Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Gayle, your chorus call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Turkcell conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the Turkcell third quarter 2023 financial results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode and the conference The session will be followed by a 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 Ms. Audrey Yardim, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance Director. Ms. Yardim, you may now proceed.

Thank you, Gili. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Truxel's third quarter 2023 earnings call. I am Özlem Yardım and recently appointed as the head of IR and M&A at Truxel. I have been with the company more than a decade and I'm excited to meet each of you in person in the near future. I'm always here to address your questions and feedback. Today, our CEO, Ali Taha Koç, and CFO, Kamil Kalyon, will be delivering a brief presentation covering operational and financial results of third quarter, which will be followed by a Q&A session. Before we begin, I would like to kindly remind you to review our safe harbor statements available at the end of our presentation. Now, I am handing the meeting over to Mr. Ali Taha.

Thank you, Özlem. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I am honored to have been appointed as the CEO of Turkcell, which pioneered mobile telecommunication technology in Turkey and remains a flag carrier in the global capital markets. With a strong background in telecommunication technology and innovation, I have contributed to numerous patents and international projects during my tenure at Intel Corporation. I have also held key positions overseeing the digital transformation of Turkey. With a wealth of experience in my new role, I am committed to advancing Turkcell's leading position in our nation's digital sovereignty. We will harness our advanced technological capabilities to foster innovation and create a brighter digital future for all while taking Turkcell to the next level. As we are celebrating the Centennial of the Republic, I am confident in Truxell's leadership in technology and innovation will further carry our country to the second century. Truxell's performance in the third quarter proves the success of this company, which is levered by a robust business model, state-of-the-art capabilities that enhance customer satisfaction, and a team of highly skilled individuals. My initial evaluation of the company has reaffirmed my perception of Truxell. My primary mission is to bolster Turkcell's position in the telecommunication and technology market. To achieve this, I plan to place a greater emphasis on technological advancements and innovation. To unlock the full potential that lies within the Turkcell's capabilities, I aim to achieve sustainable growth and create value for Turkcell's shareholders. Let me dive into financials. We delivered a solid set of results in the third quarter. Continuing to outpace inflation, our revenue growth accelerated to 77%, driven by record ARPU growth and a significantly expanding subscriber base. Our EBITDA exceeded 11 billion Turkish Liras, marking an impressive 89% annual increase. This growth is driven mostly by robust top-line performance and reduced energy prices despite increased personal expenses. Our margin reached 43.5% on a yearly rise of 2.6 percentage points. We delivered a remarkable net profit of 5.5 billion Turkish Liras, thanks to strong operational performance supported by active risk management. As a reminder, we paid the first installment of our donation for the earthquake relief in September. This result enabled us to increase our full year guidance further. Next slide, please. Let's take a closer look at our mobile operational performance. We have concluded a dynamic quarter for the mobile market, leveraging strategic pricing actions amidst competitive pressures of grasping summer seasonality. In the third quarter, we made a price adjustment in August, responding to the soaring inflation rates of July. While overall price levels across the market escalated, we also observed aggressive promotional campaigns that have shifted the MMP market away from rationality. Our commitment to price adjustments remains intact, as we have already adjusted prices by 20% for Q4 in October. Small ARPU sustained its climb thanks to sequential price adjustments aligned with inflationary pricing policy and bolstered by upsell efforts supported by analytical models. Accordingly, we recorded 87% year-on-year growth. This quarter, we gained a net of 392,000 postpaid and 193,000 prepaid subscribers. This remarkable result was driven by our strategy of focusing on postpaid subscribers and summer season, which had a positive impact on prepaid services. However, increased competition from alternative data solutions and rising acquisition prices impacted the prepaid net addition. The mobile churn rate ticked up to 2%, though remaining at a healthy level, despite the aggressive pricing efforts of the competitors. Next slide, please. In the fixed broadband segment, we had a net gain of 48,000 fiber subscribers, thanks to an expanded fiber footprint and increased demand during the back-to-school period. The year's only prized action by the incumbent took place in July, which we follow. Thanks to our strategy focused on 12-month contract options, the ratio of those in our Fiber portfolio reached 59% in the third quarter. With 88% of our new customers opting for a 12-month contract in September and the removal of 24-month contract options in this quarter, it is fair to expect a higher 12-month contract ratio in the Fiber base in upcoming periods. Consequently, price actions will have a more immediate impact on ARPU. Fiber ARPU ramped up by 63% yearly driven by our price adjustments, upselling efforts to higher tariffs, our focus on development contract options, and higher IPTV pricing. It is fair to expect real growth in Fiber ARPU will be sustained for the remainder of the year. Introducing shorter contract durations and the price adjustment in the fixed segment has led