Orange Polska SA

WSE:OPL

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q4

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for standing by, and I would like to welcome you on Orange Polska Full Year 2022 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] The format of the meeting will be the presentation by the management team followed by a Q&A session.

Let me introduce speakers for today's conference starting from Julien Ducarroz, CEO of Orange Polska; to his right, Jolanta Dudek, in charge of Consumer Market; Maciej Nowohonski, in charge of Wholesale Activities and Real Estate Sales; Bozena Lesniewska, in charge of B2B operations; and Witold Drozdz, in charge of corporate affairs; next to me, Jacek Kunicki, our CFO.

Let me now hand the floor to Julien to begin the presentation.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

Thank you, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome, everyone, on our conference summarizing fourth quarter and full year 2022.

Let's start on Slide 5. 2022 was the second year of our .Grow strategy implementation. We did not expect an easy year for us, but the accumulation of challenges was unprecedented; outbreak of the war in Ukraine, global energy crisis, Polish inflation hitting 25-year high. Despite this very turbulent environment, our performance was strong, and we met our objective.

Commercial results were solid in most areas despite intensifying competition. In the wake of inflation, we escalated our value strategy. It was another strong year in B2B, both in telco and ICT services. Our new opening in wholesale strategy resulted in robust performance in this area. Financial results were strong across the board. We met all our commitment despite huge burden from energy cost. I'm especially proud to confirm that we will deliver our 2025 climate goals, securing CO2 emission reduction target 3 years ahead of our plan. At the same time, we hedge vast majority of our energy cost for 2023.

Similarly, we continue to change as a company. We need to be ready to meet future challenges and take advantage of new opportunities. We have boosted digital transformation on many fronts. It will support our revenue generation and cost savings. Last year performance proved that our business has strong fundamental, and we are able to swiftly adapt to changing external conditions. It was a collective effort of all team of Orange, and I would like to thank them for this commitment.

Let's look at financial highlights on the next slide. In 2022, we delivered on all our financial commitment despite very turbulent environment. Revenue increased by 4.7%, and this was much more than we were anticipating in the beginning of the year. Strong revenue performance was the key enabler to mitigate a huge spike in energy costs and allow us to deliver almost 4% EBITDA growth. Please note that we are reporting growth of our operating profitability for the fifth consecutive year. Since 2018, we increased our EBITDAaL as much as 18% despite a lot of challenges.

Economic CapEx in 2022 were in line with the guidance, showing refocus from fiber to mobile. Those results show that we are consistent in delivering growth, and we have good prospects ahead of us based on our .Grow strategy. Let's look in more detail how we executed it in 2022. So let's look now on our strategy and our 4 core pillars. Starting with our core business, its performance was excellent in retail and wholesales market. Announcing .Grow, we declare a new opening in wholesales and last year demonstrated that this strategy is working very well. In new opportunities, we are focusing on growing our ICT products. Last year, we increased our ICT revenue by almost 25%.

I'm excited that last year, we saw a promising growth in our smart city services, IoT solution and hence quality of life for local communities and support more efficient resource management. Becoming more digital as a company is a key part of our transformation. Cloud is an important part of it. Over the last year, we have accelerated with its adoption by migrating our system to Google Cloud. This makes us more agile, especially in marketing. Externally, we are making the digital journey for our customers easier and more efficient. In 2022, we increased digital sales by 20%. Now half of our customers contact us via digital tools. At the same time, we know that brick-and-mortar stores are important. 2 weeks ago, we have opened a unique green showroom in Warsaw, showcasing greener solution, including 30% of refurbished devices on display.

It has been a particular year for our responsibility pillar. Thanks to greener energy mix and further optimization of energy consumption, we cut our CO2 emission by 14%. It's good for the planet and is good for our cost. We have also reinvented our secular effort. We encourage our customers for reusing, repairing, recycling and refurbishing smartphone and wearable. Unfortunately, last year was also marked by outbreak of the war in Ukraine. I was impressed by engagement of Orange team that dedicated their time and energy to carry humanitarian aid.

