O2 in 2018: substantial growth of O2 TV and mobile base and continuous strong financial performance supported by record high investments

• Number of O2 TV customers subscribed for any of M, L or XL monthly tariffs and those watching television on the web or in application increased by over 34%
• year-on-year; thus O2 registers already 758 thousand active accesses.
• Number of mobile contract customers grew by 165 thousand in 2018. Total mobile customer base increased by 2% to 5.038 million.
• Substantialinterest in attractive exclusive sport content and successful proposition
• of O2 Spolu bundled packages for families, groups of friends and entrepreneurs are the key drivers of the growth.
• O2 completed complex transformation program of its IT systems, which among other things simplifies customer service in all shops and other service channels.
• Consolidated revenue went up 0.8% year-on-year to CZK 38 billion in 2018, EBITDA grew by over 6% to CZK 11.2 billion.

"From my point of view, we had a very successful year. We brought many new products to our customers and improved the existing ones. Since summer, we have been offering the most attractive TV content on the market and it has been in a record demand. Our digital O2 TV,as well as mobile services, is part of the O2 Spolu tariff packages, which are used by an increasing number of families, groups of friends and entrepreneurs. This contributed to the number of customers of our traditional monthly O2 TV tariffs increasing by more than 60 thousand in 2018 and the number of mobile contract customers by 165 thousand," comments Jindřich Fremuth, Chief Executive Officer and the Chairman of the Board of Directors of O2 Czech Republic on the results, and adds: "Our sales performance growth is all the more valuable, as we delivered it along with a successful completion of the largest IT transformation project in the company'shistory. In the future, it will enable us to further develop My O2 self-care application and will fundamentally change the way we develop new products and serve our customers."

"From the financial point of view, the 2018, and mainly its second half, was a year of the highest investments since the company's spin-off in 2015. On top of investments into the exclusive sport rights and IT transformation, we continued investing in further improvement of our own network in Slovakia," explains Tomáš Kouřil, the company's Chief Financial Officer and Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors, and adds: "Thus, the majority of our investments in 2018 was directed into pro-growth areas."

Overview of key events in the fourth quarter

As the next step towards 5G, in mid-November, O2 began offering a new generation of mobile home internet using 3.7 GHz band with up to 100 Mb/s speed to the customers living out of reach of fixed broadband network. In addition to locations with low-speed fixed network, the new technology is suitable also for new buildings where a telephone line is not available. Along with higher real speeds, 5G home broadband internet will bring also unlimited data volumes as well as higher capacity, allowing for example HD video playback or seamless O2 TV watching.

On 22 November, O2, as the first operator in the world, launched the AR Wi-Fi function. Customers with AR enabled handsets can measure the reach of their home network through augmented reality. Once the current version of O2 Smart Box is turned on, they just select "Measure Wi-Fi coverage" in the "Wi-Fi and network" menu. Then, a window is displayed in the application, where a real-time image is captured by the camera. A field of virtual balls is displayed on the smartphone or tablet display, where the colour of the balls indicates the quality of Wi-Fi coverage.

Operating overview

Mobile segment

Thanks to the successful proposition of O2 Spolu bundled packages for families, groups of friends and entrepreneurs and popularity of new O2 Data tariffs with 4 GB to 20 GB data volumes, the total number of mobile customers increased by 2% in 2018 to 5,038 thousand. Mobile contract base grew by 165 thousand, i.e. 4.8% to 3,594 thousand at the end of 2018. At the year end, O2 had 1,444 thousand mobile prepaid customers.

In O2 network, smartphones represent close to 70% of handsets and over a half of total handsets support LTE technology.

Fixed segment

The number of O2 TV tariffs customers provided over O2 fixed line (IPTV) as well as over internet connection from any provider (OTT), reached 335 thousand as at 31 December 2018. Of that, over 40 thousand households subscribed for the increasingly popular complementary MULTIservice, which enables customers to watch TV on multiple TV sets at once. Customers are granted up to 4 free of charge licenses to each tariff enabling them to watch the complete O2 TV content on the web or in mobile applications. About 420 thousand viewers used this opportunity on a regular basis in 2018, including customers of O2 TV Sport Pack package. As of 2018 year-end O2 registered already 758 thousand O2 TV active accesses.

Slovakia

O2 Slovakia keeps recording increasing demand for its O2 Pausal mobile tariffs portfolio with improved data volume limits. As of 31 December 2018, the total customer base reached
2,028 thousand, which represents a 4.7% year on year growth. Contract base increased by 11.2% to reach 1,270 thousand and it represented 62.6% of total base, up by 3.7 percentage points year-on-year.

Financial overview

Total consolidated operating revenue reached CZK 37,996 million in 2018, up 0.8% year-on-year. Operating revenue in the Czech Republic declined slightly by 0.2% to CZK 30,713 million, as a 1.6% growth of mobile revenue to CZK 20,311 million did not fully compensate a 3.6% year-on-year decline in fixed revenue to CZK 10,402 million. Mobile data, financial services, O2 TV and hardware & accessories sales revenue were the key revenue growth drivers, more than compensating continuous decline in traditional voice, data and SMS/MMS revenue.

In Slovakia, total operating revenue improved by 7.9% to EUR 292 million. The year-on-year growth in Czech koruna (CZK) was negatively impacted by strengthening CZK against EUR. Thus, denominated in Czech koruna the operating revenue reached CZK 7,485 million, up 5% year-on-year. Similarly to the Czech Republic, higher data and hardware sales revenue were the key growth drivers.

Consolidated earnings before depreciation and amortisation EBITDA improved by 6.2% year-on-year to CZK11,163 million in 2018, thanks to the higher revenue, savings in majority of costs and a positive impact of the new IFRS 15 accounting standard. In the Czech Republic, EBITDA grew by 5.1% to CZK 8,507 million, while Slovakia reported a 9.9% increase to CZK 2,655 million (+12.8% to EUR 104 million). Consolidated EBITDA margin improved by 1.5 percentage points to 29.4% in 2018.

Consolidated net profit in 2018 declined by 2.5% year-on-year reaching CZK 5,448 million as higher investments into sport rights, transformation of IT system and network in Slovakia led to depreciation & amortisation growth. A one-off net profit from the sale of the stake in Taxify owned through Bolt Start Up Development subsidiary, which improved the financial income and net profit in the 2017 by approximately CZK 60 million, also contributed to the year on year net profit decline.

KEY FINANCIAL INDICATORS OF THE GROUP