Dear shareholders,
Dear friends of Deutsche Telekom,
What a remarkable year it has been! Put simply, 2024 was outstanding for Deutsche Telekom: all of our key financial performance indicators clearly exceeded market expectations. In November, for the first time in over two decades, our share surpassed the 30 euro mark. Our “T” is the most valuable brand in continental Europe. Our customers were loyal to us. Today, we maintain around 300 million customer relationships worldwide. We invested further for these customers, once again reaching our highest level yet of EUR 16 billion. But perhaps the most important message for you is this: Our dividend per share for 2024 is set to rise to EUR 0.90. In short: We continued our growth course on both sides of the Atlantic and achieved extraordinarily good results. This is both reassuring and encouraging.
These positive trends are reflected in our key financial figures. Adjusted EBITDA AL grew by 6.2 % to EUR 43.0 billion. Free cash flow AL increased by 18.7 % to EUR 19.2 billion. Adjusted earnings per share – the basis for the proposed dividend to the Shareholders’ Meeting – rose to EUR 1.90 per share. In addition, we bought back shares with a total volume of approximately EUR 2 billion in 2024, and intend to purchase more in this year: At our Capital Markets Day in October 2024, we announced that we will buy back further shares up to a total purchase price of EUR 2 billion.
All this means we are maintaining our course for 2025 – the year in which we celebrate our 30th anniversary. Our businesses are geared toward steady growth. We are focused and remain a reliable constant. Our continued success rests on the systematic implementation of our strategy. It gives us the necessary boost for realizing our vision of becoming the Leading Digital Telco. At the center of our strategy is the flywheel. At our Capital Markets Day in October 2024, we demonstrated how it has been helping us achieve – and in many cases surpass – our most important financial targets since 2020. We also presented an updated version of this flywheel incorporating the additional dimensions of data and artificial intelligence, as well as global scaling. The resulting growth targets for the coming years remain ambitious.
Our continued success rests on the systematic implementation of our strategy. It gives us the necessary boost for realizing our vision of becoming the Leading Digital Telco. At the center of our strategy is the flywheel. At our Capital Markets Day in October 2024, we demonstrated how it has been helping us achieve – and in many cases surpass – our most important financial targets since 2020. We also presented an updated version of this flywheel incorporating the additional dimensions of data and artificial intelligence, as well as global scaling. The resulting growth targets for the coming years remain ambitious.
Flywheel: Leading Digital Telco vision
Our success hinges on keeping our flywheel constantly spinning. We will do this by continuing to invest more than our competitors. In this way, Deutsche Telekom can win over more and more people, and turn customers into fans by offering them the best products and the best services on the best network. This enables us to scale up and become more efficient. Building on this, we will improve our financial figures; higher profitability in turn enables higher investments. And our flywheel keeps spinning.
But it must never stop. Which is why we are adding momentum through two new elements. First is the global aspect: We have a strong position as the leading telecommunications provider to the Western world, with one mainstay in Europe and another in the United States. We want to focus even more intensely on leveraging this strength going forward, to unlock further growth opportunities and efficiency potential, and continue accelerating our flywheel.
Second, we are making good progress with amplifying digitalization through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) – another addition to our flywheel. This topic already plays a key role throughout most of Deutsche Telekom. AI opens up new access to knowledge and helps us to better use our resources, e.g., in service, and improve our productivity. AI is much more than a tool for creating text or images: We have launched in total over 500 projects aiming to unlock the potential of AI in our Company. Just one example: Thanks to AI, we have been able to reduce the time it takes to activate fixed-network lines from over three minutes to ten seconds. Projects like these make us faster and more efficient, ultimately enhancing the quality of our services. And they will all help us to understand AI even better and keep on improving our processes.
Dear shareholders,
At the heart of our strategy are our approximately 300 million customer relationships worldwide. Without these customers, we cannot be successful. That is why we continue to forge ahead with our network build-out, and enable the best connections over our infrastructure for customers across our entire footprint.
T‑Mobile US keeps leading the industry in terms of customer growth. Ahead of Verizon and ahead of AT&T, both former leading big players on the most important mobile communications market globally. In the 2024 financial year, T‑Mobile US won around 6.1 million new postpaid mobile customers, retaining its position as the number 1 in the United States. According to independent tests, T‑Mobile US’ ultra-fast 5G network is unbeaten as the best mobile infrastructure nationwide.
In our domestic market of Germany, we are a pioneer of the digital transformation. And we are improving every year. We proved this yet again in 2024, meeting our expectations for this year in terms of the fiber-optic build-out: more than 470 thousand new customers have subscribed to a fiber-optic line from us. At the same time, we give over 10 million households and businesses the option to subscribe to our fiber-optic lines. We keep our word. We are the growth engine for optical fiber in Germany, building out more than all of our competitors combined. Our focus now is on maintaining this momentum and continuing to work toward nationwide coverage.
We are shaping up our 5G mobile network for the future, making it even more flexible and high performing through the use of Open RAN and antenna tuning. We aim to make 3 thousand sites Open RAN-compatible by 2027. Our 5G build-out, too, is industry-leading. At present, 98 % of the population of Germany can access our high-speed mobile network.
Successes like these are pivotal to our brand’s global reputation. According to the latest Brand Finance report, our “T” is worth USD 85.3 billion, making it the most valuable brand in our industry. Not only that: we currently top the list as the most valuable brand among all companies in Europe, and have more than doubled our brand value since 2020. This clearly highlights how seriously we take our brand promise, “Connecting your world.”
Dear shareholders,
We want you to participate in this success. Because you put your trust in us every day. In light of the strong earnings performance, we intend to increase the dividend for the 2024 financial year to EUR 0.90 per share. Provided we get the approval of the Shareholders’ Meeting, of course. This is an increase of 17 % against last year, and this step is in line with our communicated dividend policy. Showing again that we can be counted on. And we are still shifting up a gear: by 2027, we want to increase adjusted earnings per share – which also forms the basis for our dividend – to approximately EUR 2.5.
But for all of this success, we must not lose sight of what is important. That is why we stand by our convictions. 200 thousand employees carry the responsibility for all of the people who place their trust in us. We are aware of this. We draw strength from this. And it gives us momentum.
At the same time, we are currently experiencing changes in the political realities around us. Over and over this presents us with new challenges. What is Deutsche Telekom’s role in these unstable times? We want to remain an anchor of stability, synonymous with reliable and sound business operations. We adapt to new circumstances while staying true to our values. In practice, this means that Deutsche Telekom remains a liberal and inclusive company. We will continue to advocate for tolerance and against hate and propaganda. Radical views and marginalization have no place within Deutsche Telekom’s walls. We offer all people the opportunity to take part. We look at people’s skills and talents, not at where they come from or how they choose to live their life. We act in line with our conviction that participation is the basis for a functioning society.
Dear shareholders,
I would like to finish on a personal note by saying how delighted I am that the Supervisory Board has offered to extend my contract as Chair of the Board of Management until the end of 2028. I will continue to discharge my duties with energy, passion, and joy. Deutsche Telekom faces major challenges, but we also see major opportunities. Our plans are ambitious. And with the realignment of our management team, we are on the right course to take them on successfully. We won’t stop!
Best regards,
Tim Höttges