Good morning, and welcome to Telenor's Second Quarter Results Presentation for 2026. With me here today, I have our CEO, Benedicte Schilbred Fasmer, and our CFO, Torbjørn Wist.

Today's agenda follows our usual structure. Benedicte will start with the main developments in the quarter, including the Nordic markets, transformation, M&A, and defense topics.

Torbjørn will then take you through the financials. As usual, all revenue and EBITDA growth, just as a reminder, in terms of rates, are organic and made on a constant currency basis, and EBITDA always refers to adjusted EBITDA.

At the end of the presentation, we will open the line for questions. With that, Benedicte, over to you.

Thank you very much, Frank, and good morning, everyone. The results in the group's business units were mixed this quarter, with more demanding mobile markets in Norway, tough competition in Finland, but good financial progress in Sweden, Denmark, and Amp.

In Amp, the net asset value of the portfolio has grown to around NOK 15 billion, reflecting the new connection partnership and solid performance in KNL. The inflationary effect from the Iran war still weighs on Grameenphone in Bangladesh.

We have particularly tough year-on-year comparables due to the National Roaming Agreement, the timing and size of pricing adjustments, facing and step-up of robustification and transformation costs, and we faced a more promotional market in Norway this quarter, where we also needed to make a provision related to a dispute on VAT for TV news channels dating back to 2020 to 2022. In Q2, we report a decline in service revenues of 0.7% and a decline in EBITDA of 4.8%.

However, underlying performance on a fully comparable basis was better, with 0.3% increase in service revenues and a 2.3% decrease in EBITDA. In Q2, we've taken active measures to build a stronger Nordic franchise going forward.

We took multiple important steps to strengthen our Nordic market position, expanding our broadband footprint in Norway, and becoming the number two fixed provider in Sweden. We announced a value-unlocking partnership for Telenor Connexion to scale growth within IoT, and we also were awarded important contracts within defense and mission-critical communications.

2026 is a transition year for Telenor from several perspectives. As you remember, we've just sold two of our Asian businesses and focusing more on the Nordics.

We also advanced on our transformation agenda, which is set to bring substantial cost improvement in the years to come. However, due to the performance year to date, we are revising down our outlook for the year, and we will elaborate on this later in the presentation.

This said, our strategic direction and mid to long-term financial ambitions remain unchanged. We are building a simpler, more Nordic-centric, and more profitable Telenor.

Turning to the Nordics, as mentioned, performance was mixed across the markets this quarter. In Norway, we faced an exceptionally tough comparison with 16% EBITDA growth in Q2 last year.

Reported results were also affected by the TV VAT provision and the business transfers we mentioned earlier this year. Excluding these effects, service revenues increased by 0.6% in Norway, while EBITDA declined by 2% due to timing effects on both revenues and OpEx, including transitional IT costs.

In mobile, we grew well in B2B and also won a frame agreement with the armed forces that will add approximately 25,000 subscriptions during the year. In B2C, a quiet promotional quarter and market put further pressure on our output growth, although we saw some positive pricing trends in the market during June.

Sweden added 36,000 new mobile customers and grew mobile service revenue by 3.1%. The fixed transformation continued and helped drive an EBITDA growth of 5.2%.

Denmark sustained its commercial momentum and delivered service revenue growth of 3.5%. EBITDA improved substantially from the previous quarter, in line with our expectations.

In Finland, we saw modest improvement over the previous quarter with a low level of churn in B2C mobile. The recovery in new sales consumer output was modest as earlier campaign pricing continues to affect the customer base.

ARPU for DNA's new sales did not improve much from March through June, we expect new sales ARPUs to still take a few months to potentially coming back to year-over-year growth. We also see a more competitive fixed market in Finland.

Transformation initiatives supported good cost control and underlying a better growth of 4.8%. Overall, the underlying development in the Nordics is more resilient than the reported figures suggest.

We also see that the competition has picked up in some of our markets compared to what we saw earlier this year. Let me briefly give you status on our transformation agenda.

As mentioned at our CMD, 2026 is the peak transition year, with significant activities across several programs driving an uptick in Nordic OpEx in the short term. We execute the transformation on a country-by-country basis, and you see examples of this on the slide.

We are also scaling pan-Nordic programs in selected areas like, for instance, shared services, common products, AI, procurement, and network and IT. In the near term, this means supporting dual IT cost structures and incurring implementations costs, which will start rolling off from 2027.

