Cyfrowy Polsat S.A. Ord

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the second quarter 2022 results call of Polsat Plus Group. The results will be presented by Mr. Miroslav Błaszczyk, CEO, Mr. Maciej Stec, Vice President, Responsible for Strategy and the New Business, Mrs. Katarzyna Ostrop-Toman, CFO, and Mr. Stanisław Janowski, President of TV Polsat. After the presentation, we will hold a Q&A session. As always, you can post your questions in advance in the chat section. Mr. Błaszczyk, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. As usual, our agenda has four points. I will open the presentation by discussing the key events of the second quarter, then Staszek and Maciek will talk about the operating results of our business segment, while Kasia will present our financial results for the quarter. After a short summary, we will proceed to the Q&A session. Let's begin with the most important events. Quite a lot happened in the second quarter of 2022. First of all, we have finalized the acquisition of Port Praski, a unique real estate development project located in the strict center of Warsaw. We have also signed a joint venture agreement with the experienced European real estate development company HB Revis, and together we want to construct office buildings in Port Praski. We are also working hard to implement our new strategy in the field of clean energy as fast as possible. To this end, we have acquired a wind farm project located in Czuchów in northern Poland. 33 wind turbines will operate on it with total power of 72.6 MW. This new wind farm brings the scale of already initiated wind projects up to over 140 MW, more than half of our strategic target. What is more, Polsat Closed Group and ZITEPAK have developed from scratch the Polish hydrogen-powered bus, the NesoBus. Our bus received European type approval and had its official market launch this quarter. We have also begun the construction of a bus manufacturing plant in Świdnik. In our TMT business, we have extended our cooperation with Volleyball World for the next 10 years. Volleyball has always been an important part of our offer and our long-term social contribution. We have gained TV broadcasting rights to international men's and women's tournaments, especially the World Championships. Also, we are the only Polish operator offering Disney Plus productions which include the content of the highest quality – Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, National Geographic and Star. Last but not least, the General Meeting of Cifrowy Polsat decided to pay out 661 million zlotys in dividends, which means 1.2 zloty per share. Moving on, let's take a look at the rating results of our group. Staszek, please go ahead.

Thank you, Mirek. I will discuss our performance in the media segment, TV and online. First, the online. As you can see, thanks to the acquisition of Interia, we are a strong number three player on the Polish online market and we continue to grow steadily in the segment. In Q2, on average, 21 million real users visited our website and application each month and we recorded a monthly average of over 2 billion page views. These are very good results and we will work to build and strengthen our position on the market of the Internet portals, both in terms of content and advertising. I am very pleased with the rate of growth of our online revenues, which continue to increase at a healthy double-digit rate since the acquisition of Interia two years ago. Just to remind you, our promise was to double EBITDA of Interia in few years from acquisition and we are well on track to deliver it. On the next two slides, we have the performance of our TV business. In Q2, our main channel Polsat held a leading position with 7.7% of audience shares. As for our thematic channels, they recorded a viewership of 15.1%. As a result, the total audience share of Polsat Plus group was 22.8 and, as you can see, was a little lower year-on-year, but in line with our long-term strategic target. The key driver behind this change was the compulsory switch to the new digital terrestrial signal DVB-T2. Many Polish households are not ready yet technologically to receive in the new standard, but commercial broadcasters were forced to use the new standard, while the public broadcaster was allowed to continue using the old DVB-T standard until next year. Despite slightly lower viewership figures in Q2 compared to a year ago, our position in the advertising market remains very strong. The broad market declined by 3.3% year-on-year while we maintained stable advertising revenues. As a result of our strong operating performance in Q2, our share in the TV ad market grew to 28.6%. Turning to our performance in the first half of 2022, our main channel was a clear leader in the commercial group with an audience share of 8%, while our portfolio of thematic channels gained a total of 15%. Consequently, our TV channels had 23% of audience shares. Again, in line with our strategic goal. As for our position on the advertising market in the first half of the year, as you can see, we have maintained a stable stream of advertising revenues on a declining market. As a result, our share in the TV advertising and sponsorship market grew to the level of 28.5%. To sum up my part of the presentation, I am very pleased with the operating performance of our group in the media segment, despite the headwind from the reframing of the digital terrestrial broadcasting signal. I am also very happy with the way Interia is progressing. That would be all from me. Thank you very much for your attention and I shall pass the floor to Maciek.

