Turkcell - Q1 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gail, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome. Thank you for joining the Turkcell's conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the Turkcell first quarter 2023 financial results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. The conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by question and answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ali Serdar Yağcı, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance Director. Mr. Yağcı, you may now proceed.

Ali Serdar Yağcı (Investor Relations and Corporate Finance Director)

Thank you, Gail. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Turkcell's first quarter 2023 result call. Today, our CEO, Mr. Murat Erkan, and acting CFO, Mr. Kamil Kalyon, will be delivering a brief presentation on operational and financial results. Afterwards we'll be doing Q&A. Before we start, I would like to kindly remind you to review our safe harbor statement, which is placed at the end of the presentation. Now I'm handing over to Mr. Erkan.

Murat Erkan (CEO)

Thank you, Serdar. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. We have been healing the wound of the recent earthquake, which happened to be one of the worst disasters of our history. We have taken certain action to make sure people do seamlessly communicate in the region. Turkcell also remains committed to support the local community through projects that aim to increase employment, and we will also make our digital channels available for local producers and suppliers. Moving to the Q1 highlights. Our revenue growth continued to accelerate from 37% of Q1 2022 and reached to a remarkable 61.5%. Thanks to the expanded subscriber base and increasing ARPU, despite the negative impact of the earthquake during the half of the quarter. Excluding the earthquake impact, the growth would have been around 65%.

The strategic focus area, mainly digital business services and techsegment, also support top line growth with its performance. We're happy to see our mobile ARPU growth, which achieved 68%, exceeding the headline inflation, as we reap the benefits of sequential price increase we began at the end of 2021. On the profitability side, our EBITDA reached TRY 6.8 billion with a 57% increase. Despite the ongoing inflationary pressure, we achieved a margin of just over 39%, in line with our expectation, which accounts for the impact of the disaster on our OpEx. Excluding the earthquake impact, the margin would have been 41%. Last but not least, we recorded a solid net profit of TRY 2.8 billion, mainly on the back of strong operational performance as well as lower FX losses. Next slide.

Let's take a closer look at our mobile operational performance. As a part of our strategy, we have been focused on attracting premium subscribers, which led to a net addition of 342,000 postpaid subscribers in Q1, bringing postpaid share to 69%. Prepaid net additions were impacted by lower new subscriber demand in the earthquake region and from the competitive offers, as well as higher involuntary churn due to significant tourist arrival in Q3 last year. While we observed the continued impact of year-end campaigns in the beginning of the year, the market rationalized after the earthquake. Overall, the MNT market contracted in Q1. To support the victims of the earthquake, all operators frozen price actions. We also paused telesales to respect our national grief. We resumed both mobile price adjustments and telesales by April.

Despite the impact of the earthquake, blended mobile ARPU growth accelerated to 68% year-on-year, outpacing the 54% average annual inflation within the quarter. Without the earthquake impact, we shall note that the ARPU growth would have been around 75%. Our mobile churn rate of 1.7% is reasonably below 2% despite a slight increase year-on-year due to the higher prepaid churn. The monthly data usage of 4.5G users have reached 17.4 gigabytes, driven by 80% smartphone penetration, up 1.5 points year-on-year. Next slide, please. As expected, the earthquake also had a negative impact on our fixed broadband business. However, we saw a significant demand for our services in March due to relocation in the impacted area.

Our focus on fiber subscribers continued, resulting in a net addition of 38,000 fiber subscribers in Q1. Our IPTV platform also saw a net addition of 28,000 subscribers in the same period. After the long-awaited notable price adjustment in Q4 last year, and due to the earthquake, there were almost no significant price adjustment in the fixed broadband market. However, we introduced uncommitted offering in January, which were appreciated by customers. We also saw continued traction in high-speed packages with 44% of new subscribers opting for 100 megabits or higher packages. Our annual residential fiber ARPU growth in Q1 slightly decreased to 31% compared to previous quarters. Mainly due to the action we're taking for earthquake victims. Excluding this impact, the ARPU growth would have been 36%. The slight increase in fixed churn is also triggered by the distraction in the earthquake regions.

As we announced previously, our target is to reach 300,000 homepass this year, and we have already exceeded half of that in Q1. With an aim to increase return on investment, we will focus on increasing our take rate by addressing potential subscribers in the relevant homepass areas. Next slide. Now in the next 2 slide, I will be providing an update on our strategic focus areas. Let's start with digital services solution. In Q1, standalone revenue of digital services and solutions grew by 65% year-on-year. This was enabled by digital OTT service revenue rising 73% year-on-year. Our flagship digital OTT services, namely cloud storage, TV, and music streaming platforms, were the main pillars of the growth on the back of price adjustment and paid user expansion.