to a slight increase in churn levels annually. We are pleased to register a further 31,000 net additions to our IPTV subscribers, bringing our total customer base to 1.4 million. We provided IPTV to 66% of our Fiverr subscriber base. Next slide, please. Regarding our strategic focus areas, let's begin with digital services and solutions. The standalone revenues from digital OTT services rose 103% year-on-year. We introduced new price adjustments across most of our digital service portfolio. The standalone paid user base reached 5.8 million, marking a 1 million rise on the previous year. Our TV platform, TV+, expanded its customer base on both OTT and IPTV platforms thanks to its rich content and the best pricing strategy. It has consistently increased its market share in the pay TV market since the second quarter of 2014 and most recently reached 17.2% despite ongoing price adjustment throughout the year. Lifebox, our cloud storage platform, has seen substantial growth, reaching 2.1 million subscribers, rising 29% on a yearly basis. Our digital business services, playing a pivotal role in supporting the digital transformation of enterprises, recorded 76% year-on-year growth. We also witnessed strong performance in the promising verticals, particularly in the data center and cloud segment, which accounts for 16% of our DBS revenues and posted solid revenue growth of 152%. This quarter, we had a record level of new contracts exceeding 1,500 contracts. Next slide, please. Our TechWing companies once again delivered a strong performance, supporting the group's top line in the quarter. Digital financial services platform PayCell's revenue rose 112%. The flagship product, PayLater, sustained its growth, robust growth, with more than doubling transaction value. PayCell, with the vision of providing solution across various verticals of the Turkish fintech ecosystem, has been expanding its reach. PayCell customers can now execute Borsa Istanbul stock exchange transactions through the app via a CMB-licensed brokerage hub. Furthermore, PayCell offers shopping limits to its customers through Financel in collaboration with Turkey's renowned pioneering e-commerce platform. Revenues grew by 104%. The loan book has expanded to 5.7 billion Turkish liras and 97% growth thanks to loan portfolio diversification with new products, such as green laws for solar energy investments offered to enterprise customers. Increasing funding rates have diluted the margins due to the shortage of long-term funding liquidity. Complementing our Techfin strategy, our digital insurance company, Wayo, started operations in July 2023 with loan protection insurance. We will be sharing more information about Wayo, which stands for with you, including KPIs and product development in the coming quarterly reviews. Next slide, please. Now our international subsidiaries. Turkcell international revenues comprising 11% of consolidated revenues grew by 75% year-on-year in the third quarter. The growth came mainly from the positive impact of currency movements and growth in all subsidiaries. Excluding the currency impact, the segment has grown 30% organically. Lifestyle revenues, which account for 76% of this segment, grew by 26% year-on-year in local currency terms. The rise in ARPU and expanding subscriber base underpinned the performance, while the impact of war during the same period of last year was the factor curbing the growth. BEST recorded 18% organic revenue growth on a yearly basis, and the EBITDA margins reached 46%, marking a substantial 14-point improvement. Lower interconnection expenses were the main driver of this high profitability. In September, we introduced 4.5G services in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, establishing ourselves as the pioneering provider in the country. Next slide, please. According to GSMA reports, the telecommunication industry consumes 2 to 3 percent of global power consumption. As operators' energy usage grows daily with increasing data demand, so does our carbon footprint. Furthermore, considering the global energy crisis we experienced last year, we may face even higher energy costs and scarcity. In Russia, we are also actively taking related steps. We are implementing various projects for optimal and efficient energy usage. Furthermore, we utilize 100% renewable energy certified sources and intensify focus on our renewable energy investment. As you may recall, Turkcell acquired a wind power plant in Turkey two years ago, which currently generates 8% of our energy usage. This acquisition marked a great leap toward achieving net zero by 2050. This year, we initiated investments in solar power plant installations to achieve a capacity of 300 megawatts within three years. The first phase, with an installed capacity of 54 megawatts, will be completed by the end of first half next year. We aim to cover 65% of Turkcell's total energy consumption from our own green energy production by 2026. This goal shields us against energy price fluctuations and reinforce our commitment to sustainability. Next slide, please. To conclude my presentation here, I'm pleased to share our updated guidance for 2023. Building on our outstanding performance in the first nine months of this year, we have decided to revise our guidance upwards to align with a more realistic expectation. Accordingly, we raise our revenue growth guidance to around 73%, generating real revenue growth. Our nominal EBITDA expectation is now set around 39 billion Turkish Liras, and we anticipated maintaining an operational CapEx over sales ratio of around 22%. I firmly believe that TruXell has the scope to deliver a stronger performance over the coming years. We are confident in our ability to create value through advancements in artificial intelligence, innovations, and cybersecurity by leveraging our state-of-the-art infrastructure in next-generation communication technology. Moreover, we aim to capitalize on the evolving digital habits of our customers with providing our superior digital services. I will now leave the floor to our CFO, Mr. Kamil Kalyan. Thank you very much, Ali Tahabey.

