Sunrise Communications Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 19, 2025
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Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Sunrise First Quarter twenty twenty five Financial Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants have been in listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q and A session. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

Operator

Page two of the presentation 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 Sunrise expectation with respect to their respective outlook and future growth prospects on the information and statements that are not historical effect. These forward looking statements involve certain risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the statements. These risks include those needed in Sunlight's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recently filed 20 F. Sunrun disclaims any obligation to update any of these forward looking statements to reflect any change in the expectations or in the condition on which any such statement is based.

Operator

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Alex Herrmann, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Alex Herrmann
VP - IR ,Corporate Finance and Treasury at Sunrise GmbH

Thank you, operator. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for joining us today. I'd like to welcome you to our Q1 twenty twenty five results call. As this is our first pure quarterly update call since our listing, let me briefly summarize which documents were published today and which will also be made available on a quarterly basis going forward. So next to the press release we published earlier, you will find on our Investor Relations website the interim financial statements, the fact sheet as well as the presentation that we will discuss in this call.

Alex Herrmann
VP - IR ,Corporate Finance and Treasury at Sunrise GmbH

Now turning to the presentation itself. As per usual, with me today are Andre Krause, our CEO as well as Jani Frutier, our CFO. We will start the call with a presentation, which will be followed by a Q and A session. With that, let me hand over to Andre. Please go ahead.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Yes. Thanks, Alex, and good morning, everyone, for our Q1 results. Let me start off the presentation by talking you through an overview of the key takeaways of today's presentation. So firstly, we have seen Q1 as being a quarter with continued customer growth and with a number of new technical and product launches that we'll talk through in a minute. The quarter as such was somewhat softer in terms of trading, which was intentionally also driven by the fact that we had some price rises coming up and hence had reduced our activities a bit and had also a few spillover effects from the Black Friday activities in Q4, which had impacted the quarter.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

As I said, we launched a new product portfolio in April that is focusing on more for more for our customers and also on loyalty. And there's a number of new innovative products on the basis on the back of that launch coming throughout the year. We also launched our five gs standalone technology in our network, and we'll talk about that later on as well. Secondly, the Q1 financials were in line with our expectations. And on the back of that, we are also confirming our full guidance for this year.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Revenues were down by 3.3%, also impacted by lower hardware sales on the back of increasing replacement cycles on hardware and, of course, also impacting by the right pricing activities from last year on the fixed side in particular. Down to EBITDAaL, we are plus 0.4% year on year. The revenue decline was only partially impacting gross profit. And then with a number of OpEx optimizations and some phasing, we see the EBITDA number growing year on year. We're now fully confirming our guidance.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

As said, that includes also our dividend per share guidance that we expect to grow by 2.7% for the year 2025 to be paid in 2026. Certainly, we also held our first AGM just last week. You probably all saw the outcome of that. Shareholders approved our 2024 dividend and the payment has been executed in the meanwhile. And today, we are also announcing that we will go ahead with the ADS delisting for the August 2025.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Already 82% of our ADS have been converted of our Class A shares have been converted and 98% of the Class B shares have been converted. So we are progressing as announced as part of the IPO towards the delisting. Now with that, let me move to a bit more detail and granularity on our commercial performance. And I would really like to start off with our new portfolio, which is called Swiss Connect. And the name is actually the program of the new portfolio.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

It is, like I said, a more for more portfolio. So customers do get more roaming included. All tariff components now have certain roaming services included, and that comes in with a slightly higher price across all of the tariffs that we have. We also added a new Travel East plan, which covers the Balkan region as we do have also quite some frequent travelers to that region that seems to be an important product and a need that we are covering with that tariff in particular. Important on top of that is also this portfolio is not only looking at more for more and the inclusion of roaming, but it's also adding loyalty rewards.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

And these loyalty rewards are not only for new, but also for existing customers. That is closing an important gap that we had in the past where existing customers were oftenly complaining about the fact that our promotions were mainly focused on new customers and existing customers were not benefiting. With the structure and the mechanic of the new portfolio, this is now past history. And hence, we believe that this portfolio will drive more value also to our existing customers. Lastly, we added also Perplexity to our product lineup.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