Hello everybody and welcome. I will show you how Pulsar Plus Group performed in the B2C and B2B services segment. Despite all the new things that we have been going on in our group, we remained focused on our Multiplay strategy. Thanks to the consistent execution of our strategy, we have increased our Multiplay customer base by 45,000 over the past year and today almost 2.5 million customers use our Multiplay offer. The number of RGU's have increased to almost 7.4 million services. One of our key KPIs is the level of churn, as you know. We continue to record historically low levels in this respect, only 6.8% in the second quarter of 2022. This demonstrates that we have a loyal and satisfied customer base, something that is particularly important today in times of economic uncertainty and extremely high inflation. We steadily increased the number of contract services sold to B2C customers. As you can see on this slide, the number of contract RGUs that we provide increased by 161,000 year-on-year to almost 13.4 million services. Mobile telephony remains the main driver behind this growth and is the result of successfully upselling and cross-selling services to an individual client and also ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction. The positive effect of the acquisition of premium mobile is still visible this quarter. The most important issue for us and the key point of our multiplayer strategy is to build customer value. On this slide, you will see that in Q2, we were able to achieve further growth of ARPU. We increased the level of ARPU by 2.4 zlotys or 3.5% year-on-year to 70.2 zlotys. This is the direct effect of the execution of our strategy centered around building customer value. The popularization and increasing uptake of 5G tariffs among our customers is also a factor that positively contributes to RPO growth. Let me just remind you that we continue to be the only operator in Poland to offer real 5G based on dedicated frequencies with maximum speed up to 600 Mbps. Already 19 million people in Poland live within the footprint of our 5G network. The increasing ratio of RGU saturation per customer reflects the successful upselling of products and services to our customers within the framework of our Multiplay Strategy. As you can see on the slide, in Q2 2022, each of our customers had on average 2.23 services from our portfolio. I'm extremely happy with the operating performance in the prepaid segment in Q2 2022. As you can see on the slide, the scale of our prepaid base and RPO generated on the services are in a growth trend. At the end of the second quarter of this year, we provided nearly 2.8 million prepaid services. The scale of our prepaid segment RGU-based remains under the positive effect of the support that we provided to Ukrainian refugees in the form of three starter packs. The effects of our value-oriented strategy are easier to notice in the prepaid segment because it reacts to offer changes almost immediately. RPU in the prepaid segment increased by 8.7% to 17.4 zlotys in the second quarter. The main drivers behind this trend are changes that we have made in our mobile and TV offering. Please remember that last year we repositioned upwards our online streaming service in terms of pricing and changed the model to fully subscription-based. Also, we observed that our customers of prepaid mobile services tend to prefer more and more packaged solutions over pay-as-you-go. As for the subsegment of B2B, it's clear from this slide that this is a very stable part of our business. We have a high stable base of about 69,000 B2B customers, and we have a stable stream of revenue from it based on ARPU of about 1,400 zlotys. Let me briefly summarize the results of B2C and B2B services segment before I move on to discussing our performance in our new branch of business, Clean Energy. Invariably, we focus on and implement with success our Multiplay value-oriented strategy, which is reflected in our operating results. We have almost 2.5 million loyal Multiplay customers. We provide almost 13.4 million contract services. ARPU exceeded 70 zlotys in the B2C subsegment and grew to 17.4 zlotys in the prepaid segment. Most of all, we have a consistently low level of churn, which I'm very proud of, only 6.8%. Okay, let's move on the third pillar of our business, which we have introduced into our strategy last December, clean energy. As a quick reminder, in the clean energy segment we have set two strategic goals. The first is that together with ZEPAK we want to become the leading producer of clean green energy. This slide shows a quick overview of our specific targets within this goal. 100 MW from biomass. We have already achieved this target. 600 MW of solar power. Our 70 MW solar power plant in Rudzef is fully operational and we are working on new solar projects as we speak. 250 MW onshore wind power, despite the fact that regulations hindering the development of wind farms in Poland are still in place. We are quickly moving forward with acquisitions and development of several onshore wind farms. Two installations of thermal waste treatment. We are looking at two or three potential locations. And we will strongly support ZEPAK and Ørsted in their attempts to procure licenses for the construction of offshore wind farms on the Baltic Sea. And finally, we are actively analyzing and following the developments related to small modular reactors. Our second strategic goal is that together with ZEPAK we want to become the leading producer of green hydrogen in Poland. I think making rapid progress to achieve this goal is vitally important today from the perspective of energy security. Within this goal, we want to create a full and complete value chain based on green hydrogen consisting of the production of green hydrogen, its storage, transportation, and distribution, and finally, the supply of end-user products powered by green hydrogen. So, in order to do this, first, we need clean energy sources to produce the green hydrogen. Our aim is to build electrolysis plants of 100 MW in total with the capacity to produce 40 tons of green hydrogen per day. Once this hydrogen is