Elisa Oyj

OMXH:ELISA

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q4

[Vesa Sahivirta, Director of Investor Relations]

Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Elisa's Fourth Quarter 2020 Analyst Call and Analyst Meeting here in our headquarters. My name is Vesa Sahivirta, I'm Head of Investor Relations, and here is a very familiar team with me, CEO, Veli-Matti Mattila; and CFO, Jari Kinnunen. We start this meeting with the presentation followed by Q&A. And first, we take questions from here, from our audience, and then from the conference call lines. I think we are ready to start this meeting. So I hand the word to Veli-Matti, please.

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Thank You, Vesa, and welcome to our interim report results review on my behalf as well. We had a strong fourth quarter, continuing our development -- good development, revenue growing by 2% and EBITDA also growing by 2%. Mobile service revenue got back on the positive track with 0.7% year-on-year growth even if we didn't see any roaming revenues for fourth quarter either. Postpaid churn increased to 19.8%. It was a raise from third quarter, but slightly below the fourth quarter in '19. But nevertheless, 19.8%, of course, shows that the competition is keen in our market. Postpaid mobile subscription base was increasing by 22,000 and so did also the fixed broadband subscription base by a bit more than 4,000. 5G momentum continues to build up, and towards the end of the year, more and more. Our network now covers more than 2 million of Finns, and our number of subscriptions reached almost 200,000 by the end of the year with 5G. For the full year, the revenue growth was 3% and earnings per share, 6%. EBITDA reached EUR 685 million for the full year. Our CapEx was in line with the guidelines. We have given 12% of revenues, EUR 236 million altogether. The mobile service revenue growth for the full year was 0.5%. We had the roaming revenue decline as a bit of a challenge like all the operators. But of course, the good upselling of higher speeds and also some product changes contributed positively also this year and continued to do going forward. Number of subscriptions stayed pretty much on the same level, both in mobile side as well as in fixed broadband side. And the mobile data consumption is continuing to increase, now almost 40% increase in the mobile data traffic in our networks. In terms of the revenue, all the services basically contributed to the increase in mobile -- in the revenue side. We, of course, had also inorganic elements with the acquisitions we have done. For mobile service revenue, good upselling of higher speed in 4G continues and has continued. And so also does the 5G upgrades, they start to contribute to the mobile service revenues positively. We have, of course, made -- continued also some product changes for some cohorts of customers. But of course, there was a lot of negative from the roaming for fourth quarter as well. We continued to develop our productivity based on Elisa's culture and our own way, Elisa way, to continuously improve the operations in all parts of the operations by having better processes, better practices, but also with the use of technologies of automization -- automation as well as digitalization tools. And the churn has reached almost the levels we saw a year ago in the fourth quarter, and we have active competition going on with campaigning and there is no kind of major change in the competitive landscape. If we look at the segments then in the Consumer side. We saw nice revenue growth of 4% and EBITDA even growing by 8%. In the Corporate Customer side where the roaming has more told to the revenues as well as to profit. We had, however, flat revenue development in the Corporate Customer segment. And then with the EBITDA, we saw minus 8% result there. We continued to execute our strategy with 3 focus areas where we see very good potential for value creation for our customers and shareholders in all of these 3 focus areas going forward. When we look at the mobile side, 5G momentum really has been building up. And of the phones that we sell at the moment, more than 50% are 5G devices. Also, the upselling, like I said, continues nicely. We see continually customers moving to higher speed tiers from 3G even to 4G, but within 4G to higher speeds. And then customers already now are reaching 200,000 amount of customers in 5G already. We are with the networks in 64 towns and cities in Finland. And we have more than 50 5G device models and the amount is increasing. So really a wide set of devices available to customers, which is 1 element on increasing the momentum for 5G business. We also have made some world's first fastest 5G speeds, together with Nokia and Qualcomm, with the 26-gigahertz spectrum and the data usage, like I said, has been almost 40% year-on-year. In the strategy of expanding internationally with digital services, we continue step-by-step to execute our strategy. In the domestic digital services side, Elisa Viihde IPTV services continue very well. And now with the cooperation with Viaplay, the integrated streaming service was successfully launched in December. And we see very positive momentum and demand for the joint content that we offer with the Elisa Viihde-Viaplay, together with the Nordic Entertainment Group. We also continued to get international interest on Elisa Viihde's original series from different countries, from different players like BBC, for example. And also in our domestic IT business, we see solid sales growth there, continuing the -- building momentum for that business line as well in the domestic businesses. In the international digital services, we have continued with acquisitions as well. In the end of the year, we acquired camLine Group, a software solutions provider for manufacturing industry from Germany. We continued to provide data and AI-driven intelligent manufacturing solutions to global customer base, including semiconductor and electronics manufacturers and medical devices in industries. And the camLine's global footprint to the customers, together with camLine, we can supplement their offering with Elisa Smart Factory capable solutions, having more speed to this business. Also on the Elisa Automate business side, we continued with the good cooperation and work with Polystar. But also with Elisa Automate, we signed a deal with T-Mobile for the Czech and Slovak companies to deliver virtual network operations and automization solution. And we have many other customers to whom we now, together with Polystar, have projects going on with virtual NOC and other solutions. So the momentum building international digital service business, both in the Smart Factory side as well as in Elisa Automate side, continues to grow. And about the outlook and guidance for this year. We see still very much uncertainty how this COVID-19 really will be solved. Vaccination, of course, is ongoing, but there are some delays and uncertainties so that creates still uncertainty for the macroeconomic environment potentially can have impacts to Elisa. The competition in the Finnish telecommunications market remains keen. And our revenues, they will be slightly higher than 2020. We have also some, like I said, acquisitions we've done contributing a bit to the growth. Comparable EBITDA will be at the same level or slightly higher than 2020. And our capital expenditures will be maximum 12% of revenue. Now I ask Jari to continue further, please.