So customers do get an exclusive loyalty offer, which is a one year Perplexity Pro subscription that everybody can use. We are quite happy about that inclusion because for us, it looks like the Perplexity is a great AI tool that helps our customers to use AI on, I would say, basis that includes all of the current news in the web, has great referencing tools and while we are speaking, has already 10,000 customers who have taken this option. Now, let me also talk about the price rises that we have executed in the first quarter. So you see on the slide that we have done price rises across all our brands, our Sunrise main brand, also our Sunrise B2B customers to the largest part of the portfolio and also for our yellow customers. For the Sunrise brands, those price rises have become effective in March, while yellow only became April.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

So you see from that that the price rise has only marginally impacted the quarter, and we are expecting more price rise positive impacts in the quarters to come. We have increased on the main brand side by 1.8% and on flanker brand by 1.5%. The main brand scope included fixed and mobile, while on the Flanker brand, we have focused on mobile only. And hence, we are expecting also the benefits down to revenue and ARPU in the coming quarters. We've also added new Moments rewards to our Moments program.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

As you remember, Moments is out there for three years now, and it's actually growing in usage. And it's trying to drive loyalty with our customers. We have focused in the past very much on entertainment experiences. We have now also added more features and more experiences for families, like for example, Circus Knee and Europa Park and the Partei cinemas are also new additions that are broadening the scope of the rewards that we are providing. And with that, we think we are going to reach more of our customers going forward with those exclusive benefits that we are providing.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

As you know, B2B is a very important part of our story. And also in Q1, we had quite a number of movements. I'd like to talk you through our new Swiss Post testimonial campaign. Swiss Post is now a customer of Sunrise of more than ten years and hence are now participating in this campaign. They are demonstrating how our fixed and mobile offerings that we are driving to the Swiss Post are supporting their business.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

And as you can see from the numbers, Swiss Post obviously is a very large enterprise in Switzerland and very much operating in the entirety of the country and driving vast volumes of logistics throughout the country. And we are very excited that we have been with SwissBoat and alongside SwissBoat now for ten years. And I think this was this testimonial campaign as well demonstrating the strengths and delivery that we have done for this customer. We also added new customers in the quarter. So we added, for example, the Aker Group, the Partei Cinema, the Volare Group, to name a few.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

And we also had important prolongations, so customers that have been with us and have prolonged their contracts like the airport of Zurich, University Hospital Of Zurich, Dertour, which is a touristic company and also the Tour Gaurcanto Nalbank. And again, we are excited about the momentum that we have in B2B. And I think we are in a good position to further accelerate our growth in the B2B areas in the quarters to come. Also, as I said already at the beginning, we are very excited about the launch of five gs SA. We are the first operator in Switzerland that has launched five gs stand alone.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

And furthermore, given the fact that we have rolled out this technology now to ninety nine point five percent well, we've rolled out to our entire network and our entire five gs network has 99.5% POP coverage. So this is not just a trial, but it's widely available in Switzerland, and we are rolling it out now also to our customers. We have started with a soft launch now in the second quarter, the beginning of the second quarter. And on the back of that, we are also going to switch off our three gs network during the second and third quarter. As a result of that, we will also be in a position to reallocate spectrum to our five gs network, which will then further widen and expand our five gs coverage.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

We are expecting that five gs SA will not only improve the coverage, but will also reduce battery consumption, will provide higher security and encryption standards. We will also be able to provide unique services based on the slicing technology that is only fully usable with the implementation of five gs SA. And also, we will provide ultra reliable and low latency communication tools. Now this is, of course, an enabler technology and we are on the back of that expecting further commercial launches during the course of this year and also in the next year. So very excited of our technology leadership in this mobile area.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

As I said, I think we are pushing the bar higher again in the Swiss market and are positioning ourselves as a driver for this technology innovation. Now with that, let me talk about the trading results in a bit more detail for the first quarter. As I said, trading came in a bit softer on the back of the reduced intentionally reduced commercial trading activity on the back of the price rises coming. And as a result, we have seen 12,000 net additions on the mobile postpaid side and 5,000 net additions on the Internet side. I think that is pretty decent momentum despite the fact that we had significantly reduced our promotional activities in the first quarter.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Our FMC quota has further increased to 58.3%, that's 1.3 percentage points sorry, 1.5 percentage points over the course of the last year and demonstrates that convergence remains a key trend supporting also our bundle product policy that we are driving. ARPUs, as you see on mobile, have been reducing to CHF 28,600,000.0. So we have seen a reduction of CHF 1.1 over the last year. This is mainly driven by roaming reductions that we have been seeing in the first quarter in particular. And on the back of that, the new product portfolio is intended to actually help with More for More to drive back volume that we have lost from the variable consumption of roaming and drive higher prices by including more roaming in this new portfolio.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Secondly, on the fixed side, also our ARPU has declined to CHF 58. That's clearly on the back of the annualization of the right pricing efforts that we are driving. We are now at around 12,000 remaining customers that still have to be migrated. And as we said earlier, we are intending to finalize the migrations of those customers by the mid of the year. On top of that, there's also the fact that our Flanker brand product is still growing on the Internet side quite well.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

