just seems a little unintuitive to me to be amortizing the commissions, extending the amortization period, as you are accruing increasing net losses and higher churn. That seems like quite the opposite thing you would do. I'm wondering why you've chosen to do that and on what basis. I guess the second point would be, is it just a one-off impact, or should we now be seeing this run over a period to support the EBITDA line? I guess my final question was, does this adjustment sit within the EBITDA guidance, or is it outside the EBITDA guidance, and was it anticipated when you gave the EBITDA guidance? That would be really interesting to me.

Charlie, I have to ask, you mentioned this full year VMO2, I don't want to say revisit, but full year update. It seems like that could be a more significant event. Should we think about it that way, or are you just talking about general business planning as usual? Thank you, James.

Charlie, both for you.

Accounting. First of all, to answer the second question, that is the usual update in February. I don't want to make a big deal about it. It's more just to say we obviously give guidance every year. The guidance for this year, we're on track, and as we always do, it'll be the regular. There's nothing particularly sinister or magical about next February. In terms of the accounting, look, the magic of accounting estimates, we are always revising accounting estimates. It's always based on facts. It's obviously always aligned with our auditor, and it's always based on our real-life experience. I believe maybe it seems odd in the context of the market competition, but these actually are the facts, and this is the right way we believe to account for it. It's not just us, it's obviously run through with the auditor.

It has some impact on EBITDA. Was that anticipated in the original guidance? Probably not. On the other hand, it's not that material a number. It's worth pointing out the key metric we're looking at here is free cash flow, and it's obviously a non-cash item. I do agree it has a short-term benefit on EBITDA. In years past, it's worked against us. We consider this in the swings and roundabouts of accounting.

Just on the facts.

Sorry, one thing I can add.

Why wouldn't churn be the bigger driver? Sorry. Thanks a lot, please.

I think I can help you to answer what it is. When you do a lot of prevention, you bring customers into a new 24 months contract length, that is impacting accounting the rate up. Right? If you add these two things together, I think what is maybe on the surface counterintuitive makes a lot of sense. A lot of new recontracting, you pay commission for that and you accrue them over the new contract or lifetime of the customer. Just one thing, so it all makes sense. Then the other thing what Charlie said, concrete numbers. Last year, we had [tons and tens] working for us. We don't have this. This makes even a higher amount. Now this goes the other way. It's always small items with big companies like ours, but it's not explicit to the outside guidance. It's more smaller things.

Thank you, Lutz.

Thank you. With that, we will conclude the Q&A session. I would now like to pass the conference back over to you, Mr. Mike Fries, for any closing remarks.

Great. I'll keep it brief. Thanks for joining us. We always appreciate that. Lots of information to digest. You know where to find us if you have questions. Be a busy summer for us, as you can imagine, across the group, particularly in Benelux. Stay tuned for announcements there and stay well. Speak soon. Thanks very much.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Liberty Global's first quarter 2026 investor call. This call and the associated webcast are the property of Liberty Global, and any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the express written consent of Liberty Global is strictly prohibited. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's website at libertyglobal.com. After today's formal presentation, instructions will be given for a question-and-answer session. Page 2 of the slides details the company's safe harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements.

Today's presentation may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical fact. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. These risks include those detailed in Liberty Global's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed Forms 10-Q and 10-K as amended. Liberty Global disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect any change in its expectation or in the conditions on which any such statement is based. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Mike Fries.

All right. Thanks, operator. Hello, everyone. Appreciate you joining the call today. As usual, Charlie and I will handle the prepared remarks and the presentation, and then I have my core leadership team on the call with me and on standby for Q&A as needed. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so I'm just gonna jump right in on the first slide, which provides some key takeaways from the quarter. To begin with, we delivered strong operational performance, and we'll go through it all in a moment. One big headline here, this was our fourth straight quarter of steady broadband improvement across each of our big three markets, with fixed to mobile ARPUs remaining largely stable. Charlie will walk through how this translates into our financial results, but the punchline is we will be confirming all of our 2026 guidance today.

There are lots of reasons for this commercial momentum, including our multi-brand strategies, our network investments, AI implementations around personalization and churn in call centers. We'll talk about all that a bit today, but really what we'll do on our second quarter call is do a deeper dive on our AI initiatives, so stay tuned for that. Equally important for this audience is the fact that we are making real progress on the value unlock initiatives announced this past February. The acquisition of Vodafone's 50% stake in our Dutch JV is on track to close this summer, and we see no obstacles to getting that deal done on time. That, of course, is just one of the main building blocks underlying our strategy to spin off our Benelux assets in the second half of next year.

I'll walk you through each of those building blocks in just a moment, as well as the value we could and should create for you all by spinning off the Ziggo Group. Quickly on Netomnia, that transaction in the U.K. is now officially in the regulatory process, and while the noise from one or 2 competitors has escalated recently, we're pretty confident this deal will be approved. It's a very positive development for the U.K. fiber market, which is in desperate need of rationalization, as you all know. It's a great outcome for VMO2, for all the reasons we reviewed on the last call. Finally, you won't be surprised to hear that we are highly focused on capital allocation at the corporate level. Over the last two years, we've brought our net corporate cost down by 75%.

We talked about that on the last call. We've articulated what we believe is a clear investment strategy around telecom and growth, and we've strengthened our balance sheet. After funding the EUR 1.2 billion needed to close the Vodafone transaction and executing on around EUR 700 million of asset sales from our growth portfolio, we should end the year with around EUR 1.5 billion of corporate cash. As noted here on the slide, through April, we generated around EUR 300 million in proceeds, so we're sort of on our way. Finally, just one quick remark on the broader telecom environment in Europe. As you would know, the sector has performed well in the last 12 months or so. That's driven in part by improved operational performance, reduced CapEx, and a general rotation out of software and into industrials.

You're all familiar with those trends. I would add to the list what appears to be an improving regulatory climate in Europe when it comes to telecom broadly and more specifically when it comes to consolidation. We await the formal release of the EU merger guidelines, for example, but these changes are expected to redefine the rules, and that's going to be a big positive together with an increasing commitment to sovereignty to our sector and the broader telecom industry. I am sure you're aware of that, but important to note. Moving on to the next slide. Let me start by saying that there will come a point in time when I don't need to put this chart in the deck.

For now, I think it's helpful to summarize our operating structure, specifically our three core pillars of value creation, Liberty Telecom, Liberty Growth, in the center, Liberty Global itself, and to highlight the strategies we're executing to create and deliver that value. Liberty Growth on the far right houses our portfolio of media infra and tech investments totaling EUR 3.4 billion today. Here we're focused on rotating capital, investing in high-growth sectors with scale and tailwinds. We'll try to spotlight a few of those in each quarter, today we'll lay out the thesis for the experience economy. In the center sits Liberty Global itself, with EUR 1.9 billion of cash and a team with decades of experience operating and investing in these businesses.

As we reported last quarter, we've restructured our operating model and reduced net corporate cost by 75% since 2024 to around EUR 50 million this year. These two asset pools alone, by the way, our cash and the market value of our growth investments exceed the current price of our stock by around 30%, which means, of course, that everything in our core Liberty Telecom business on the left, namely EUR 22 billion of revenue, EUR 8 billion of EBITDA, and 4 incredible converged telecom champions, are receiving no value at all in our stock. In fact, negative value if you give us credit for our substantial reduction in corporate cost. As we said over and over and over, our primary goal here in telecom is to drive commercial momentum and importantly, to unlock value for shareholders.

That was the impetus behind our Sunrise spin-off, which you all know about, and which we believe has worked extremely well for investors. That's why in the last call, we described the formation of the Ziggo Group, combination of our Benelux assets in Holland and Belgium, and our intention to spin off our interest tax-free to shareholders in the second half of 2027. Where are we on that specific initiative? I referenced earlier the building blocks that form the foundation of our expected value unlock with the Ziggo Group, and you can see the most significant ones outlined on the left-hand side of the next slide. Let me just say that each of these steps, each of these blocks if you will, are centered around strategic catalysts, free cash flow growth, and deleveraging. They each represent a foundational element of the value creation plan here.

This is the primary blueprint we've been executing, of course, with dozens of overlays and work streams, but it should give you greater confidence and awareness of our plans here. Let's start with Belgium. The first step was, of course, separating Telenet from its fixed network, which is now a 2/3, 1/3 JV called Wyre. This restructuring accomplishes or has accomplished four key things. First, it isolates a significant fiber CapEx and debt capital needed to upgrade the HFC network in Flanders into an off-balance sheet vehicle. Second, it precipitated a comprehensive network cooperation agreement between Wyre and Telenet on one hand, and Proximus and its fiber asset, Fiberklaar, on the other hand, which I'm pleased to say was just signed yesterday and will result in a single network, ours or theirs, in about 75% of Flanders. That's a great outcome.

It creates a cleaner, more consumer and B2B-focused Telenet ServCo with a significant free cash flow turnaround story supported by declining mobile CapEx and mostly AI-driven OpEx reductions. Fourth, it facilitates a reduction in Telenet's leverage from both the rebalancing of debt between Wyre and Telenet and the sale of a portion of our stake in Wyre at a premium, by the way, which will be used to repay debt at Telenet. Really critical steps to getting where we want to be. Moving to the Netherlands, for me, the first strategic catalyst here was bringing in a new management team, one that could set the tone for a return to growth and for winning results in the Dutch market. Steve and his team have delivered exactly that.

The second strategic catalyst was, of course, reaching an agreement with Vodafone to buy their 50% stake in our Dutch JV. This deal, as I just said, is scheduled to close in less than three months. Not only is that deal accretive from a financial point of view, but it strategically unlocks about EUR 1 billion in synergies we referenced and provides the structural elements necessary to complete a tax-free spin-off next year. Each of these steps accelerates our commitment to reducing leverage at VodafoneZiggo, which we'll accomplish through asset sales, a return to EBITDA free cash flow growth, and synergies. On the top right of this slide, you can see a side-by-side of Sunrise and the combined Ziggo Group. If you look at 2025, the Ziggo Group is bigger.

It's about 2 to 2.5x larger in revenue and EBITDA and a bit more profitable. Importantly, you'll see that in 2028, we're estimating free cash flow of around EUR 500 million and leverage of 4.5x, which, you know, presents a comparable financial profile to Sunrise when we spun it off in Q4 2024. On the chart on the bottom right provides an illustrative bridge to the EUR 500 million of free cash flow, which is estimated to be EUR 120 million this year. The biggest components of that, as you can see, are the non-recurring nature of some costs this year in Holland, combined synergies, Telenet's mobile CapEx reduction, and organic EBITDA growth. We think the Ziggo Group represents a compelling equity story, and it's anchored around four selling points.

Number 1, this is a strong regional business with two of Europe's most rational telecom markets that are best-in-class brands. Number two, we have clear network strategies here with declining CapEx as 5G investments subside and fiber costs are moved off balance sheet in Belgium and a cost-efficient DOCSIS 4 rollout in Holland. Declining CapEx and great visibility to the network strategies. Number three, rising free cash flow and declining leverage. That's supported by organic growth, synergies, and EUR 1.2 billion-EUR 1.4 billion of local asset sales I've already described, towers, property, et cetera. Number 4, a commitment to pay dividends from free cash flow as we've done with Sunrise. We have lots of work to do, but this plan and this path forward is clear for us, and we look forward to updating you each quarter on our progress.

What does it all add up to? I'm sure many of you are wondering, you know, what sort of value creation do we think is achievable here? The chart on the next slide is actually simpler than it looks, it moves left to right, it demonstrates how we have and how we intend to create value through this unlock strategy. Let's start on the far left. The day we announced our intention to spin off Sunrise in February 2024, our stock closed at $18. Of course, nine months later, we completed the spin-off and using Sunrise's current stock price, we feel we delivered a tax-free dividend that's valued today at $13 per Liberty share. Together with our $12 stock, you get to $25 or about a 40% value appreciation in the last 14 months or so.