Let's go to the next slide and more in detail. The basis of the success of our strategy lies in the strength of our core business. It consists of 3 stable growing engine: B2C, business-to-consumer; business-to-business; and our wholesales activity. All of these engines constantly deliver growth of revenue, but more important, direct margin. 7% growth over the 2 years is a strong achievement and key enabler of improvement of our profit. Why it is so important to have those 3 engine growing? It shows that we are more diversified and, therefore, more resilience to external factor linked to those business lines. Wholesales activity are an additional way along retail to monetize our core infrastructure in an open model for the market.

Thank you for now, and I hand the floor to my colleague, who will tell you about the performance in their respective market.

[Jolanta Dudek, executive]

Thank you, Julien. Good morning, everyone. Let me walk you through our last year's achievements in our key telecom services. Let's start with fiber. Our fiber customer base increased by more than 200,000 in each of the past 3 years. This demonstrates that the demand for the best connectivity remains strong. We now have close to 1.2 million retail fiber customers. This is more than the number of copper broadband customers. This is a symbol of our technological transformation. Our fiber service are available to more than 7 million households, that is nearly 50% households in Poland. This means that we already reached low end of the strategic ambition for 2024. In line with our strategy, we grow our fiber footprint, mainly through wholesale partnerships. Our largest partner is obviously FiberCo, which already has a network of almost 1.3 million households connectable and the rollout goes as scheduled. Why fiber is so critical for us? It is a powerful tool to build long-term relationship with the customer and increase value to an upsell and more services supporting convergence.

On the next slide, switching now to convergence and mobile. It was another solid year for both groups of services. Convergent customer base rose by a further 5% last year, even though more operators are now pursuing the strategy which we initiated many years ago. We win customers with our simple and attractive offer. In mobile, we combine steady piece of customer base growth with ARPU improvement. In 2022, our mobile handset customer base increased by another 4%. It was consistent with prior years. This is strong performance given that the Polish market has matured and very competitive. According to our estimates, we maintain our share in the market.

There are a few drivers of this performance. On the mass market, the main Orange brand is complemented by our B brand Nju. Additionally, our digital offer Flex hit a record increasing its customer base by more than 60% last year. B2B was also a solid contributor, which will be commented by Bozena in a moment. ARPU in convergence and mobile-only increased by 3% in 2022. In mobile, this growth rate visibly improved compared to 2021. In the second half of the year, we intensified our more-for-more value strategy in almost all key services in B2C and B2B. This will gradually filter to our revenues. Our key focus for 2023 is execution of the strategy. ARPU growth is absolutely essential for us to at least partly mitigate the impact of inflation.

That is all from me. And I hand the floor to Maciej.

[Maciej Nowohonski, executive]

Thank you, Jola. Hello, everyone. We will now stay on Slide #12. In our .Grow strategy, we declared to explore more opportunities in wholesale, and I'm happy today to share with you the midpoint of the strategy execution. Our wholesale strategy is straightforward. We want to increase return on our investments in the infrastructure and monetize higher demand for wholesale services from other operators. Wholesale services are usually perceived by the market through the lens of interconnect, national roaming or BSA line rental. In fact, it is much more. It also includes data transmission links, rental of ducts and telecom posts, colocation of infrastructure and messaging. All these elements constitute a wholesale market in Poland, which is worth roughly PLN 3 billion.

There are 3 key drivers of the demand for wholesale services. Firstly, fiber networks in Poland grow rapidly. These networks require a lot of connectivity through data transmission links and their fiber cabling needs ducts and coax infrastructure. Secondly, mobile operators increasingly need fiber to connect their based stations, traditional radio links are less and less capable to carry amounts of traffic. And thirdly, other operators use our fiber access network to expand their footprint for fixed services. Common denominator for that is obviously growing demand for high-speed connectivity, driven by increase of data consumption in Poland.

Our largest in Poland stock of telecom infrastructure is meeting this demand. As you can see on the slide, since 2020, we have significantly increased utilization of our infrastructure. In many aspects, we are ahead of what we assumed in the strategy, and we want to continue this way. Our largest in Poland stock of telecom infrastructure is...

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

We move to Bozena.

[Maciej Nowohonski, executive]

Yes. Now we move to Bozena. Thank you very much.

