Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Geli, your chorus call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Turkcell conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the Turkcell second quarter 2021 financial results conference call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ali Sertar Yadze, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance Director. Mr. Yadze, you may now proceed.

Thank you, Geli. Yes. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Turkcell's second quarter 2021 results call. Today's speakers are our CEO, Mr. Murat Erkan, and our CFO, Mr. Osman Yılmaz. We have a brief presentation, and afterwards, we will be doing Q&A. Before we start, I would like to kindly remind you to review the last page of our presentation for our safe harbor statement. Now, I hand over to Mr. Erkan. Thank you, Ali Serdar.

Good morning and good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. Before we dive into the result, I would like to extend my condolences to every country, including our own beloved Turkey, that is fighting wildfire disaster and flood recently. The world is dealing with one of the most severe heat waves, which underlines the importance of addressing climate change under a focused sustainability strategy. In the second quarter of the year, we accelerated our outstanding performance delivering robust operational and financial results. We recorded 23.5% revenue growth and EBITDA reached 3.5 billion TL. Net income was 1.1 billion TL on 31% year-on-year growth. Despite prevailing pandemic conditions, This performance was enabled by customer-centric strategy, a diversified business model, and a digital ecosystem with high value offers. All this was possible due to remarkable subscriber base growth of 617,000 and double digit ARPA growth in mobile and fiber residential segments. Additionally, our strategy of prioritizing our digital channel has helped us during the second quarter. whereby their share in our sales reached 18%. To note, we distributed the first and second installment of the 2020 dividend on April and July 13, and the last installment planned to be distributed in October. Our stunning results and our expectation for the second half have led us to upgrade the full-year guidance. Next slide. Let's take a look Look at our operational performance in the second quarter. In the mobile business, with our continued focus on post-pay segment, the base grew by 501,000 and the post-pay share reached 66% of the total on a three-point rise year-over-year. Going forward, we aim to keep our post-pay focus and further increase the post-pay share. Despite the lockdowns in May affecting acquisition and churn numbers, after the ease of pandemic measures in June, we gained strong momentum in net addition through increased mobility. Additionally, our customer-centric approach and AI-based analytical capabilities were instrumental in the retention. As such, our mobile churn rate was 1.7%, the lowest level of the past three years. Blended mobile ARPA rose to 52 TL on a 14% increase thanks to a larger post-based subscriber share. Price adjustment upsell to higher tariffs and higher data usage. Our mobile ARPA level is 12% and 23% higher than the competition. Enabling a rational pricing environment in the market, we expect double-digit ARPA growth for the remaining quarters of the year. In the fixed broadband segment, strong demand has continued under prevailing mobility limitation. We made 40,000 fiber subscriber addition with our high-speed fiber internet offers. Our focus on fiber customer will continue. We are pleased to register a further 40,000 net addition to our IPTV subscribers, having reached the homes of 961,000 customers. We now offer this service to 62 out of every 100 households amongst our residential fiber customers. Fiber residential ARPA rose to 77 Turkish Lira on 11% growth, mainly on our upsell efforts, demand for higher speeds, and price adjustments. As a challenger operator in the fixed broadband market, our ARPA level is 21% above the incumbent. Next slide. Next, an update on the data usage and foreign house subscription trends. Average mobile data usage rose 15% year-on-year to 13.4 GB per user. Recall that last year, for this quarter, mobile data growth was the record high of the previous eight years. The lockdown period in the quarter also affected growth. This quarter's data growth is reflected on mobile ARPA growth, which indicates that we are monetizing the usage trend. Out of 33 million customers signed up for foreign energy services, And around 70% have 4.5G compatible smartphones, still indicating significant growth potential. Overall