Far so good. About two months ago, we announced the second step in our value unlock strategy with our intention to consolidate Benelux and spin off the Ziggo Group in the second half of next year. What might that be worth? These numbers are illustrative. Lawyers maybe say that, of course. If you move to the right to the third column, I think you'll see the answer. We believe a publicly listed Ziggo Group, if it were to trade at, let's say, the same implicit valuation of Sunrise today in essentially an 11.5% free cash flow yield, could be worth up to $14 per Liberty share based upon the 2028 free cash flow estimate of EUR 500 million that we just discussed. Without debating the point, we believe this could be conservative.

As you would know, many of our peers, KPN, Swisscom, Orange, Zegona, they trade at free cash flow yields of 5%-7%, albeit with different leverage profiles. Let's stick with the 11.5% free cash flow yield. The primary question is where will Liberty itself trade post-spin? Remember, we believe that the entire Liberty Telecom group has negative value in our stock today of around $4 per share, despite our announced intentions regarding Ziggo. With our cash and growth assets worth $16 and our stock at $12, that's the only conclusion we can reach. To arrive at $14 post the Ziggo Group spin, we simply added our pro forma cash balance after the Vodafone deal and asset sales together with the value of our remaining growth assets, including our residual stake in Wyre, and we get to $14.

By the way, these numbers assume that the market continues to assign no equity value. That's 0 equity value to our remaining telecom businesses in the U.K. and Ireland. Of course, we think there's substantial equity value in these businesses, but we don't need to agree on that to get to these numbers. To recap, if you follow the light blue boxes from February 24, the day we announced our plans to spin off Sunrise to today, we created $7 on what was an $18 stock. That's 40%. We believe for those who had held on to the Liberty stock and their Sunrise stock, that number gets to 41 with the Ziggo Group spin.

If you do the same thing with the dark blue boxes for those who bought their shares after the Sunrise spin-off, we think we can take $12 today to as much as $28 by the second half of next year when we spin the Ziggo Group. Now, while there are no sure things in life and plenty to do between now and then, trust me, the building blocks we think are in place and we feel good about the plans and these estimates here. Now, one of the reasons for that good feeling is the progress Stephen and his team have made over the last five quarters.

This next slide summarizes some of those initiatives and some of the progress beginning early last year when we repositioned broadband pricing, changed the operating model and rejuvenated our campaigns, even expanded our footprint through the deal with DELTA Fiber. As a result of that, we saw steady improvements right away in broadband, where we'd been losing over 30,000 subscribers every quarter. Those changes continued into 2026 when we rejuvenated the Ziggo brand with a new campaign, the Everything Network, that was supported by our UEFA rights, by the way, which we just extended. We also launched broadband into our no-frills flanker brand, bringing a simple and value-driven connectivity product to that critical segment. You can see at the bottom right, the broadband net adds have been moving in the right direction for 4 straight quarters.

In fact, our Q1 result was the best in three years, driven by all the initiatives I just referenced, pricing adjustments, new campaigns, product expansion, network improvements. By the way, we have the largest reach of 2 gig broadband services in the country. We just launched field trials with DOCSIS 4 in anticipation of launching 4 and 8 gig products later this year. Operationally, VodafoneZiggo is in great shape and improving exactly what you want to see as we plan for a public listing next year. The next 2 slides summarize Q1 operating performance across our four markets. I'm going to do this quickly since the CEOs are on the call and they can provide color if needed. I think the main headline here is that we continue to see good broadband trends pretty much across the board and stable fixed and mobile ARPUs.

Starting with VodafoneZiggo, like I just talked about, our broadband performance improved for the fourth consecutive quarter and postpaid mobile net adds also improved sequentially. We continue to invest in our fixed mobile markets in Holland with both the Vodafone and Ziggo networks receiving outstanding awards in the Umlaut test. With ARPUs of nearly EUR 57 in fixed and EUR 18 in mobile staying steady, it's been a good outcome. Turning to Belgium, Telenet delivered its highest quarterly broadband result in 10 years, driven by successful cross-sell campaigns and strong performance with our BASE, our flanker brand there. Postpaid mobile results remain subdued in Belgium as the market's pretty competitive. Here too, our BASE brand is outperforming, while both mobile ARPU at EUR 16 and fixed ARPU at EUR 63 remain largely stable ahead of upcoming price adjustments in Q2.

Now turning to the U.K. on the next slide, despite a market that remains highly competitive, Virgin Media O2 delivered a third straight quarter of broadband improvement with just 6,000 losses compared to 43,000 losses a year ago. This was supported by strong commercial and retention initiatives and of course, lower churn. Importantly, and despite pressure on the overall market pricing, here our fixed ARPU remained relatively stable at GBP 46.50, supported by more and more personalized and AI-driven pricing. With the Netomnia deal working its way through the regulatory process, we continue our fiber to the home expansion with 8.7 million fiber homes available today. In U.K. Mobile, we launched O2 Satellite. You might have seen that making us the first operator in the U.K. to switch on direct-to-device satellite connectivity.

In addition, our mobile network transformation is progressing with new RAN upgrade agreements and the transfer of the second tranche of spectrum from Vodafone Three. That's hugely important to us. O2 now has the largest 5G standalone footprint in the U.K. Net postpaid losses of 60,000 were materially better than last quarter as churn from the Q4 price adjustment, we've talked about that, subsided and ARPU of around GBP 17 was broadly stable. In Ireland, lastly, we continue to execute strategically with growth in wholesale and off-net traffic more than compensating for retail pressure on net.

A fixed retail ARPU of EUR 61 remained stable despite no price rise in 2025. Importantly, our fiber rollout, this is critical, remains on track to be substantially complete in 2026, with nearly 20% of the retail base now taking a fiber product, and that will also drive free cash flow in 2027 and beyond. Just one slide on our Liberty Growth portfolio, currently valued at $3.4 billion and centered around four key verticals you know and love, infrastructure and energy, technology and AI, services, and of course, media and sports. The strategy here has been consistent for some time. We are exiting positions that are no longer strategic and using that capital to both invest in new opportunities as they arise and as needed, provide capital for transactions that will unlock value in our telecom assets. That second point is really important.

Historically, we've divested investment positions totaling something like EUR 1.6 billion since 2019, and we've targeted another EUR 700 million in sale proceeds this year, of which, as I said, EUR 300 million is already accounted for. A few comments on sports and live events. We're already invested heavily here through Formula E, but we also believe there are significant structural tailwinds that warrant us evaluating additional opportunities, and we're doing that. These points are probably well known to all of you, I'm sure, but there's clearly a generational shift from physical goods to experiences. That's live events, sports, travel, entertainment, and many of these markets are fragmented and most are protected from AI disruption. It's an interesting space. It's also clear momentum in the sector, right? Just look at sports.

Global revenue in sports growing well in excess of GDP over the last 10 years, and by almost everybody's estimation, poised to increase and accelerate from here. What's our right to play, you might be asking? Well, we know how to consolidate a fragmented industry, both in telecom, but also we've been doing that for decades, and recently with All3Media before exiting at a premium. We've got strong relationships across these sectors. Really, the deal flow is the easy part. When you factor in our expertise in things like treasury operations and technology, it's a pretty strong combination. We have a good track record in sports, specifically with Formula E, the fastest growing motorsport globally, and one of only eight global sports leagues, which is a great segue to my last slide.

I always get excited when I talk about Formula E, sometimes too excited, but I think this moment is perhaps our biggest yet. Look, over the last 10 years, as you've been following this, we have constantly innovated, investing significant energy and time in the car, the technology, and the racing. Well, the wait is over. Last week at the Paul Ricard Circuit in France, Formula E unleashed the next generation race car, Gen4, we call it, and the motorsports world is still reverberating. First of all, you have to see it in person. Yes, it is a beast, but it's a beautiful race car. The step up in power and performance is incredible. 600 KW of power represents a 71% increase in base output over the current Gen3 Evo car. The acceleration is insane, 0 to 100 km in 1.8 seconds.

That's meaningfully faster than a F1 car. Top speeds in excess of 335 km an hour, nearly 210 mi per hour. We estimate, because it's an estimate at this point, that lap times will decrease 10 seconds on average from the current generation car. That's a lifetime in racing. It's also the first single-seater race car with active all-wheel drive all the time, which will provide incredible acceleration and torque out of the turns. Of course, it meets all of our expectations from a sustainability point of view. It's made from at least 20% recyclable materials. It's 98.5% recyclable itself. It allows us to continue claiming that our race-related carbon footprint for the entire championship would fit into one F1 team, by the way. Speaking of F1, yes, we might have taken a few shots at them since the Gen4 launch.

You know, it might be deserved also. You're obviously aware of the issues they're dealing with currently and that they're going through with the hybrid engine. It just reinforces our view that going halfway on anything does not make history. You know, we love the position that we're in technologically, competitively, from an entertainment and motorsports point of view. Hey, just don't take my word for it. In the next slide, you can see, go ahead and scan social media, the motorsports press. There is widespread consensus. I know I'm quoting. This Gen4 car is a quote-unquote monster. It's quote an ushering in the most extreme era of electric cars. It's expected to change perceptions of Formula E forever. Even Max gives it a thumbs up, as you can see on the bottom right.

Anyway, I'm super excited about Gen4 car and Formula E. With that, Charlie, I'll turn it over to you.

Thanks, Mike. My first slide sets out the Q1 financial results for our Benelux companies. As you can see on this slide, we are now presenting Wyre's financial performance for the first time separate to Telenet to give investors clarity on their respective financials before we complete the full separation of the two companies and their capital structures later this year. VodafoneZiggo reported a revenue decline of 1.8% in Q1, driven by a lower customer base and ongoing repricing impact. This was partially offset by the price indexation and higher revenue from Ziggo Sport. Adjusted EBITDA declined 6.4%, driven by higher marketing costs and some incremental investments in network resilience and service reliability, in line with our guidance in March.

At Telenet, revenue was broadly stable in Q1, reflecting our strategic decision not to renew Belgian football rights, which was partly offset by a strong broadband performance, which was driven by effective cross-selling into the video customer base. Adjusted EBITDA grew 8.9%, driven by lower content costs following the exit from the football broadcasting rights. At Wyre, revenue declined by 1%, impacted by the implementation of a new pricing model, which was partially offset by strength in wholesale growth. Adjusted EBITDA declined by 4.6%, and this was driven by an investment in build capability as we start to accelerate Wyre's fiber build-out capability. Turning to the U.K. and Ireland, Virgin Media O2 delivered a total service revenue decline of 3% on a guidance basis.

This was impacted by competitive pressure in the consumer fixed market and lower B2B revenue as the newly rebranded O2 business rationalizes its product portfolio to support its long-term growth in the mobile segment. This was partially offset by wholesale revenue growth, which was supported by growth in MVNO revenue and adjusted EBITDA declined by 3.4% as a result of the lower total service revenues and a non-cash provision for legal matters recorded in the quarter. This was partially offset by cost reduction initiatives. At Virgin Media Ireland, revenues declined by 1.4% in Q1, impacted by intense competition in the consumer fixed and mobile markets, as well as a decline in advertising revenues at VMTV. This was partially offset by a strong wholesale performance.

Meanwhile, adjusted EBITDA declined by 7.1%, driven by these top-line pressures, and was also impacted by a one-off benefit in Q1 last year. Turning to the next slide, we remain committed to our disciplined capital allocation model as we rotate capital into higher growth investments and strategic transactions. Starting in the top left, Telenet reported EUR 10 million of free cash flow during the quarter and is expected to deliver at least EUR 20 million of free cash flow for the full year. Additionally, Liberty Corporate delivered adjusted EBITDA of negative $2 million, putting us firmly on track to achieve our full-year 2026 guidance of negative $50 million.

Turning to the bottom left, CapEx has meaningfully stepped down at Telenet in Q1 on a guidance basis, driven by the 5G upgrade nearing completion at the end of 2025 and lower spend on digital platforms. Capital intensity remains elevated at the other opcos, reflecting investments in our fixed networks and also 5G upgrades. Moving to the Liberty Growth walk in the top right, the fair market value of our growth portfolio remained broadly stable versus 2025 year end at $3.4 billion.