[Bozena Lesniewska, executive]

Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon already. Let's look at Page 13. I have a pleasure to say that 2022 was another successful year for B2B. We have improved our results across all business lines and sectors, starting from core telco services. In mobile, executing more-for-more strategy, we gave customers more freedom of choice and variety of bundled offers. As a result, ARPU growth improved up to 4% growth. This, coupled with consistent expansion of customer base led to 15% mobile revenue growth during the last 2 years. This approach strengthens our leadership position in all customer segments despite the market remains very competitive. Further deployment of fiber successfully replacing legacy technology resulted in 26% revenue growth in this category last year.

In ICT business, we continued value chain development for digital transformation of business by building more synergies between Orange Polska and our IT subsidiaries. As a result, ICT revenue increased by as much as 24%. It was fully organic growth. The main drivers were cybersecurity and software domains, both growing about 30% year-on-year. The majority of projects were realized in retail, logistics and pharma sectors. These customers progress with automatization, migration to cloud and software solutions, improving customer experience. Thanks to it, we are consistently beating growth of the market and our own assumptions from .Grow strategy plan.

Last year, we significantly accelerated monetization of our investments in the solution based on IoT, especially smart cities. Our city management platform has become more and more appreciated by local governments. More than 100 cities use intelligent metering, monitoring and analyzing platform for lighting, water, waste and transport management. All this improves quality of life and brings tangible savings, also supports the green agenda by limiting the energy consumption and decreasing carbon dioxide emission. In 2023, we are focusing on further execution of our value strategy and await 5G spectrum, which is especially important for business applications. We hope to accelerate on the front of mobile private networks.

Thank you. And I hand the floor back to Julien.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

Thank you, Bozena. When we announced .Grow, we told you that we aim to become more digital to release more of our potential. This digital approach will make us to respond better and faster to customer needs and at the same time, make us leaner and more efficient. In order to be better in marketing, we want to manage majority of customer interaction through machine learning and AI model. This will give us easier and faster personalization of contact and offer. As a result, it will translate into more relevant offers, increased customer loyalty and more revenue. To do that, we partner with Google Cloud, and we are now progressively migrating our big data lake to the cloud and benefit from its capacity. We are constantly improving online sales and customer care channel to increase our efficiency and improve customer experience. Sales for digital channel increased another 20% in 2022 and now constitute 17% of our commercial act.

The key tool is our My Orange application, which is more and more relevant to customer needs, already close to 50% of our customers use it to manage their services and pay their bills. Max, our voice and chatbot with AI, every year is dealing better with customer requests with less human assistance needed. We estimate that in the past 2 years, we avoided more than 2 million calls to our adviser on the main info line, mainly thanks to Max. Internally, we are adopting robotization, big data and AI across the company. We have now around 370 robots and more than 1,200 business processes automatize. It allows us to save costs and reallocate our human resources from repetitive job to more value-added tasks. A very important aspect of all digital journey is education of our employees. We are on a good way to reach our 2024 target of training 70% of our employee with data skill.

Going to the last pillar of our strategy, 2022 was a particular year for responsibility pillar of our strategy. We made exemplary progress in our #OrangeGoesGreen plan. On the other hand, war on the Eastern border was a special test to our ability to carry help and support to other people. Energy crisis additionally mobilized our effort around increasing energy from renewable sources in our mix. In 2023, thanks to our contracted PPA from wind farms, 75% of our energy is secure and green. As one of this PPA is a short-term one, this ratio will fall to around 2/3 in 2024. As a result, our strategic goal to reduce CO2 emission by 65% versus 2015 in Scope 1 and 2 is secure, 3 years ahead of the plan. I'm especially proud of that achievement. It will stabilize our energy cost and make our business operation cleaner and more friendly to the environment.

I'm also proud that our #OrangeGoesGreen strategy was appreciated by World Communication Awards in a competition awarding achievement and innovation in the telco industry globally. We got into the final short list as the only company from European Union. Our climate strategy was seen as holistic with tangible action and results. This is a confirmation of our authentic engagement in green transformation and that this is not an empty slogan. In terms of Ukraine, after the major effort in the beginning of the war, now our support has become more systemic, aimed mainly at helping refugee to adapt to life in Poland through various activities. As much as we hope for a quick resolution of this strategic conflict, we are aware that continuous support is needed.

I now hand the floor to Jacek.