Collectively, standalone paid user number grew 24% year-on-year, reaching 5.2 million despite this decline in outreach due to suspension of marketing campaigns after the earthquakes. Our second focus area, digital business services, addressing digital transformation enterprises, posted strong growth of 104% year-on-year. The main drivers of growth were system integration projects, data center and cloud business. Exceeding 11% of total DBS revenue, data center and cloud business cloud services more than doubled their top line, with strong demand from both local and international clients. In this quarter, we gained more than 1,100 new contracts. The backlog from system integration projects reached TRY 2.5 billion, which will contribute to the top line over the upcoming quarters. Next slide, please. Our third focus area is TechFin.

In Q1, Paycell, Turkey's leading payment platform, increased revenue by 79% year-on-year. Almost tripling transaction volume was enabled thanks to an ongoing shift into digital payments. Paylater, which is the leading product of the Paycell, maintained its strong revenue trend and doubled its transaction volume, mainly supported by transaction payment in Apple and Android stores. Paycell solution transaction in size rose more than 4x. Given the increased penetration in the physical post prices in the market and our exclusive role in the joint electric vehicle project, Togg pre-sales project. On the consumer financing side, Financell's revenue grew up by 65% on rising interest rates and expanding loan portfolio. Financell loan portfolio expanded 7% year-on-year, mainly reflecting the increased device prices in the market as well as co-corporate segment initiatives.

Due to the diversification in portfolio as well as the action taken after the earthquake, cost of risk increased to 2.7%. Next slide. Let's look at the performance of our international subsidiaries. Turkcell International revenue grew by 31% year-on-year in Q1. Excluding the currency impact, the organic growth was 20%. lifecell revenue rose 16% year-on-year in its local currency. EBITDA margin expanded by 4 percentage point compared to the last year, reaching 60%, thanks to higher revenue growth and lower international interconnection expenses. BeST revenue rose 15% year-on-year in its local currency. EBITDA margin expanded by a remarkable 15 percentage point compared to last year, thanks to the recently revised MTR rates, which led to lower interconnection expenses. Next slide.

I would like to say a few word about Togg, our e-mobility initiative. Our investment in Turkey's electrical vehicle initiative is a solid step towards realizing opportunity in e-mobility ecosystem. In a promise to deliver Turkey's first smart mobility devices, as you may recall, Gemlik Technology Campus had become ready for mass production in October last year. In March, Togg began pre-sales of its first smart mobility devices and received a strong demand of nine times. Electrical vehicle deliveries started in April. As Turkey's leading payment platform, Paycell provided the payment infrastructure for the pre-sales process through Togg's own app. Paycell managed to process around TRY 11 billion transaction smoothly, and it's very first company in the world to achieve such a large transaction volume through a wallet app in a short time.

In the meantime, Togg has laid the foundation of battery development and production factory adjacent to its technology campus, together with battery giant Farasis Energy. Facility is planned to be completed by 2024. I would like to leave the floor to our acting CFO, Mr. Kamil Kalyon.

Kamil Kalyon (Acting CFO)

Thank you, Murat. Now let's take a closer look into the financials. Group revenues grew by 62% year-on-year, corresponding incremental rise of TRY 6.6 billion. This quarter was another period where we saw the results of our dedicated price adjustment, resulting in robust ARPU growth. Turkcell Turkey revenues rose 70% in this quarter, thanks to an expanding subscriber base and an ARPU growth that exceeds inflation. Our digital business services was another revenue driver with its doubling performance. The revenue contribution of international segment was limited to TL 442 million in this quarter, reflecting the easing inflation in our international markets, as well as the slowdown in currency depreciation. Segment added TL 253 million to the top line on the back of Paycell's tripling transaction volume and Financell's higher loan portfolio and average interest rates.