[Jari Kinnunen, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Thank you. Let's start with profit and loss. Q4 continued with growth, both in revenue and earnings. Revenue growth, 2.2% or EUR 10.9 million. And in different revenue streams. Of course, COVID impact negatively still in roaming, in practice nonexisting traveling. And interconnection and visitor roaming, which is part of the total roaming is negative minus EUR 1 million. Equipment sales increasing in both customer segments, totaling EUR 5 million. Service revenues in Corporate segment were decreasing EUR 2 million and inbound, outbound roaming, having an, of course, negative impact. Mobile services also negative. Positive impact in digital services, IT services growing. In Consumer segment, service revenue growth was good, EUR 9 million, mainly mobile services and digital services contributing to that. We had now sort of structural change when we combined services with Nordic Entertainment Group, our streaming services, Viihde and Viaplay streaming services, and we had first time total revenue coming through our revenue and that had EUR 2.5 million impact in Q4. Comparable EBITDA growth 3.2%. Revenue, of course, growth contributing to that as well as measures, what we did in cost savings as well. And margin was 34.4%. In depreciations, there is a EUR 6 million difference to last year. That comes from goodwill depreciation. So we did EUR 6 million goodwill depreciation, which is visible in the changed EBIT, in comparable basis was growing 3.3% to EUR 103 million EBIT margin, slight improvement to 20.8%. Financial expenses includes EUR 6 million capital gain from sale of Sulake shares. We had 40% ownership and did sell that in Q4. And EPS, after all this growth, was 3.4% or EUR 0.02. Then Estonia, revenue was flat in Q4. Roaming impact, negative. However, EBITDA continued to grow, and growth was 3%. Operational KPIs continued to develop positively, and postpaid base -- mobile postpaid base was growing 2,400. The churn was same as Q3, 9.7%. Then if you look at CapEx in Q4. The guided CapEx, excluding shares, licenses and lease agreements was EUR 64 million; and for the total year, EUR 236 million, which is in line with the guidance, 12% of sales. Main CapEx relate to mobile network investments, fixed networks and IT investments. Then moving to cash flow, which was very strong in Q4. Comparable cash flow did grow from EUR 55 million to EUR 99 million, very much driven by net working capital change, also higher EBITDA and lower CapEx affected positively. Net working capital change -- change of net working capital change, which was a year ago, minus EUR 11 million, and now EUR 16 million. So difference is EUR 27 million and all lines contributing mainly from payables and receivables. And for the whole year, net working capital change was positive EUR 30 million; 2019, it was negative million EUR 5 million. And there has been improvement relating to payables, for example, promoting shorter payment times for handset sales or improving billing process speed, which contribute positively to receivables side. For the whole year, comparable cash flow did grow by 9% to 351%. And cash -- EBITDA cash conversion was 63%. Then moving to capital structure and returns, very much in line with targets. Net debt-to-EBITDA, 1.8 and the equity ratio 39% and return ratios remained at good level. Return on equity, 28%. Return on investments, 16.7%, which is slightly down from last year but can be explained by repayment of bond, which was due this month. And we, of course, did have the funds available already at the year-end. Should the repayment -- or should it be in December, then return on investment would have been the same as last year. And relating to bond repayment, 174% (sic) [ EUR 174 million ]. So after that, average interest expense is -- for the interest-bearing debt is up approximately 1% and the whole maturity situation is so that for the next 2.5 years there is no debt or bank loans maturing. And then moving to dividend. Board of Directors made proposal to AGM for EUR 1.95 dividend per share, which represents a dividend growth of 5.4% and is now seventh straight year of increasing distributions. Payout ratio inside distribution policy, which is 80% to 100%, now 95%. And dividend yield against the share price end of the year, 4.3%. Additionally, there is a proposal for 5 million shares buyback authorization to the Board. And again, this is showing a strong commitment for continuing with competitive distributions to our shareholders. And now I give to Vesa, please.