In May, we announced a new and simplified organizational structure with effect from mid-August, leading to a leaner operating model supporting our more focused portfolio. By removing the business area layer, we will be reducing costs, FTEs, and complexity, and annual OpEx savings will be around NOK 0.3 billion from 2027.

Additionally, we have scaled down our office in Singapore following the exit of True and Pakistan, with annual OpEx savings of NOK 75 million already effective from this quarter. We are confident that these efforts will drive meaningful cost efficiency with average annual OpEx reductions in the Nordics of -2% from 2025 to 2028, while increasing operational leverage and organizational speed.

Let me now share a more concrete set of examples from Norway, where we see the greatest complexity and the most significant benefit from simplification. We have a strong and long track record of reducing costs in Norway.

We currently have multiple large-scale transformation programs running in parallel across four key dimensions: improving robustness, modernizing platforms, reducing systems and product complexity, and digitizing remaining manual interfaces. We are now carrying out the heavy lifting on IT migration, legacy platform exit, cloud transformation, and robustification.

As you may understand, this temporarily increases our cost because parts of the old and new platforms run in parallel, in addition to implementation costs on top. From January 1st, we are set to exit one major legacy vendor platform and move workloads to public cloud.

This alone would lead to NOK 0.4 billion OpEx and CapEx savings ramping up from next year. In addition, our private cloud initiative targets further savings of around NOK 0.4 billion over the next four years.

These are just two examples of the large transformation program we have in Norway. In short, we are taking transition costs now and to build a stronger and more efficient platform for the years ahead.

Our strategic momentum this quarter extended well beyond transformation. We started by unlocking value in Telenor Connexion through a partnership that supports further scaling globally in IoT.

The IoT transaction is strategically important and financially attractive and will release close to NOK 4 billion in proceeds upon closing expected in Q3. We also made some important progress within broadband.

In Norway, the GlobalConnect transaction was approved by the competition authority in Q2. As a result of the announced broadband transactions, Telenor is set to become the number two broadband provider both in Norway and Sweden, pending regulatory approval.

The three broadband deals will add around NOK 3.5 billion in revenues and are expected to generate around NOK 750 million in annual synergies from 2030 and beyond. Together, these actions sharpen our portfolio, strengthen our Nordic center of gravity, and positions Telenor for longer value creation over time.

Let me spend a moment on the acquisition of Bahnhof in Sweden, which was announced just last week. This is a strategically important expansion for us in the largest Nordic market.

The acquisition is set to make Telenor the second largest fixed telecom provider in Sweden, increasing our market share from around 15% to around 27%. Bahnhof is a service provider that brings 500,000 consumer fiber customers to our portfolio, a very strong B2B position, and a differentiated brand built on privacy, security, and technical expertise.

The company also brings secure infrastructure capabilities, including military-grade data center assets, representing a strong fit with Telenor's focus on resilience and security. The industrial logic is clear: strengthening our competitive position, enhancing cross-selling potential, and transforming the profitability of our combined fixed businesses.

This will create a foundation for renewed growth after a three-year period where we have peeled off layers of unprofitable fixed business due to suboptimal segment scale. Finally, let me also highlight our progress in defense and mission-critical communications.

KNL is seeing substantial traction with its international expansion and has qualified for a framework agreement with the U.K. Defense on tactical communication.

While the individual contracts have not been awarded yet, the opportunity is significant over time. KNL has also received pilot orders from another non-Nordic NATO country and has just been awarded a EUR 6.5 million contract with the Finnish Defence Forces, the third so far.

In Norway, Telenor has secured a four plus three-year mobile agreement with the Norwegian Armed Forces, with NOK 750 million in estimated revenues over the contract period. For Telenor, these wins signal growing traction within secure and resilient communication, a key strategic focus area for us.

With that, I'll hand you over to Torbjørn for the financials.

Thank you, Benedicte, and good morning, everyone. Let me start with the group financial highlights for the quarter.

The main financial message is that Q2 was affected by tough comps, timing effects, and the TV VAT provision in Norway, combined with the soft home market. Group service revenues were NOK 14.7 billion, corresponding to a decline of 0.7%.

Adjusted EBITDA was around NOK 8 billion, down 4.8%. Free cash flow before M&A was NOK 1.8 billion, up 13% year-on-year, while adjusted EPS was NOK 1.94, down 12% year-over-year.

The CapEx to sales ratio was 14.5%, and leverage ended at 1.4x, still well below our target range. ROCE was negatively affected by the CelcomDigi impairment we booked in Q1, in addition to the softer operating profit this quarter.