smartphone penetration is at 84%, with 92% of these being 4.5G compatible. Next slide. We recently launched Turkcell Digital Ecosystem, which reunites all digital enterprise services under a digital ecosystem roof. An individual who uses any of our digital services will be served as a Turkcell customer, regardless of the operator they use. We aim to serve all customers within our digital ecosystem with the unique Turkcell customer experience and technology. A satisfaction point accepted by all of our customers is our well-invested, high-quality network and strong infrastructure. This quarter, our AI-based retention strategy led us to reach the right customer at the right time with the right tariff. An extensive distribution channel of almost 6,000 points nationwide and our digital channels that are tailored to customer needs are instrumental in customer decision-making. As we invest further in the relationship with our customer, we are happy to see their appreciation. customers have continued to recommend Turkcell to a significantly higher degree than the competition, as confirmed by our Net Promoter Score. Next slide. Now our strategic focus areas. Let's start with our digital services. The standalone revenue from digital services and the solution continued its strong growth at 32% year-on-year, reaching The paid user base reached 3.4 million, up 0.8 million on last year. BIP, our messaging platform, reached 82 million downloads and has 26 million active users. More than a quarter of active users are being abroad. Since we have added the ability to move chat and groups from other platforms, 2 million chats have been imported to BIP today. It has also been a good quarter for our TV business. The churn level for mobile TV product is half that of last year. STV Plus has the best user experience, price, and content equation. In the big screen strategy, we are now in almost every smart TV produced over past four years. And for those that we have not integrated, we offer TV Plus rated devices. We are delighted to have reached a remarkable milestone for our personal cloud application Lifebox as the standalone paid user base has exceeded 1 million. Consistent improvement on user experience, new features, and collaboration have increased the app's user base. As communicated last quarter, we have launched the B2B business model of our digital services with the evident demand from the market. As the demand for remote working and education continues, we are ready to serve cooperation with our local services and aim to be a part of their digitalization process. Next slide. Next are our digital business services. Revenues from digital business services rose 22% year-on-year to 618 million Turkish lira. We signed 678 new contracts with a total contract value of nearly 170 million TL. 917 million TL system integration project backlog is promising for the periods ahead. By rendering our latest data center operational this quarter in Çorlu, we further sustain our leadership of data center and cloud business. we have launched a new interface for our cloud services, which enables our customers to make their own configurations. We have introduced our customers to a variety of new services. On cybersecurity vertical, we have focused on fraud prevention for financial institutions and strengthening firewall services. Turkcell RPA was developed for the automation of robotic process. On IoT vertical, we launched smart utility management solution. These services will continue to assist corporates in their end-to-end digital transformation journey. Next slide. Third is our Techmin focus. Techmin services revenue for the quarter rose to $243 million. on 24% year-on-year growth. The contraction trend in finance sales revenue has eased off this quarter, and year-on-year revenue are flat due to the balanced long portfolio and higher interest rates. PaySales saw another remarkable quarter, topping 5.5 million active users. The company has seen 78% year-on-year growth on the back of traction in mobile payment solutions, especially for its buy-now-pay-later products. Mobile payment transaction volume nearly doubled to 418 million TL, whereas PayCell card transaction volume grew threefold year-on-year. Financel is the market leader in microloan segment with a 20% share. It differentiates with a robust credit scoring system that produces an instant result with a much higher approval rate than the banks. Aiming to serve all Turkish customers, Finansel started to provide financing solutions to Turkcell's fast-growing corporate segment, almost reaching 4,000 clients today. With this strategy, we aim to keep our focus on our products or service while providing