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Thank you, Julien. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's start the financial summary on Slide 17. Our financial results last year were strong across the board as we delivered on our annual objectives and have built a platform for further growth in 2023. We grew revenues, profits and return on capital employed while preserving a solid cash generation and a safe balance sheet. We've outperformed our initial expectations for the year.

I'm particularly happy with the EBITDA growth as a 4% rise is slightly ahead of our guidance. We've delivered solid growth despite some PLN 220 million headwinds coming from the energy prices. This was coupled with disciplined capital allocation and CapEx was at the low end of the guidance. This underscores that we are becoming ever more efficient in CapEx spending. The growth of profits and CapEx control further improved the return on capital employed and KPI that we target to create value for shareholders.

Let's now review our results in more detail, starting with the top line. Our revenues expanded strongly in Q4, fueled by the sustainable demand for our core retail and wholesale services. The key takeaway is the consistent mid-single-digit growth of our core telecom services supported by good dynamics of their respectable KPIs. These are key to our results as they generate a very high variable margin. These were coupled with a continued double-digit growth of IT and IS revenues, strong dynamics of our wholesale business and a 10% increase of equipment revenues as we attracted customer demand away from the open market.

Let's now take a look at our profitability. The EBITDA grew by around 4%, both in Q4 and for the full year. We outperformed our guidance. The analysis of this growth reveals the strength of our business model. First, a strong underlying growth of the direct margin; second, the adaptability of our cost base to external headwinds resulting in high operating leverage. These are the fundamentals that underpin our .Grow strategy for 2021 until 2024. We delivered this growth in spite of huge price driving increase of energy costs. These rose by PLN 220 million last year and by PLN 50 million in the fourth quarter. We've offset 2/3 of their impact by limiting other indirect costs, and therefore, preserving our high operating leverage. In consequence, we have converted the growth of the direct margin into higher EBITDA. Looking forward, the macro environment remains challenging. However, the 2022 success gives us the confidence to address these challenges and continue to deliver predictable, consistent and improving results.

Over to net income on the next slide. We have achieved over PLN 700 million of net income in 2022. This was our highest net income in a decade, if you exclude the one-off FiberCo transaction gain from the result of 2021. First of all, we note that the EBITDA growth is translating into the net profit. Secondly, positive EBITDA was coupled with lower depreciation expenses as we have decreased CapEx and used our assets more efficiently, especially the mobile access infrastructure. Finally, our property sales have rebounded and gain on sale of assets has increased by PLN 55 million.

Let's now switch to CapEx on Page 21. Our economic CapEx for 2022 amounted to just over PLN 1.7 billion and was towards the low end of our guidance. We allocated more CapEx to mobile, where we began the modernization of the access network. This is exactly in line with the pivot planned in the .Grow strategy. This modernization will be coupled with 5G rollout as soon as the spectrum auction will be concluded. At the same time, we continue to expand our fiber footprint off balance sheet through the FiberCo joint venture. We have decreased CapEx in all other lines, striving for a greater discipline in capital expenses and a rise in the returns that we get from our investments.

Let's now take a look at cash flow on Page 22. We're happy to report over PLN 800 million of organic cash flows in 2022, marking this another year of very solid cash generation. Cash flow growth was fueled by PLN 200 million more cash from operating activities before working capital, owing to the excellent EBITDA results. This was then offset by higher working capital requirements as we have significantly increased the value of handsets sold in installments. Higher handset sales have increased accounts receivable in the short term, but they will generate recurring positive cash flows in the future, though cash generation has further strengthened our balance sheet.

And now let's look at leverage on Slide 23. The financial leverage stood at 1.3x EBITDA at the end of December despite cash outlays for spectrum renewal and for the dividend. Our cost of debt is only 3.3% due to effective hedging. We don't expect it to change significantly soon as 90% of it is at fixed interest rates until mid-2024. So as you can see, our balance sheet is as solid as ever, giving us the necessary safety net and flexibility, especially appreciated in the current turbulent environment.

2022 marks a halfway point in our strategy execution. So let's do a quick checkup of how we stand against our ambitions from the financial perspective as visible on the next slide. As you remember, we have a strategy of growing our revenues and translating this growth through high operating leverage into low- to mid-single-digit increase of the EBITDA over the strategic plan horizon. Next, by keeping a stable CapEx, we aim to boost cash generation and the return on capital employed, all while keeping a very solid balance sheet.

