CEO letter - Q2 2025

The first half of the transformation year 2025 has now passed and it is a good time to reflect on our progress so far.

I am happy to say that the organisation has responded and adapted exceptionally well to the many significant changes we have introduced since December. This strong response has given us a flying start – especially in areas like cost control, simplification, and allocation of resources to where they matter most to our customers. Together with the reduction of our workforce, the optimisation and automation of processes and the renegotiation of major contracts, this effort explains our impressive underlying EBITDAaL growth of 15% in Q2.

The first phase of our transformation has been delivered in a record time, and I want to extend a big thank you to my colleagues for all the hard work. Our organisation’s ability to transform quickly makes us confident enough to raise our full year underlying EBITDAaL guidance to slightly above 10% growth (previously mid-to high single-digit).

Our Baltic operations have not only applied the same resource discipline but also managed to grow the topline in a very impressive manner, strongly contributing to the Group’s end-user service revenue growth of 2%. I am particularly happy to see the turnaround in Estonia materialise so quickly. We are continuing to strengthen the everyday collaboration between the Baltic and Swedish organisations, including building new career paths within the company and between the countries, to ensure we are efficiently sharing
operational best practice.

The global turmoil and the uncertainties that comes with it make both consumers and businesses reserved for the moment, and Swedish consumer confidence is on low levels, affecting primarily the demand for new handsets. In combination with the effects of the Boxer terrestrial TV decommissioning at the end of 2024, our end-user service revenue growth in Sweden stayed flat in Q2, despite a solid growth in B2B. 

In the meantime, we have been multiplying the initiatives to address future topline opportunities. To enable an even closer dialogue with our customers, we continued investing in the development of our own channels, opening three new stores, and revamping Tele2.se in Q2. We are also investing in our data analytics and AI expertise, to continuously improve our churn management and cross-selling capacity and empower our customer operations. Our new TV service and portfolio have been very well received by our customers. We continue the roll-out of our 5G network, delivering already a fantastic and award-winning 5G quality in Sweden. 

Swedes have likely also noticed that Tele2’s most popular co-worker ever – the advertising character and black sheep, Frank – returned with a bang in June. The external and internal excitement over Frank has been fantastic to follow, and I am eager to see how customers react to our new promise: You are number 1. 
We are Tele2. 

Frank is yet another symbol of our ambition to culturally return to Tele2’s challenger roots – becoming a faster and more agile company. The strong and unique culture once made Tele2 a global reference for challenger telcos, and me and my colleagues across the company are all eager to reclaim that position. In Q2 we aligned our company values on the new way of working already embraced by the organisation, and our day-to-day commitment has never been clearer: make it simple, be brave, take action and act cost-efficiently
in every decision we make. 

Last but not least, we are immensely proud of once again being named Sweden’s most sustainable company by the influential TIME Magazine. Behind this award are years of true commitment and dedication, and we will continue to find new and even better ways to embed sustainability into the business. Our work to protect and empower children online is engaging our Tele2 and Comviq families. We see hardware circularity as a great potential for our customers, our business and the planet. We will remain a challenger also in sustainability!