Now let's move on to our financial results. Our goods revenue delivered an incremental revenue of 11.3 billion TL, marking 77% year-on-year growth. The Turkcell Turkey segment was the main driver of this performance, driven by an expanding subscriber base, strong ARPA growth thanks to sequential price adjustments and successful upselling efforts. The contribution of the international segment was 1.2 billion TL. The main drivers of this rise were the positive impact of currency movements and our Ukrainian operations performance. Our technical segment contributed 537 million TL to the top line with the strong performances of Paysal and Finansal which grew 112% and 104% respectively. Next slide, please. Now let's look at our EBITDA performance. In the third quarter, Group EBITDA grew 88.9% to 11.3 billion TL due to solid top-line performance. The EBITDA margin expanded by 2.6% on a yearly basis in this quarter. The increase in personal expenses due to the wage rise that became effective at the start of the quarter was more than compensated by the decline in the cost of goods. Energy expenses sustained their positive impact on the margin this quarter as well. Please note that the Energy Market Regulatory Authority has announced a 20% price increase effective from October 1st, which will have an adverse impact on our Q4 results. Declining NTR rates through 2024 year-end will continue to impact profitability in the upcoming periods positively. Next slide, please. Now the net income performance. Group net income surged by 3.1 billion TL, reaching a remarkable 5.5 billion TL on 129% year-on-year growth. Our robust operational performance boosted EBITDA contribution to 5.3 billion TL, resulted in the solid net income. The limited depreciation of the Turkish lira resulted in lower foreign exchange losses in Q3, particularly compared to the previous quarter. The M2M valuation of the derivative portfolio had a positive impact of 600 million TL on the overall net effects loss of 670 million TL. The tax impact of the earthquake donation and the change in the corporate tax rate on deferred tax assets led to a lower tax expense in this quarter. Next slide, please. Let's take a closer look at our CapEx Mini. for the third quarter, which brings the past 12 months figure to 19.4%. Thanks to a front-loaded investment in the mobile segment, we primarily concentrated on maintenance capex, excluding the earthquake zone. Having met the fiber homepage target in the first half, we focused more on monetization in the sixth segment. These improvements have resulted in the expansion of other segments in the total capex breakdown. FX movements were the primary reason for the increase in international capex rather than higher organic investment. We expect to see a higher capex intensity in the next quarter due to seasonality of the business and new investment areas like data centers and renewable energy. Next slide, please. Now let's turn our attention to the balance sheet. At the end of Q3, our cash position increased by 4 billion TL, supported by FX movements of 1.3 billion TL, while cash generation totalled 1.8 billion TL. Our gross debt increased to 83.5 billion TL, mainly due to 2.9 billion TL currency depreciation and new borrowings of 2.4 billion TL. We ended the quarter with a net debt position of 28.1 billion TL. Thanks to robust EBITDA generation, our net leverage decreased to 0.8 times. Our leverage ratio is quite healthy and we are far ahead of our competitors. In addition to the strong cash position, we have committed lines of around 175 million euro equivalent for the upcoming periods. The majority of our cash continues to remain in hard currencies. Excluding FX swaps, 56% of our cash is in US dollars and 13% in euros. Next slide, please. Lastly, let's look into the management of foreign currency risk in Q3. At the end of Q3, our balance sheet had around 1.9 billion USD equivalent in FX financial liabilities. In addition to the 1.4 billion USD equivalent FX-denominated financial cash, we have a 700 million USD effective hedging portfolio, the vast majority of which consists of future We ended up with a long FX position of $145 million, which is within our neutral FX position definition. This concludes our presentation, and we can now open the line for questions.

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 2. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. One moment for the first question, please. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone. The first question is from the line of Moistil with Schreuters. Please go ahead.

