• Deutsche Telekom has just presented its results for up to 31 December 2025
• T-Mobile US remains a strong growth engine, while Germany says it is on track with FTTP
• Regulation in Europe continues to be a sore point, with the proposed DNA seen as a disappointment  
• DT is still confident it will achieve its targets set out at the Capital Markets Day in 2024

Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges donned his (magenta) humility t-shirt on Thursday morning to share that, recently, “someone said about me: This man is Deutsche Telekom. I disagree, and I disagree emphatically. We are Deutsche Telekom. Our results are a team effort by 197,096 employees”.  

So began the German telco’s presentation of its full-year financial results for 2025 – a year that Höttges again described as “very successful” for DT.  

Perhaps stung by the implication that he is a somewhat dominant presence at the group, Höttges was keen to note that he was surrounded by more colleagues than usual at the earnings press conference. 

“I am especially pleased that our operational board members from the business units – namely from Europe [Dominique Leroy], from Germany [Rodrigo Diehl] and from T-Systems [Feri Abolhassan] – are with us today,” he said.  

Overall, while DT was able to deliver a “record result” that surpassed its own guidance in 2025, Höttges said it was a complex year “that challenged us all”.  

“We had to deal with immense costs for energy. We had taxes on wages and ancillary cost increases. We had competition that is extremely intense. We occupied ourselves with spectrum. We had to deal with satellites for the first time. And of course, we also had enormous challenges in 2025 with sabotage and power outages, which we also experienced due to hacker attacks. Additionally, there was a currency effect” relating to the US dollar, he said.  

Despite all this, Höttges pointed out that DT continues to grow, and its strategy is working well. In organic terms, which excludes exchange rate fluctuations and changes in the composition of the group, annual net revenue increased by 4.2% year on year to €119.1bn. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation after leases (EBITDAaL) rose by 4.7% to €44.2bn. (Notably, the reported growth rates were lower due to the impact of the US dollar-to-euro conversion rate.)

Free cash flow after leases increased by 2% to €19.5bn and the adjusted net profit grew by 3.7% to €9.7bn. DT has already announced its plans to distribute a dividend of €1.00 per share for 2025.

Höttges added that in 2025 the group invested €17bn in initiatives spanning artificial intelligence, datacentres, cybersecurity and resilience: He particularly pointed to the recent opening of an AI datacentre in Munich, in collaboration with Nvidia. 

Of this sum, he said €5.9bn was invested “right here in Germany. I don’t know how many people in Germany are investing that much. Perhaps Deutsche Bahn in their economic stimulus programme. But we have been doing this continuously for the twelfth year in a row – more than all our competitors and more than in the previous year. We have launched over 500 AI and data projects within the organisation, and our customers are benefitting from them”. 

Ups and downs

The divisions within the group all have their own successes to report, and face their own particular challenges. In Germany, for instance, there is a continuing strong focus on increasing customer numbers for the fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) network, which passed 12.6 million homes by the end of the year. Some 584,000 households became active users in 2025, taking the total client base to over 2 million.

According to Diehl, who took over as CEO of Telekom Deutschland from current T-Mobile US CEO Srini Gopalan last year, the German business is on track to reach its target of accelerating fibre adoption to a run-rate of 1 million new customers in 2027. He noted that the penetration rate would then stand at 20%. 

Germany did see a slight dip in revenue, however, which DT blamed on lower terminal equipment revenues: Total revenue decreased by 0.4% to €25.6bn.

Over in the US, T-Mobile published its 2025 financials earlier in February and has maintained its traditional strong performance under Gopalan. Service revenues grew by 7.8% in 2025 to $71.3bn and adjusted EBITDAaL rose by 6.8% to $33bn.

In Europe, DT said the national companies “closed out the year with extremely good financial performance indicators”. Adjusted EBITDAaL increased by 5.4% in organic terms to €4.7bn. “This segment has now posted eight successive years of year-on-year earnings growth per quarter,” DT added.

The formerly troubled enterprise unit T-Systems has also developed well, with a 2.5% increase in revenue to €4.1bn. Adjusted EBITDAaL grew by a healthy 15.7% to €427m. 

Germany and Europe continue to complain about the European Union’s regulatory stance meanwhile. Notably, DT has expressed less-than-favourable views about the proposals contained within the new Digital Networks Act.

Leroy, DT’s head of Europe, reiterated that “we are very disappointed with the DNA in Europe”, with the exception of clauses relating to spectrum, which includes elements around the longer duration of mobile spectrum licences and making licences renewable by default, and a unified, pan-EU approach to satellite services spectrum authorisation. 

“But all other points really do not lead the way for the telecom sector,” she added. 

Looking ahead, the overall group remains optimistic for the coming year. Adjusted EBITDAaL is anticipated to increase to around €47.4bn, and free cash flow after leases to around €19.8bn. “This guidance places the group clearly on track to achieve the ambition levels it presented at the 2024 Capital Markets Day,” DT added.

- Anne Morris, Contributing Editor, TelecomTV