[Vesa Sahivirta, Director of Investor Relations]

Thank you, Jari, and now we move on to Q&A part. And we ask if there is a first question from audience.

[Artem Beletski, Analyst]

Yes. It's Artem Beletski from SEB. Three questions from my side. So first of all, starting with 5G migration. So you mentioned that you had at the year-end 200,000 of 5G customers. Could you maybe talk about implications in terms of your mobile service revenue growth coming from this kind of fairly rapid pace of migration of your new customer base to 5G. And then if I can ask on M&A front, so you made camLine acquisition, strengthening your Smart Factory offering quite extensively. How do you see, first, the M&A opportunities going forward and which are the most interesting areas? And the last one is relating to this regulatory change in Finland when it comes to maximum duration of fixed-term contracts in mobile. Has it really impacted the market dynamics around year-end? And also this year-end, do you see it making any big impact also this year going forward?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Right. Thank you, Artem. The first question regarding the 5G, we see -- we saw already 5G to contribute to the MSR to some extent. Of course, the number of subscribers, 200,000 that we reached almost in the year-end, didn't happen all growth in fourth quarter. Of course, it was a growth during the year. But nevertheless, we saw already some impact to MSR from 5G. In 5G, when we do upgrades from 4G to 5G we see several euros upgrade in -- or up -- increase in ARPU when moving from 4G to 5G at the moment. So clearly, we see customers to get and perceive to get more value while moving to 5G. Also, when we look at our Net Promoter Score, our 5G customers rate higher their satisfaction than 4G customers, even with the customer base where they have already higher speeds in 4G. So clearly, the assumption that we have said already quite some time that the human impatience is one of the key drivers first for 5G. We have been able to prove that, that seems to be the case, really. So customers are getting better experience also for their existing applications they are using with the use of 5G, and it is creating momentum. Not to say that, of course, there will be many other new good -- performance improvements with the 5G technology that will bring additional value to Consumer Customers or B2B customers. But a bit long answer to you, yes, we start to see contribution also from 5G upgrades to the MSR. In regards to M&A, yes, we see further potential there in growing and acceleration of the growth of our international digital services with M&A, both in Elisa Automate area, we have the Polystar, but of course, we see that there are kind of very good candidates to kind of strengthen the portfolio and the full offering to create Elisa's Automate solutions to operators, really larger and larger business and offering. The same thing with the industrial software, Smart Factory management side, after camLine, we see many other opportunities that can bring value. We actually have had a kind of minority shareholder position now that we acquired from an Italian company setup that we announced this January. So there is further to come also on that side on organic development, but also in inorganic side. In terms of the regulation, this fixed-term contract part and regulation there didn't have yet any impact last year. But of course, the -- one of the main things are there, not only that the maximum long-term contract from 24 months to 12 months, will be a change, but rather that the customers have to get easily the timing when the contract ends from the operator. There seems to be a bad habit by some players in the market to make it fuzzy for customers and unclear so that customers would kind of be sticky, and that's not the way Elisa wants to increase this customer satisfaction to make customers kind of in the dark when they -- and now this regulation has been pointed to the same problem. I can say that we have tens of thousands of customers who have been unsatisfied when they have been trying to come from another operator to us. And then they have met that, oh, I didn't know. I couldn't get very well understanding when my contract ends. So that is now regulated that the customers should have as easy as sending an SMS and getting an SMS response back when the contract ends. And we believe that, that helps the whole market. It helps customers' perceptions of operators overall in the market for customer satisfaction. But of course, since our business model is not trying to kind of -- in kind of -- with different kind of tricks to make customers to stay sticky, rather to have a real satisfaction to our services and that being the reason for stickiness. We see this change as positive.

[Vesa Sahivirta, Director of Investor Relations]

Okay. Any other questions from audience? If not, then we'll take first question from the conference call lines, please.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Nick Lyall from SocGen.

[Nick Lyall, Equity Analyst]

Just 2 quick questions on IDS, please, if that's okay. Firstly, can you give us the size of IDS in terms of revenue now, please? And also, what's the underlying growth that you've seen from that business? And then, secondly, on the camLine acquisition itself, when do you expect that to start contributing? Was that from the announcement date? And what sort of synergies would you expect as well from camLine and over what period, please?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Okay. Thank you for your questions. For the international digital service businesses, we haven't yet disclosed the amount of revenues overall, but we can say that currently we are in the ballpark of EUR 50 million to EUR 100 million. We will have a Capital Markets Day on the 1oth of March, where we will give also further information and understanding of this business. The underlying growth there, we come back to numbers more probably in the Capital Markets Day, but we are aiming at acquiring companies that have a growing business, good companies. But with the help of our machine learning, artificial intelligence-based organically developed solutions, we believe we can accelerate the growth of these companies by building additional capabilities for the service portfolio, but also to have a kind of channel for our own solutions that we develop in-house. And of course, the growth is in our mind, but let's come back to the numbers a bit later. In terms of camLine, I would ask Jari to give light to the reporting when that starts to really impact the numbers and so forth. Jari, please?