the financing from a specialized company. This will improve risk management and balance sheet receivable with more transparent. Next slide. Now a few words on the performance of our digital channel. Digital channels play an integral part in providing our services 24 by 7. even in extreme situations like complete lockdowns. Digitalization of our customers is among our top priorities. From the digital operator application, a customer can tap up Turkish Lira, purchase data packages or smart devices from our extensive portfolio, while even a non-Turkcell user can apply for a subscription. As such, there were 23 million active digital operator users, which we refer to as digital users. Even though we have currently witnessed limited acquisition through digital platforms, the numbers have doubled year on year. Notably, data plan purchase and Turkish lira top-up transaction volume over this platform were even higher for the quarter at 1.9 times. Overall, With a 6.5 percentage point increase, the share of Turkcell Turkey's consumer sales generated on these digital channels have reached 18% in the second quarter. Next slide. Let's take a look at our performance in our international business. Turkcell International Revenues has reached 10% of consolidated revenue, 45% year-on-year. On the back of flourishing Ukrainian business and the positive impact on currency movements, excluding the currency impact, the segment has an organic growth of 24%. Lifestyle Ukraine revenue grew by 26% in local terms. This was driven mainly by subscriber base growth, higher data consumption, and corresponding solid ARPA growth of 17%. Mobile subscribers reached 8.4 million on 11% year-on-year growth. Next slide. Now, for an update on our e-mobility initiative, Turkey's Automobile Project TOG. TOG has received one of the world's most prestigious design awards, the IF Design Award. for its fully electric SUV model. As production facility construction continues at full speed and the first SUV model vehicle is planned to roll out in the last quarter of 2022. In July, as a milestone, the company assembled the first body entirely made of domestically produced parts. As the company presents opportunities in e-mobility, a field we are also exploring, it has the potential to be the next strategic focus area for Turkcell. In line with this, in June, we announced increasing our stake in TOG from 19% to 23%. Considering the existing and potential synergies with TOG, we believe that this investment has the potential to be valuable attractive for Turkcell Group in the medium term. Next slide. I'd like to touch upon our action on the ECG front in the second quarter. Our subsidiary Turkcell Energy recently acquired a wind power plant located in Izmir with an 18 megawatt capacity. Furthermore, we installed solar panels at Çorlu data center. These investments are aimed at fulfilling our commitment of energy procurement exclusively from renewable sources by 2030. As a socially responsible company, we established TÜXEL's sustainable governance principles. These principles underline our commitment to ethical behavior, human and children's rights, and environmental sensitivity in our relations with our employees, customers, and vendors, shortly within the Turkcell ecosystem. This year, we designed an AI-based fresh graduate recruitment interview process, where AI only focuses on the talent of the applicant. To note, this year we welcomed more women graduates than males. We are in solidarity with disaster victims and heroes who are fighting the wildfires in southern Turkey. We have donated saplings, provided free data and voice packages, set up mobile base stations, and built veterinary hospitals with a local NGO in the region. Nature Conservancy is not only a disaster-related action in Turkcell, as we have donated thousands of saplings through various campaigns to date. Next slide. I would like to end my presentation by sharing our new guidance for the full year of 2021. Taking into consideration our healthy first-half performance and our expectation for the remainder of the years, we revised our guidance upwards. Accordingly, We rise our revenue growth to around 18%, still aiming for a real revenue growth in high inflationary environment. We revise our expectation to around 14.3 billion Turkish Lira. We expect to register an operational capex over sales ratio between 21 to 22%. The strong nationwide demand for fiber has led us to increase our home pest plant to 600,000 for the full year. Our CAPEX expectation is also affected by the demand arising from strong operational performance in Ukrainian business and FX fluctuation. I will now leave the floor for our CFO, Osman.

