Wierzbicka Serwinowska: A very quick follow-up. So is the return on equity, the only remaining discussion point with the regulator…
Leonhard Birnbaum: No.
Wierzbicka Serwinowska: In Germany?
Leonhard Birnbaum: It’s one of the ones that will take some time to sort out. And what we also don’t have right now is the Xgen factor, the general efficiency increase factor. But we have made assumptions which we are comfortable that will hold true in the planning.
Wierzbicka Serwinowska: And in your planning, nothing on the returns on the existing assets have been baked in, right? Or have you baked in some improvements? Because it might be substantial given €90 billion of RAB?
Marc Spieker: No. As in the past, for the terms of our guidance, we applied the allowed returns, which are currently formally available. Any upside from a court case that would come on top.
Wierzbicka Serwinowska: And Marc, again — yes, congratulations…
Marc Spieker: Wanda, you are stretching our 2-question rule by far.
Wierzbicka Serwinowska: Yes, I know. Yes. I just wanted to say congratulate on your new job, and I will turn over.
Iris Eveleigh: Then turning to Peter from Bank of America.
Peter Bisztyga: And congratulations also from me, Marc, on the new role. So 2 questions. First of all, everybody, certainly in the U.S. is getting excited about data centers at the moment. So I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about what trends you are seeing straight expecting in your Networks business either in the Nordic region or anywhere else. And also whether this is a potential opportunity for your Energy Infrastructure Solutions business? So that’s my first question. And then the second one, actually, on your Retail, you’re expecting sort of fairly healthy growth in your Retail EBITDA over the next few years. Can you scope out in a little bit more detail as to what’s driving that? Is it new products on the future energy home? Is it efficiency? Is it customer gains? So a little bit more detail on that would be helpful.
Leonhard Birnbaum: Yes. I take. Peter, thanks for the questions. I’ll take the first one. First, we are seeing an increase in data center connection requests. We have seen that a lot around Frankfurt for the reasons that you all know, the Internet breakout point that we have there. There we are, by the way, at the limit of what the grid can cope with. And that is exactly — around Frankfurt, we have the discussion that we are having now driven by AI, hyperscalers building data centers all over the place in the U.S. So we have that in Frankfurt, the grid being the bottleneck for addition of additional data center capacity. We are seeing the request for data centers popping up all over Europe as well. 2 hyperscaler data centers for Microsoft will be built here close to Cologne, again, investing on the terrain in our terrain.
We are not seeing that to an extent in which — to which it is already being discussed in the U.S. So that would come as an upside. Right now, data center increase is also driven by increased penetration of 5G, which is driving an increased penetration of distributed data centers all over the place even at a smaller scale. We are seeing some areas which are hotspots like the Nordics, where there are more people trying to build larger scale data centers. And yes, that is all an upside from our business. So renewables are driving the increase of the network base, connection requests of customers coming in, and they are like not only the Tesla’s battery factories, but also especially data centers. It’s an upside not — and not, however, to the extent it’s being discussed right now in the U.S. that would further increase the outlook here in Europe.
And on the retail, I give it to Marc because whatever he says now, I would mail him in the next years on it. So be aspirational, Marc.
Marc Spieker: That’s a great comfort for you. But I’m still going to be wrong with Q1, but thanks, Peter, for the congratulation. I’m not yet off the hook. So on Retail. I think there’s a significant opportunity here in the convergence that all these decentral assets will make necessary. Let’s look at our German customer base just as an example, we have 40 million customers, 2/3 of them are residential homeowners. All of these will during the next 5 to 10 years at some point in time, own an energy asset on their ground or lease it. This will trigger an enormous need how to manage the flexibility, how to service and also how to provide an insurance like backup for them if they can’t produce it on their own. And that’s a unique opportunity where technology will converge on a digital platform, where we here comes to the digitalization strategy, again, be in a pole position to generate value.
The second element clearly will continue to be operational excellence. We will see in German increasing rollout of smart meters and increasing digitalization also of our customer care. And with that, while Leo talked about the opportunity to grow our workforce, that’s true for many areas. But in some areas, we will also continuously work on further efficiencies, and we said also, yes, on FTE reduction when it comes to further digitalization — digitizing our services. So that ambition is built, that’s the message on very sound robust trends, and they are all manageable from our side. So no excuse later on.
Leonhard Birnbaum: I remember that one.
Iris Eveleigh: The next question comes from Meike Becker.
Meike Becker: And also Marc Congratulations from my side as well. Let me focus on your energy infrastructure business. If I may, arguably, that could be a growth area where we have the least visibility? And if I play devil’s advocate, I might also say that some of your peers in the past have put out very ambitious numbers and have been later on, pulled it back. So what KPIs are you looking at? Or what KPI should we be looking at and to see if growth is on track? And what comfort can you give us that this segment is growing strongly? The second question is on your interest rate sensitivity in EBITDA and net income.
Marc Spieker: Second question, I didn’t get it.
Iris Eveleigh: Interest rate sensitivity and EBITDA and net income.
Leonhard Birnbaum: Okay. I mean let me take Iris and you take the second one. So yes, we are showing now more visibility, which is why we’re showing it now as a new segment. I’m not going to say what I think about my competitors, you can say that. But for us, we want to deliver also in that area. It’s also marked by the way. And the KPIs actually are more or less the same that you know from all our other businesses. We are looking at EBITDA. We are looking at CapEx as an indicator of growth. We are looking obviously at operational KPIs like the pipeline, which we use for internal steering. And then we have an IRR hurdle rate from 7% to 10% that Marc just mentioned in his speech for each individual project, depending on the market and risk profile of the customer. And basically, all of that then translates into the numbers that Marc presented. It’s pretty straightforward. We don’t try to make it complicated.
Marc Spieker: If I may add, kind of on top of the financial KPIs, of course, we focus on technology. So our solutions are carbon neutral or carbon neutral ready. And secondly, this is an organic project business. So what we’re not going to do is buy into growth in that area. We’re going to develop that business, project-by-project on an organic basis. On interest rates, first of all, the really relevant question, if I may, actually say is what’s the impact on our cash flows of changing interest rates. And the answer to that one is nil, nothing, yes, because our funding is now set up to exactly be in sync with the regulatory returns. So whatever happens on the interest rate side, what you as an investor and analyst can bang on is it actually doesn’t change anything for us as a company from a financial point of view.