[Jari Kinnunen, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

We start to consolidate beginning of this year. So camLine figures and -- profit and loss figures are included for the whole year. And as we said in our release, camLine 2019 figures, revenue was approximately EUR 20 million and EBIT was EUR 5 million. And the company has seen a good solid track record of growth, and we aim to continue with the growth.

[Nick Lyall, Equity Analyst]

Can I just ask on the -- are there any synergies expected from that as well? You've been pretty open about the Polystar and other synergies in the past. So would you expect to add synergies maybe over the next couple of years from camLine on top of any underlying growth?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

In terms of cost synergies, they are probably quite limited. We are not buying companies to do restructuring. But really, the growth synergies, we haven't disclosed any numbers for that. But of course, that's the thing that we accelerate the growth of our own organically developed services plus the growth of those companies by having our products to help them. So the synergies are very much of revenue-sized synergies at the moment that we foresee and there are kind of several of them.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Andrew Lee from Goldman Sachs.

[Andrew J. Lee, Equity Analyst]

I had a couple of questions. The first was on B2B, which is obviously a bit of a black box for us to understand. So just wondered if you could give us a bit more color on what you're assuming for B2Bs or corporate trends in 2021. Can you give us -- and on top of that, can you give us a bull-and-bear case on B2B? And what your guidance is assuming within that bull-and-bear range, that will be really helpful.And then, secondly, your slide on returns is always very helpful. It shows your returns on investment remained high, but have fallen modestly from their peak in 2018. And so I just wondered on what your outlook for the trajectory of those returns is through 2021. And if longer, that would be great, but I suspect you'd save that for Capital Markets Day.

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Okay. Thank you. In regards to the B2B question, unfortunately, we are not giving outlook for the segments separately. But of course, some things I can try to elaborate for you, if not bull or bear case, but something. Our B2B business is very strong, our competitiveness, the portfolio of services. We are the leading 5G solutions provider in Finland. We have a very good growth also in the B2B side for 5G subscriptions with additional revenue growth from there with the upgrades. We have a very solid IT business, which is also growing. And also with the combination of those, we provide value. And there is a growth opportunity. We had last year one thing, which was the roaming due to COVID because the B2B segment has proportionally more roaming revenues there. Of course, that kind of challenge will, from year-to-year comparisons, go away during this year. At some point in time, we believe that traveling will also start, so it will be an additional positive there. We also -- let's say, we haven't really been increasing our market share in, let's say, mobile side, but we have also kept very well the market share even though there has been different kind of, let's say, competitive dynamics in the market, our strong performance and especially the high-quality and kind of trustworthiness to provide good solutions to customers as really kind of bad results for us. Going forward, also -- and of course, now in the B2B segment, we have the IDS numbers and Viihde numbers there. So they, of course, have part of the element. And then for B2B segment, of course, have their own on kind of contribution going forward. So unfortunately, this is all, I can say at the moment of the development, but we see positively the capabilities to improve both the revenue and the kind of profit side of our B2B business going forward even if there is a very fierce competition also on that segment. And of course, in the Capital Markets Day, we will elaborate some more. And for the returns question, I ask also again, Jari to give some light.

[Jari Kinnunen, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Yes. So as I said in the presentation, we had -- end of the year, we had funds already for the repayment of EUR 174 million bond, which was due in this month. So that had an impact to ratios, and return on investment would have been the same as 2019 if the bond would have been repaid in December. With the CapEx guidance, 12% long time and also for this year. And the acquisition politics and strategies, which are very much value creation oriented, we will remain with the ratios at good level. And I believe in comparison to many other players, we are not that all bad in that kind of comparison. So we intend to maintain good ratios going forward. And with this policies that we have, that is the case also in the future.

[Andrew J. Lee, Equity Analyst]

I think it's a fair point on returns. Thanks for the color on both questions. Can I just ask a quick follow-up, it will be probably a yes or no answer. So the flat EBITDA scenario in your guidance for the group, does that assume no growth or growth in B2B? Can you say -- can you give us an answer on that? Or is that...

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Well, we say flat or slightly higher to be exact for the first. Second...

[Andrew J. Lee, Equity Analyst]

Yes. The flat end of it.