Thank you, Murat Bey. Now let's take a closer look into our financials. Our performance in the second quarter was outstanding and resulted in an 8.5 billion topline on an accelerated 23.5% growth year-on-year. Despite the strict COVID-19 restrictions, we were able to generate 9% quarter-on-quarter growth. For the first half of the year, topline growth exceeded 20%. Our EBITDA reached 3.5 billion TL on a 22.7% increase with a 40.5% margin. Our capex-to-sales ratio rose to 24.5% in Q2 due to advanced capital spending in line with our plans. We registered a net income of 1.1 million TL on a 30% rise in Q2. As we disclosed last week, pursuant to Tax Law No. 7326, we have restructured our tax assessment for the years 2017 and 2018. Another article of the same law allows us to revalue a part of our fixed asset investments based upon domestic PPI. The impact of the latter has more than compensated to the former. Next slide. Now some details on revenue development. In the second quarter, group revenues rose 23.5% year-on-year, corresponding to an incremental 1.6 billion TL. Of this increase, 1 billion TL derives from Turkcell Turkey. This was a result of the strong ARPU and NetEd performance, mainly in the post-bate base. Turkcell's international revenues rose 45% year-on-year thanks to strong lifestyle operational performance and the positive impact of currency movements. Our Techfin segment contributed 47 million TL to the top line, fully driven by Paycell revenues. Other segments grew by 42.1 percent, contributing 285 million TL in this quarter on the back of higher equipment sales supported by digital channels. Next slide. Group EBITDA rose 22.7 percent year-on-year to 3.5 billion TL, driven mainly by strong top-line growth. The EBITDA margin slightly decreased to 40 percent in Q2. The factors affecting the change in EBITDA margin A gross margin decline of minus 0.9 percentage points triggered mainly by increasing equipment sales. An OPEX increase of minus 0.3 percentage points mainly due to the marketing expenses that had been suspended during the COVID-19 lockdown period. Decrease in doubtful receivables of plus 0.9 percentage points thanks to better collection performance. Rising 49% year on year, Truxel International EBITDA made a higher contribution at the group level. Strong operational performance and cost measures in our international subsidiaries, coupled with FX impact, were instrumental in this performance. Next slide. Now I would like to talk about our balance sheet and leverage details. As at the end of Q2, our cash position decreased to 12.4 billion TL from 13.5 billion TL mainly due to an 860 million TL dividend payment and 1.6 billion TL debt repayment. In Q2, currency movements led to a 763 million TL increase in total debt and a 265 million TL rise in our cash position. As a result, our net debt position slightly increased to 11.6 billion TL from 11.4 billion TL with a 0.9 time leverage ratio. Excluding the financing business, This was at 0.8 times, hence the same level as the previous quarter. Around the 1.3 billion US dollar equivalent cash position covers our debt service until 2025. Next slide. Now I will go into the management of foreign currency risk. We continue to hold the bulk of our cash in hard currency as a natural hedging tool. With hedging instruments in place, the share of FX debt declined from 83% to 51% as of Q2. We are in a long net FX position of $146 million as at the end of second quarter. Going forward, we continue to target a neutral to long FX position. Next slide. Let's take a closer look at our fintech company's performance and firstly our financing business financials. The contraction trend in financial revenue has eased off this quarter, and revenues are flat year-on-year due to a balanced loan portfolio and higher interest rate revenues. EBITDA rose by 15 percent to 87 million TL with a margin of 65 percent. The improvement in collection performance and the sale of doubtful receivables led to the rise in EBITDA margin. All in all, the cost of risk has reached 0.2 percent level, thanks also to the sale of doubtful receivables in Q2. Net income increased 44% year-on-year to 68 million TL, driven mainly by a 50 million TL dividend payment from Paysal, strong operational performance, and a lower FX loss after hedging. Next slide. Our payment services company, Paysal, continued its momentum on 78% yearly revenue growth. The demand for digital payments has been rising rapidly as payment habits change. PayCell is well positioned to meet this demand with its diverse range of services and solutions. In fact, PayCell's three-month active users reached 5.5 million. Mobile payment transaction volume nearly doubled in this quarter to 418 million TL. Additional to rising demand, the increased usage of buy-now-pay-later product is instrumental in this growth performance. In Q2, Paysal card transaction volume quadrupled to 300 million TL year on year. We position Paysal app as a super app that meets daily financial and payment services needs of its users. Additional to our services, we act as a financial marketplace providing digital content and e-commerce products. In Q2, we had collaborations with game platforms to sell game tokens through the Paysal app. There are numerous items of legislation in the pipeline. Digital ID recognition, fast and even regulation, a joint QR initiative, digital banking and open banking regulations will support the various verticals of PayCell for future growth. PayCell, supporting the overall strength of Turkcell Group, is set to sustain its strong momentum over the coming quarters. This concludes my presentation. We can now open the line for questions. Thank you very much for listening.

