The continued booming business on both sides of the Atlantic makes Deutsche Telekom even more optimistic for the current year. The operating result before interest, taxes and depreciation after leasing costs (Ebitda AL) should now reach around 38 billion euros after previously at least 37.2 billion euros, the Dax group announced on Friday in Bonn. In the months of July to September, Telekom was also able to grow again - above all in terms of free cash inflow. Shortly after the start of trading on the Tradegate trading platform, the Telekom share rose by 2.7 percent compared to the Xetra closing price.

The free cash flow (AL) is now expected to increase to around 8.5 billion euros.

So far, the board had at least 8 billion euros in view.

The Bonn-based company is turning the screw for the third time in terms of the operating result and has become more hopeful for the second time with regard to the inflow of funds.

"Our business is going even better than expected," said Telekom boss Tim Höttges.

About a week ago, the US subsidiary T-Mobile had already raised its outlook and intends, among other things, to retain 5.1 to 5.3 million mobile phone contract customers for the year as a whole.

The operating result should also develop a little more strongly than previously forecast.

90,000 additional broadband customers

Group sales for the months from July to September rose by 1.8 percent to just under 26.9 billion euros compared to the same period in the previous year.

That was a little less than analysts expected.

The US subsidiary T-Mobile is contributing more than 60 percent.

The Group's operating earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization after leasing costs (Ebitda AL) remained almost stable at just under 9.7 billion euros.

This is due, among other things, to a new accounting method used by the US subsidiary T-Mobile for the marketing of end devices: instead of renting them out, customers should pay for their smartphones in installments.

In addition, costs at T-Mobile US continued to weigh on the acquisition and integration of Sprint.

Analysts had, however, had less on the list.

The bottom line was that net profit rose by 8.8 percent to 889 million euros.

In Germany, sales rose by 2.5 percent to 6 billion euros in the third quarter. The reason is the "sustained positive customer development". In the broadband segment, around 90,000 additional people would have opted for the Group's products. More than 70 percent of Telekom broadband customers also used fiber-optic offers.

On the other hand, the free inflow of funds in the third quarter developed particularly noticeably, at around 2.9 billion euros, well above the analysts' expectations. Compared to the previous year, the current value corresponds to an increase of almost 80 percent. A company spokesman explained that the extreme growth was almost exclusively due to the operational business. With almost 8.3 billion euros in the first nine months, Deutsche Telekom is already above its previous annual target for the free inflow of funds, which is why the forecast increase is hardly surprising.

On Thursday evening, Telekom surprisingly announced that it wanted to increase its dividend more than expected by experts.

The profit participation per share for the financial year 2021 is to increase by 4 cents to 64 cents.

Experts surveyed by Bloomberg had previously expected an average dividend of 605 cents.