This was driven by modest investments in AtlasEdge, egg Power, nexfibre, and EdgeConneX, offset by the partial disposals of our ITV and some of our EdgeConneX stake, as well as a positive fair market value adjustment at EdgeConneX, along with the recent decision to move Liberty Blume out of our Corporate and Services segment and into the growth portfolio. Turning to our cash walk on the bottom right, we ended the quarter with a consolidated cash balance of EUR 1.9 billion. Q1 distributable free cash flow was impacted by high CapEx levels related to the fiber to the home rollouts at Wyre and Virgin Media Ireland, in addition to working capital movements at Telenet.

It's worth noting, we continue to anticipate that Wyre will draw on its standalone facility following BCA approval and will fully repay the short-term funding provided by Liberty Global consolidated cash via Telenet. As a reminder, we are aiming to end 2026 with around $1.5 billion of corporate cash, despite the expected outflows associated with the incremental Vodafone stake and also, to a lesser extent, the Netomnia acquisition. Finally, turning to our full-year guidance targets for 2026, we are reconfirming all guidance metrics of VMO2, VodafoneZiggo, and Telenet, as well as our guidance for corporate costs. That concludes our prepared remarks for Q1, and I'd like to hand over to the operator for Q&A.

Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking a question. We will pause here briefly as questions are registered. Our first question comes from the line of Carl Murdock-Smith with Citigroup. Carl, your line is now open.

That's great. Thank you very much. Two questions, please. Firstly, I wanted to ask on Virgin Media O2 about the wholesale service revenue growth. In the release, you say that that included GBP 15 million of fixed pre-enablement and installation income. Am I right in saying that that increase was due to a change in accounting treatment, meaning that it's now recognized as revenue, whereas previously it wasn't? I recognize that it's low margin, but that has provided almost a 1% boost to service revenue overall in Q1. My question is, did you know about that change in treatment when you issued the guidance in February? Does it provide potential upside to the revenue guide of 3%-5% decline, particularly as you've come in at the very high end of that range in Q1?

Then secondly, I just wondered if you could expand slightly on the O2 Satellite news and your kind of level of excitement around that. How much customer interest are you anticipating? More broadly, just what is your view on the role of satellite in telecoms as a complement or competitor going forwards? Thank you.

Satellite question about you. Over to Lutz first. Let me just say that, you know, as we look at the satellite space, generally, we think, of course, satellite broadband, Starlink broadband has a role to play on the planet. There will be plenty of people who will utilize that broadband service and need that broadband service. We believe the direct-to-device mobile opportunity is far more limited by technology, by market access. We do like the idea of having a satellite service attached to our mobile network. We think it adds, you know, just another level of service and commitment to customers. Of course, the U.K. is the first market where we have done that. Lutz, I'll turn it over to you for satellite. Someone, Charlie, I guess, will answer the wholesale question. Lutz?

Hi, Carl. We are very satisfied with the launch of O2 Satellite. Not disclosing numbers, but the fact that we have at the moment not the iPhone available, we will have it available in a week from now, and we have already quite a high demand, is leading us to the assumption that this is really a reliable service, an interesting and attractive service for customers. Also in combination with our improved mobile network, our 5G standalone coverage, we are really creating the right perception for customers, which means we have the most reliable mobile network from everybody in terms of coverage and data speed. Therefore we are very happy with that.

Charlie, you wanna address the wholesale revenue?

Just on the wholesale revenue, I mean, I think it was basically in budget and, you know, that is a very difficult business to forecast by its very nature 'cause it's. I think it was a pretty strong quarter. Do you have anything to add on that?

I mean, I can give some color, right? I mean, I think Carl, you're right. It was not, we didn't account it the same way before. The reason for that was not to beef up our service revenue. As you see, right, we are coming currently more at the upper end than of the guidance. The reason for that is that will be a growing and a continuous service revenue stream. We will more and more connect customers either from other networks or from other ISPs. Therefore, when you look at that way, I think that makes change makes sense. As you said yourself, right, we are coming in at the upper end of our guidance. You could track that number a little bit.

It is 0.7% of it, if you want to accrue for it, but it won't change anything in the guidance. I mean, we wouldn't change it. It's only 1 quarter. So far we are happy with what we have.

Makes sense. That's great. Thanks very much.

Operator.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Polo Tang with UBS. Polo, your line is now open.

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking the questions. I have 2. The first one is just on U.K. competitive dynamics for Lutz. Can you maybe talk through how the recent price rises in April have landed? Because the percentage increase is quite large, and I think it's double-digit for most subscribers. I'm just wondering if there's been any change in terms of churn. Separately, your postpaid mobile losses are continuing, how optimistic are you that this can stabilize through the year? Second question is just a broader question on use of cash going forward. You've talked a lot in this, the prepared remarks about ventures and the focus on sports and media. I think press reports suggested you were considering buying a European NBA franchise.

Are you pivoting the group more towards media and sports, or is the plan still to break up the group and return cash to shareholders? Any color on that would be great. Thanks.

Sure. I'll start with that, Polo. They're not mutually exclusive. That's point 1. Point 2 is our primary commitment, and I think it should be clear, but I'll repeat it here, is to create value for shareholders. We believe, as I've said a few different times, the biggest opportunity to do that is to highlight and find ways to, you know, illuminate value in our telecom business. That is our priority. That is number 1. As I mentioned a moment ago in my remarks, when we look at the use of capital, that factors in squarely to that to the strategy. As I said, we will use capital and rotate capital into growth opportunities should they be presented to us, but also into the telecom business if it helps to unlock value for shareholders.

I think I went on to say that second one is an important point. That's the first part of the answer. I'd say secondly, we are opportunistically looking at and being presented with sorts of opportunities. Sorry, somebody's ringing. With opportunities in that sports space and in the media space generally. There's a reason why the portfolio was EUR 3.4 billion large, because we have been very active as an investor. You know, maybe it's been quiet and we don't spend as much time on our earnings calls doing it, but it's, you know, it's arguably the biggest component of our stock price today are the investments that we've assembled strategically and purposely over the last, you know, let's say five to seven years.

You know, we're divesting ourselves of a huge chunk of those investments, and rightly so, 'cause we need cash to do the things we've been talking about today. Then we will opportunistically look at new investments if they make sense. Don't get me wrong, we are committed to the unlock strategy, and that is priority number 1. Lutz, you wanna talk about competitive nature of U.K.?

Yes. Good afternoon, Polo Tang. In mobile, you see in our numbers that we have been tracking in service revenue around 3%. This is before the price rise. Right, a reason for the net losses in Q1 was the higher price rise we decided for. We are seeing this landing very well. We have the first months now of the 2nd quarter behind us, Polo Tang. Our explanation for that is that those who didn't want to pay it left and for that has materialized. We don't see any spike in churn. Obviously we also have to wait for the May, our findings here are so far so good. On the fixed side, the competitive situation is also unchanged, I would say.

All nets are very aggressive as we are now. Other competitors have to follow. Here, remember I said at the last call, we have to optimize our prevention machine as we used to do it with the retention machine, which we have done now. Therefore, we are quite proud about the fact that we have almost managed to stabilize our fixed customer base in Q1, and we expect something like that in the future. Yes, it comes at the cost of some ARPU, which is 1.6%, but in the scheme of things that is a balanced approach.

Let me finish with to remind you, when we've given the guidance, right, 70%-80% of the service revenue decline is attributed to our expectation on the fixed consumer service revenue market. That means that we are planning for a recovery in mobile service revenue, Polo, and we are going to see this as we speak from the price rise in Q2.

Thanks, Lutz.

Thanku

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Grindle with Deutsche Bank. Robert, your line is now open.

Yeah. Thank you. Afternoon, gents. I see the progress on the long-form agreement with Proximus, approval for the collaboration is still outstanding. What happens if you're delayed for another six to nine months? Do you progress the build as planned, or is the project pushed back? I think Charlie said the Wyre revenues were impacted by a new pricing model. Could the Wyre Telenet ServCo financials change from here? Should there be a change in the wholesale rates associated with any approval? Will this financial base you've given us now be effectively unchanged? Thanks.

Thanks, Robert. We got John Porter on the line, who's worked tirelessly on this Proximus transaction.

Which I must say marks an outstanding result. Outstanding result for Telenet and for us. Do you wanna speak to the regulatory process from here, John?

Sure. Well, we've been in lockstep with the competition authority and the BIPT over the last two years. They are right up to date on every aspect of the transaction between ourselves and Proximus. We have very positive inclination from them and belief that they will expedite the final review of the transaction. There is a necessary 30-day review at the European Commission. That is not an approval process. It's just a chance for them to reflect on the transaction and see if it has broader implications. You know, we are cautiously optimistic that we will complete this transaction over the next, say, six to eight weeks. It's a virtual impossibility that it would go longer than that because I think we'd all down tools.

The main critical path has been achieved between ourselves and Proximus, and everybody's ready to get going.

Let me just step in on the.

I don't know.

As we're separating the two companies.

Oh, go ahead, Charlie. Sorry.

I was going to say we're separating the two companies. There is a little bit of tweaking. For example, there is a bit of movement on the wholesale rate to Telenet, and there's also some management fees that are being reevaluated. I think we'll get a more stable view on the numbers in Q2, but I would say it's pretty good news for the ServCo. I'd also say on the financing side, just to, you know, real shout-out to my treasury team, the EUR 4.35 billion of underwritten financing that's clearly in place and we could draw, has now been fully syndicated, which is a great success. Very successfully syndicated.

With the completion of the BCA approval, we're drawing that down and indeed paying some of the money that we decided was more efficient to bridge from our balance sheet rather than draw revolvers to do so. I think it's all around good news for the eventual Ziggo Group spin, because I think the Telenet part of the equation is very much on track for the free cash flow target we set them in 2028.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joshua Mills with BNP Paribas. Joshua, your line is now open.

Hi, guys. Thank you for the questions. Two from my side. One was just going back to slide 6, where you lay out the strategic plan for the new Ziggo Group. My question is around the leverage. There's a lot of moving parts there. Can you just remind us what the pro forma leverage position of this business would be today if you put it together? How much you're expecting to bring in from the Wyre state sale, and then the other asset sales that make up the EUR 1.2 billion-EUR 1.4 billion. I just wanna understand the assumptions underpinning that and what you're at today, and then how you get down to the 4.5x. That would be the first question.

The second question is just around the Dutch business. We've seen continued improvement in the broadband performance. Can you give a bit more color as to what's driving that on the customer side on perception? Is it people happier with price? Is it that they've noticed a change in the network quality? Any detail you have would be great. As a final add-on, your competitors have highlighted potential benefits from the data breach at Odido, and I think, you know, in the Q1 and probably rolling into Q2, Q3, net add trends there. How much of an impact have you seen from that on your own business in Q1 and Q2? Thanks.

Thanks, Joshua. Stephen will prepare our answers to the Dutch questions. On the asset sales, the EUR 1.2 billion-EUR 1.4 billion, those consist primarily of towers and technical facilities, et cetera. We're not really providing a breakdown of those numbers today 'cause we're in active, you know, sale process. We're not gonna provide, you know, expectations or estimates of where we think value is, but we think that's the range of total combined asset sales, which would be used to pay down debt. Charlie, you wanna address the pro forma leverage? It really depends on what point in time you look for that number and what's happened to the Wyre. Do you wanna address that, Charlie?

Yeah. I mean, it's actually a very complicated question because clearly the Belgian assets that are going to go into the Ziggo Group do not include, 'cause there will be a full separation of the Wyre assets. With the EUR 4.35 billion of underwritten and now syndicated debt, we will therefore be paying down debt at Telenet or Telenet ServCo, but Telenet will be what we'll call it going forward. It remains that because of the investment profile, VodafoneZiggo is relatively higher elevated. There's a lot of moving parts in answering that question. I would just reconfirm what Mike said, is we're very confident in a path to get down to the around 4.5 times by 2028.

It does depend on some asset sales, but we feel pretty good about those being delivered. With those asset sales and indeed, you know, continuing organic EBITDA growth, particularly in Holland, I think we should be there or thereabouts on target. Very happy to take it offline to go through some of these 'cause there's a lot of moving parts.

Yeah

It's in the low to mid fives.