The first question is from the line of Kapacek Andre with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hello. Congratulations on a strong quarter, and thank you for the question. A couple from me, please. First of all, on the upgraded guidance, can you maybe break down – The top line guidance, I guess, is ahead of the EBITDA guidance and also CapEx is up. So two questions here. In terms of the top line upgrade, can you give us an idea what that is primarily driven by? Because it would seem in the context of the EBITDA that it is kind of the non-core businesses that are growing faster than perhaps expected. And then in terms of CapEx, if you could break down the impact between FX, you mentioned additional fiber investments and anything else. And then second question for me, please. You've had another huge quarter in terms of mobile net additions. At the same time, your main competitor, I guess, highlighted that the composition in the market stabilized quite a bit during the second quarter and that it's looking pretty good. Can you just talk about where these numbers are coming from and how you, as the market leader, see the competitive situation in mobile fees?

Thank you very much. Okay.

First of all, thank you very much. Regarding guidance revision, I think we achieved quite robust performance in the first half and despite the challenge of the pandemic environment I mean when we look at Turkcell Turkey we have significant role especially strong subscriber and ARPU performance we achieved net subscriber addition 1.3 million in the first half of the year so which means this subscriber base will help us to increase our revenue level at the second half of the year. And also on the international side, we see strong organic growth in Ukraine operation, together with the positive impact of currency movement, supported top line growth. So this is also another confident situation for us for the second half. EBITDA guidance revision mainly depends on revenue increase. And regarding CAPEX breakdown, because I also mentioned in the slide in the presentation, we would like to invest more on the fiber since there are demand from the customer side. So we increase number of on-pass target from 500,000 to 600,000 So which will drive the capex increase. Also, as I mentioned, Ukraine is promising market. We're gaining market share, we're increasing our top line growth. So we would like to invest in Ukraine more. Since we invest, we get more as well. So this is the main reason for the capex. And obviously, since we have more customers, The customer needs more data, so we're going to invest more in this side. Regarding second question, for the net addition, first of all, our strategy is based on providing a rich value proposition to our customer through differentiated product and services. And we have diversified business model. We offer high-quality telco services, wide range of digital services, as well as digital payment solution. And as clearly stated from our customer, our infrastructure also enable us to provide all the services with maximum quality. And this help us to increase our customer basis. Also, AI capabilities is important. we can go further micro-segmented approach, which enables to make us right offer to the right customer at the right time. So, in terms of where are these customers, mainly post-paid, out of 617 customers, 500 of them post-paid customers, and out of These post-paid customers, 40% of them switch from prepaid, and 60% of them active acquisition new lines. Thank you.

Thank you. May I have a very short follow-up on the CapEx question, please? You mentioned strong demand in fiber, and that is consistent with what your competition is saying. Should we read this? Maybe that's the higher target than just 0.5%. excuse me, 0.5 million homes per year would be not just the 2021 target, maybe going forward as well, that you would accelerate the plan for the medium term as well?

Exactly, because we don't want to stop after investing 600,000 home tests. So we see that the demand will continue, especially we have also 5G in front of us. When the 5G comes, We need more fiber, so when we invest in home paths, on anything, it will help other businesses as well. So definitely we'll continue to invest in fiber.

I meant more than half a million because your previous guidance was kind of half a million per year over the next couple of years. Would it now be, say, 0.6 million per year over the next couple of years? We hope more than that.

To be honest, we hope more than that. Because when you start investment... it will take time to accelerate the machine. When the machine gets speed, you can easily increase the speed of having a home pass or customer, actually. So I think 600, I hope more than that.

Okay, thank you very much.

The next question is from the line of Dr. Evslava with Goldman Sachs.

Please go ahead.

Thank you very much for the presentation. A couple of questions. Firstly, on the 5G, what would be your thoughts over the timing and also the financial implications of the spectrum option? And would you envisage the significant investments into the network after or around the spectrum allocation? And the second question would be on the electric vehicle projects. Can you outline certain potential for a further upcoming capital commitment into this project? and also the timing, the magnitude of the monetization, as well as the signatures you see with Terpcell. Thank you.

Okay, Slava, thank you very much. For the 5G, as you may recall, a couple of months ago, the Deputy Minister of Transport and Infrastructure unofficially announced that new spectrum auction related 5G could be held in 2022 with a commercial launch of 2023. So this gave us some guidance. Since then, we don't have heard any official announcement from the government with respect to the 5G standards. Meanwhile, we continue our preparation for the 5G And we're ready to get 5G spectrum and license. And also, as a recent development, we're working very hard on the preparation of 5G. And in June, we launched commercial 5G outbound roaming services so that Turkcell subscribers can now use 5G services in 29 countries. Overall, we don't have any official timeline for 5G. However, we already have a strong foreign housing network, which we believe will ease the 5G transition. Our extensive test with the different partners on different use cases will also help us to offer a quality 5G service going forward. Regarding CapEx side of the 5G, as I said, we don't have a clear schedule for the 5G auction. And obviously, when you wait more, your complex demand decrease because the cost of equipment by nature of the technology decrease. So we'll see what can happen but obviously the announcement is there. It's not official announcement but it's an announcement. Regarding the electrical vehicle project, our capital commitment to this project is around 115 million euro. So far, we have invested around 25 million euros already. So going forward, we'll continue to release this capital during the project phases. And it depends on where we need, when we need. It really depends on the project plan and the progress of the EV companies.

Thank you. And can you maybe elaborate on the synergies you see with Turkcell?

Regarding synergy with Tok, e-mobility is everywhere. So when we joined this partnership, the Tok partnership, everyone was thinking that why telco operator joining this EV consortium? But everybody right now sees that e-mobility is a strength. The connectivity, entertainment, and the car without driver is very important, which means high speed, low latency, and strong customer engagement. So that's the main reason that we have synergies. So Turkcell and Tok can have a lot of things together, including smart living solutions, smart city, smart charging, data based business model supplier and partners with novel competencies and so on there are integrated digital services and payment payment is very important as well charging solution and infrastructure IOT is there so there are many many things you know may come during the roadmap but we'll see what we can help on this side but I think Clearly, Turkcell has vision to finalize this synergy.