The results of the last 2 years show that we have done exactly as committed. The revenue and EBITDA growth is at the high end of the guidance. Our CapEx spending is at the low end of expectations. We have quadrupled the return on capital employed and preserved a very sound balance sheet. In short, we are on the right track to deliver all our midterm financial commitments, and we can focus on execution in the remaining 2 years of the .Grow strategy.

This concludes the financial review. Let me hand the floor back to Julien for the conclusion.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

So let's look forward. 2023 will be the third year of implementation of our .Grow strategy. The environment continue to be demanding. Poland's economy is expected to slow down to less than 1% inflation to stay at double-digit level, the war behind our eastern border, unfortunately, continue. Nonetheless, we are confident that we have the right asset, network and people in place to manage those challenges and that our goals are ambitious.

First and foremost, we need to be persistent in execution of our commercial value strategy to at least partly reflect much higher cost in output prices. That need to be coupled with a further cost transformation to be more agile and cost effective, which include further digitization of our business processes that we discuss a lot today. Secondly, we hope that 2023 will finally be the year of 5G. We are very pleased that long-awaited consultation for the 5G auction has begun. We hope for efficient and transparent process. Finally, we will push further with our ESG agenda, both on environmental and social fronts. Our increased focus will be now on CO2 emission, reduction in Scope 3, so including entire value chain of suppliers and customers. This is why we are pushing more action related to circular economy.

Let's look now at our guidance on Slide 27. The objective for this year is consistent with our strategy to deliver growth. The key challenge is inflation, which will significantly impact our operating cost. We believe the demand for our services will remain solid as they are essential to our customers. We anticipate further growth of our core retail telco services, solid revenue from ICT and high demand for our infrastructure from wholesales customer. As a result, we expect further growth of total revenue at low-single-digit level.

EBITDAaL will further benefit from profitable revenue growth in the key area of business, our intensive focus on value and cost optimization. At the same time, please note that the large part of our cost is indexed to last year inflation or subject to pressure resulting from big increase of minimum wage in the economy. In addition, macro environment is very volatile with uncertain scale of economic slowdown, coupled with high inflation and interest rate. Taking all that into account, we repeat guidance for EBITDAaL that we announced last year for '22. So flat or growth by low-single-digit percentage.

Regarding eCapEx, we expect it between PLN 1.5 billion and PLN 1.7 billion. This reflects 3 elements. Firstly, our view that the outcome of the 5G auction will come in the second part of the year, so we will not see this year full run rate of network rollout. Secondly, our strive to be more CapEx efficient. And thirdly, our ambition plan regarding sales of our unused real estate. Of course, by definition, it excludes acquisition of mobile spectrum. It is going to be another tough year, but we believe that the merger we have put in place provides us with confidence in our ability to execute our goals. This confidence underpins our dividend recommendation.

Let's look at the last slide. As we presented to you today, we are on track with our strategy execution. We delivered our objective. We grew our revenue, profit, return on capital employed, and we have a healthy balance sheet. I'm pleased that we are in a position to share benefit of this growth with our shareholders. We have recommended to the general meeting of shareholders a payment of PLN 0.35 per share cash dividend in '23 from '22 profit. At the same time, in line with our dividend policy, PLN 0.35 per share becomes our new sustainable floor for the future. This 40% dividend increase reflects confidence that we, as management, have in the long-term prospect of Orange Polska and our ability to resist challenges of the future.

This concludes our presentation, and we are now ready to take your question.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

[Operator Instructions] While we are waiting for first question from teleconference, we have received a couple of questions online. I will start with the questions from Piotr Raciborski from Wood. The first question, could you please provide us with some update on the network monetization project? And this is about the discussions with tower term, what scenarios are possible?

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

I would say we don't have any big news to share regarding the tower considerations. Today, I think the macro environment is not favoring these type of considerations. So it's not very high on our agenda. It's not the perfect time for these type of projects. I think it's fair to say today, we're more focused on the concepts of improving the efficiency of running these operations. And obviously, we would keep you updated if the situation changes. But I would definitely say today, if you're thinking about what are we focused about, it's less on the towers and the monetization potential is more on execution of the organically designed plan that we have designed for years that we have implemented over the last 2 years, and that needs a lot of care to be implemented properly in 2023 and 2024.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

The second question from Piotr. Do you see negative impact of macro slowdown on your net additions? What is the reason of the decline in mobile postpaid net adds and fiber net adds in Q4? How does Q1 2023 looks like?