And given the ARPU differential between the first and the second brand, there's also some balancing happening on the fixed ARPU that is impacting the total ARPU of the customer base that we are showing here. Now I think on both on mobile and fixed, we are expecting a sequential stabilization on the back of the price rises on the mobile side, also on the back of the introduction, the migration of customers onto the new More for More portfolio. On the fixed side as well, we are expecting stabilization price rises helping, but also the tailing off of the right pricing activities should help us throughout the year. And we are expecting actually that the volume of trading may be lower at least in the first half on the back of all of introductions that we did and on the introductions of the new portfolio. But we are also expecting that ARPUs on the back of this will stabilize and will help our revenue then to achieve the guidance on the revenue end.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Now with that, I'm handing over for Jani for the more detailed financials.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

Thank you, Andre, and also welcome from my side. Before we start diving into the financials, let me remind everyone that the numbers that you're seeing on the pages are on a rebased basis. In Q1, there were two rebasings that we have laid out in a slide in the appendix. It doesn't change the revenue overall, but there was a shift from B2C customers to B2B as part of the legacy switch off of the UPC stack. And secondly, there was a product hierarchy reclassification that shifted some revenue from non subscription to subscription.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

But as said, all of the numbers and the year over year movements that you're seeing in the subsequent pages are net of that. So with that, if we zoom into the revenue, the 3.3% that Andre already referred to is mostly driven by the lower non subscription revenue in both fixed and mobile across B2C and B2B as well as the impact of the right pricing in the residential as part of the UPC base migrations. Then that is partially offset by continued customer growth in the Flanker brand, especially in the fixed part, and that is then tempering the revenue tailwinds. Then when we go to EBITDA, that is driven in part by a 1.3% decline in gross profit as some of the revenue decline is tempered because of the lower margin, especially of the handset sales with a slight improvement year over year in OpEx, which was in part driven by efficiencies and in part by phasing. Then when we go to adjusted EBITDA less P and E, you can see a slight decline.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

And although revenue was more of EBITDA was more or less flat, CapEx was higher and that is in part because of the front loading of the network and the CPE related investments. So purely phasing throughout the year rather than a sustained increase. When we get to adjusted free cash flow, minus 117,000,000 and lower than prior year year, which is then again driven by CapEx and two more things. One is the supplier phasing payment phasings and some other typical phasings in our seasonality and, of course, the interest payments that we typically do in Q1. When we go to the revenue slide then, minus 3.3% or €25,000,000 down year over year.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

What you can see here is that both the residential and the B2B other revenue or mostly non subscription revenue constitute to €12,000,000 decline, which isn't as part of the softer takeoff of new product launches both in mobile but also in TV where we had less TV gifting than what we typically do as part of our fixed subscription additions. When we then zoom into residential subscription, you can still see the EUR 50,000,000 decline in the fixed subscription, which is driven by the right pricing on the one hand and by the brand mix between Flanker and the main brand. Mobile, 3,000,000 decline is in majority driven by the lower variable roaming usage. We expect the residential movement to further improve from here, and this was already an improvement versus what we had seen in H2 twenty twenty four, in part because of the new portfolio the mobile portfolio that Andre already spoke about. Then also the tailwind from the price increases.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

Just to reiterate, the B2C main brand price increase is set in these numbers for one month, whereas the flanker price flanker brand not at all yet. And as we are finally through the customer migrations, we will still have about the three subsequent quarters impacted by the financial financially from the right pricing, but the actual commercial activities are behind us. And that is then all partially offset by a continued growth in the Flanker brand. When we focus on B2B, on the one hand, we see continued growth in the large enterprise segment. However, that was slightly softer than what we saw in the prior quarters, and that had to do with the big one off deal that we did in 2024, which, of course, has now been annualized.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