Yeah. The combined group is going to be in the low to mid fives. Telenet itself will be in the mid fours. VodafoneZiggo will be higher. We'll start layering in the various de-leveraging steps, additional steps as well. There's a clear path. You know, perhaps next call, Joshua, we'll give you a little bit more detail. That is the general trend.

That's, that's great. Just to be clear, this isn't assuming any injection of cash. Sorry. There's no assumption of cash going in from Liberty Global into Telco.

The only other comment I'll make is actually, look, you know, clearly.

Yeah. Go ahead. Thanks.

No cash from corporate. I think it is important to know that we are putting our money where our mouth is. There's no distributions to Liberty Global in terms of equity distributions. We're, you know, we're reinvesting the free cash flow of Holland back in the business this year and indeed in Belgium. That, you know, is a commitment to our bondholders and also to the fact that we are very confident in this growth profile. Do you wanna answer the question?

Yeah. In terms of the operational performance of the broadband business.

Yeah. Can you hear me?

Yeah.

In terms of the operational performance of the broadband business over the last 12 months, if you follow the story, we've done a number of very clear interventions. The first is we got our pricing right for the broadband products that we're selling. We were mispriced in the marketplace. We fixed that a year ago. When we talk about the back book we're pricing, we're pleased with the progress we've made on that. You haven't seen that in the RP, so we've managed that, I think, pretty well. Second thing we've done is we've gotten on top of churn. We've been much more proactive in how we manage our customer base, which I think has had an effect on bringing churn down. We're now down 3 points year-on-year. We've invested more in marketing by repositioning the business.

The business was underspending on marketing and was out of sync with how, in my view, connectivity should be sold. We've invested, as you saw, in upgrading the speeds of the network. You've seen us launch. We're the only national 2 GB service, we've taken speed as a headwind off the table for us. More generally, I think we've done a pretty good job of just tightening how we take the business to market. You've seen that flow through sequentially each quarter as each of these initiatives have landed. We have a series of initiatives coming through the rest of 2026, which we anticipate to continue to help us with the momentum behind the story.

The [Odido question, Stephen

I'm sorry, I missed the Odido question. Can you repeat that?

The question was, what are you.

Yeah. It was.

Do you see any benefit from their cyber attack?

Yeah. It happened late in the quarter. It happened around week 10, so we saw some impact from that. We didn't see a lot of it in the quarter. Because of the size of their mobile base, we felt a bit more of it in the mobile base. nothing that I think is material in the Q1 results 'cause it only represented a handful of weeks.

Great. I mean, I was more talking about the Q2 results. Obviously, it happened later in the first quarter, but are you seeing any impact so far in Q2?

No, we're happy with our progress on Q2 so far, but it's quite early. I'll have to come back to you when we do the Q2 results in a couple of months.

Thanks.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of James Ratzer with New Street Research. James, your line is now open.

Yes. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the question. I had two really both around Belgium. In Telenet, you obviously had a very good quarter in terms of broadband net adds. I'd love if you can just give a bit more color behind what's driving that. Is that now growth out of footprint in Wallonia? Is that coming on your kind of base brand within Flanders, or is it something else? I'd be interested to kind of get a just a bit more color on the drivers there of broadband subs growth. Then secondly, just going back to the point that was raised earlier about Wyre revenue growth, which was down year-on-year in Q1.

Is that a kind of 1-off for this quarter, Charlie, you were mentioning around pricing, and it goes back to growth in the following quarters? I'd just love to understand a bit more about the kind of dynamics there between kind of P and Q, because I've been thinking that with kind of pricing there, we should see Wyre as a top-line growth company. Thank you.

John, you wanna take the Belgium question?

Yeah, I can take it. On the first, on the broadband, the BAU has been strong, particularly in the BASE brand. Their growth is about 50/50 between the Telenet footprint and growth in the South. We are steadily growing, and that growth in the South is increasing incrementally. There is what will be a, you know, year-long enhancement of that growth as we migrate out of DVB-C and into full IP for our video distribution. We are the last operator in the market to have DVB-C where you don't require internet to get television, but we are shutting that down over the next year. You know, we're expecting to see continued strong growth.

As you can see, the quarter ending 25 and the first quarter of the year, very strong and those are the main drivers. On the Wyre revenue, there we implemented a wholesale deal, a new wholesale deal on the HFC, which is essentially structuring the higher speed tiers to be more accessible. The wholesale price is going down a little bit, and that's what you're seeing flowing through. That will be part of the overarching deal done with Proximus, and we'll be able to give you more detail on that down the road. The drop will not continue to drop, but it is the new HFC wholesale pricing.

Thank you, John. From those new prices, do prices then rise with inflation from this slightly lower level looking into 2027, 2028?

There is an inflationary component to both the fiber wholesale and the HFC wholesale.

Great. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Matthew Harrigan with StoneX. Matthew, your line is now open.

Oh, thank you. This is very much a conjectural question rather than kind of blocking, tackling valuation anomalies. You made a quick reference to more benign, you know, regulatory environment in your markets. What's even more interesting on a macro basis is, you know, the emphasis on Europe's industrial base and defense. Clearly, you know, telecom is a vital, you know, pivot in defense. Is there any possibilities for your telecom business or I guess particularly your venture portfolio in that end? I'm sure, you know, Charlie and Lutz aren't gonna be manufacturing drones, but it still feels like something that could be an interesting, you know, tailwind, particularly since you're involved in so many areas and verticals. Thank you.

Hey, Matthew. Listen, the whole sovereignty debate, it's no longer a debate, it's a, it's a, you know, verifiable conviction, is net positive for us in the telecom space. Now we won't all benefit equally, but every telecom player will benefit from the European Union and countries within the European Union's focus with their own, you know, cybersecurity, their own data protection, their own data centers, their own AI infrastructure.

Inevitably, whether it's AtlasEdge or our investment in EdgeConneX on the infrastructure side in our Liberty Growth portfolio, whether it's our opcos themselves and their ability to provide services and B2B services and connectivity to governments and others, I think it's a net positive for telcos in Europe, which is why I mentioned it along with the loosening regulatory framework, which I think will also be a net positive. We may or may not be part of any of that consolidation, we know that consolidation itself brings benefits to customers as well as operators and investors. I think it's a real positive step.

In terms of defense itself, we're not, you know, unlike perhaps some of our peers who are more closely aligned with the government, we are not involved in any specific defense type investment opportunities or infrastructure. If we were approached, we would certainly consider it if it was consistent with our, you know, overall strategy. I don't see us veering off, if you will, into that, but.

Right. Sure.

Does that answer your question, Matt?

You're not [audio inaudible]. Absolutely. Thanks, Mike.

No. You got it.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ulrich Rathe with Bernstein Societe Generale Group. Ulrich, your line is now open.

Yeah, thanks very much. Thanks very much. Two questions. First one is, Mike, you talked about the improving re-regulatory climate with regards to consolidation. Other management teams in the sector have flagged mixed signals they perceive to come out of Europe. Could you talk through what specifically you have in mind there? What insights or news you have to share on which you base this more positive assessment? The second question is on the EUR 1 billion synergies that you talk about in Ziggo, can you talk about the sort of rough makeup of that in terms of operational and other sources of synergies? Thank you.

Sure. On the synergies point, I don't know if we've been specific, so I'm gonna pause. You know, but it typically you wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's consisting of three or four key line items. There's a financial synergy, that's more of a, you know, more of, I would say, a free cash flow type synergy from, that we haven't. Well, from taxes, essentially. There's operating costs that we think are achievable and create more efficiencies around. There's procurement and CapEx type synergy. So it's not going to be. When we get closer to legal day 1, we'll clearly provide more detail to you. Right now, we're still in the midst of closing the deal.

You know, there's lots of things we can be doing and will be doing in those two operations and within and among them to create those synergies. If I had to put my team on the spot right now, they'd say that's probably a low number. On the regulatory side, we did just, you know, get the EU merger guidelines released, and they are quite positive, you know, and, you know, at least in comparison to the kind of posture and position that the European Union would take previously when it came to in-market consolidation, right? I mean, they're looking at a much more, I guess, modern and pragmatic approach and, you know, they're seeing that benefits could certainly accrue from mergers versus just always seeing the negative in those mergers.

There's always been a structural bias against scale, now they're seeing, well, actually scale could increase investment, could increase innovation. It's actually spelled out in the document that was released recently. That to us is, you know, when it's in writing. If it's just a speech, I don't give it much credit. When they put it in writing, as they have with these new EU merger guidelines, that is a positive step. It needs to be put to the test, there will be plenty of deals that will put it to the test soon, I imagine.

Never before have they written down in black and white the sort of statements that we're reading today in terms of, you know, which are consistent with the arguments we've been making, that consolidation in market is the first step to repair in the European Telecom space.

Very helpful. Thank you very much.

Yep.

Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of David Wright with Bank of America. David, your line is now open.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, last question. A couple please, guys. Just on the, I guess it's for Ziggo, DOCSIS 4.0. I think you may have said, Mike, that there are some trials ongoing. If we could just get some estimates of maybe the sort of trajectory of commercial launch for 4.0 in Holland. When do you expect the first sort of, you know, significant retail launch, et cetera? Is it something that you think you could even price a little as you move into the real sort of mega tiers of speed? Then the second question, maybe a little more conceptual.

You know, we're observing a lot of discussion around the kind of InfraCo, ServCo split, and you guys have obviously sort of embraced that. You know, there's obviously a clear sort of capital allocation justification and the ability to, you know, to separate the two businesses that are quite structurally different. I just wondered, does having a separate InfraCo make a more agile ServCo in terms of just day-to-day, you know, operations? Is the business just, you know, more able to respond and sort of change shape in the sort of digital age? It's a little more conceptual, Mike. If you've got anything to add on that, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

Sure, sure. Steve Malcolm, jump in here if I get it wrong, I believe our 4 and 8 gig trials are the latter part of the year, maybe even late Q3, Q4. What we did was get a, you know, the field trials underway to demonstrate that it works, it works well, that the technology we're using is really state-of-the-art, even in relation to the U.S. operators. As we get closer to going public in the latter part of this year, we'll have more information. It's happening, and we think it's gonna be a big positive for the market and for our, for our business for sure. On the, on the ServCo side, look at, I mean, Belgium is the test.

What does it do when you end up taking the fixed network, you still own the mobile network, but taking the fixed network and putting it into a separate entity? I think, and John will agree, I'm sure, it forces you to be more efficient, more agile, and your margins change. All of a sudden, there's a wholesale fee in your P&L that you have to account for. In principle, Telenet will continue to be a very competitive brand and a very competitive B2C company and B2B company. It's with respect to its network, its fixed network, it will be renting instead of owning that network. The relationship it's developed with Wyre is highly integrated, highly, you know, with mutual benefits both directions.

On balance, I think, and this is the only place we've done it really is Belgium. I think on balance, and John can chime in, I think it does create a bit more energy in that ServCo, a bit more focus on margins and on competition with a little less to worry about and a slightly better, you know, CapEx profile. That CapEx profile frees up free cash. You know, Telenet will generate significant free cash here shortly as it has, and we'll have to figure out how to reinvest that free cash, whether it's in de-leveraging or in actually new products and services. Any, anything more to add to that, John?

Yeah, a bit. The CapEx we are spending, we are now concentrating on customer experience. We pivoted our strategy, obviously away from network and product differentiation, because we have to, into customer experience. The timing is right because, of course, with a lot of AI initiatives around the company, and a new greenfield CRM platform, the focus is well and truly on straight through digital journeys for our customers, which delivers better experience and a better bottom line. I think certainly your hypothesis is valid.

Okay. Good to hear. All right. Listen, we appreciate everybody joining us on the call. Thanks, David. It's been a good start to the year. I hope you agree, and we're really encouraged by the progress that we're making. Trust me, we are laser-focused on value creation and value unlock, starting, of course, in the Benelux, where we're not only, you know, performing well, but the strategic roadmap, and as I pointed out, the building blocks are all in place. We'll keep you abreast and updated on those things and we'll speak to you soon. Thanks, everybody. Have a great weekend.