[Jolanta Dudek, executive]

So I will take this question. We do not observe the macro slowdown in general on the market. The reason of lower net adds in postpaid and FTTH are as follows. For postpaid, at the end of October, we have introduced new tariff plans with price hikes. So always, after such a price hike implementation, we observe 2, 3 weeks of slowdown of the sales. But after this period, the sales come back to the normal level. And we observed in January that January was excellent. So my forecast for first quarter is very good.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

Maybe we can add on the fiber that the production from the market, mainly now for us for third parties and our own co-own venture were lower than in '21, resulting in slower, but this is more a time different than our own performance. So this is -- and the production was reduced in last quarter of '22 versus '21.

[Jolanta Dudek, executive]

And some delays of installation on third-party FTTH.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

The next question on CPI clauses. Will you execute CPI clauses included in the contracts this year? Can you please provide us with some comment on the current Antimonopoly Office investigation regarding these clauses?

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

So let me take the first part of the question. So regarding the implementation of the clause that we introduced last -- mid of last year to all new customers and customers who renew the contract with us. So we have not yet decided. The period is the first 6 months of the year to take this decision. So at the moment, we have not yet decided, but we are strongly considering to implement this clause that we, in our case, with the way we have implemented, the way we have formulated in the contract, we believe our position is that we have the right to do it. And again, we have this period of up to the end of June to decide, and I repeat, at the moment, no decision has been taken.

Maybe, Witold, on the second part of the question related to our observation.

[Witold Drozdz, executive]

Just one comment. We are aware of one proceeding concerning also as directly. The Competition Office is simply verifying all the clauses introduced by telco operators, including us. We strongly believe our clauses fully in line with the regulations. So we are patiently waiting for the outcome from this proceeding.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

The last question from Piotr on eCapEx guidance. Could you please elaborate on the eCapEx guidance for 2023? What level of investments in 5G network rollout do you expect? What are the assumptions regarding real estate sales?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Well, I would say, if we're thinking about the eCapEx guidance, there are 4 main factors driving the CapEx expectations for 2023. First, we need to note that we continue to benefit from an expanding fiber footprint, but that we are able to reap those benefits off balance sheet through the use of the Swiatlowod Inwestycje, see our FiberCo JV, and here, everything is really going well. It has a mandate to build up to 1.7 million of new households connected, and this is progressing. And this allows us to allocate more CapEx onto the 5G rollout, but also the renewal of the existing -- now for the...

As far as 5G rollout goes, the auction isn't expected to end soon. I would say it's more likely to end in the second half of the year. So we will mostly focus on purchase of the license. This is obviously excluded from the eCapEx definition, and therefore, from the eCapEx guidance, but this is going to consume, well, a sizable amount of capital. And the rollout will likely reach the full pace only in 2024. What does that mean? It means that more CapEx will be delayed beyond the horizon of the .Grow plan 2021 to 2024 versus our initial expectations. I would still assume that if you ask us about the size of the yearly spend that we need for mobile investments, it's valid. What we have said in the .Grow plan, so it's between PLN 400 million and PLN 500 million yearly for the renewal and the rollout. But it will really be dependent on timing of the 5G auction.

And then looking at all the other categories of CapEx spend, we really are working on increasing the CapEx efficiency on things like network replacement, capacity, IT development, and I believe that we will demonstrate for the sequential benefits, and we will increase the returns that we are getting from the investments in those areas. So that's for the CapEx spend. Obviously, the eCapEx includes both the CapEx spending, but also the proceeds from sale of unused real estates.