ROCE, excluding associated companies, was still a solid 12%. Let me now walk you through the main drivers, starting with the top line.

The service revenues for the group were in a soft patch this quarter. The organic decline was mainly driven by Nordics and Asia, partly offset by continued growth in Amp.

In the Nordics, service revenues were affected by Norway, the VAT provision, and timing of price migrations. In Asia, Grameenphone remained under pressure from lower voice and data revenues in a challenging macro and competitive environment.

On an underlying comparable basis, group organic service revenue growth was slightly positive at 0.2%. Turning to OpEx, which grew 1.5% for the Nordics, while growth in Amp, as well as special projects on the HQ level, drove group OpEx growth to 2.6%.

The increase was mainly related to transformation, robustification, and M&A activity, as well as amortization of commission costs. Moving to EBITDA, the combination of the service revenue development and higher organic OpEx resulted in a 4.8% organic decline in adjusted EBITDA.

However, the underlying decline is 2% when adjusting for VAT in Norway, the coastal radio transfer to the state, and with like-for-like accounting in Finland. This is still an outlier quarter, reflecting several moving parts, tough comps, timing effects, transformation spend, and the macro pressure in Bangladesh.

There was also a negative contribution on the HQ level, reflected by the other and elimination column here. This was due to the cancelation of a procurement contract with True and higher spending on special projects this year.

As a side note, we are adjusting the procurement organization as part of our reorganization to address lower income from Asia on the procurement side. Before I go into the Nordics overview, let me now zoom in on Norway, where these effects are particularly visible this quarter.

On Norway, it is useful to take a step back and look at the development in more detail over a two-year period. Compared with Q2 2024, Norway has delivered 4.6% EBITDA CAGR on an underlying comparable basis, even when excluding revenues from the National Roaming Agreement.

In Q2 2025, growth in Norway was 16%. We were clear back then that this was exceptional on many levels.

It was driven by commercial timing effects, new but temporary roaming revenues, and supported by counter seasonal swings on the COGS and OpEx lines. In Q2 this year, Norway's underlying adjusted EBITDA declined 2%.

The reason is that we lapped last year's larger than usual back book pricing effects. The price uplifts we made were more spread out, and last year's boost from the National Roaming Agreement revenue went into a gradual reversal this quarter.

As Benedicte said, we also had an OpEx increase, partly driven by transitionally higher IT transformation spend, as well as robustification projects, which included transfer of sites from infrastructure. Q2 2026 in isolation is therefore not a clean quarter in terms of assessing the long-term earnings trajectory in Norway.

Our focus is on driving commercial performance while progressing the transformation that will support a structurally lower cost base over time. For the Nordics overall, adjusted EBITDA declined 3.1% organically.

Norway was the main negative contributor. Sweden contributed positively, supported by subscriber growth, fixed transformation, and structural OpEx reductions.

Denmark remained in the red on EBITDA due to amortization of commissions, but made a 12 percentage point uplift quarter-on-quarter as introductory campaigns rolled off. While the near term in Denmark will be challenged by an increase in OpEx, we do expect return to sound growth in the fourth quarter.

DNA improved EBITDA as transformation initiatives offset higher sales costs. On an underlined comparable basis, Nordic adjusted EBITDA increased 0.6%.

Again, the OpEx level is affected by the temporary IT transformation spend, which particularly weighs on Norway and Denmark for 2026, as well as the mentioned year-on-year timing and phasing of both price changes and costs in Norway. Let me move to Asia.

In Bangladesh, Grameenphone continues to operate in what can only be described as a difficult environment. Service revenues declined 3.2% as the inflationary effects due to the situation in the Gulf rippled through the economy, creating pressure on consumer wallets, further intensifying price competition on the data side.

EBITDA declined by 6%. Still, commercial momentum improved sequentially, with 3.5 million new data subscribers and overall 2.1 million new subscribers added.

To support the voice to data transition that is taking place in the country, the 700 MHz low band rollout has started. While this increases CapEx across Q2 and Q3, we continue to manage spending diligently and with tight focus on operational and capital efficiency.

The timing and strength of any recovery remains uncertain and a risk given macro sensitivity and the wider regional situation. Let us move to the P&L cash flow and leverage.

The P&L is fairly clean this quarter, apart from the mentioned VAT item, which is spread out across fixed service revenues, OpEx, and a minor effect on financial items. Reported EBITDA was impacted by workforce reductions and restructuring related cost of NOK 337 million, which is higher than last year.

