Finance strategy

We announced our finance strategy for the years 2018 through 2021 at the Capital Markets Day in late May 2018. Our forecast for growth through to 2021 remains at the same high level we anticipated at our Capital Markets Day in 2015 for the period 2014 through 2018.

Part of our finance strategy was to achieve our target financial ratios – relative debt (ratio of net debt to adjusted EBITDA) and equity ratio – along with a liquidity reserve that covers our maturities of the coming 24 months at least. With these clear statements we intend to maintain our rating in a corridor from A- to BBB and safeguard undisputed access to the capital market.

There is a sustainable dividend policy for shareholders, which is subject to approval by the relevant bodies and the fulfillment of other legal requirements. The new dividend policy introduced in 2019 sets out a minimum dividend of EUR 0.60 per dividend-bearing share. The dividend is to continue to reflect the relative growth in adjusted earnings per share (EPS). For the 2020 financial year, we will propose a dividend of EUR 0.60 for each dividend-bearing share. We thus offer our shareholders both an attractive return and planning reliability.

We will also take share buy-backs into consideration, both of Deutsche Telekom AG shares and shares in T‑Mobile US.

Total capital expenditure is also to remain high in the next few years. The scope for investment is to be used to further roll out our broadband infrastructure and to accelerate the transformation of the Company. In mobile communications, the infrastructure build-out will focus on the LTE and 5G standards and, in the fixed network, on optical fiber and vectoring. The finance strategy supports the transformation of our Group into the Leading European Telco. In order to generate a sustainable increase in value, we intend to earn at least our cost of capital. We plan to meet this target by optimizing the utilization of our non-current assets on the one hand, and pursuing strict cost discipline and sustainable profitable revenue growth on the other.

Our finance strategy through 2021

We will provide information about the further development of our finance strategy for the years following 2021 at our Capital Markets Day, which is planned for 2021.