produced, it needs to be stored and transported, and we are already testing the first hydrogen trailer capable of carrying more than 1000 kg of hydrogen. As for distribution, we uphold our declaration that we want to construct 30 refueling stations countrywide. We are waiting for a building permit for a Warsaw station, and we are applying for funding from the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management for the construction of another 5-6 stations. In terms of end-user devices, we have designed and built a Polish hydrogen-powered bus, which is already being tested in several cities in Poland, and we are working on the construction of a manufacturing plant. And as you know very well, our company Flick already has 100 hydrogen powered cars which are being used by our employees. On this slide, I wanted to show you the dynamic progress we are making in the implementation of our strategy in the area of clean energy. I'm really proud of it, so this is a very nice slide. First of all, I wanted to share some operational details on our photovoltaic farm in Brudzew, the largest solar power plant in Poland. Only in the first half of this year, this farm produced 43 gigawatt hours of clean energy exceeding our expectations. Actually, this energy had a positive effect on our business this quarter as I'm sure Kasia will tell you in a few minutes. We are strongly focused on the development of onshore wind farms. And like I said before, despite unfavorable regulations, we have doubled the scale of initiated investment in this area. We have acquired an onshore wind project in Czuchów, which is located in the northern part of Poland, where wind conditions are very good. This is going to be a huge farm. 33 turbines with total power of 72.6 megawatts. At present, we are constructing wind farms that we have a total capacity of over 140 megawatts. This is more than half of our strategic goal in this area, and I'm very happy with the pace at which these projects are progressing. We are also very proud of our hydrogen-powered bus, the Neso bus. In Polish, Neso stands for the first letters in the phrase, I don't emit exhaust fumes, I purify air. The NestaBoost receives an EU-type approval and was already tested on the streets of several large cities, Gdansk, Gdynia, Wrocław and Konin. We got a lot of very encouraging positive feedback from authorities in those cities, saying that this is a very promising, high-quality ecological means of transportation based on a Polish product. So that makes me really happy. Given the success of the Neso bus, we decided to go forward with the construction of a bus manufacturing plant. To this end, we concluded an agreement with Mostostal Puławy, who will begin the construction of this factory in September of this year in Świdnik. The factory is expected to be ready in mid of next year and will have the capacity to produce over 100 hydrogen-powered buses per year. We are also very excited because our first 2.5 megawatt electrolyzers is ready for shipment in Belgium and we expect it to arrive in Konin at the beginning of September. This means that soon we will be able to start producing green hydrogen by ourselves. What's more, we have already received a special hydrogen trailer with the capacity to carry more than 1,000 kilograms of hydrogen. This is a very important step because it helps us link the different elements of the hydrogen value chain and I hope that it will help us launch the various elements of this chain simultaneously in the third and fourth quarter of this year. I would also like to say that our hydrogen project is one of the biggest in Europe in terms of scope and complexity. The old saying goes that a picture is worth a hundred words, so on the next few slides I wanted to show you how we execute our strategy 2023 plus in the clean energy and green hydrogen segment using images. In the upper left corner you can see the foundations for a wind turbine in Miłosław. In the upper right corner is the second biomass energy block located in Konin. Very nice block. This energy block has been reconstructed from a lignite installation and today it operates as a cogeneration unit, which means that it produces both electricity and heat. The biomass unit is also significantly more efficient with more than 60% efficiency compared to approximately 35% before. Another important advantage of biomass is that this is a stable source of energy. The lower left picture shows a hydrogen compressor and our 2.5 megawatt mobile electrolyzer, while on the lower right picture you can see the hydrogen trailer with more than 1000 kilogram capacity that I have already told you about. On this slide, you can see the path from plants and prototype of our hydrogen bus to the real thing. We are very proud of this project. The Neso bus was created by a team of experts from ZEPAK and Polsat Plus Group and exterior and interior design was prepared by Italian company Torino Design. We built this phenomenal bus from the scratch in only a year and a half. The Neso bus had its official debut in May of this year when we presented it for the first time to the public. Like I said, it has an EOType approval and it has been tested over the several past months in various cities across Poland and gets excellent reviews, particularly expressed by common people, real users, just passengers. Let me sum up quickly our activities in the area of clean energy production. We consistently and rapidly execute our strategy 2023 plus in this business segment. Our solar power plant in Brozef has exceptional operating results. We are rapidly developing onshore wind projects with total capacity of 140 megawatts. In the area of green hydrogen, we already have all elements necessary to start building the complete value chain of an economy based on green hydrogen. I think the pace of execution of our strategy is very impressive. Please remember that we announced the new strategy in December last year, barely nine months ago, and look at how far we've come since then. Okay, I could go on and on, but let me stop here and pass the floor to Kasia for the presentation of our financial results. Thank you.