Thank you. That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Liberty Global's Fourth Quarter 2025 Investor Call. This call and the associated webcast are the property of Liberty Global, and any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the expressed written consent of Liberty Global is strictly prohibited. [Operator Instructions] Today's formal presentation materials can be found under the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's website at libertyglobal.com. After today's formal presentation, instructions will be given for a question-and-answer session. Page 2 of the slides details the company's safe harbor statement regarding forward-looking statements. Today's presentation may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including the company's expectations with respect to its outlook and future growth prospects and other information and statements that are not historical facts. These forward-looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. These risks include those detailed in Liberty Global's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed Forms 10-Q and 10-K as amended. Liberty Global disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect any change in its expectations or in the conditions on which any such statement is based. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Mike Fries.

Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. As you would have seen by now, in addition to our results, we announced 2 significant transactions earlier today, which, of course, we'll address in our prepared remarks. As a result, I think this call may run over 60 minutes. I hope you can stick with us because there's quite a bit to talk about here. We've broken this down into our typical quarterly results presentation, which Charlie and I will breeze through as we usually do, perhaps a little faster than normal, and then we'll move into more of a strategic update like we did 2 years ago at this time. I also think it might be a good call to follow the slides that we're broadcasting, especially in the second half. But let me jump right in on Slide 4. And certainly, by now, you are all familiar with how we organize and manage our business today. As illustrated here, everything falls into 1 of 3 operating verticals. Liberty Telecom comprises our 4 national FMC champions that generate $22 billion of revenue and $8 billion of EBITDA on an aggregate basis and where our primary goals are to drive commercial momentum and importantly, unlock equity value for shareholders. Much more on that in a moment. Liberty Growth on the far right houses our portfolio of media, infra and tech investments totaling $3.4 billion today. And here, we're focused on rotating capital, right, and investing in high-growth sectors with scale and tailwinds. And of course, in the center sits Liberty Global itself with $2.2 billion of cash and a team with decades of experience operating and investing in these businesses. Now I'll come back to this slide and the strategic update. But first, let me provide some highlights on each of these for 2025. So it has clearly been a busy year for us on all 3 fronts. And as Slide 5 points out, we feel like we've delivered on our core strategic priorities. There's a lot of detail here, so I'm just going to hit a few of the high points. We'll talk about our telecom operating results in the next couple of slides, but we're pleased with the momentum that our commercial and network strategies are delivering, especially in the second half of the year, supported in parts by the benefits we realized from AI, all of our 3 large OpCos hit their guidance targets last year. When it comes to unlocking value in telecom, a key goal for us, as you know, you've no doubt seen our announcements on the U.K. fiber transaction and our acquisition of Vodafone's interest in the Netherlands. We'll dig into both those deals shortly, but this is exactly what we said we would do on our call last year and the year before. At Liberty Global, we've totally reshaped our operating model, having reduced our net corporate spend by 75% in the last 12 months. Needless to say excited to see how this new guidance leads its way into analysts some of the parts calculations. And we continue to allocate capital to the highest return. As you know, we did reduce the buyback last year from 10% to 5% of shares partially, to be honest, in anticipation of some of these varied transactions. And so far this year, we're not actively in the market, but we always remain opportunistic on our stock and we'll keep you abreast of our plans throughout the course of the year versus guiding to them. And with respect to our cash balance, pro forma for the transactions announced today and for what we expect to realize in further asset sales, we should end the year with $1.5 billion of cash, and Charlie will get into that in a bit more detail in a moment. And then finally, our growth portfolio remains highly concentrated with 5 assets comprising 70% of the $3.4 billion in value. We couldn't be more excited about Formula E and the progress we're making on the Gen4 car, our racing calendar and of course, our sponsors. And we have renewed focus on the experience economy. I'm not going to get into much detail here. But by this, we mean live events, sports, et cetera. We probably looked at 100 deals in this space. We've done real work on about 40, and we've only closed a handful of very small transactions. So that should give you some comfort that while we're excited about this sector, we're staying very disciplined as we look to rotate capital. Now the next 2 slides summarize Q4 operating performance for our telecom businesses. In the U.K., Lutz and the team have implemented a number of things that helped improve broadband performance throughout the year, initiatives like bundling Netflix and being recognized as a top U.K. broadband provider. Those things drove a strong Q4 as well as stable ARPUs. Postpaid mobile results were impacted, however, by the increases that they took in October. Hopefully, we'll see improved performance in '26, especially as 5G coverage continues to grow and pricing pressure settles. In Ireland, a combination of fiber wholesale activations, improved network performance. Actually, they are also ranked the best provider in the market and off-net expansion, supported net growth in the fixed base with stable ARPUs. Mobile in Ireland continues to grow steadily. Remember, we're an MVNO there, helped in part by a EUR 15 offer launched in June. In the Netherlands, Vodafone Ziggo's How We Win plan is driving substantial improvements in the broadband base. Becoming the largest provider of 2 gigabit broadband speeds in the market and recent recognition as the best TV provider helped make Q4 the single best result in fixed services in nearly 3 years with steady improvement over the last 6 months carrying into 2026. Postpaid mobile growth in Holland continues to be supported by nearly universal 5G coverage and a strong flanker brand. And then finally, Telenet had its highest quarterly broadband results in 3 years, helped by fixed mobile convergence in the South and a strong Black Friday period. And similar to other markets we operate in, ARPUs were fixed and mobile are very stable. Now if it wasn't enough information for you, we will be discussing 3 out of these 4 markets in our strategic update later in the call, including a lot more commentary on their performance and outlook. So in the meantime, Charlie, over to you.

Thanks, Mike. Now turning to our Q4 financial highlights. Our operating companies in the U.K., the Netherlands and Belgium delivered on their full year guidance metrics despite challenging market conditions. VMO2 delivered a revenue decline of 5.9% on a reported basis, which was impacted by lower Nexfibre construction revenues due to a slowdown in the fiber build and also sustained competitive pressure in both the fixed and mobile market in the U.K. On a guidance basis, excluding Nexfibre construction and O2 Daisy, we delivered modest growth for the full year. Adjusted EBITDA declined by 2.4% on a reported basis, primarily driven by lower Nexfibre construction profitability. Excluding this, adjusted EBITDA fell by 1% in Q4, but we still achieved growth overall for the full year of positive 1%. Moving to VodafoneZiggo, we saw a revenue decline of 2.3% in Q4, driven by fixed churn and reduced low-margin IoT revenues. This was partially offset by the annual price adjustment and higher Ziggo Sport revenues. Adjusted EBITDA declined 3.4% in Q4, driven by this lower revenue and higher costs related to commercial initiatives. The full year figures were in line with the guidance in Q1 for the new How We Win strategy. At Telenet, we saw a revenue decline of 1.3%, driven by our strategic decision to not renew the Belgium football broadcasting rights and lower programming revenues. Adjusted EBITDA declined by 9.9%, driven by elevated labor and marketing costs as well as higher professional services and outsourced labor spend. Turning to our treasury update. We've been extremely proactive through 2025 and the early part of 2026 and extending our 2028 and 2029 maturities. And we successfully refinanced close to $15 billion across our credit silos. At both VMO2 and VodafoneZiggo, we have fully refinanced all 2028 maturities following successful term loan refinancings, senior secured note issuances and private taps within these credit silos. In Belgium, as we announced in Q3, we have EUR 4.35 billion of committed financing at Wyre, which is contingent on BCA regulatory approval of our fiber sharing agreement. A portion of the proceeds of around EUR 2.34 billion are allocated to repay the intercompany loan with Telenet and will be used to rebalance leverage at Telenet. We intend to further repay some of the 2028 debt at Telenet with the proceeds from our partial Wyre stake sale, which is expected to complete this year. All of this proactive refinancing activity has significantly reduced our 2028 maturities and maintained our average tenor of around 5 years at broadly comparable credit spreads to our historic levels. Turning to the next slide. We remain committed to our disciplined capital allocation model as we rotate capital into high-growth investments and strategic transactions. Starting on the top left, we successfully delivered against all free cash flow guidance metrics for the year across our OpCos and JVs. Additionally, following our corporate reshaping program, Liberty Services and Corporate closed 2025 ahead of guidance at negative $130 million of adjusted EBITDA, which is around $20 million better than our $150 million target. Moving to the Liberty Growth walk in the bottom left. The fair market value of our growth portfolio remained broadly stable versus Q3 at $3.4 billion. This was driven by modest investments in Nexfibre, AtlasEdge and EdgeConneX, offset by the partial disposal of our ITV stake and the full exit of our Enfabrica stake as well as positive fair market value adjustments at Formula E and UPC Slovakia, which has been held in the growth portfolio until the sale process completes later this year. Turning to our cash walk on the top right. We ended the year with a consolidated cash balance of $2.2 billion. During the quarter, we received $162 million of upstream cash and JV dividends and $140 million of net cash proceeds from disposals in our growth portfolio, including $180 million from the partial ITV stake sale. We spent $34 million on our buyback program during the quarter, repurchasing a total of 5% of our outstanding shares during the year. Moving to the bottom right, we are aiming to end 2026 with around $1.5 billion of corporate cash. After deducting for the cash outflows related to the M&A transactions Mike will touch on in a minute, we intend to replenish our corporate cash with a combination of dividends and cash upstream from our operating businesses as well as noncore asset disposals from our growth portfolio. Turning to Liberty Growth in Media and Sports. Our strategy remains to invest in live sports and entertainment platforms with growing global fan bases. Formula E is our lead example of this, and Season 12 has started strongly ahead of the launch of the Gen4 car. Our data center assets, EdgeConneX and AtlasEdge, continue to show strong top line revenue growth, supporting a $1 billion-plus year-end valuation. And our energy transition assets also made big steps forward in 2025. Egg Power secured GBP 400 million of senior debt to help fund over 400 megawatts equivalent of wind and solar power projects, and Believ, our destination charging business has now built 2,500 public charging sockets, which are averaging around GBP 1,500 of EBITDA per socket with a further 23,000 awarded to them by U.K. local authorities. And they're currently bidding on a large number of additional sockets, which are being awarded. In tech, the focus is on AI. We made a strategic investment in 11 labs, and we're also moving our in-house AI investments into the growth pillar, given their potential to sell services to third-party customers outside the Liberty family. We've also established a new services pillar and have transferred Liberty Blume into it from Jan 2026. Now Liberty Blume develops tech-enabled back-office solutions for Liberty Global companies as well as third parties. It delivered over 20% revenue growth in 2025, achieving over GBP 100 million of revenue with an order book of nearly GBP 400 million. The initial value has been set at GBP 100 million, and we've hired a new CEO to accelerate growth. Starting January 2026, we're also introducing an annual management fee of 1.5% of assets under management paid by Liberty Growth to Liberty Services. This fee will be funded by distributions from the growth portfolio, including disposals and will be used to fund direct and allocated operating costs such as treasury and related legal services, and these are all directly attributable to the growth portfolio. Turning to our guidance for 2026. We're providing guidance by operating company. For Virgin Media, O2 from Q1 2026, we will move to new disclosure, which better reflects the 3 key operating verticals following the creation of O2 Daisy. Now these are consumer, business and wholesale. There's a pro forma information in the stand-alone VMO2 release, which explains this further alongside updated KPI disclosures. On this basis, the VMO2 revenue guidance is now set on total service revenues, which we expect to decline by 3% to 5%. Now this is adjusted for the impact of the Daisy transaction, which is driven by continued promotional intensity as well as planned streamlining of the B2B product portfolio following the creation of O2 Daisy. Adjusted EBITDA is also expected to decline by 3% to 5%, also against the comparable period adjusted for the Daisy impact, driven by lower revenue and lower gross margin due to the changing customer mix. Stable property and equipment additions of GBP 2 billion to GBP 2.2 billion, excluding right-of-use additions due to continued investment in 5G and fiber-to-the-home and adjusted free cash flow of around GBP 200 million for the year, supporting cash distributions to shareholders of the same amount. For VodafoneZiggo, we expect stable to low single-digit decline in revenue, driven by a lower fixed base and the flow-through of the front book pricing impact, albeit with support from continued price indexation and fixed and mobile. Mid- to high single-digit decline in adjusted EBITDA, driven by OpEx investments into network resilience and service reliability. Property and equipment additions to revenue is expected to be around 23% to 25%, driven by continued 5G and DOCSIS 4.0 investments as well as the CapEx component of investments into network resilience and service reliability. Now to give more detail on this additional investment, we expect EUR 100 million of incremental investment of OpEx and CapEx into network resilience and service reliability during 2026. Now this will reduce to EUR 50 million OpEx impact in 2027, 2028. And we're expecting adjusted free cash flow to be around EUR 100 million with no shareholder distributions planned for the year. For Telenet, we're introducing new full year 2026 guidance based on IFRS financials, excluding Wyre. We expect stable revenue growth, reflecting a stable operating environment and the annual price indexation under Belgium regulations, low single-digit growth in adjusted EBITDAaL, supported by OpEx savings from significant digital and IT investments and continued lower programming costs. Property and equipment additions to revenue of around 20% as investments in 5G and digital upgrades step down and positive adjusted free cash flow of around EUR 20 million. And finally, for Liberty Corporate, we expect around $50 million negative adjusted EBITDA, driven by the annualization of the cost savings from the corporate reshaping that took place in 2025 and the implementation of the new 1.5% management fee from the growth portfolio.