You can expect more of this in coming quarters. Last year, we recorded NOK 500,000 in M&A gains from the Jottacloud merger.

Net financial items improved materially year-on-year, supported by higher financial income and items related to True Corporation. In total, we generated NOK 2.5 billion in net income to our shareholders.

Turning to cash flow, free cash flow before M&A was NOK 1.8 billion, an improvement of around NOK 0.2 billion year-over-year despite lower EBITDA. The improvement was supported by lower net interest paid, dividends from associates and financial investments, and lower dividends to non-controlling interests.

Working capital was a negative driver in the quarter, mainly due to timing effects year-over-year. Also, handset financing in previous periods was a headwind on this line.

CapEx paid was around NOK 2.3 billion, and total free cash flow was NOK 2 billion, including almost NOK 200 million in M&A cash flow from a True deferred installment. Our balance sheet remains very strong.

Net interest-bearing debt was NOK 51.5 billion at the end of June, with leverage at 1.4x. The increase in the quarter was mainly driven by the half-year dividend payment to our shareholders.

Our three-year NOK 15 billion buyback program is now well underway. We bought back 2.9 million shares in the market for a total of NOK 0.4 billion during June.

Our financial position gives room to sustain shareholder returns while also pursuing disciplined value-accretive Nordic investments. Even following the recent M&A announcements, we still have significant financial flexibility for either acquisitions or additional shareholder returns.

With that, let's see. No.

We're just having a little bit of a technical issue here. If you can give me the speaker notes.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you very much.

Apologies for that. Let me turn to the financial outlook.

In light of the market developments and performance in Q2, we have updated our financial outlook for 2026. The revision is driven by a combination of technical and market-related effects.

The more technical effects relate to direct and indirect effects of recent transactions, such as the loss of procurement revenues from True and the expected deconsolidation of Telenor Connexion from September. In terms of the market-related effects, the main issue is revenue momentum in parts of the Nordics, especially in Norway, where B2C ARPU has been affected by promotional activity and only modest scaling of our new services in the quarter.

Finland is also improving more modestly than expected with competition in both mobile and fixed, and Bangladesh continues to remain uncertain. Given this, for Telenor Nordics, we now expect organic growth in both service revenues and adjusted EBITDA of flat to low single digit for 2026.

Note that the guidance, as usual, excludes prior year activities, which in Q2 means that we have excluded the impact of the TV VAT provision. We continue to see Nordics CapEx to sales at around 14% for the year.

For the group, the updated outlook is for flat to slightly negative organic growth in adjusted EBITDA, obviously with Bangladesh remaining a key sensitivity. Note that our Nordic transformation activity and the profile of our commission amortization schedule is set to drive OpEx increases in the very near term.

This means that the underlying EBITDA improvement in Q3 will be temporarily held back by OpEx. Transformation benefits will soon once again start to offset implementation cost, becoming more visible from late Q4 and especially into 2027 and 2028.

With that, Benedicte, I will hand it back to you for the concluding remarks.

Thank you very much, Torbjørn. To sum up, Q2 was a bit softer financially, it was also a quarter with clear strategic progress.

We advanced heavy lifting on IT simplification, strengthened our Nordic broadband position, progressed in defense, and continued to sharpen both the portfolio and the organization. As Torbjørn said, we also remain financially strong with leverage well below our target range, the buyback program is well underway.

As we move through this soft patch, our focus is firmly on execution, improving commercial momentum, delivering transformation benefits, and turning this year's strategic actions into stronger cash flow and returns over time. Our long-term ambitions remain unchanged, we are confident in the direction we are taking.

I now hand back to Frank to moderate the Q&A. Please, Frank.

Thank you, Benedicte. We'll now open the line for questions.

As usual, please limit yourself to one question each, plus a brief follow-up if needed, so that everyone gets an opportunity to participate. Operator, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

I had a question clearly around the guidance cut today. The share prices are telling us all that investors have lost confidence in the structural growth outlook for some of the Nordic markets and also in execution.

I had a question that hits on both those things. On the structural side, the concern in Norway is have we run out of road on the More for More growth and the value-added services?

It's worked well for the last few years. It's not working this year.

Is that just poor execution, or is there a structural problem of us running out of road there? Also, the execution side, the cost of transformation.

Cost reduction is always a black box, but it's unprecedented the amount of EBITDA headwind that this IT stack transformation is generating to your business. Your investors haven't seen that before across the sector.