And secondly, we did see mobile lower liquidity in the market. So when we then zoom to EBITDA, revenue decline significantly tempered down to gross profit in part because of the lower margin of the handsets that I already referred to. And then also in B2B, you can see that the revenue growth was further accelerated by a number of reductions in direct cost and a solid MVNO performance. The growth that you see in infra is in part due to the phasing of direct cost in relation to the network build that we're doing and then monetizing with our infrastructure partner, Scelnex. OpEx, you can see a €7,000,000 decline year over year.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

And I would classify half of those savings approximately as hard savings and the other half as phasing mostly into Q2. And that has to do with some of the marketing activities that we are driving. Leasing, you can see a net increase, albeit that is again different phasing of the excess costs, whereas the underlying leases are increasing due to switch due to shift into the access line or the Allo deal that we have with Swisscom. Then when we get to Slide number 14 and focusing on adjusted EBITDA less P and E and adjusted FCF, What you see on the left side is the adjusted EBITDA less P and E additions. We have now given you more granularity on the buckets of CapEx, how we look at it.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

So with CPE coverage, capacity, product and enablers and baseline, we will continue to report these categories going forward. And this is the way how we look at the spend of our CapEx. And I think here, again, I referenced to it already before. You see that the decrease on adjusted EBITDA less P and E additions come solely from the higher CapEx, which as I referred to already is due to the phasing. Full year, we expect a slight reduction of CapEx as we have guided for versus prior year.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

Then when we get to adjusted FCF on the right, we spoke about CapEx already. The interest growth that you're seeing here is still in relation to the debt reduction that we did in Q4. So in Q4, actually paid down the debt. But as everybody, I guess, is aware, we have both the FX and the interest rates fully hedged. And what you see here, the higher costs were in relation to the retirement of the derivative instruments in relation to the debt reduction of Q4.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

So basically, we paid the we retired some of the instruments and some of those instruments were in the money. And so therefore, there was a cash outflow. However, if you look at the underlying reduction and therefore, the third party debt obligations, they have actually gone down. And so therefore, the €7,000,000 is a one off, if you will, that is not expected to recur. Tax largely unchanged.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

And I think important to note here that on an adjusted FCF basis, we exclude the tax settlement that is in relation to the past because that was prefunded by Liberty Global when we did the spin off. And secondly, it is a non recurrent event. I give you some more detail later in the presentation on the actual tax settlement. Lastly, net working capital significantly down. Euros 18,000,000 of that is in relation to leases, which, as I spoke to earlier already, is phasing.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

The other part is higher supplier payments that we typically have there and vendor financing repayments. All in all, as we have guided for, we expect this to normalize throughout the year. Go then to the next page. Andre referred to it already, but in general, we are confirming all of our financial metrics with revenue broadly stable, adjusted EBITDA stable to low single digit growth, CapEx at 15% to 16% and then leading to a free cash flow of $370,000,000 to €390,000,000 And lastly, upon achieving those guidance, we expect to propose a dividend of €3.42 for the Class A shares or €0.34 for the Class B shares that are there. Lastly, I would like to reiterate the fact that the growth metrics that you're seeing here for revenue and especially EBITDA are in relation to the rebased 2024 numbers, which include an approximately €30,000,000 higher cost for 2024, which is in relation to all of the stand alone items, which we have spoken about before.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

All right. So if we then go to my last slide, two things to update you on. On the one hand, we paid the dividend actually today after it was improved during the AGM last week. I spoke already about the growth, so 2.7% expected. And lastly, which is now also fully confirmed after the completion of the AGM, the dividends were paid out from foreign capital reserves, which means that they are not subject to Swiss withholding tax or in general for Swiss personal residents are fully tax excluded.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

And lastly then, and we haven't disclosed this amount before, the remaining amount after the 2024 dividend payout is approximately €2,580,000,000 in reserves that then can be used to pay dividends on a tax rebate on a Swiss withholding tax basis. Then lastly, on the right, you can see the sort of the remaining process that we're envisaging in relation to the ADS. So by now, 82% of the Class A ADSs have been canceled and 98% of the Class B. We can see that the volumes in the Swiss line have nicely and subsequently improved and are now on a daily basis accounting for more than the majority of the total traded shares. As part of the IPO, we had said that we intended to switch that listing off from the NASDAQ nine months after, which we are now confirming.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