You will have seen that over the last 2 years, we have progressed the income, the proceeds from sale of real estate this year was much higher -- well, last year was much higher than 2021. And we wish to further exploit these trends and to make sure that we have growing proceeds year-on-year from this domain. So that is another factor where we are quite ambitious and this will help us to manage the eCapEx portfolio, and this is the reason where we have guided for PLN 1.5 billion to PLN 1.7 billion of the CapEx spending. Obviously, the weights of the guidance, it takes into account that there are various scenarios, both for the real estate sales, but also timing and pace of the 5G rollout that we would be making.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

That concludes questions from Piotr. Now we're switching to Marcin Nowak, who will be answering his -- who will be asking the questions via phone. However, I have, I guess, Marcin, your -- let me try again.

[Marcin Nowak, analyst]

Can you hear me?

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

Yes, we can hear you very well.

[Marcin Nowak, analyst]

I have, well, 2 questions. First, regarding working capital, given the significantly large charge of working capital in fourth quarter, what should we expect regarding further evolution of working capital in following quarters given that the demand from handsets has been the major driver for the quarterly increase? That would be the first question. And well, second question would be about your net debt-to-EBITDA leverage target, which has been established in 2021, in mid-2021. And then it was described as well long term. And my question is, what exactly has been in your mind back then when describing this as a long-term target in which year should we expect Orange to meet this target? I mean having a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio within the range of 1.7, 2.1, excluding potential M&As?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Maybe starting with the working capital. Obviously, we've seen an increase of working capital requirements, but it's driven by positive factors because it's driven by our ability to sell more handsets to take more of the share of handset sales away from the open market. It demonstrated our ability to price those handsets in a favorable way for us and still for those to be attractive for the customers. So this is definitely something that if there will be demand, we will be trying to pursue that. The increase of working capital that you have seen in Q4, it's something, which, again, it's favorable, but this is the first step. So as we buy the handsets, and we sell them to our customers in installments, either with a contract or as a SIM free, it creates a large accounts receivable.

And then as time passes, we are able to do 2 things. First of all, we receive the cash from the customer. And if it's SIM free, it's cash for the handset, if it's with the contract, obviously, the higher the accounts receivable, the more we receive, but also usually, we use this to promote higher end tariffs. So this is something which is very accretive from the ARPU perspective.

And as time goes, we are able to sell a portion of those accounts receivable through factoring facility. This is what we have always been doing for the last 3 or 4 years. We do not sell those accounts receivable immediately. We wait for at least 3 tranches to be paid to make sure that the quality of those accounts receivable is good. And then we are able to get the cash quicker. We haven't decided exactly how much of it we will release through factoring, but this is definitely something which is at our disposal and something that we are using, normally, it's part of the business. And so this is -- the working capital is not something that I perceive as a blocking point and a hampering point for the cash generation in 2023. I would say even going further, if you look on the EBITDA guidance and on the CapEx guidance, it implies that we're rather striving for quite a good cash generation in this year.

Regarding the net debt-to-EBITDA leverage target, it is a long -- mid- or long-term goal that we have. So every time that we refer to this target, we don't only refer to the points that you see or the ratio that you see on the balance sheet date, but what are our expectations regarding this target when we take into account at least 2 to 3 years. So giving you an example of the current situation, we would not only look at the ratio that we have as of end of December 2022. But we obviously include the costs that we have -- the cost that we will incur. For example, for the 5G license during this year.

We haven't set an exact date when we would like to reach this corridor. It needs to encompass the main expenses that we have ahead of us and the big uncertainties. I think we will be in a much better position to comment on this when the 5G auction will be included as this is currently the rather big unknown that has been shifting in time for the last 2 years. And as soon as it's known, as soon as the amount will be known, we will be also in a better position to say how close are we to the minimum or the maximum threshold and what actions should we take to make sure that we are not under or over leveraged in the long-term perspective.

[Marcin Nowak, analyst]

But if I may, a quick follow-up. Because as you said, if I understood correctly, that you perceive this as a long-term approach of looking onward by 2 or 3 years. And if I calculate correctly, in mid-2021, the period of 2 or 3 years was in 2023 or 2024. So can you comment whether if this is not a current approach to the perceiving the target, but only when we look from the today's perspective, that you possibly may not plan at all to reach this leverage because from current level of net debt-to-EBITDA, which is at 1.3 right in the call, to reach the higher end of the leverage would have to pay in a auction around, let's say, almost PLN 3 billion, which versus the proposed pricing by you guys kind of unrealistic?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

I would say, if you're referring to the comments made in 2021, obviously, those were made also in the assumption that the auction will be finalized by now. The auction has not yet been finalized. And hence, today, it's still a big uncertainty ahead of us. We have not and will not comment to the precise date at which we should be within this corridor. But we have issued this corridor as part of a policy where being below the low end trigger is always initiating our thinking of how levered are we, how levered you want to be? And should this not assume something positive for shareholders in terms of dividend increase. On the other hand, obviously, if we were to reach the high end of the guidance, this would be something that would be awarding signal for us that we need to limit the expenses going forward not to exceed 2.2x net debt-to-EBITDA.

