Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on February 26, 2026
2 min readLast updated: April 2, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleDeutsche Telekom’s Q4 adjusted EBITDA AL rose to €10.8B, edging past the €10.7B consensus and last year’s €10.6B. The weaker U.S. dollar pressured U.S. earnings but overall profit beat expectations.
By Emanuele Berro and Danny Callaghan
Feb 26 (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom beat fourth-quarter core profit expectations on Thursday, helped by a slight recovery in its home market and a solid performance at its U.S. unit T‑Mobile, but issued a mixed outlook for 2026.
The German telecoms group is stepping up its AI efforts and has launched one of Europe's largest AI factories in partnership with Nvidia. It is also in talks with unlisted retailer Schwarz to submit a joint bid for billions of euros of EU funding to build AI gigafactories.
Ferri Abolhassan, head of its services arm T-Systems, said on a media call that Deutsche Telekom sees itself as Europe's first provider of private and sovereign cloud services, and aims to increase its T Cloud Public revenue by 20% in 2026.
But Chief executive Timotheus Hoettges criticised the lack of clarity on the EU's planned funding: "We were expecting a tender from Brussels since long, and now apparently it has been put off to May, so I would hope that things speed up and politicians take action".
He added it is "increasingly difficult" for Germany to combine resources in such a way that guarantees a minimum level of utilisation for data centres, saying there had been "no real reaction" by the government to high domestic energy prices.
"Deutsche Telekom doesn't need a gigafactory, Germany does," he added. "And if politicians do not provide a framework for that, then we will not invest in this kind of project."
The German government was not immediately available for a comment.
The Bonn-based telecoms operator reported fourth-quarter adjusted earnings before interest, taxes and amortization after leases (EBITDA AL) of 10.8 billion euros ($12.8 billion), above a company-provided analyst consensus of 10.7 billion euros.
The group estimated a better-than-expected core profit of 47.4 billion euros for 2026 but free cash flow after leases of 19.8 billion euros was slightly below analyst consensus.
Its shares were down 0.3% at 1355 GMT.
($1 = 0.8462 euros)
(Reporting by Emanuele Berro and Danny Callaghan in Gdansk. Editing by Matt Scuffham, Alexandra Hudson and Mark Potter)
Deutsche Telekom’s fourth-quarter results, highlighting a core profit (adjusted EBITDA AL) that slightly exceeded analyst expectations despite currency headwinds.
€10.8 billion, compared with analyst consensus of €10.7 billion and €10.6 billion in the same quarter of 2024.
A weaker U.S. dollar reduced the translated value of results from the company’s U.S. operations, pressuring reported earnings.
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