Airtel Africa Plc

Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Airtel Africa full year results call. All participants will be in listen only mode. For the participants on the webcast, please type your questions in the webcast question box. For the participants that have dialled in, there will be an opportunity to ask questions later during the conference. If you should need assistance during the call, please signal for an operator by pressing star and then zero. Please note that this conference is being recorded. And I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Shegun Ogunzanya. Please proceed, sir.

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today. As always, I have with me J.D. Group CFO, RPF, who is there for Investor Relations. Let me give you some brief highlights of the year and update you on strategic vision and priorities before handing over to JD to run through the results in detail. This year, our business and economies where we operate have faced considerable challenges, but our business has managed much stronger. We have seen considerable progress on our priorities, as we continue to deliver strong revenue growth and maintain our very high margins despite significant inflationary pressure. This profitable growth has allowed us to not only continue investing to support future growth potential, but also to further enhance our capital structure through a very disciplined capital allocation process. As our business grows, we continue to create value for all of our stakeholders. We create more jobs, directly or indirectly. We pay more tax. We invest in infrastructure that is key to the development of these nations' economies. We continue to bring communities closer and give them the opportunity to access affordable financial services, sometimes for the very first time. This enables us to further increase returns to our shareholders. From a strategic perspective, Our focus has been on investing in the future growth potential our markets offer, which includes 5G spectrum, as well as investments into fiber and data centers. In Nigeria, our largest market, we've also continued to invest aggressively. We've launched a mobile money service called Smart Cash, which will support increased financial inclusion across the country, and it will supplement future growth. Operationally, we continue to expand our customer base, grow our Apple, and increase 4G network coverage. Both mobile money and data continue to be our growth engines, although voice continues to grow double digit as well. Financially, I'll let you talk through the details, but at a very headline level, We continue to deliver double-digit revenue growth in reported currency and associated EBITDA margin despite the inflationary pressures. We continue to strengthen our balance sheets and the board has recommended a total dividend of 5.45 cents for the full year. This is a reflection of a very solid trend. The momentum while our sustainability strategy remains unchecked and it continues to be embedded in everything we do. It will be very helpful to provide some context around our very strong operational performance. But let me start by reminding you that our industry is not immune to the macro and geopolitical challenges across the globe. However, We have adopted various initiatives to mitigate against those challenges. Consumer spend remains impacted by high inflation. However, with affordable and transparent offerings, we continue to see consumer growth and higher usage driving strong constant currency revenue growth in our portfolio. On inflationary pressures, especially a rise in energy costs, This has been particularly challenging for our cost base, but we continue to focus on cost optimization, allowing us to report a resilient margin performance. Currency volatility across the region is not something new. Now it's something we can control, but our strong constant currency performance has ensured double the reported revenue and EBITDA growth. And finally, Despite the first liquidity challenges across some of our markets, we've been very successful in upstreaming over $1 billion of cash from our up-cost to de-risk our balance sheet. Let me now update you on our strategic priorities and our achievements that are light of the strategies working for us. to stop putting our business in the contest by reflecting on the opportunity our various markets offer. This slide captures the key drivers of Airtel Africa's future growth potential. The demographics are in our favor. Combined with the low level of SIEM penetration, we continue to support the growth in our customer base. And as usage of the key services continue to develop, this will support continuous strong revenue trends Importantly, the mobile money journey is still at a very early stage across all of our markets, especially in Nigeria. As a group, we're very clear on how we will continue to capture this growth. Our win-win strategy has consistently delivered on our performance to date, and we don't anticipate this changing in any way. Additionally, execution has to be successful, and the last 21 consecutive quarters of double digital revenue and EBITDA growth has shown that as an organization, we have the right framework and mindset to continue delivering. The chart above, chart number nine, reflects our growth algorithm, which has supported operational success historically, and we continue to underpin our growth aspirations in years to come. As customers increase and use cases continue to develop, so Apple and revenue growth remains very strong. Our forecast of costs allow us to drive strong efficiencies, which combined with operating leverage drives strong free cash flow generation, which is then used to invest for the future. and to sustain further customer growth. This cycle will continue to sustain our strong operating momentum in future. Slide number 10. This algorithm is depicted on the previous slide. It's reflected in a delivery of double digital revenue growth across all service offerings, voice, data, and mobile money.

Slide 11 shows our group strategy. The six wins.