I think it's -- our actions, as of today, prove that it is working. We are below the low-end threshold. We are still before concluding the 5G auction, not waiting for the 5G auction to be concluded. We have first reinstated the dividend last year. We have increased the dividend by 40% this year. And I think, again, this shows you that we are taking those triggers into consideration. There is no automatism, but obviously, those are linked with -- amongst other things, our ability either to exercise our balance sheet to grow faster or to use the balance sheet and the safety net of the balance sheet to increase shareholder remuneration. But those are decisions that we will obviously take in 1 year time in 2 years' time because we do evaluate and reevaluate the dividend on a yearly basis.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

2 questions from Dominik Niszcz from Trigon that came online. On the real estate, first question, what was the year-end book value of the real estate that you intend to sell? And what is the market value of that portfolio? Is 2x book value a fair assumption?

[Maciej Nowohonski, executive]

I will take this question. So Maciej Nowohonski speaking. Basically, the value of the portfolio that we estimate is the market value that today we are having is surpassing PLN 1 billion. The value in the books is obviously lower because, as you know, these properties are not with us since 2 years or 3 years, but they are long tens of years. So they are well depreciated. Net book value of that is obviously much lower. And I hope it is helpful for you.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

I guess it's just as a compliment, it's fair to say whenever we sell real estate, we usually make quite a nice gain, it's sometimes close to 50% gain on those sales, it obviously depends which exactly real estate we sell and how much we sell. It's not the only, I would say, benefits of selling those real estates, I mean, obviously, the capital gain is one benefit, but it's also freeing up the capital that is currently locked into the value of those real estates and then reinvesting this in CapEx, into more value accretive projects that is really something that is on our minds as well as disposing those assets to reduce the recurring cost of maintaining those real estates, including real estate tax, excluding all the utility fees that we need to pay as we have them -- as long as we do have them.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

And the question from -- now from Jakub Viscardi from BOS. What is the value of estimated CapEx for 5G network rollout? How do you assess the covering targets -- so covering with 5 years, 99% of households with a speed of 100 mgs per second capacity network with the latency of the 10 milliseconds?

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

Yes, it's more for 5G commitments. In terms of the overall rollout, it's what I mentioned. It's -- the run rate will be around PLN 400 million to PLN 500 million per year for the rollout and the renewal of the rollout of 5G and renewal of the 4G license. As for the conditions of the auction, maybe Witold could give us -- help us.

[Witold Drozdz, executive]

Just one short comment. Please remember that these conditions are not final ones. This is, I would say, first round of consultation. We expect the second round and us like other operators and all the chambers at best our positions. We believe the regulator is now carefully analyzing it, and we expect the conditions may change also in this respect. So it's much too early to say what level of costs we may assume based on these obligations.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

Actually, I missed one question from Dominik Niszcz. It's a question on PPA agreements, a question on PPA wind energy agreement. What is the price indexation mechanisms beyond the year 2023?

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

I mean, we will not comment those contract by contract because they are commercially sensitive. So on some of the contracts for these type of ventures, you get mechanisms that are linked directly or indirectly with inflation. But the precise mechanisms are commercially sensitive, so we will keep it for us. I think it's safe to say we are satisfied and happy with the conditions that we have for those PPAs, both the virtual ones and the physical PPAs. We are satisfied with the mix that has both short-term and long-term contracts, and it is the right mix that we should have in our hedging strategy, and we are satisfied with the fact that this will help us to keep costs of electricity or energy stable year-over-year 2023 compared to 2022.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

It appears we have no further questions. So thank you very much for your attention. If you would like to follow up, you know how to reach us. Thank you. Have a good day, and see you back in April. Thank you.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

Thank you very much.