Thanks, Charlie. Great job. And now we're going to switch gears to what I think I hope is the most important part of today's call. And that, of course, is an update on the key transactions we've just announced and how they significantly advance our plans to deliver value to shareholders. I'll start by revisiting the first slide that I showed you today, and that's the 3 core pillars of our operating structure, Liberty Telecom, Liberty Growth and Liberty Global. I won't go back through the strategies for each of these. I think you've got them by now. But what I have done on this slide is present a very rudimentary sum of the parts valuation exercise for these 3 pillars at the bottom of the slide. It shows that the Liberty Growth portfolio today, accepting the fair market value that Deloitte has prepared is worth roughly $10 per Liberty Global share. Our corporate cash of $2.2 billion, even after a reasonable reduction of the value for the $50 million of corporate spend this year is roughly $6 per Liberty share, which means that with an $11 stock price today, there's at least $5 per share of negative value being ascribed to our Liberty Telecom businesses. And of course, there are multiple ways of arriving at these figures. Some people start by valuing Liberty Telecom and then applying discounts to cash and Liberty Growth and Corporate. But I like this approach. Cash is cash, and we believe the growth assets are valued fairly and appropriately. More importantly, we're rapidly turning those growth assets into cash. We've already exited something like $1.6 billion in the last 6 years. So whether it's negative 5 or 0, you can see why we have focused a lot of time and attention on creating and delivering value in our telecom portfolio. Of course, the Sunrise spin-off just 14 months ago was step 1. That transaction delivered what is today roughly $13 per share of value to Liberty Global Investors, far more than anyone expected at the time or what the implied value was for that business at the time. And that's why we can say our stock really on a combined basis is up meaningfully over the last 2 years. Now moving to the next slide, here's another thing that gives us some confidence in the value of our telecom business. The European telecom sector has been experiencing a broad-based rally this year with the Euro Telco Index up 16% year-to-date and just about every major incumbent telco, and you know all the names, up even more than that, 20%, 25%. So what's happening here? We see 3 key tailwinds impacting the sector. First, of course, is an improving regulatory environment. This is not to say that we're totally satisfied with where things stand. You know us better than that. But if you look at the U.K. and the changes they've made to the CMA or if you look at the recently published draft of the EU's Digital Networks Act, we believe there's a good chance regulators continue to loosen rules around consolidation and spectrum policies, especially in the age of AI, where telecom continues to be perceived rightly as critical infrastructure for consumers, for businesses and for governments. Secondly, just as we are seeing in our own operations like Telenet, where 5G CapEx is largely behind us now or Ireland, where our fiber build is coming to an end, there is light at the end of the CapEx tunnel. And when you combine declining CapEx intensity with Telecom's high margins and stable revenues, you've got a strong recipe for improving free cash flow. And then finally, there is the AI thesis. It's hard to find an industry more ready to benefit from AI-driven efficiencies, customer improvements, network automation than the telecom sector. In addition, as AI permeates every aspect of our lives, our role, telco's role as foundational connectivity and data transport providers, I think, continues to increase. And then lastly, there appears to be -- and this is an area you're experts in more than me, but there appears to be a rotation going on here. Investors growing a bit sour on how capital-light software-driven industries and rotating capital into more infrastructure-based or defensive sectors where AI is a net-net positive and quite frankly, unlikely to be as disruptive over time. I think the impact of AI, if you ask me on our industry, will be positively transformational. I recently asked the CEO of one of the big tech companies, look, how do I go from spending $14 billion a year on OpEx to $7 billion? That's what I want to do. He said, bring me your P&L, and we'll go through it. The point is we're just scratching the surface today. I think the upside for us from AI is massive, and it's massive for our entire industry. Now so with that as background, on this call, last year and the year before, we laid out 2 very specific goals related to our telecom businesses, and they're summarized here on Slide 16. The first was to prepare each of our Benelux operating companies, this was last year, for the next phase of value creation. And I'd say we achieved that goal. Bringing in Stephen van Rooyen as CEO, has been a game changer for VodafoneZiggo. And of course, today, we're announcing the acquisition of Vodafone's 50% stake in VodafoneZiggo in order to advance our plans to spin off a new company that combines our Dutch and Belgian operations. More on that, of course, in a second. And in the U.K., we committed last year to advance our plans to monetize our fixed network infrastructure for both financial and strategic reasons. And early last year, we pivoted away from a pure NetCo, as you know. But together with Telefonica, we continue to evaluate accretive ways to grow and finance fiber infrastructure in the U.K. Today, of course, we announced the acquisition of U.K.'s second largest AltNet, creating what will ultimately be an 8 million home fiber platform with the opportunity to further consolidate a fragmented market. So let's get into these deals, beginning with the Vodafone acquisition on Slide 17, after what can only be described as a very successful, and I mean -- seriously mean rewarding partnership with Vodafone in the Netherlands, we're pleased to announce an agreement to acquire their 50% stake in exchange for EUR 1 billion of cash plus a 10% equity interest in a new company called Ziggo Group, which will own 100% of VodafoneZiggo and 100% of Telenet in Belgium. Now there's 3 primary reasons we're doing this, 3 primary benefits from this deal. To begin with, we believe the net present value of both operational synergies and incremental service revenues from this transaction and combination total about EUR 1 billion alone. And of course, pretty much all that accrues to us. Second, we think the combination of Holland and Belgium is a financial winner. As the chart on the right shows together, the 2 operations serve 7 million mobile subs and over 5 million broadband subs with total revenue of EUR 6.6 billion and over EUR 2.5 billion of EBITDA. The combination also creates a clear road map to reduce leverage to what we're estimating will be about 4.5x through a combination of synergies and improving operational performance. In fact, we think we'll generate $500 million of free cash flow by 2028. And then third and perhaps most importantly, we are announcing today our intention to list Ziggo on the Euronext exchange in 2027 and to simultaneously spin off our 90% interest to Liberty Global shareholders as we did in Switzerland. Interestingly, similar to Sunrise, there is a strong equity story here. Belgium and Holland are rational markets just like Switzerland. We have a clear network strategy in each country like we have in Switzerland. Our plans to reduce leverage are front and center and actionable like they were and are in Switzerland. And the financial profile should support both free cash flow and dividends in the future. Interestingly, this is more anecdotal, just as Sunrise was once a very successful public company that we took private and then relisted. Ziggo was also a very successful public company that we took private. So we will be reintroducing Ziggo to the public markets as we did with Sunrise. Now just a quick update on Slide 18 of VodafoneZiggo's recent performance. There's no question that Stephen's How We Win plan is driving clear operational turnaround. The combination of OpEx savings, repositioned broadband pricing, speed upgrades and a multi-brand strategy are delivering materially lower churn. And you can see that on the bottom right of this slide, where Q4 '25 was the best broadband performance, I think, in 10 quarters, and things continue to look good into 2026. We've also provided a medium-term outlook for VodafoneZiggo on Slide 19. And while 2025 EBITDA was in line with our plan, 2026 guidance, as Charlie indicated, shows a decline impacted in part by our largely one-off investment we're making in network resilience and service reliability. In 2028, however, we expect EBITDA growth to rebound. We're not giving you actual numbers here, but we are confident in that trajectory. That EBITDA growth, combined with a very stable CapEx envelope should generate the meaningful free cash flow I just referenced. And as Charlie indicated, leverage will peak in 2026, but should decline thereafter, both organically, that's, of course, from EBITDA growth and through asset sales like our tower portfolio, the proceeds of which we intend to use to reduce debt. And then a quick strategic update on Telenet on Slide 20. We can't underestimate the importance of the steps we've taken over the last 24 months in Belgium to both rationalize the market structure and create a clear operating road map for both of our businesses there. As you know, this is the first time we've completely carved out a fixed NetCo, which we call Wyre, and have even gone one step further by entering into a network sharing arrangement with the incumbent telco Proximus that will create arguably the most attractive fiber wholesale market in Europe. And to facilitate the carve-out, we secured EUR 4.35 billion of new capital to both fund the Wyre build and reduce leverage at Telenet. And as we've discussed, we're in the process of selling a stake in Wyre with the proceeds earmarked for further deleveraging in Telenet. The goal here is to bring Telenet's midterm leverage down to the 4.5x level. And Telenet, as part of the new Ziggo Group, I think, represents a very strong equity story itself with outstanding retail brands, significant B2B growth, an upgraded 5G network and long-term access to fiber. Perhaps even more importantly, though, with CapEx declining significantly this year, Telenet's free cash flow is at that inflection point and poised for continued growth. Now let's switch gears to the U.K. and our announcement today to use our fiber JV, Nexfibre to acquire Substantial Group, which consists of the Netomnia fiber network and a 500,000 subscriber broadband customer base for a total enterprise value of GBP 2 billion and a net payment of GBP 1.1 billion at closing. Now I'll walk through the various transaction steps on the next slide, but the goal here is simple. The first goal is to create the second largest fiber network after BT Openreach. When you combine Netomnia's 3.4 million fiber homes with Nextfibre's existing 2.6 million fiber homes and then you add 2.1 million VMO2 homes that will be made available to Nextfibre for upgrade, the platform will ultimately reach 8 million fiber homes by 2027. As I'll outline in a moment, there are significant benefits to VMO2 stakeholders here. This is a fantastic outcome for VMO2. It's also a strong vote of confidence in the U.K. generally. We want the U.K. government to know that we, together with our partners, are willing to commit significant capital to the U.K. based upon their pro-growth policies. And this next slide is one that you'll probably want to print out and tuck away somewhere. As I said, this is a complicated transaction, they often are, and this is an attempt to simplify it as best we can. On the left-hand side, you'll see the money and asset flows. The green numbers, when you take a look at the slide, if you're aren't looking at it now, the green numbers simply show the cash and how it moves from and to the various parties here. Approximately GBP 1 billion of equity will be injected into Nexfibre, the acquisition vehicle, and that's our 50-50 JV with InfraVia, of course. And this will consist of GBP 850 million of cash from InfraVia and GBP 150 million from Liberty and Telefonica. So the first point to make is that Liberty Global directly will be responsible for GBP 75 million of cash in order to complete this transaction. The GBP 1 billion together with a new debt facility, I think it's about GBP 2.7 billion will fully fund both this transaction and the longer-term strategic plans for Nexfibre 2.0. Now once capitalized, Nexfibre distributes a little over GBP 2 billion of cash, GBP 950 million to Substantial Group for the Netomnia fiber assets, and GBP 1.1 billion to VMO2. Of course, VMO2 will use that capital to both acquire the broadband subscribers for GBP 150 million and reduce leverage. The vast majority of the GBP 1.1 billion going to VMO2 is in exchange for a significant commitment to utilize the Nexfibre network on a wholesale basis. That's how these deals work. Specifically, VMO2 will provide access to 2.1 million of its own homes and we will agree to pay Nextfibre wholesale access fee on those homes once they're upgraded to fiber. And additionally, VMO2 will pay wholesale access fees day 1 on another 2.5 million homes that overlap Nextfibre's footprint. So there's substantial value being contributed to the Nexfibre 2.0 plan by VMO2, and that's why it's being paid. Now as I mentioned, the benefits to VMO2 are substantial. To begin with VMO2 gets cash to reduce leverage. This is necessary, of course, given the increased wholesale fees paid out to Nexfibre. Second, it will end up with 500,000 additional broadband customers. Third, there will be substantial CapEx avoidance here, both in terms of the cost to build and the cost to connect millions of premises that will no longer be the responsibility of VMO2. We think the NPV of that is around GBP 800 million. Fourth, VMO2 will be able to continue providing construction and managed services to Nexfibre in exchange for revenue and positive EBITDA margin. The NPV of that contract, we think, is around GBP 400 million. And then finally, in addition to having access to the second largest fiber footprint in the U.K., VMO2 will also receive a direct stake in Nexfibre 2.0. Now looking ahead, I think this transaction also opens up the market for further consolidation, something that we have talked about for a long time and may just be on the horizon. One quick slide here providing additional context on VMO2's operational outlook, as I promised. On the left-hand side of Slide 23, we make the point that despite a highly competitive market, VMO2 has delivered pretty good financial results, especially in comparison to its peers. While revenue has been largely flat over the last 4 fiscal years, and you know that, EBITDA has grown annually at around 1.5%. During the same time frame, VMO2 has generated GBP 2.6 billion of cumulative free cash flow and distributed GBP 5.2 billion to Liberty and Telefonica in the form of dividends. We are happy shareholders here. That's clear. Now the rest of the slide identifies the main drivers of growth moving forward and why we're confident in the VMO2 story, including 3 powerful brands, Virgin Media, O2 and Giffgaff, that reach every segment and help drive fixed mobile convergence. There's also synergies and B2B growth from the recently completed O2 Daisy merger, strong wholesale position as the #1 MVNO provider and now a key partner in the second largest fiber footprint. I mean, Lutz and the team, we believe we have a pretty good head start in AI-driven innovation and efficiency as well. And on top of that, there's the opportunity to drive growth off-net to the 10 million homes we don't reach today. So a lot of really good things happening in the U.K. market for us. Finally, this is the key takeaways here on the final slide, what we'd like you to bring home, if you will, from the second half of this call, right? Number one, we think the telecom sector broadly and equity values in Europe more specifically are poised for continued appreciation in the eyes of investors. Tailwinds from consolidation, stable cash flows and what appears to be a rotation into stocks that will be net beneficiaries of AI as opposed to roadkill are drivers here. Hopefully, by now, you're convinced that we are serious about delivering value to shareholders. The Sunrise spin-off was always step 1. We told you that. And the transactions we announced today, in particular, the Vodafone stake acquisition and our intention to list and spin off the new Ziggo Group will be step 2. In the meantime, we worked extremely hard to reshape our corporate operating model. This is not just a cost-saving exercise, even though it did save considerable costs. We believe that our structure today is fit for purpose, both to continue operating and investing in the TMT sector as we've done for the last 20-plus years, but also to provide our unique form of expertise to existing and future affiliates. Now while we were only marginally successful in convincing analysts to look at our corporate costs differently, we have been spectacularly successful at reducing those net corporate costs, as I said, by 75%. That is going to accrue to the benefit of our stock price. And we're excited about our growth platform. We have a great track record here, and we're focused on the right sectors where we have a clear right to play as they say, and where there are tailwinds and scale-based opportunities that I think we're uniquely qualified to pursue. So stay tuned to see what we do there. And then finally, in our world, capital allocation is everything. Now where you choose to invest your capital, especially in a capital-intensive business, has never mattered more. We've always run our telecom businesses as if we're going to own them forever. And even in that context, they generally have not required any cash from us to achieve their strategic and operating objectives. We will invest in a telecom business when it unlocks value for shareholders. We've said that many times, like we did with Sunrise, delevering the company pre-spin and like we're doing with the acquisition of Vodafone stake in Holland. We have been significant buyers of our own stock. $15 billion over the last 9 years to be exact, reducing the number of shares outstanding by 63% and ensuring that those who stuck around with us end up with a bigger piece of the pie. If you owned 1% of our company in 2017, you ended up with over 2.5% of Sunrise, for example. And finally, we do believe there will be opportunities in tech, infrastructure, energy, media, sports and live entertainment. These are areas where we have significant deal flow, great partnerships lined up, $10 per share of value and importantly, strategic flexibility to deliver that value to shareholders. So hopefully, that update was helpful for you, especially on the recent announcements of the 2 deals this morning. So with that, operator, we'll get to questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question will go to the line of Robert Grindle with Deutsche Bank.