The ADS listing was always only envisaged as a means to distribute the shares to our shareholders. But the original hypothesis, of course, was always that this share was better traded in Switzerland locally than on the NASDAQ. Once we switch once we delist the ADS, a Class A ADS from the NASDAQ, then it's our intention to terminate the sponsorship of both ADS programs ninety days after the last trading, which then further reduces, if you will, the level of support for the ADSs. And by then, you can only trade the ADSs on an over the counter basis in The U. S.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

And then lastly, we intend to apply for the deregistration with The U. S. Securities And Exchange Commission following the delisting and determine delisting and then the retraction of the sponsorship. And by doing that, we are terminating the reporting obligations under the SEC, which then will further simplify our operating model and also reduce cost in relation to that. We expect that termination to happen approximately twelve months after the original delisting, and it has to do with the fact of certain requirements that have to be fulfilled in terms of where the volumes of shares are trading across the world before the SEC will accept the deregistration, if you will.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

And so with that,

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

I give it back to you, Andre.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Yes. Thanks, Jani. And before we open up for Q and A, let me just quickly summarize one more time. So firstly, I would say we have landed the price rise well and successfully.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Again, we have been leading the market by going first. But by now, all of our competitors have followed. And I think this is playing the leadership role and also the pricing power that we think we have. Our new portfolio is a more for more portfolio, which has a higher list prices than before. Again, I think all of the movements are demonstrating our drive for value, which has come in the first quarter with somewhat softer trading, and we are also expecting a somewhat softer trading to continue for the second quarter on the back of that.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Nevertheless, the price increase, which has not yet left their mark really in our financials, will support an improvement on ARPU as we go along and will help to drive value and revenues for the rest of the year. We have also again demonstrated technology leadership by going first to a five gs stand alone network that now covers 99.5% of Switzerland. And I guess with that, we are not only the first in Switzerland, but from a reach of that network, we are probably one of the first in Europe that is doing that. And on the back of that, there will be a variety of benefits to our customers that we will exploit going forward. As Jani showed in detail, our financials are on track, which gives us the opportunity to fully confirm our financial guidance for the year and again, including also an increase of our dividend to CHF 3.42 for the year 2025, which I think is, again, also demonstrating the financial strength of the business going forward.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

With that, we close the presentation, and I'll ask the operator to start the Q and A.

Operator

Thank you, sir. We will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question comes from Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead, sir.

Andrew Lee
Andrew Lee
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Good morning, everyone. I had two questions. Thanks for the detail you gave on your price adjustments in Q1. Just wondered if you could talk about what how you see the broader competitive environment and how you've seen that kind of response from competitors in particularly in residential mobile and fixed. Just to give it context, Swisscom spoke about it a couple of weeks ago and said it hadn't really seen any change in the degree of competitive intensity on residential fixed, but had seen small kind of signs of slight increase in or improvement on the mobile side.

Andrew Lee
Andrew Lee
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

That's kind of first question. Then second question is just related to that. You talked about lower promotional spend in Q1. Can you just explain exactly why you would reduce promotional spend through the price rise process? And then should we expect promotional spend to increase again in Q2 back to normalized levels?

Andrew Lee
Andrew Lee
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

How should we think about that? Thank you.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Yes. Thanks, Andrew, for those questions. So let me talk to the competitive environment and how we see it evolving. I think I would clearly echo that we see on mobile that the net prices, if you deduct the promotional period, have gone up over the last couple of months. I think post Black Friday, there's some rationalization happening.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Still, I think there's also a number of smaller players out there that are still operating at low price points. I think the situation is kind of fragile. So everybody has understood that the direction of travel should be that we can't continue to just drive prices down. Elasticity is actually declining, given the fact that prices have come down substantially over the last couple of years. And as a result, now we are, I think, at a turning point where we have to rationalize our pricing behavior.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

It's good to see that the price rises have been taken on also by our competitors. We would have not expected Swisscom to do that with the main brand, but they did with Wingo. I think that all is indicating towards the right direction. On fixed, I'm also not surprised that the promotional intensity has remained the same. In fact, prices have also not been moving for the last, I would say, years, right?