Improvement of the other segments contribution on a yearly basis is mainly thanks to a rise in sales from digital channels and higher equipment revenues. Next slide, please. Some highlights on EBITDA development. Strong revenue growth has been the key driver of the 57% rise in EBITDA. In this quarter, EBITDA margin contracted by 1.1% year-on-year, declining interconnection expenses as a % of revenue partially compensated the rise in personnel expenses. Please recall that we had made a secondary rise to wage in July last year on top of the January rise following the minimum wage increase. Energy expenses had a limited impact on the EBITDA margin, as last year's energy price hikes were exceptionally higher. I would like to mention about Turkcell International profitability. In this quarter, EBITDA margin of the segment improved by 3.8% year-on-year.

Lifecell improving margin performance in Ukraine was joined by BeST in Belarus, thanks to the recently announced MTR change in favor of us. Next slide, please. Let's take a closer look at our CapEx management. We begin the year, we are implementing a disciplined CapEx plan, which brings our last to CapEx intensity ratio to 20.6% in line with our guidance. Looking at the CapEx breakdown, mobile and fixed networks each account for one third of the total CapEx. On the mobile CapEx side, our non-discretionary approach is still intact as evidenced by a single digit mobile CapEx intensity. Of note, we had to make around TL 350 million one CapEx due to the earthquake. The fixed side, having realized 1.5 million fiber home passes in the past two years, we have decided to slow down the given compelling cost environment.

Therefore, this year we will focus on monetizing these recent home passes. This quarter, we added 160,000 new home passes to our portfolio. We are proceeding with expanding our white space capacity in our data centers. Thanks to modular structure of our existing data centers, we are just adding new modules to meet increasing demands. Next slide, please. At the end of Q1, our gross debt position increased by TL 4.6 billion to TL 59 billion, due mainly to new borrowings and currency depreciation impact of TL 1.4 billion. Our cash position increased by TL 1.4 billion to just over TL 27 billion in Q1. FX movements had TL 0.5 billion positive impact in the cash position. To note, TL 1.4 billion wireless usage tax payment in Q1 negatively affected our cash position.

As of first quarter of the year, group net debt was around TRY 23 billion with a 0.9x net leverage. Excluding the Techfin business, this was at 0.8x in line with the previous quarter. We are far below from our long-term threshold of 1.5x net debt to EBITDA. Of note, 10% depreciation in our currency leads to a 0.1x increase in our net leverage. The majority of our cash continues to remain in hard currencies. Excluding FX swaps, 57% of our cash is in USD and 15% in EUR. This cash is sufficient to cover our debt service until 2025.

The FX debt service is around $280 million this year, which we believe is reasonably manageable given our strong cash position and committed long-term credit lines. Next slide, please. Lastly, I will go into the management of foreign currency risk in Q1. We have continued to keep majority of our cash in FX and also utilized hedging instruments as part of our prudent financial risk management approach. Looking at the FX position composition, we had $1.9 billion equivalent of FX debt on our balance sheet. On the asset side, we had $1.4 billion equivalent FX cash and a $600 million derivative portfolio, mainly comprised of proxy hedge, namely futures and forwards.

Overall, we ended up with a short FX position of just $21 million, which is within our neutral FX position definition of ±$200 million.

Murat Erkan (CEO)

We may, however, see a higher short FX position from time to time during the rest of the year due to the use of liquidity at higher co-costs for hedging, as well as a result of 2G license fee of around EUR 140 million. This concludes our presentation. We can now open the line for questions. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Please use your handout when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from the line of Jonathan Kennedy-Good with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Jonathan Kennedy-Good (Executive Director / Equity Analyst)

Good evening, and thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Just a quick one on the potential price increases for the rest of the year. When should we expect further price increases on the mobile side? Given now that your mobile ARPU is growing well ahead of inflation, how should we expect price increases to evolve? Secondly, there was a significant cash outflow in terms of working capital, I think driven by an increase in your trade receivable balance. Can you give us a sense of what drove that and whether that will reverse in the quarters to come? Thank you.

Murat Erkan (CEO)

First of all, thank you very much, Jonathan. Let me take first question regarding price increase. As you know, we are the leader of operating mobile. Our priority in a high inflation environment is to adjust our price in a timely manner. Due to earthquake in the first quarter, we temporarily stopped price increase in February and March, but continued with the price adjustment in April. We aim to maintain our price focus strategy throughout the year. Far, we increased our prices every quarter. Our aim is to keep this behavior. We have successfully implement this strategy last two years. This the accelerating ARPU growth and revenue growth clearly showed this attitude. Despite the negative impact of earthquake on ARPU, mobile ARPU increased 68% annually.