Hello, and thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on the quarter. Can you please share some thoughts about what you're planning to do with your upcoming debt maturities? There's quite a war ahead, like $2 billion between now and 2025, so it would be great to get some call on that. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the question. We have around 1.4 billion vestal recurrence effects in hand as of the end of the third quarter. In addition, we have around 185 million vestal committed long-term facilities, as I mentioned in my presentation. And as of Q3, our cash is sufficient to service our debts until the end of 2024. Our FX debt service for this year is around 150 million USD, which we deem as manageable. As you mentioned, regarding our 2025 Eurobond, Turkcell possesses adequate cash reserves to fulfill the bond redemption, as evident from our financial statements. Nevertheless, we are diligently exploring a range of competitive and rational alternatives for the issuance of the 2025 Eurobond. These alternatives encompass potential solutions such as launching a fresh bond sukuk offering or securing a bank loan.

All right, thank you. You're welcome.

The next question is from the line of Demirtaskiy, Mahlouz, Atta and Beth. Please go ahead.

but thank you for the presentation and congratulations for good results uh my first question is about uh the fiverr investment in turkey uh what's your the current share of your company in this uh area uh what are your targets for the future i'd like to elevate that and the second question is about the inflation accounting fed or what might be the impact of inflation accounting application on your financials starting by the following if you know that you also announced the inflation adjusted figures both you know as you are listed in us but i'd like to understand understand how it will affect your you know tax payments or other factors or any impact on your financial thank you let me answer the first one and then i'm gonna hand over to my cfo

As part of our CapEx planning this year, we focus more on our core businesses. Compared to the last year, mobile investments will take a bit more share given the disaster-related damages. On the fiber front, each year, we maintain a balanced CapEx strategy with a demand-driven approach. we have decided to decrease homepass investment to 380,000 due to uncertainties that arise from the current macroeconomic situation and our new monetization strategy on the fiber side. In line with the increased demand, we accelerated our investment and added a total of 1.5 million new homepasses in 2021 and 2022. Accordingly, we now slowed down our investment on that side and have progressed on the monetization phase. However, if a need arises, we can also consider increasing our home-pass investment in line with our smart capex strategy. Additionally, we have remarkable energy investment plans on the energy side to meet our own electricity demand as well.

Thank you.

In the inflation accounting system, as you know, we have revised our 2022 financials as per the IFRS rules, and we will be starting the 2023 financials this year regarding the IFRS side. Since we are in the CapEx or how can I say, the asset side are a little bit higher, the inflation accounting would affect a little bit positively in the income side. Most probably, simultaneously, the tech side might be affected over this issue, but we have some tools regarding the tech side, especially for the deferred tech side, and we would not have affected very negatively about this issue from the tech perspective.

Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome.

Once again to register for a question please press star and one on your telephone. As a final reminder to register for a question please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, Oh, we have more questions. The next question is from the line of Demira Kahayan with AK Investment. Please go ahead.

Hello. Thank you very much for the presentation and opportunity to ask questions. I mean, I have a question about maybe for the next year, would it be possible to give any indication about the expected topics intensity for the next year given your expansion plans in the fiber and also could we assume that the company will be committed to the inflationary pricing delivering real growth by this year thank you

Thank you very much for the question. As we mentioned in our presentation, we had a lot of investments in the fiber side last three months period, and we are at the stage of monetization of these fiber investments in this year. Most probably, this strategy would continue for the next year, especially for 2024. We will make some investments where we need. Regarding the Committed to Inflationary Pricing Delivering Growth, yes, this year we have a lot of inflationary effects in our sector and in our economy. Therefore, this is a tradition for the Turkcell team. We are doing this inflationary pricing very well, more than decades. Therefore, we will continue this inflationary pricing in 2024 also. Okay, thank you. Thanks for taking the time. You're welcome. Thank you very much.

The next question is from the line of Nagi Nora with Ayers Group Bank AG. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thank you for the presentation. I'm taking my question. Can you please update us on 5G spectrum allocation in Turkey? What's the status and what's your expectation? Thank you.