Could you just tell us what the total cost of the IT stack transformation is and what the anticipated boost to Nordic EBITDA is so people understand that better? Because it's confused a lot of people.

Many thanks.

Okay. I'll try and pick up.

It's the structural in Norway, right? On the More for More strategy.

Yes. The value-added service.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay. Firstly, I'd just like to repeat that the service revenue in Norway, adjusting for the VAT effects and the business transfer, even with the different timing effects of price increases this year compared to last year, grew by 0.6%.

What we saw in the second quarter was that there was much more rotation in the market and much more campaigns, which means that our ARPU was still growing but had a lower growth than it had in the previous quarter. We still have our More for More strategy, and on top of that, we have our Services First layer on top.

However, the Services First products that we've launched, the first one in November of last year and the second now in March, have not picked up with the pace that we anticipated. We are adjusting and fine-tuning that and hope to be able to prove that that also is a viable way forward for Telenor.

We continue, of course, with the More for More concept as well. On the transformation side, would you like to cover that, Torbjørn?

Sure. I think the way to think about the item, we're not going into the specifics about the cost themselves, but clearly what is driving a lot of cost right now is the number of IT people we have involved in, one, the IT system out in Norway that needs to be done by the end of this year, as well as the implementation of the BSS stack in Denmark.

Those two things, in combination with running two systems in practice in parallel, brings additional cost. Of course, when you look at the efficiency savings that will come on the back of that into next year and beyond, that is, of course, that those costs that we are now running to implement those systems will be taken out.

The IT stack is not just important from a cost perspective. It is also an important part of our customer journey because the old, what I call technology debt systems, often stand in the way of good customer journeys.

This is, of course, important for our customer experience to ensure that we have proper future-proof systems that will deliver a whole new level of customer service in the future.

I'll just add a teeny bit to that, which has to do with the paying off on robustification, which is one of the key elements of the transformation as well. In light of the global context, if you could put it that way, one of the reasons for winning, for instance, the Norwegian defense contract is that we have stepped up on the robustification and resilience of our networks as well.

Thank you.

I might just add-

Thank you.

... before you go to the next question, an element as to the aspect you raised, Andrew, on whether or not this type of development that caused by the IT transformation in terms of the EBITDA growth, which by the way, on an underlying basis is down 2% year-over-year on a very tough comp, is unprecedented.

I think what is also unprecedented is what we're actually doing in terms of creating a cloud-native incumbent telco in Norway. I don't think many operators out there have been doing what we are doing now with a combination of going to a public cloud and private sovereign clouds production stack for the IT part.

I think that's fair to add, and that will bring significant benefits in the years ahead.

Yeah. Thank you.

Next question, please.

Good morning. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yeah. Just some IT issues here this morning.

Yes, I just wanted to follow up on the competitive dynamics. It seems like a theme across, like Andrew said, the different telcos in the region and your report is increased competition, and the commentary on the Tele2 call was also quite strong on that front.

Could you maybe give some more color on what you're seeing across the different countries? Is this like a new norm of higher competition, and what is driving that?

If not, what will change going forward? Then I have a follow-up, please.

It's always difficult to have forward-looking statements, and particularly on markets. I guess that's what's hurting us a little bit also this quarter that we didn't see that a very good and stable three-player market actually turned more rotational in Norway with much more aggressive campaigning.

We saw some recent improvements towards the end of the quarter. That's the story for Norway.

In Sweden, it's a four-player market, as you know, and is quite stable and seems to continue that way. In Denmark, which has been at highly maybe the most competitive market in Europe, we've seen an improvement in the way the pricing and the market is behaving.

I guess in Finland, which has also been confirmed by some of the other market players, the price shock we got in Q4, remember you have a 12-month binding period for new customers, takes some time to recover, but it seems to be stabilizing and recovering from that price shock.

All right. Thank you.

My follow-up is more on the dividend and the buyback program. You're obviously making some big moves with Bahnhof and other deals, and you're having these transitory headwinds to the cash flow and the earnings this year and next.

Can you just help us understand how to think about the buyback program and the dividend going forward, if you're still committed to those? I think when you launched the buyback program, you said it gave you flexibility, but if anything, to increase it if you did not do any big deals.

Just wanted to get confirmation that there's no risk to the program or the dividend from the near-term weakness you're seeing now and all these deals. Just getting a lot of questions on that from investors.

The short answer is no. We have a 16-year track record on paying dividends.

There's a strong fundamental commitment to the payment of dividends, both in the board and in the management.