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Well, the flat end is overall the uncertainty that we have in the macro. We have to take into account that we are not over with COVID-19 yet. That's for the most reason, yes.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Paul Sidney from Crédit Suisse.

[Paul Sidney, Research Analyst]

I had a couple of questions as well. The first one really just a follow-up from Andrew's question, but mainly aimed more to the Consumer segment. And then the question would be how does Elisa view the balance between Consumer subscriber market share and profitability and free cash flow? So for example, would Elisa to any when push for subs market share by Telia, for example, under the new management? Or would you be prepared to see the subscriber base go slightly backwards just to protect your profitability and free cash flow?And then just secondly, you've got 200,000 5G subs now. Are 5G users doing anything different in terms of their usage behavior versus the rest of your base? Or is it just sort of more of the same sort of applications that have been driving strong data usage on 4G over the past few years?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

All right. Thanks for your questions. Well, in regards to the market share, I just reiterate that I have been maybe reiterating for years already many times that we are not going after volume market share in Consumer, neither we are doing that in B2B segment, by the way, but we are not tolerating the market share to drop. So we are defending the market share. The value creation we see in the market, as we have now seen also very well starting with 5G is the -- creating more value for the existing customer base and then being able to capture part of it. So -- but like I said, we have been defending time to time and we are ready to defend at any position our market share, and at the same time, also being able to deliver improved results like now in the fourth quarter our EBITDA improving at the same time when the churn has been improving -- increasing. So they are not kind of factors that are going to different directions, but we can have actually both. But of course, the main way for us to create value is continuously provide value -- more value to customers, have some value capture, but also at the same time fiercely improve our own productivity to be able to kind of invest, if needed, to protecting our market share. In 5G, if there is any difference, certainly, these 5G customers they are consuming more data. So clearly, we see higher data usage by the 5G customers. And it seems that bears it all because we see higher customer satisfaction for 5G customers that much that the 5G customers are paying, on average, several euros more than the 4G customers.

[Paul Sidney, Research Analyst]

And just a follow-up, are there any particular applications just to sort of add to that, that 5G users are using?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Well, of course, there are emergence of new type of applications continuously, but let's say that the major usage is still with the current applications, very much, of course, different kind of video services, a lot of downloading and so forth. Of course, some part of the segment has maybe a bit new application by having fixed wireless access instead of fixed broadband if you call that a new application maybe. But the main bulk of the use is, of course, with the current applications. The domain of applications is evolving and developing continuously step-by-step. And of course, the more new applications, there starts to be that are really creating value for customers. We see some 3D modeling applications. We see, of course, some augmented reality now starting to already be usage. But I wouldn't say that there has been some great new killer applications. The killer application at the moment still is the human impatience, getting better experience overall, which you don't expect necessarily, but once you start to use 5G, you will not go back to 4G.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Maurice Patrick from Barclays.

[Maurice Graham Patrick, Managing Director]

Just a question on your -- picking up on the fixed wireless access point you just made. I mean very helpful thoughts there. I mean can you talk a bit about of your 5G base, how many of those are fixed wireless access? Is it a big sort of driver in terms of uptake? Are most of those customers sort of urban, suburban? What kind of usage? It would be super helpful to get some more color on that.

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Okay. The fixed wireless access is quite a small proportion of those 5G customers we've taken so far. We believe that it is a nice subsegment of 5G customers going forward growing somewhat. I don't expect to have kind of a very huge acceleration of that, but it is a good service. And definitely, the customer satisfaction of those 5G customers is tremendously high. So they are really, really satisfied customers. But you have to remember also that we have mobile broadband as a solution for many, many customers already with 4G technologies. So we certainly will see upgrade of mobile broadband from 4G to 5G, but not necessarily always with fixed wireless access solution with an external antenna and all. It just can be -- it's just the router device inside house. But like I said, no major volumes there, but clear volumes and then a nice add-on to the total.

[Maurice Graham Patrick, Managing Director]