Well, there is no official timeline for 5G announced by the regulator yet, but the Minister of Transportation has announced that 2024 will be planning for a year for the 5G technology. Accordingly, we will be continuing our preparations during 2024. 5G is a vital technology that will facilitate the utilization of industries and contribute to the economic development of our country. However, we believe that there are some issues that need to be addressed first for a healthy launch, such as the fiber connection of our base stations, 5G-capable smartphone penetration, and development of locally manufactured equipment. As of 26 July 2022, we've officially launched commercial 5G in Istanbul airport with a special regulatory permission. that is issued to all operators, through our customers and international homeowners with 5G supported phones and 5G subscriber subscription can use 5G in Istanbul Airport. We will position Istanbul Airport as a commercial 5G pilot cluster and use it as a base for us to use care creation and R&D on top of our test 5G sites. As to the license cost and rollout of CAPEX, it is difficult to give you an estimate as there is no official tender announcement. Analyzing the 5G development in different countries, we see that the high license costs lead to a slower 5G rollout and lower network quality. Additionally, the use cases especially of 5G, particularly for the consumer segment, are not yet clear. 5G will offer value for the utilization of the industries initially. We believe that this will limit operators' ability to generate incremental revenues at first. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that licenses are granted to operators with reasonable fees and conditions. We also believe that deployment should be gradual based on customer demand to prevent excessive cash outflows without any return potential.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next question is from the line of with HSBC. Please go ahead.

Hello. Thank you for the opportunity. I would like to wish the top management success for their new post. I hope that's for you. I would like to ask you a more general question maybe about the strategy. What are the key parts of this future system that we think needs improvement at first glance? And when you look at 2024 and 2025, what are the key points where there is potential for improvement in performance that will also reflect in the financial performance? over the next couple of years. This is a more broader question maybe, but I just wanted to hear about your thoughts on this.

Thank you. Thank you for the great question. I'm committed to advancing Turkcell's leading position in our nation's digital sovereignty while sustaining and bolstering the company's position in the telecommunication market. I am planning to emphasize emphasize innovation and technological development to unlock the full potential that lies within the Turkcell, while creating, of course, value for our shareholders. There are several trends in the telecommunication industry, if you look around, that have the potential to significantly affect the future of our sector, such as especially artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digitalization. As Truxell, we will direct our efforts towards these forms by utilizing our company's state-of-the-art infrastructure and know-how and human capital. Thank you.

Once again, to register for a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone. The next question is from the line of . Please go ahead.

Thank you. My question is, again, about the strategic focus area. As we see in your financials, around 15% of your revenue is coming from the most focused strategic areas, tax alone, digital, digital business, and taking the grid. Do you have any targets on that side? Because over the last several years, we see that around 15% of your consumption is revenues. Should we expect some jump in the future, maybe over the next three, four years? Do you have any just numerical pilot on that? Thank you.

Cemal, thank you very much for the question. As you know, our strategy or our focus areas are growing. We are in the leader in the telecommunication sector, but we have determined some growth areas for our group, especially this DSS side and the finance side, tech wind side, fintech side is growing. significant instruments of this growth area. Therefore, especially in the PayCell side, we continue our growth, more than 100% growth rate, as you can see in our financials regarding the Techfin side. Most probably, we will be continuing this performance until next year. We also have targeted our DSS services, especially we are trying to increase our direct sales from the DSS side to the more efficient and the more, how can I say, extended subscriber base, and we will continue to perform this performance in 2024. Thank you.

Thank you for that. You're welcome.

As a final reminder, to register for a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone. The next question is from the line of Demirak Kahayan with AK Investment. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you again. As a follow-up on the strategic priorities since there's new management in place, asset monetization was an important topic for the two cells for over the next past few years. But there has been a little progress on that front. The things I remember, the company was looking for a strategy partnership in the fintech business and potential IPOs in the power business and the broadband business. And the IPO process has been started, I think, late previous years, but there hasn't been any progress on that front. Very well. So, what do you think about asset monetization at the current structure? And also, maybe I may add the disposal orders, selling the international businesses also was a part of the agenda. What's your view on those issues?

Well, thank you. We are continuously evaluating our portfolio, and we are open to strategic actions that has the potential to create value for our shareholders. Frankly speaking, our international operations can be the closest candidates for a potential divestment. While these operations contribute to our top line, they are not among our strategic priorities. If we see interest with good valuation, we might evaluate our options always. As you know, SuperOnline is a multi-billion dollar world asset. We currently do not think that the current market conditions are supportive for such a sizable IPO. Last December, our board decided to start preparations to take Global Tower to public. As there was a board resolution, it had to be announced. The board resolution said the company will be listed when relevant conditions are favorable. As IPO preparation takes time, between six to nine months, we decided to have the Board approve in advance and be ready for a potential IPO in the following quarters.

Okay, thank you.

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.

Thank you very much for joining this call. We hope to see you in next quarter. Thank you very much for sparing your valuable time.

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