Increasing dividends, not only dividends.

Increasing dividends, thank you, which has now been complemented by a share buyback program, which is well underway. Of course, the buyback program, A, it returns capital to shareholders, but B, it also reduces a little bit the absolute amount of dividends that we pay out, which, of course, where the cash is no longer coming in.

With the acquisitions we are making, this will of course add to the financial profile going forward. We think they are good acquisitions that will support our development in the years ahead.

Then, we always have good discussions with our own board on, call it, alternative uses of the financial strength we have, and that is something that you would have to wait for until we have that discussion with our board and communicate something. There's a strong commitment to compensating our shareholders in a good way, Kristoffer.

Yeah. The flexibility, if anything, was more on the upside rather than downsizing the buyback program if you do these big deals.

As I said, now we have kicked off on the NOK 15 billion program. Of course, in sizing up these things, one is, of course, returning a good amount of capital to the shareholders, that needs to be conducted in accordance with market regulations.

Yes, there's always flexibility to add additional shareholder remuneration. That's something that I'm not going to pre-flag here.

That is something that we would have to communicate as and when we make a decision.

I think we need to move to the next question, which seems to be from Felix at Nordea.

Very good. Thanks for taking my question.

I'll actually follow up on Kristoffer's question on capital allocation more broadly. I'd like you to discuss about the financial and operational headroom that you still have left for larger, maybe mobile M&A, given that you've now announced three acquisitions on the fixed side of things.

You have the buyback going, and it seems like the earnings trends are worsening. Obviously, there's been speculation about mobile market consolidation in the Nordics, and historically it seems like you've been quite open to that.

Just curious to hear your thoughts about your both financial headroom as well as operational capacity to do anything larger on top of what you've already announced. Thanks.

Yeah. I think we will not do anything that will not benefit our shareholders from a financial perspective in the areas of M&A.

I think the three, or actually four proof points you have from this quarter is a testament to that. That would also, of course, apply if we were to pursue any other consolidation efforts or acquisitions within our markets.

Of course, as Torbjørn just said, answering Kristoffer's questions, we have a very strong balance sheet at the moment. We have initiated the share buyback program, which will take down the number of shares and give higher returns per share.

If we cannot apply or invest in things that we think yields more to the investors, of course, we will suggest to our board that we in some way or form repatriate that to our shareholders if that occurs.

Okay. I hope that answers your question.

Thank you.

Yeah. Morning, guys.

I hope you can hear me.

Yeah.

It was to come back to Norway, please, if possible. You mentioned competition in broadband, I think, in your comments, Benedicte.

Would it be possible, there's loads of moving parts, obviously, in the Norwegian numbers this quarter. Could you tell us where we find, if anything, in your KPIs it looks like mobile is moving?

Could you just help us and tell us exactly what the effects are on the numbers and what you've penciled into guidance? Just a very quick clarification on the last point.

You did mention CelcomDigi as a stake in the last point. Can you just remind us what the criteria are for you thinking about sale or keeping the asset, please?

Thank you.

Sure. When it comes to the Norwegian market, what we saw in Q2, which of course you can think of also as a little bit of a bridge to the outlook for the year, is that we saw a lot stronger promotional development in B2C mobile in Norway which led to higher churn and pressure on ARPU growth.

Q2 is typically a very promotional quarter with summer campaigns, etc. They were quite aggressive campaigns this quarter, and that when you do get rotational churn, perhaps into lower price points, that has a carry-on effect, which affects the outlook for the year.

As Benedicte talked about, we had had a bit of a slower start to our value-added services. We had growth on the security products, but less so on the entertainment products.

We're now, of course, taking steps to recompose that package. Those were the main things that was affecting the performance in Norway.

On the broadband side-

Well, there is one more thing.

Yeah.

Which is the price adjustments.

Yeah.

They were a bit more staggered this year compared to last year.

Yeah.

It kind of comes in in different periods of the year.

Yeah.

Between quarters.

On the broadband side, the main focus there has been we've taken a couple of steps now to strengthen our market position on the fixed side in Norway with the acquisition of GlobalConnect, which was recently approved, as well as the announced acquisition of Enivest. Sorry, the second part of your question, Nick.

CelcomDigi was it?

Yeah.

Yeah, CelcomDigi. Yeah, briefly.

Thanks.

What we have said is that, long term, we see ourself becoming more of a Nordic-centric group, and of course, with the acquisitions we make, we are just by nature of the weightings becoming more Nordic-centric. Our main focus there is to be active owners and, if we do see structural opportunities, we will of course consider those.