And just as a quick follow-up. I mean you talked about the 80 gig per second speed you're achieving on the 26 gigahertz. I mean is that -- I mean that's much [ harder ] I get on my fixed line broadband connection here in the U.K., but maybe that's just me. I mean can you talk a bit about -- is that a complementary product to the existing 5G FWA? Is it a different segment? How to think about how you positioned there?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Thank you. That, of course, was in our commercial network though, but it was kind of a first time we were able to reach. It is somewhat development ongoing to commercialize that level of speed. But we, of course, want to spearhead also pushing the envelope for new technologies and test in commercial environments that can we have these service levels and which service levels. So we are very happy to be able to do also that record with Nokia and Qualcomm together. Point in time, it will be commercialized to the customers. That's, of course, with the usage of very high frequencies, which then means that it's probably more used in enterprise domain for the first to provide, for example, enterprise applications demanding very, very high-speed or really, really low latency. We start to use us there. So that's the kind of domains that we see first maybe this kind of solution to get commercialized. For kind of regular home users with fixed wireless access, we can provide, let's say, several hundreds of megabits per second speeds today. And that's much more than many customers can get even from their fixed broadband. So it is -- whether it's 300 megabit per second or 600 or 1 gigabit that we have in our commercial offerings in fixed wireless access, those are already at the moment the ones that are very much kind of helping the customers. I cannot say when this 8 gigabits could be a fixed wireless solution for the customers. The high frequency is making it a bit difficult to provide in the rural area. The distances need to be quite short when using that frequency. But with the 5G developing, evolving with the lower frequencies, we can get decent increases in speed. And like I said, this is continuous improvement, step-by-step also increase in the revenues. We don't need to offer all the speed at the same time. But of course, we need to push envelope also to show that where the future can go.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Terence Tsui from Morgan Stanley.

[Terence Mun-Sion Tsui]

I've got a couple of questions, please. Just firstly, on CapEx. Can you just give us an update around what the government authorities are saying on the use of network equipment providers? I think there was some news around in December. Just wondered if you've got any latest updates for 2021 on whether certain equipment providers will be excluded going forward? And then, secondly, just following up on B2B. You spoke about some of the outstanding opportunities. I just wondered if you can maybe just go a bit more in detail on some of the pressure points that you're seeing. I know you highlighted the COVID impact and the roaming impact, but just wondering what are you seeing in terms of the competitive dynamics and whether you're seeing any impacts from business insolvency so far?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Okay. Thank you. In regards to the CapEx-related question, for the first, we are not expecting any major challenges from any regulation that we see in Finland or Estonia to our CapEx whatsoever. But coming back more to the legislation or regulation. In Finland, yes, we do have now new quite large legislation in our business domain, including not only these long-term contracts that we discussed earlier, but also some of the network security side. We see it so that even if it has some amendments to the previous legislations, already the previous legislation in Finland has obliged operators to make sure that if there's any device in the network that causes problem, whether they are cyber or any other problems, they need to be taken out and the similar ones need to be taken out from the network. So we have had this obligation and responsibility already quite some years in Finland. And we, of course, have taken that seriously with our vendors and vendors selection and for the most by managing our networks ourselves. We are the only operator in Finland who has been managing totally 100% owned networks, not buying managed service for the network operations from the others. And additionally, as you know, more than 10 years, we have developed our own automation solutions for network operations, with virtual network operations center and all that, which has enabled us to be even more capable on kind of managing or even predicting potential problems, if any. So we think that we are very well equipped and capable, of course, continuously developing our capabilities to make sure that our networks are safe, clean of any cyber or any particular things. And like I said, the new legislation is not creating any further obstacles or obligations that would impact on our CapEx. In Estonia, the situation is still evolving around 5G. There was -- the country's government actually was renewed quite quickly. And it's, of course, up to this new government in Estonia now to make the legislation for 5G. We expect that they have a bit more restriction there for usage of vendors of different kinds, but also from that point of view, our expectation is that, from the CapEx point of view, it shouldn't be any kind of topic for -- or issue for us. In terms of the B2B side pressures, of course, the COVID is creating still potentially uncertainty. We don't know yet how the macro environment really will kind of develop throughout the world. And for Finnish and Estonian companies, that's an uncertainty that we have. Roaming is down as long as the traveling is down that we know. In terms of competitive dynamics, I wouldn't say that there has been anything specific really and we -- that we have seen already during the years. There is continuously fierce competition on different kind of deals. But that's the reason we are building systematically long-term competitiveness with our quality, with our very good portfolio of services, with our capability to provide also AI and machine learning-based solutions to the customers and we are comfortable about our capability to compete in this environment.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Siyi He from Citigroup.

[Siyi He, Vice President]

I have a couple please, and the first one is on your ARPU. I think your postpaid ARPU has now flat year-on-year in Finland. I'm just wondering if you can help us to understand what has been the driver for the improvement? And it'd be great if you could give us some breakdown in terms of the efforts from the price increases upselling, et cetera. And my second question is on the 5G. You said that you have 200,000 subscribers. And would you mind to tell us how much that is from your Consumer segment? And if possible, can we get an idea on the quarter-on-quarter development on the 5G subscriber sales throughout 2020? I understand that Q4 must be much stronger, but it would be helpful to understand the phasing as you see the 5G acceleration. And finally, I have just a quick clarification. I remember there have been news around your lost public contract to your competitors during summer. Just want to check has it started to impact your B2B mobile subscription trends yet in Finland?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