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

So if you look at the net prices that are resulting, then I think there's little to no improvement on that, which has also to do with the wholesale nature of most of the fiber networks. So there is a natural limit to what can be priced. But on those levels, it has been quite stable, I would say. So therefore, I would also not see that there's increasing aggression on any of it. So from our point of view, a fragile moment because everybody is trying to get in the right direction, but everybody is also needing to then deal with lower volumes on the back of that.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Liquidity is not necessarily growing. If the only feature that was stipulating liquidity in the past, which was price promotions, is being reduced. Now that's exactly where we are turning towards a main brand strategy that is more looking towards innovation, service and loyalty. And of course, price will continue to play a role, but it can't be the only argument going forward. That's how I would depict the competitive environment.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

And maybe Jani, on the promotional spend, you want to take that one?

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

Yes, sure. Well, I think why one would reduce promotional intensity when you're doing the price increase, I think Andre referred to it already. It's that when you are bringing up the price, it's not sure you want to use then a lot of above the line marketing to shout about new promotions, which typically come at a discount. And so I think that's the commercial reason behind it. I think, like I said during the EBITDA slide, of the EUR 7,000,000, approximately EUR 3,500,000.0 is phasing, of which of the marketing campaigns is one.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

I think the way to think about it is that EUR 3,500,000.0 higher of lower spend that we saw in Q1 is supposed to come back throughout the year and marketing campaigns is a large element of that, but not the only one, just to put that into context.

Andrew Lee
Andrew Lee
Managing Director at Goldman Sachs

Thanks. That's very helpful.

Operator

The next question comes from Polo Tange from UBS. Please go ahead.

Polo Tang
Polo Tang
Managing Director at UBS Group

Hi, thanks for the presentation. I've got three quick questions. The first one is, at the end of the remarks, you flagged softer trading in Q2. So can I clarify, was this a reference to net adds? Because I'm assuming that your revenues will have the benefit of price rises and your new More for More portfolio.

Polo Tang
Polo Tang
Managing Director at UBS Group

Second question, just continuing on revenues. In Q1, you saw a decline in terms of handsets, hardware or your non subscription revenues. This is obviously lower margin, but I'm just curious in terms of how we should think about the evolution of this line in the next few quarters. My final question is just on your plans to delist the ADSs in August, just given reduced reporting requirements. Just trying to work out whether this could be a notable saving or not?

Polo Tang
Polo Tang
Managing Director at UBS Group

And how quickly could this feed through into numbers? Thanks.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Yes, Polo, thanks for your questions. So on the Q2 trading remark, it clearly was related to the trading in terms of physicals. So not in terms of revenue. You're absolutely right. The revenue will have the benefit of the price rises really coming through for in full for the first time only with the Q2 numbers and from there on.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

In terms of volume, as I said, liquidity, given that promotional activity has been reduced and prices have gone up, is slightly coming down. And hence, we are also not expecting that the Q2 net add figure will be a very high one. We rather expect it to be on softer levels. And that's absolutely fine from our perspective given the fact that we are benefiting from the price measures that we have taken in terms of revenue generation. And then hardware delisting, Jan, you want to

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

take this too?

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

Yes, sure. No problem. Well, if you look at the non subscription decline as part of the Q1 results, they were significantly going down on a percentage basis. And we that is in part because also some of the new launches happen typically in Q1 from some of the providers, which I think were not as strong this year, and we don't expect that sort of percentage wise decline to continue throughout the year.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

We expect that to normalize throughout the coming year. And of course, nobody knows how the new Apple launch is going to be later this year. And of course, we expect, let's say, a more tempered decline, if you will. Then on the deregistration, two things. So yes, there is absolutely school savings that will occur as part of that.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

But those will only at first start to appear in 2026. Because what is important to note, there's effectively three steps in the deregistration process. So first is the delisting of the NASDAQ. Then secondly is the retraction of the sponsorship, which then sort of makes the program not sponsored by us anymore. And then thirdly, it is the deregistration from the SEC obligations, which can only happen first time twelve months after the delisting of the NASDAQ because basically what the SEC says is that the trading volumes in The U.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

S. Versus the rest of the world have to significantly reduce so that there is no exposure anymore for U. S. Investors, if you will, after which you can then stop to report under U. S.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

Law and to U. S. In terms of all of the requirements that come with that. So yes, there will be savings. We'll talk to those to you as we give guidance for 2026 because they don't impact the 2025 financials, if you will.

Polo Tang
Polo Tang
Managing Director at UBS Group

Thanks.