That is about as far as we go when commenting on the future of our Asian assets.

That's great. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks very much.

My video doesn't seem to work. I apologize for that.

I wanted to ask a little bit about this competition situation, particularly in mobile Norway. You're describing it very distantly, right, as an externality.

You're sort of saying there is higher competition, could you dig a little bit more into the dynamics of it? For example, it is imaginable that you have enabled Ice through the NRA, the National Roaming Agreement, to become more of a quality player, and they might be emboldened to be more aggressive in the market.

In this sense, it's not simply an externality of other players, it's also Telenor's contribution to the situation. If that's not true, any other sort of underlying reasons for this flare up of competition that you would see here.

You want to take that, Torbjørn?

Yeah. I can start.

I wouldn't peg it on a particular operator, but there was some significant campaigning that was going on in Q2. We've had campaigning from all the MNOs.

We've had campaigning from the MVNOs. That's just part and parcel of operating in a market with several players.

Of course, when there are packages being offered with lower price points, all you can eat on data, etc, that will always create a certain market dynamic, which has affected our numbers. When the market is more competitive, we do see that sometimes there is rotational churn.

We've had to spend more cost in order to keep customers and secure them. Sometimes they will then switch into lower price points, as a result of which you do get some pressure on the ARPU, which is what is evident in our numbers.

I think it is important to say that we did see some normalization towards the end of the quarter. Some of our competitors has increased their price points.

Q2 will always be a very dynamic quarter on the competition front.

Thank you. Can I just clarify one thing?

It's a very quick one on the clarification, Frank, sorry about this. You seemed to say during your prepared remarks that the guidance actually excludes, so for the year, the comparison to guidance would exclude the TV VAT issue, whereas in the organic growth rates, the VAT issue is included.

Can you just confirm that? If it's true, explain why you would play it that way.

Yeah. Well, we have had a caveat for some years now on issues or claims or other factors relating to prior periods activities, such as this TV VAT, which was a claim from the tax authorities on 2020-2022.

That comes in that category where we basically have said that our guidance doesn't include that sort of periods not related to the period in that way. That's consistent with how we have done it.

The service revenue growth, the organic growth, and so on, the reported numbers, as we touched on in the presentation, are affected by the TV VAT. The first half year rates that you see on our outlook slide have been adjusted for the TV VAT so as to be consistent with the guidance, which excludes the TV VAT, if that makes sense.

Thank you, Frank.

Thank you. Thank you for taking my question as well.

I had one on Sweden. The announced acquisition of Bahnhof, if you have any regulatory approvals that is needed is the first one.

Secondly, if you can come through with this acquisition, do you feel you have your base ready in Sweden, or do you have white spots that will make you continue to look for M&A since we don't want to fixed size as well? Thank you.

Yes, we do need regulatory approval from the competitive authorities, which is put in motion, but we hope to get an answer to that within third to fourth quarter, sometime. As you may remember, we are also at that point will make a mandatory offer for the remainder of the shares.

When it comes to, are we satisfied with our base, I think I'll just answer that by saying if we have financially viable opportunity that would be incremental to our business, then we will look at it, and if not, we won't. We have a pretty good position now, and improved with what we've done in Q2.

Crossing finger, but it goes through. We'll continue to be open, but not too eager, if I can say it that way.

Okay. Then maybe a quick follow-up on Sweden.

You said, Benedicte, that Sweden is quite stable, and hopefully it will continue that way. We just had a conference call with one of your competitors that said it has been a flare-up of competitions here late spring into the summer.

Is that something you can confirm, and how you deal with that?

I think from our perspective, we've progressed quite well in the market, and our experience is that it has been a quite normalized market. We've added, as I said, 36,000 new subscribers.

We have still a decline in fixed, but remember then that some of it is now reported under mobile for the fixed wireless access customers. We are pretty pleased with how we are progressing in Sweden at the moment.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Hi, guys. My question is just on Finland.

You mentioned inbound ARPUs have somewhat deteriorated during Q2. I suppose this is a slightly different message to what Elisa said yesterday, who had seen an improvement.

Can we read this as Elisa are raising prices, creating a gap between themselves and the other operators? Do you see this, or do you still see pricing as quite tight within the market?

Yeah.

We can speak for ourselves, but why don't you cover that, Frank?

Yeah. I think it's difficult for us to talk about the differences between the individual players and so on, and gaps, and the things you ask about from a price perspective.