All right. Thank you very much. In terms of the ARPU development quarter-on-quarter, we had some growth in the ARPU. And of course, the things that have been impacting on ARPU in the past year and fourth quarter, one is, of course, that the roaming year-on-year comparison is negative development there. But then our upselling of higher speeds with higher price to customers in 4G, but also lifting up customers to 5G has contributed positively. Then we have -- we do time to time some price corrections with the product changes to certain cohorts of customers, which also contributes positively so there is this positive momentum of upselling continuing. And because we had lack of roaming revenues, the net was a bit negative for 2 quarters. Now it turned to positive again. In terms of 5G, unfortunately, we are not disclosing the way the growth has been during the different quarters last year. Apologies for that, but that's the disclosure we have. But we, like I said, reached close to 200,000 at the year-end and the growth rate is relatively good, what we can say. The higher part of -- proportion of those customers are in the Consumer sector, but we have a significant 5G base and growing base in the B2B side as well. In terms of the last question, you if I understood right, you've asked about this one public sector contract that we lost to Telia, and they -- that contract had very low ARPU customers, quite a few subscriptions. And we anticipated to have some of those public sector customers, which are individual cities and so forth that they would have changed. But I guess the buyer organization is quite clear that they want to have those functions and functionalities and capabilities that have been promised and there has been some I guess, the delay of having customers to move to -- from our services to the others. We expect the customers to move some point in this year, first half probably, but there definitely has been delays, which, of course, proves that Elisa's quality is something that customers appreciate and they are not so quick to go with -- even with the lower prices to some other vendor. But that's approximately the situation. Like we have said earlier, it's -- if -- because it is a frame contract, different cities individually can decide to use or not. Even if the -- all the cities that we have as customers would use it, it's less than EUR 1 million per quarter impact to us.

[Operator]

Next question is Sami Samarkies (sic) [ Sarkamies ] from Nordea.

[Sami Sarkamies, Senior Analyst of TMT]

I have three. Firstly, a bit of follow-up on the comments regarding ARPU and mobile service revenue growth improvements from the third quarter. Did I understand correctly that majority of this improvement was driven by 4G upselling and legacy price changes and less due to 5G migration?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Okay. If we go one by one. Maybe you didn't understand all the things correct -- or I phrased that in a bad way. All of these three, what you mentioned, contributed. We are not disclosing exact proportion, but all of them had a very clear impact to our kind of mobile service revenue growth.

[Sami Sarkamies, Senior Analyst of TMT]

Okay. And the second question would be on churn that increased quite materially from the third quarter. I think this came as a bit of a surprise as you haven't flagged any material increase in campaign intensity. Can you talk about the competitive landscape at the moment and share your views on the churn level going forward?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Well, the churn -- if we look at the fourth quarter churn, it tends to be higher always because of the many of the campaign periods that we have Christmas, Singles' Day, Black Friday and so forth, which we do have flagged in many discussions after Q3 that we anticipate that we never have any guidance for churn. So of course, it was up very -- particular reasons, I believe, are these campaigning periods that we have seen. It has been an active market. Now going forward, of course, we cannot say what the behavior of competitors is with the intensity of using lower price or any kind of promotions going forward. We are prepared for that, no problem of that. But nevertheless, the -- it was -- from our point of view, it was quite anticipated that this fourth quarter is a bit more intense. But it was less intense than the fourth quarter 2019.

[Sami Sarkamies, Senior Analyst of TMT]

Okay. And then, finally, on the EBITDA guidance that looks a bit cautious as you will be faced with easy traveling comparables and will benefit from some M&A tailwinds. Did I understand so that you have reservations related to the macro development that could then sort of impact business to business part of your revenues, that, that's really the only sort of reason for you to be a bit cautious on this front?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Yes. The main concern is really the uncertainty that we have to the macro development, especially due to how COVID will kind of be resolved or when truly. We have really guidance same level or slightly higher for EBITDA and it is quite early of the year to make a full year guidance. There are many months to see how this COVID will further develop.

[Sami Sarkamies, Senior Analyst of TMT]

Yes. But this macro uncertainty, that would be relevant for B2B but not your sort of B2B kind of business?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Yes. The macro developments that we've seen in the past, they have had more impact normally to the B2B side. It has to be a really big macro kind of inflection point, which would shake up the B2B segment.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Peter Nielsen from ABG.

[Peter Kurt Nielsen, Lead Analyst]

I'll do it very briefly. Just 1 question on the momentum in 5G upselling [indiscernible]. What behavior patterns are you seeing among your 4G customers? Are they waiting for 5G do you think or are they skipping the higher 4G speeds? And anything you can tell us about then what you're seeing in the market or if it's too early?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Thank you, Peter. There are, of course, a bit different kinds of behaviors. We have, of course, some customers who are very eager to kind of get the newest and greatest in the market and they go for that. And there are customers who are just coming to a very good kind of momentum for upgrading their speed. Maybe they passed some of the offerings we used to have in the higher speed tiers in 4G and they jump directly to 5G. Then we have, of course, like I said, these fixed wireless access customers who are maybe replacing some of their fixed broadband solution. So there are different kind of behaviors. And then again, in the corporate side, in the B2B side, there are different reasons why some corporate customers are earlier to be willing to have higher speed for their employees or for their applications. And for this, we can also give certainly more light in our Capital Markets Day.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Adam Fox-Rumley from HSBC.