My head is spinning with all the news you guys have provided. So I'll ask one question about the U.K. deal. 8 million Nexfibre homes post deal completion and the 2.1 million HFC home upgrade. Do you think that definitively unlocks the U.K. wholesale opportunity in a major way. Do you think you have to wait to get to the full 8 million? Or are you on a course before you get to that point to get more wholesale business in.

I'll take a crack at it, Robert. Thanks for the question. And Lutz or others -- Andrea can chime in here. But the 8 million will be achieved relatively quickly end of '27 probably. So that's a good fiber number for Nexfibre 2.0 both, as you say, from the 3 -- the contribution of the 3 entities. And VMO2 will be a significant wholebuy partner for that 8 million home footprint. And remember that Lutz and VMO2 continue to upgrade their network. So there'll be another 12 million homes on the VMO2 network that continue to be upgraded. So we believe you're looking at what is effectively a 20 million home footprint in the end, the vast majority of which will be fiber. So obviously, first order of business is to grow and manage our own customer base on that 20 million home network, but also very much so to provide a wholesale opportunity for the market, which is much needed for reasons that you understand very well. Does that answer your question?

It does, Mike. Is there a time line on getting the rest of the VMO2 network upgraded?

Well, I don't know if we've disclosed that time line. Lutz, if you want to reference that, let me know if we disclose that or not.

I would add only that we have already upgraded 5 million homes to fiber out of the 13 million we are having. So you -- Robert, you can add these 5 million to the 8 million. So you have very quickly an access to 13 million fiber homes. And the second part, right, I think we always said that we will enter the consumer wholesale market. And obviously, the more homes and fiber we are able to offer, the more interested it is. Further guidance on how quickly we will upgrade the remaining homes, we haven't given, and we don't want to.

Our next question will go to the line of Josh Mills with BNP Paribas.

Maybe I'll take my questions on the VodafoneZiggo transaction. I think you're still talking about a stable CapEx envelope over the guidance period. But now that you're creating this new Ziggo group with more scale, does it change your appetite or opportunity to invest more on the cable to the fiber upgrade strategy? Is there any synergies there you can take from your learnings in the Telenet business and bring them over to the Netherlands, it would be very helpful. And then secondly, I think on Slide 17, where you talk about the clear road map of bringing Ziggo Group leverage to 4.5x. Is that all organic deleveraging? Or would you be willing to inject cash into this business prior to the spin-off as you did with Sunrise.

Great questions. Listen, I think on the network strategy for Holland and Belgium, those plans are set. So we have made a definitive assessment of the CapEx strategy and network strategy for a fixed business in VodafoneZiggo's market, and we are going with DOCSIS 4. The team has already done a great job of getting 2 gig rolled out nationwide with the largest 2 gig provider, and they'll be at 4-gig and 8-gig right around the corner. So there is no strategy or plan to build fiber in the Netherlands, and we don't believe it's necessary either from a commercial and certainly not attractive from a capital point of view. So the CapEx profile does not change as a result of this or any announcements that we're making today. On the leverage, I think that as we mentioned, there's 2 very clear sources of deleveraging. One is organic growth. the second -- or 3, I guess, the second is free cash flow and paying down debt as we're doing in Sunrise. And then three is asset sales. So in the case of Holland, we have PropCo and TowerCo. In the case of Belgium, we have the Wyre stake. So there will be asset sales. With those proceeds used to delever, there will be growth in EBITDA organic, and there will be free cash to organically delever. And that is the plan. At this stage, we don't anticipate putting any capital or cash into the Ziggo Group to get the plans launched in 2027. And Charlie, do you want to add anything to that?

No, I absolutely endorse what it is. I mean remember, there are some pretty material financial synergies that we get, which obviously give us strong free cash flow. And I should clarify that, that $500 million is the annual target. It's not a cumulative target. I also think that there's -- Stephen has performed and his team, by the way, performed fantastically. And as they get this EBITDA turnaround, I think you can do the math and figure out how that contributes to getting towards this 4.5 target, which we think works based on what we saw in Sunrise.

The next question will go to the line of Matthew Harrigan with StoneX.

Since I'm the last American left in the draw again. When I talk to your U.S. peers on AI, they don't expect to see too much quantifiable benefit this year, but pretty substantially by '28. Is that something that you layer into your numbers somewhat. And clearly, the market is not remotely assigning the value of the ventures plus cash. So they're not going to give you anything for having your telecom OpEx. But what are your thoughts on really seeing that discernible in the numbers? And when you look at AI, is that -- I mean, clearly, a lot of the value in your network has been appropriated by Silicon Valley and other tech companies. But when AI really sticks in, are you going to see 85% of the benefit on the cost side? Or do you expect to see some revenue enhancements that actually attach to you as well? I know it's a fairly big question, but obviously, people are -- it will be very transformative if you can have your OpEx even if it's in 8 to 10 years.

Yes. Look, I'll address that generally, and I'll ask Enrique to step in and provide a bit more color. But 3 things are really driving for any telco driving the benefits from AI, right? Beginning with customer acquisition and retention, which we're all seeing marginal improvements from the investment in our call centers and things like that. The second is fraud, credit, things like that, that can really drive down OpEx and inefficiencies. And then as you mentioned, the network and operations. And I don't know, roughly, those are each going to contribute about 1/3, let's say, of the demonstrable benefits we expect to see in the next let's say, 1 to 3 years. And they're not small numbers. There will be real benefits. And I think the nice thing that I'm seeing in the space is that whereas a year ago on this call, I would have said that we're inventing a lot of these applications. Right now, we're getting bombarded with start-ups and third-parties and Silicon Valley companies that are doing a much better job in many instances of creating these solutions for us. And so the pace of integration and implementation, I think, is speeding up, and it's real. So as I said in my remarks, I don't think there's an industry better positioned to benefit from marginal improvement in CapEx, OpEx and revenue from AI. But I would emphasize the word marginal there. That's really all we're doing at this stage as an industry is finding marginal benefits. I think the real home run is to think more broadly and bigger about how we kind of disrupt our own supply chain, our own software stacks, our own operating models and to do that could be material. I'll let Enrique chime in if you want, if you're on, Enrique.

Yes. I mean I think maybe the first thing I'll emphasize, Mike, is, as you said, it is real. We have gone from a year ago exploring AI to now seeing real benefits being delivered today and even more importantly, over the next 12 to 24 months, pretty material improvements. I would say, maybe as most of the industry is seeing a lot of benefits on the call center and the support part of the business first. We'll see that going to operations. But we're really, really getting excited about what we're starting to see as innovation more on the revenue side. I think we're going to see '26, at the end of '26, we're going to look back and look at those revenue opportunities as the year where they became real.

Mike, can I just have a quick plug. Sorry, I was going to say can I have a quick plug at sort of Liberty Blume. Look, the other aspect of this is back-office services, which is not as big as what Mike and Enrique said in the front office and middle office, but the back office still is material for telco, and it's about $1 billion, $1.5 billion by some definitions of spend for us. And what Blume is finding out is there's lots of tech enablement with AI tools to significantly reduce their accounting, their payments, their procurement of these financial products, et cetera, et cetera. And we're finding actually these are opportunities where we're getting massive savings by reducing heads, but we're able to scale our existing heads to grow revenues. And that's really what's driving that 20% revenue growth that we see in Blume. And actually, we see that continuing for many years.

Our next question will go to the line of Polo Tang with UBS.