Thank you very much.

The next question is from the line of Madati Etse with Unlu Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you very much for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. The first one is on your hedging and ethics costs compared to the last two years average, we are seeing a higher level net ethics loss when we also include the fair value adjustments. So the currency and ethics were also volatile in the previous quarter. So what has changed specifically for this quarter? 518 million TLX flows, is there anyone else in that? Or is it the new base now? Should we consider such a number as quarterly ethics losses going forward? And secondly, I want to also ask about your deferred income you have generated for this quarter due to accounting change. Is this also one of, or will we gonna see such effects in the coming quarters? And thirdly, two days ago there was the emerging market news that you were in talks or started the process for the sale of stake sale in a pay sale, minority stake sale in pay sale. Could you also provide your prospects regarding the potential asset sale and when this could be official or when we should expect such news. So thank you very much.

Ece, thank you very much. Let me give the floor to the RCFO Osman to answer all three questions, and then maybe I can come at the end of his comment.

Thank you very much. Hedging and FX costs increased significantly compared to last year, especially compared to the average of last three quarters. We can associate this increase with the rising hedging costs. Short-term swap rates almost more than doubled compared to last year, and this is making a negative impact on our FX revenues. On the other hand, we need to generate Turkish lira for our working capital needs as well as for dividend payments. Since we hold majority of our cash in hard currency, we need to generate Turkish Lira through short-term FX swaps. And the costs of these short-term FX swaps are also classified under hedging costs. And one-third of the FX loss that you see in this quarter is associated with this short-term Turkish Lira need. Farewell adjustments, hedging costs increase, and Turkish Lira generation needs make up for the high hedging costs this quarter. We expect a gradual decrease in hedging costs and FX loss over the next quarter unless we see other sharp increase in dollar TRY parity. For the second question that you are asking, it is associated with the recent tax legislation that I tried to explain during the presentation. We made use of the right introduced by recent change in law, which allows us to revalue some of our fixed assets and inventories. As per the law, the respective assets, these are typically network assets, especially mobile network, fixed network, and data center investments. These assets can be revalued with PPI. producer prices index until the year end, and we need to pay 2% over the value of this asset in order to be able to revalue those. This increasing, inflating the value of our fixed assets, it translates into higher amortization and depreciation costs in the following years, which creates a deferred tax income on our balance sheet. By the way, it's a cash impact because we will be able to pay less tax due to increasing amortization. So it translates into a deferred tax asset on our balance sheet and makes a positive impact on our net income. On the third question, I assume that you are referring to the news that appeared on the merger market yesterday. It's no surprise. We have been... expressing our interest in a potential fake sale, not only at FaceSell, but also in other subsidies, including SuperOnline. We continue to work on different alternatives, but I can say that so far we haven't been given any mandate by our shareholders to finalize this process. We still explore alternatives. something material happens, we will share with you through the disclosure platforms.

Thank you.

The next question is from the line of Demirtas Kemal with Ata Invest.

Please go ahead.

You mentioned about one of, and you had some recently announced tax investigation numbers. I guess you recorded in second quarter. Could you just give us some clarification on that? Thank you.

I'm sorry. Mr. Demirtas, can you please tell your question again because we could not hear you in the beginning? Thank you.

Okay. My question is about the effective tax rate. I see that you recorded tax income. Maybe during the presentation you mentioned about the details. I don't know if I missed it, but that's my first question. And the second question is about the VANOPS. You mentioned again during the presentation that I didn't clearly hear. If you could just further elaborate that. And was the latest tax investigation, you know, tax investigation results impact what's seen in second quarter? Did you record that in the second quarter? Thank you.

Thank you very much. First of all, regarding effective tax rate is without one-offs, it's 23%. And Regarding second questions, as we have announced last week, our company was imposed a tax assessment in relation to the tax investigation that was conducted with respect to the special communication tax for 2017 and with respect to the special communication tax, value-added tax, and corporate tax for 2018. We also share that we will benefit from restructuring provisions for this tax assessment and will pay 258 million Turkish lira at the end of September. This led to an increase in other expenses. Okay.

It was recorded under other expenses.

Thank you. The next question is a follow-up question from with UBS.

Please go ahead.