[Adam M. Fox-Rumley]

I was wondering if you could talk about the terms of the agreement with Lounea, please. Last week's press release refers to a nationwide fiber network, which makes it sound like quite an ambitious project, but I didn't see any reference to it in the release. Is it 50-50 JV? Have you got rights to the assets that are put inside it? Are you going to put all your fiber spending through that joint venture now? That would be very helpful. And then, secondly, the remuneration report was published this morning. It reminds us that your long-term incentive plan is linked to EPS, development of new business operations and other business targets. It would be really helpful if you could give us any information about what's included in the other business targets and maybe a split of the makeup between those 3 elements?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

All right. Thank you. In regards to our joint venture for fiber development, I would say that it's, of course, not all the fiber investments at all. It is just to certain regions and geographical areas where we may be normally are so active ourselves. There, we do joint cooperation with them and the volumes of these fiber installments are not so high in total. But it is, of course, a good experimentation also to see that -- which way we can maybe have some customers to be more interested in fiber solution than we have been able to earlier. And like I said earlier also, in Finnish market, the -- let's say, in the fiber-to-home market and in the Consumer market for fiber, it is about the lack of demand rather than lack of supply. But we try to see with this joint venture that whether we can better create demand in certain areas, which is kind of a minority of a -- quite a small minority of the total fiber push that we do in the market. In terms of the long-term incentive plan, we have the earnings per share in the performance-based stock plan. The earnings per share is the -- over a 3-year periods. It's the main and more than -- the majority of that performance criteria set and then the rest is related to our new business development with different kind of meters.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Florian Henritzi from Bank of America.

[Florian Henritzi, Research Analyst]

I also got 2. Just the first one, very simply, do you, in your acquisitions now you did in the digital service business, do you have any target IRR, any returns you're going to need to meet in these deals?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Okay. If we go step-by-step your questions. Then the first one, of course, we have internal return targets for the businesses that we acquire. But like I said, we are acquiring good companies having growth. That's very important for us to have growth platforms and platforms that we can further develop together with the acquired company and acquired companies together in the future. So that's, of course, important. And in that way, we believe that we can create shareholder value with these acquisitions.

[Florian Henritzi, Research Analyst]

Okay. And just the second one, I noticed your sort of growth in fixed and digital service was quite good this quarter. So growing almost 3%. I think Jari mentioned there was sort of a EUR 2.5 million impact from the -- I think, from the new streaming agreement you have with NENT. Is that going to -- is that going to show up in your financials over the next quarters as well? And does that have any impact on your EBITDA?

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Okay. Let me start and I ask Jari to continue. In the fixed and digital services, of course, there are various kinds of fixed service revenues, which are not only the fixed broadband and the fixed PSTN voice services, but there are also the data networking services to corporates like the software-defined wide area networks, which seems to be growing; also various cybersecurity solutions, both to Consumers as well as to Corporate Customers, which seems to be also a growing service element revenue stream; and then we have the digital service businesses like the IPTV service where the Nordic Entertainment Group cooperation, of course, has had its impact also. Jari, you could maybe explain a bit about this because it was a structural deal that the revenues from that cooperation runs through us.

[Jari Kinnunen, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Yes. So it will impact now this year. As I said, it started to have an impact in Q4. So we take the total revenues as we have also customer responsibility. And then the share of NENT is shown in the OpEx. And for this year, it will have a revenue impact, approximately EUR 25 million.

[Florian Henritzi, Research Analyst]

Okay. And the -- I guess, then the EBITDA impact is relatively small if you also take the cost?

[Jari Kinnunen, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

That's correct. So EBITDA impact is fairly small.

[Florian Henritzi, Research Analyst]

Okay. And just to double check, in these Q4 numbers, I guess there was no material M&A impact? I mean I guess, most of the acquisitions they come through in 2021?

[Jari Kinnunen, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Yes. Q4 -- in the balance sheet, we had camLine, but profit and loss starts beginning of this year.

[Operator]

There appears to be no further questions. So I'll hand back to the speakers for any other remarks.

[Vesa Sahivirta, Director of Investor Relations]

All right. Thank you for the questions, and thank you for participating in this meeting. We wish you a very good reporting season. Thank you, and bye-bye.

[Veli-Matti Johannes Mattila]

Bye-bye.