We beat the inflation, which was 54.3%. If we get rid of the earthquake impact, the ARPU growth would be around 75%. The strategy clearly works well. Let me give the word to Kamil regarding the outflow, cash outflow.

Kamil Kalyon (Acting CFO)

Thank you, Murat. As you know, every year, we paid the frequency usage fee in the first quarter. We will collect it from subscribers throughout the years. We paid 1.4 billion TL for this in Q1 at the end of February. The first reason was that. The second one, there were some important factors that adversely affected our cash generation through our working capital. One of them is bonus payments we made to our employees for the previous years. Expansion of Financell's loan portfolio is the second reason. The third one, receivables from our growing DBS business, which are relatively longer term, is the third reason. I may add to this, due to earthquake, we stopped collecting some payments from our subscribers for one and half months period.

Therefore, it also increased our trade receivable, for a limited time.

Jonathan Kennedy-Good (Executive Director / Equity Analyst)

Thank you. That's very helpful.

Operator (participant)

The next question is from the line of DBS business with Schroders. Please go ahead.

Maurice Tal (Equity Analyst)

Hello, can you hear me? In that way. Okay, thanks for taking my question. You mentioned the position of your credit lines. Can you remind them where they ended the quarter and where they are right now? Also, can you elaborate a little bit on your newly contracted liquidity?

Kamil Kalyon (Acting CFO)

We have a significant amount of committed lines in ICBC and CDB side. There we do not have any problem about the position of our credit lines. Also, we are trying to add new credit lines to our portfolio this year. Around EUR 220 million, CDB will end in March 2024. ICBC credit line was around $13 million.

Maurice Tal (Equity Analyst)

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Once again, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is from the line of Müjdat Akçay with ÜNLÜ Securities. Please go ahead.

Müjdat Ati (Research Analyst)

Hi, thank you very much for the presentation. I just want to ask about your CapEx over sales guidance. I think you keep it around 22%, but the 1Q performance was much lower. Is it due to the currency effects? I think that most of the CapEx was realized as of the 1Q, one of CapEx. Going forward, could there be a possibility of a lower CapEx over sales for 2023? It would be very helpful if you talk more in detail about your prospects there. Thank you.

Murat Erkan (CEO)

Thank you, Müjdat. First of all, historically, and seasonality-wise, Q1 is the lowest CapEx sales ratio quarter. Usually Q4 is the highest one. If you look at the existing guidance, we would like to keep our guidance as 22% CapEx sales ratio because some of the earthquake CapEx happened in Q1, but there are more to go coming quarters. We would like to keep our CapEx sales ratio as it is.

Operator (participant)

Is Müjdat, are you finished with your questions?

Müjdat Ati (Research Analyst)

Yes. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Turkcell management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Murat Erkan (CEO)

Okay. Thanks for joining us, but I think we have one more question. Is that right?

Operator (participant)

Yes, sir. The next question is from.

Murat Erkan (CEO)

Okay.

Operator (participant)

From the line of Demet Özdemir with Ata Invest. Please go ahead.

Demet Özdemir (Analyst)

Thank you for the presentation and congratulations for very good result. My question is regarding the donation related to earthquake. You earlier had announced TRY 3.5 billion. How should we elaborate that? When are we gonna see the impact on your financials? The other question is about the dividend side and general assembly side. Could you give us some, you know, indication in those two issues? Thank you.

Murat Erkan (CEO)

Thank you, Demet. First of all, regarding the donation, our board of directors has decided to contribute up to 3.5 billion TRY to relevant earthquake relief organizations. First of all, we need to present the donation decision to our shareholders vote at the Annual General Meetings. It will need to be voted by the shareholder first. Once it is approved at the General Assembly, we will determine the timing and payment structure of donation among other mechanics as well. Regarding the AGM, and regarding the dividend distribution, I would like to remind you that our dividend policy continues unchanged. As you know, dividend proposal is first made by the board of directors and then voted by the shareholders at the General Assembly. No proposal has been made by the board of directors for this year yet.

As you may recall from our last year, our board of directors dividend proposal was announced together with the general assembly announcement. I don't want to speculate on the potential proposal of the board of directors regarding the dividends. Thank you.

Demet Özdemir (Analyst)

Thank you. Thank you for a very clear answer. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further audio questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Turkcell management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Murat Erkan (CEO)

Thank you very much for being with us in this Q1 results. We hope to see you in the next one. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Demet Özdemir (Analyst)

Thank you very much. Bye.

Operator (participant)

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant evening.