Operator

The next question comes from Maurice Patrick from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Maurice Patrick
Maurice Patrick
Analyst at Barclays Capital

Good morning, Thank you for taking the questions. Just a couple from my side, please. The first one really is just a technical question. If you could provide the split of your net adds on the main brand and the ZOLYELLO brand would be helpful. The second question relates to just phasing of revenues in ARPU.

Maurice Patrick
Maurice Patrick
Analyst at Barclays Capital

So if I'm not wrong, you've guided to broadly stable revenues. You were down 3.3% Q1. You've talked about a softness at quarter. So presumably, 2Q could be minus 2%, minus 3% maybe depending on the equipment volumes you spoke to. I mean the price increase is relatively small.

Maurice Patrick
Maurice Patrick
Analyst at Barclays Capital

I'd love to understand the phasing of the ARPU and the revenues throughout the year. That would be very helpful. Thank you.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

All right. Thanks for your question, Maurice. Well, we are not splitting out the net adds by brand. But I would say that there's no change either, right? I mean, remember that as part of the IPO of the listing, we were talking a bit about of how the dynamics between the different brands are.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

That's pretty stable, but we continue not to share detailed net add figures by brand. And for the phasing of revenues, Jani, do want to take the one?

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

Yes, sure. So the I think, like I said on the revenue, half of the decline that we saw approximately in Q1 was driven to the hardware or hardware related revenues. And like I answered on Polo, we expect that to significantly normalize over the quarters. So with that, if you will, on a normalized basis, the revenue decline was not 3.2 or the 3.3% that we saw was only half driven by subscription revenues, which then, if you phase in the fact that we don't have really the price increase of 1.5% to 1.8% on a large part of those subscription revenues that have to come through secondly, the fact that the right pricing is going to temper in terms of year over year impact on the subsequent quarters in the year. And then I don't want to sort of speculate here around the commercial performance that we are going to have in the outer quarters.

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

But as Andre said, that we are excited about some of the launches that we're doing. So of course, those sit in our plans as well then in terms of the expectations for the quarter. So I hope that helps you to sort of frame how the revenue is going to trend throughout the quarters.

Maurice Patrick
Maurice Patrick
Analyst at Barclays Capital

Yes. Thanks for that. Maybe as a very quick follow-up. Would it be fair to assume you're expecting most of the price increase therefore to drop through to the bottom line to ARPU?

Jany Fruytier
CFO at Sunrise GmbH

Look, most is a wide range, and I'm happy to confirm that most, if you will. I think Andre just spoke about it that we are very happy with how the price increase has evolved. We actually saw we the result of it was better than expectations. I don't think we maybe want to say anything more of the percentages on that.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Yes.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

But I think most is clearly the right term as it was 1.8% or 1.5% is also not massive increases. So the counter effects have been relatively small and hence, yes, we are expecting that most of the price rise impact is going to land in our revenues and at the bottom line.

Maurice Patrick
Maurice Patrick
Analyst at Barclays Capital

Very clear. Thanks guys.

André Krause
CEO at Sunrise GmbH

Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Alex Herrmann for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Alex Herrmann
VP - IR ,Corporate Finance and Treasury at Sunrise GmbH

So thank you all very much for attending today's call. Actually, that concludes the call for today. As always, if there are any further questions, please do reach out to the Investor Relations team. Thank you, and all have a good day and week ahead.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Analysts
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Key Takeaways

  • In Q1, Sunrise saw continued customer growth and rolled out several new technical and product initiatives, but intentionally dialled back promotions ahead of price increases, leading to softer trading volumes.
  • Financials were in line with expectations—revenues fell 3.3% year-on-year while EBITDAaL rose 0.4%—allowing the company to fully confirm its 2025 guidance and target a 2.7% dividend increase.
  • Sunrise launched its Swiss Connect “more-for-more” portfolio across all brands, embedding inclusive roaming and loyalty rewards for new and existing customers to bolster ARPU and retention.
  • The operator completed a nationwide 5G standalone rollout covering 99.5% of the population, becoming the first in Switzerland to do so and planning to decommission 3G to free up spectrum.
  • Progressing with its post-IPO plan, Sunrise has converted over 82% of Class A and 98% of Class B ADSs and intends to delist from Nasdaq in August 2025, reducing U.S. reporting obligations.
A.I. generated. May contain errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Sunrise Communications Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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