It's really about VMO2 guidance. It was weaker than expected with a minus 3% to minus 5% decline in EBITDA. I think consensus on the same basis was probably getting for about minus 1%. Can you help us understand how much of the decline relates to the rationalization in B2B that may be specific to VMO2? And separately, how much of the decline reflects weakness in the broader U.K. markets? And can you maybe just give us some color in terms of what you're seeing in terms of U.K. competitive dynamics in both mobile and broadband. And I also have a quick clarification in terms of the Netomnia Nexfibre deal because VMO2 is receiving in GBP 1.1 billion of cash from Nexfibre. But can you clarify what VMO2 is giving up? So specifically, what is the minimum commitment on the 4.6 million fiber footprint? And can you give some sense in terms of what the wholesale rate is per subscriber?

Yes. Thanks, Polo. I'll let Lutz address your first question around VMO2 guidance and what we're seeing in the market. And then Andrea, you can work up a good answer to the question around VMO2's commitments. I don't know how specific we're being about that as we sit here now, Polo, but I'll let Andrea address that. Guys?

Yes. Polo, so you can broadly contribute 30% to the B2B restatement of numbers, including Daisy. And 70% is attributed to a cautious view on the fixed consumer market. So it's not mobile, it is fixed consumer. As we all know, competition is very high as we speak. Yes, as Mike alluded to, I think we had a pretty good Q4 with very low fixed net add losses and a pretty stable ARPU. But so far, right, the market is even more competitive. There's some fixed telecom access ready outstanding from Ofcom. And therefore, we have factored this in a cautious guidance. The reason why you see a similar number on EBITDA is simply that we are also paying more and more wholesale fees to Nexfibre, and that is, to some extent, eating up some of our efficiencies.

But just to be clear, and Charlie, you keep me honest here, the guidance we provided today for VMO2 does not pro forma into that guidance the transaction with Substantial Group. So we'll have -- that is all happening real time.

We're going to have to amend it.

Yes.

Completely excludes it also. I think, Mike, why I said Nexfibre is we have a growing customer base in the existing Nexfibre coverage.

I know why you said it. I just wanted to clarify it. Andrea?

Polo, I think there were 3 questions there. One was, are we giving any sort of -- is there any sort of minimum penetration commitments. No, there's an adjustment at closing depending upon how many subs get transferred over, but that's very manageable. But going forward, there's no minimum commitments. There's also no migration commitments. The transaction has been designed to give Lutz full flexibility in terms of managing the migration from HFC to fiber, which we obviously thought was very important in the overall market context. I think the second question was just a clarification on what VMO2 is getting. And I think if you break it down, VMO2 is getting $1.1 billion in cash and is getting a -- is getting a 15% stake in Nexfibre. In return for that, it's going to spend GBP 150 million to buy approximately 500,000 subscribers at closings, we think is the estimate that the Substantial Group will have. And it's also committing its traffic on 4.6 million homes. 2.4 million are in the overlapping Netomnia area and then 2.1 million are in these new homes that we're contributing into the Nexfibre 2.0, which have been carefully selected to make it a contiguous complete network. So it's not going to be a sort of Swiss cheese. And I think what was -- there was a third point, I'm sorry, I'm just...

Third question is, are we providing any detail on wholesale rates and things of that nature. And the answer is no.

No. Yes. Thank you, Mike. Yes, thank you. We're not today, but it's a competitive wholesale rate.

Our next question will go to the line of Ulrich Rathe with Bernstein Societe Generale Group.

On the Belgium deal, you mentioned a synergy figure there. Could you talk a little bit about what kind of synergies these are because this is a cross-border deal where the story in European telecoms has always been that it's harder to create synergies. And specifically on the synergies, would the financial synergies that Charlie sort of alluded to be included in that EUR 1 billion figure. And if I may just add a clarification, there was some Bloomberg sort of headlines about Telenet deferring a refinancing because of difficult markets. Could you comment on that, if that is appropriate at this time.

Charlie?

Yes. Let me just comment on the Telenet refinancing. I think we felt that the market fully understood the number of steps we were taking in Belgium, which we essentially were to pay down debt to 4.5x on Telenet through the Wyre sale and the fact that we docked in the refinancing to separate out Wyre at the EUR 4.35 billion, we thought have been well understood. I think it probably was in hindsight, too much for the credit market to digest in one go. And that's fine. I mean it was an opportunistic transaction as we always do. We thought that by halving the amount of available Belgium debt, there'll be a lot more demand than we felt, and it was a pretty choppy market. And you may recall, it was a softer market that we had a few weeks ago. So I think the discretion is the better part of [ ballard ]. Nick and I felt that the right thing to do is take a pause. We will let these transactions settle. We'll prove out the various steps. And at the right time, we'll go away and do what we usually do, which is in the $500 million to $1 billion tranches refinanced. But we still have plenty of time. I think as we tried to show in the results call, we actually don't have any material debt maturities, if you include our revolver until 2029 in Telenet, but we're very confident, and hopefully the credit markets will support this, that as these steps unfold, we can essentially reprice the debt and extend the maturity. And it's interesting, actually, the debt still trades at a very tight level despite this transaction last week, which perhaps is a bit bewildering. Look, I think in terms of the synergies, I think I slightly disagree that I think there are cross-border synergies. Enrique has proved that with the incredible work he's been doing on technology. I mean there's an awful lot of scale benefits and national technology doesn't really have a difference market to market. And I think also, as you rightly point out, the ability to drive financial synergies will come because we are able to use the platform that we will create in VodafoneZiggo and Telenet to really drive the technology across the broader footprint, which obviously has some benefits to us. So I think we feel pretty good about the synergies. And actually, to be honest with you, we might have undercooked them because we were obviously operating on a clean team basis in this transaction. So stay tuned. Let's see what we can come up with.

Yes. Our track record on synergies is pretty good. And I would agree with Charlie's comment that we've probably undercooked them, especially on the OpEx and potential revenue side. Does that answer all your questions, Ulrich?

Yes. I was just wondering, so are the financial synergies included? Or is the $1 billion just the operational bit.

They are included.

They are included, yes.

Our next question goes from the line of David Wright with Bank of America.

Again, so much to absorb here. I guess when we're thinking about the Ziggo spin, Mike, it's a strong equity story similar to Sunrise, but that does ignore what I think you flagged at the time, which was Sunrise was a very clear and strong dividend payer, obviously, in a very low rate market. And we've seen that dividend growth just today in the Sunrise share price work so well. There's no dividend story here in Ziggo. And I guess my other question is, what's the sort of run rate of synergy you guys sort of need to hit in the short term to really commit to the spin. Is that date really in stone there? And I guess my sort of associated question is, I think the VodZiggo guidance was also quite a lot weaker than most of us had forecast alongside VMO2. I'm just wondering, is there a sense as you sort of restack this business that you're -- I don't want to use the phrase kitchen sinking, but you are guiding to find a level you can absolutely deliver on and maybe put a little bit more investment into 2026 to grow from.

Yes, David, that's a lot of good questions there. So I'll try to address and Stephen can jump in here as well. With respect to timing, I mean, we were purposely general about timing. We believe 2027, as we especially get into the second half of that -- of next year, we are going to be able to see or forecast the kind of storyline here that the market will want to see. That does reflect and has comparisons to Sunrise, namely a deleveraging story from free cash flow, EBITDA growth and asset sales. Secondly, the ability to project or forecast a free cash flow number. We gave you a number today, EUR 500 million. That's 50% more free cash flow than Sunrise generates. It's not coming this year or next year, but we're going to be -- we believe we'll be able to forecast that kind of free cash flow story when it's time to get to the market. And I think the growth -- we've talked quite a bit about How We Win plan and how it -- we even showed you some visuals on the slides about how '26 is an investment year for 2027 and 2028, we start to see a rebound. So it's our view that all those things when they come together, will tell a compelling equity story. But here's the other thing to point out, which is unlike, say, Oddo, we're not listing this company through an initial public offering. We're not waiting to build a book. We're not looking for a minimum price. We're not going to raise primary capital. So those -- we don't have any of those strikes against us. We're listing the shares and spinning them off to shareholders exactly as we did with Sunrise and the market will find a value, we believe, a healthy good value well above the negative $5 we're getting in our stock today. That's all you got to believe. That's it. You've got to believe that there's good equity value in this story that in the hands of our shareholders, that equity value will trade well on a Euronext exchange with a compelling operating and brand-driven storyline, and it will be less than 0. It will be more than 0. That's all you got to believe. And so I think we have lots of flexibility here, tons of freedom to plan how and when and what we do, which is -- which to me is very exciting. Stephen, do you want to add anything to that on the Vodafone side?

Well, I think the only component I'd add to it is that, as you said -- can you hear me, Mike?

Got you.

So look, as you said, I think the core of it is that we have an unfolding story of business improvement. So the underlying value of the core VodafoneZiggo business, I think, will come through as we get through the investment in 2026 and into 2027. We've shown a track record so far in the last 12 months, and we've got high confidence given what we're seeing today and given the plans we have ahead of us that 2026 will be another step forward in the plan. And as you say, 2027 will show those return on investments, and we'll accelerate out of that. So I think the core business, if you value the core business, will look slightly different in 12 months from now.

Our next question goes to the line of James Ratzer with New Street Research.

So I was interested in following up on the slide you had to discuss the kind of Netomnia Virgin transaction in a bit more detail on Slide 22. So you've got a very kind of helpful chart there showing all the cash movements. Could you just run me through also what the debt movements are because Netomnia, I think, will have around maybe a bit over GBP 1 billion of debt on closing. Does that all go to Nexfibre? Or does some of it go to VMO2? And then of the subscribers or the homes, sorry, you've got the 2.5 million homes where VMO2 is going to pay committed wholesale fees on closing. How many subscribers does VMO2 have in that footprint, please? And then secondly, on the 2.1 million homes that then Nexfibre will be upgrading, what's VMO2's customer volume in that footprint? And to give us an idea of kind of Lutz's incentive to migrate customers over to FTTH, can you let us know, please, how many customers today within VMO2 have been upgraded from HFC to FTTH, where VMO2 has done that upgrade itself as a result of the overlay.

Thanks, James. Charlie, you hit the debt question, please?

Yes. So first of all, there's no incremental debt going on to VMO2. I'm not sure how much we're disclosing, but I would underline that Nexfibre will have a fully financed business plan to get to 8 million fiber homes, with a combination of existing debt, but also the undrawn facilities. So this is a fully financed cash flow positive AltNet, which I don't think we can say about all of them. And I think in terms of the details of the numbers, look, let's take that offline because I'm not sure what we've agreed to disclose or not disclose. But that is the key message, fully financed and no debt into VMO2.

And on the 4.6 million homes, Andrea, keep me honest, I think you could -- we're not disclosing the number of customers today, but you can read across from our broad penetration rates to those areas. It's going to roughly equal our current penetration rates. I think it's a safe bet. Lutz, do you want to address the fiber question?

Yes. So far, we have a very low number on fiber in our existing Virgin Media, O2 cable coverage, right? Majority of our customers in fiber are coming from the fiber network Nexfibre owns. And so we still -- no customer is leaving us because of technology. Also, we are able to acquire exactly the same number of customers in the cable network as well as in fiber. So therefore, commercially, we don't have, at the moment, an incentive to put customers on fiber. And therefore, we have a low number for now.

Yes. But in this, you should assume in the deal we just announced, there will be some incentives, for example, cost to connect, wholesale rates, but we're not disclosing those details today.

That will conclude the formal question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the call over to you, Mr. Fries, for closing remarks.

Sure. Thanks for sticking with us, guys. Sorry, we went a little bit over. We had a lot, as you said, to disclose. I just want to say quickly, thank you to everybody on the call today from my team because this has been a Herculean effort and just about everybody on this call was involved in these transactions and of course, delivering these results. So thank you to each of you for the great work and terrific, terrific outcomes. And look at the deals we think were announced today, I'm excited about. I think they unlock both value, but also give us a tactical runway to control our destiny here, specifically in the Benelux region, but also, I think, increasingly in the U.K. market. So they're the right kind of deals. That's exactly what we told you we would do a year ago. I think you can trust us when we tell you where we're focused, what we're focused on and how we intend to create value. So I appreciate you joining us. I know there'll be a lot of questions and follow-up, you know where to find us. So thank you, everybody.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes Liberty Global's Fourth Quarter 2025 Investor Call. As a reminder, a replay of the call will be available in the Investor Relations section of Liberty Global's website. There, you can also find a copy of today's presentation materials.