Thank you. I have one follow-up in terms of costs as well. You mentioned about a year ago, I believe, that part of the, and I think it was a half of the selling and marketing expense decline that you saw because of the lockdowns and moving to digital would be sustainable. Now we are, I know there's been another lockdown in Turkey, but on an annualized basis, that ratio of selling and marketing expenses was more or less flat year over year. And you mentioned in your presentation the ongoing share of digital sales. Can you maybe update us in terms of where you think the sustainability of the, I mean, there's a 1.5 percentage points year over year decline in terms of selling and marketing expenses as percentage of revenues last year. What part of that is or would be sustainable today, versus what you said about a year ago? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Andrei. First of all, I mean, regarding sales and marketing expense increase, the deterioration in selling and marketing expense has been mainly driven by the increase in marketing expense, not the selling side. We started a new communication campaign on Turkcell ecosystem positioning comprising both technical and digital services. We will continue investing in this campaign during the years as well. So this is one of the reasons. But regarding selling expenses, either flat or decreased due to the lockdown happened in May as well. Regarding, is there any other question?

Maybe just if there's an update in terms of how sustainable the levels of 2Q are going forward because I mean, we may have expected a bit of a rebound in terms of selling and marketing compared to last year. As you flagged, that's only part of the decrease from a year ago was sustainable. But there was virtually no change in terms of the proportion to revenues. So is there another assessment today versus what you said a year ago when you said roughly half only of the savings were sustainable? Would you say it's more today?

First of all, during the first half, we see that especially selling expenses declined. But during the second half, we would like to see a little bit bounce back on the selling because we'll continue investing in our sales channel. But as you know, we would like to invest more and more in the digital sales channel. This is our focus area. If we can continue to increase digital channels' spending and digital channels expenses. This will help us to lead more savings, but obviously it's not going to be the same as the first half. We expect a little bit more on the OPEX increase during the second half.

The next question is from the line of Demirat Kayahan with AK Investment. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you very much for the presentation and opportunity to ask questions. I mean, as a follow-up on the CapEx side, based on the upper end of your guidance, you're roughly looking for $100 million higher CapEx compared to the previous quarter. So what I'm trying to understand, what percentage of that relates to additional 100K home passes, and also very roughly, what is the incremental revenue contribution you're looking from this 600K home pass, or in other words, what is the expected payback period for this investment? Thank you.

Okay. Thank you very much for the first question regarding capacity increase. Almost one-third of them comes from the FX increase. One-third of them comes from fiber investment. And one-third of them growth business, including Ukraine and mobile subscriber base increases as well. Regarding payback, you know, the payback period usually long-term, But we see during the pandemic, we see that fiber investment, you know, return cycle is decreasing. So we would like to benefit on this side, but obviously our mainly eight, nine years' payback is acceptable on the fiber investment.

Okay, thank you.

Because economical, you know, actually the fiber lifetime is almost 25 years, so eight years is okay.

The next question is from the follow-up question from Mr. Gabacek-Ondre with UBS. Please go ahead.

Sorry, one more follow-up for me, please. In terms of Superbox, I noticed that the trend of net additions has been going down quite a bit from the peak of about a year ago, and you don't even talk about the product in your presentation anymore. Is that because you think the market for this product is kind of saturated by now, or are you actively trying to replace it strategically with fiber products? or any update on how you see that going forward. Thank you.

Thank you. Actually, your response was quite okay. Since it's launched, Superbox has shown substantial growth in a subscriber base, providing the demand for neat, fixed wireless access product backed by a quality network. Our success with SuperBucks also shown that our company is ready for the 5G transition period in Q1 2021. SuperBucks subscriber reached 626,000 on the back of increase of demand and brand awareness, as well as rising household broadband demand in pandemic environment. From now on, we will be more concentrated on monetizing our Superbox subscription with a focus on network efficiency, usage optimization, and price adjustment. So we recently did some price adjustment. We would like to monetize more Superbox products with more efficient network infrastructure. That was the two reasons. And Superbox is not a cheap product. It's a high quality product with high demand. But we would like to focus on the OPEX side as well, the network cost side as well. So it's in a balance. So we are increasing Superbox ARPU in an acceptable level. And Superbox is not a competition for fiber, and we – I mean, it's a product that specific needs or address the needs of customer in the high speed and high quality and mobility environment.

Mr. Kabacek, are you finished with your questions?

Yes, I was. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

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.

I would like to thank all the contributors, all the listeners. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good morning for everyone. Thank you.

Well, thank you. This is the end of our call. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to join us today. We hope to meet you in the upcoming quarters. Goodbye.