Those type of discussions we don't do.

I think what we can say, focusing on ourselves is that we do see that the ARPU, because remember it was a hyper-competitive Q4.

Yes.

We did see normalization of pricing as we moved into Q1. Keeping pricing aside, you still have the issue that in Finland, people are signing up for 12-month contracts.

You also have that additional thing that, let's say if you're a subscriber with one operator and you have three months to go, you can then sign up for the promotional package in December, and then that starts kicking in April time or whatever. You do get this delay in the improvement of the ARPU curve.

What we did see was that there was some improvement throughout Q1, but then that tailed off. You're going to have for the first, I would say, three quarters of this year, you're going to have an ARPU development which will take time to build itself up to where it were before.

I think that is one of the key things that has been topical for not just us.

Yeah.

I think just to give a bit of a better answer to my previous one, Ajay, on your question, I think in terms of the profile that you said that the inbound ARPUs seem to have deteriorated during Q2, which is a bit of a different message and so on. That's not quite precise.

What we've said is that if you think about month-on-month inbound ARPUs during Q1 to, I mean, January to April, were consistently improving. Even though we have seen continued improvement on average for Q2 versus Q1, the inter-quarter development from April to June showed no further improvement and actually rather with June had been slightly lower.

Pricing, remember there's a lag between the actual pricing in the market and what we're able to book in an individual month or quarter because of how the market works. Pricing is moving-

Go ahead.

... in the right direction.

With a lag.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think if that's good, or Ajay, we have other people in the queue, so I think we need to move on to the next one, please.

Thank you for taking the question. I think some of the promotional activity in Norway has been on the unlimited offers and not just the lower-end options in mobile.

Do you think there's been more competition on unlimited than usual? How do you think about your price premium in Norwegian Mobile for unlimited?

Do you see it sustainable or is the lesson here that maybe that level of price premium is a little bit more difficult to sustain? Thank you.

I think I'd like to start with the second half of your question, if that's all right. Where we've built a unique coverage, a unique brand position, a unique resilience over time, and we are also expanding that with products both for the retail and for the business segment.

We experience that our customers are willing to pay for that quality, and that has not changed. However, we do see more competition in certain pockets within the segments, and as you say, unlimited data usage and so on.

That's been one of the promotional characteristics within the second quarter, as you say. I can confirm that.

We have not experienced that our market position as such is changing.

You're right. I think the promotional activity in the market has lifted up from low to mid and towards the more unlimited bracket, which is a higher bracket in the consumer market.

That's clear. Thank you.

Okay.

Hi there. Good morning.

Thanks for taking my question. I'll ask one on Asia, please.

Just on Bangladesh, obviously you mentioned all of the sort of various macro headwinds, which make it difficult to have a lot of visibility on the pace of the recovery. Can you just explain to us what you're now baking in for Bangladesh during H2 in your new revised guidance?

I think previously you had said that you were assuming stabilization. Has that view changed?

Can you just clarify what you've assumed for H2? Just on the topic of Bangladesh, is there any update that you could perhaps provide on the spectrum auctions?

Obviously quite a lot of spectrum that was set to come up for renewal from your past spectrum bands. Any updates there would be very helpful.

Thank you.

Shall I?

Yes, please.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In terms of the outlook for the year, of course Bangladesh hits, call it, EBITDA in terms of when we look at the sort of group guidance. We do expect that it's still a form of normalization for the second half.

You've got to keep in mind that I think management has done a very good job in terms of focusing on costs when the top line is challenged, and of course that's important in terms of confidence in the guiding. Look, we've all followed the Gulf War.

No off-ramp has been secured yet for the parties there. Of course, if that situation deteriorates, it's difficult for me to sit here and be bombastic about what's going to happen in Bangladesh, which is dependent on energy imports from the Gulf.

Again, management is definitely focusing on managing costs in order to protect cash also in a challenging situation. When it comes to the spectrum auctions, there is no news there.

I will refer you to our website in terms of when these are up for renewal. We of course have our own dialogues with authorities there.

So far no information has come out on the sort of nature, pricing, etc, of that spectrum renewal process.

You're right, there are two spectrum auctions expected this year.

Yeah.

That are running out, sorry.

Yeah.

This year.

I think there are up to four bands actually-

Yeah.

... which depending on how we define them which will come up for renewal.

Yeah.

The format is still to be seen, as there's nothing official on that. I think that concludes our call for this time.

That's all we have time for. If you have additional questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to IR.

Operator, I think that concludes our call.