Thank you, Maciek. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's see how our operating results are reflected in our financials. I'm happy to say that after a slightly weaker Q1, we noticeably improved our financial performance. We recorded very high growth dynamics of revenue, which is the effect of our strategy of building customer value and growing our PO, as Maciek underlined many times, as well as excellent sales of smartphones. Excluding the impact of regulatory MTR-FTR cuts, revenue increased by almost 6% to over 3.2 billion zlotys. In Q2, adjusted EBITDA decreased by 5.9% to 893 million zlotys. As you can see, we were able to limit the negative impact of several external factors, both by improving revenue generation and by adjusting the cost side. In particular, the green energy produced for our needs by the Brudzef Solar Power Plant 43 GWh in the first half of 2022 helped mitigate partly the negative impact of persisting exorbitant prices of electricity. Despite fast-growing local interest rates, we continue to generate strong, healthy cash flows. In Q2, LTM free cash flow amounted to 1.34 billion zlotys. Even though it is 7% lower Year on year, I still find it very strong in such an unstable macroeconomic situation and given the scale and tempo of power investments in the clean energy segment. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio increased to 1.39 in the second quarter, also on the back of our investments in the clean energy and green hydrogen production, as well as the settlement of some anticipated one-off payments. Let's take a closer look at change drivers of revenue and EBITDA. In terms of revenue, all our business segments contributed positively to growth in Q2. In the B2C and B2B segment, revenue growth continues to be subdued by interconnect rate cuts, but this impact should be less pronounced in the coming quarters. Our media segment revenue grew through strong performance of the online business, as well as growing wholesale of our content to other parties. You will also notice that following the acquisition of Port Pruski in April, we have carved out a new segment in our reporting – the real estate segment, which generated a healthy top line mainly on the sale and rent of real estate. Nevertheless, we continue to note inflationary pressure on OPEX, which translates into a lower EBITDA despite growing revenue. The biggest pressure on the bottom line came from our media segment and resulted from our decision to maintain a high level of quality and attractiveness of our content despite a weaker than initially anticipated TV advertising market. We also see strong negative pressure for energy prices, but this exposure has already been partly mitigated by our own production of green solar energy in Brodzef. Turning to cash flows, I am very pleased with the level of generated free cash flow this quarter, especially since we are experiencing macroeconomics headwinds, in particular inflationary pressure on OPEX and growing interest costs. Notably, free cash flow in Q2 2022 was much higher than in Q2 2021, contrary to what might have been expected. Please also note that we are 12 months after the disposal of our active and passing infrastructure to CELNEX. Our core assumption and promise given to you a year ago was that we will convert into a Capex Light TMT company and thus the divestment will not impact our capacity of generating a strong recurring cash flow. I believe the results we continue to report confirm that the commitment was delivered. On this slide, I will analyze in greater detail our full cash flow in the first half of the year. Firstly, I would like to flag that the capex to revenue ratio that you see in the third column of this graph includes some capital expenditures related to real estate business and some hydrogen-related purchases. After the sale of our infrastructure, I guided for a ratio of circa 7 to 7.5%. And in fact, that is the case for our TMT business. The ratio of 9.4% that you see on this slide is a blended ratio for the whole new group. In the first half of the year, we have finalized a series of acquisitions for a total of almost 730 million zlotys. The most important was, of course, Port Pruski, but we also acquired two minor TMT enterprises through Netia and the remaining stake in Windix, responsible for the vindication services in our group. In connection with the pending finalization of the acquisition of green energy assets, we have already acquired a stake and increased the share capital in the company PAK Biopaliwa i Wodur, an entity responsible for energy production from biomass. Granted loans amounted to 426 million zlotys in the first half of the year. Net of loans repaid. As you know, the planned acquisition of the 67% stake in PAC-PCE is still pending. Nevertheless, we support the new investment in renewable energy sources, concentrated in PACPCE by granted loans and guarantees and this is our way of accelerating the execution of our strategy in the Clean Energy segment. A one-time factor that had a significant impact on our cash flow this quarter was the settlement of the tax on the gain related to the disposal of our mobile infrastructure. The tax amounted to 868 million zlotys. We repaid debts both under our SFA and the debts of newly acquired companies in the amount of 638 million zlotys. And finally, our own share buyback program consumed 340 million. As a result of the outflows that I have just discussed, cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period reached the level of just above 1 billion zlotys. This drop in cash carries over to leverage. As you can see on this slide, our net leverage increased to the level of 1.39 net debt to EBITDA. I expect this level to increase noticeably in coming quarters on the back of our investments related to clean energy as well as fading positive EBITDA boost. Debt service costs have further increased since our last meeting. Based on our last readings of local interest rates, our average weighted cost of debt is 8.9%. Please remember that although this factor remains outside of our control, circa 30% of our interest rate exposure is favourably hedged. The good news is that local interest rates seem to have stabilised recently. The debt structure and maturity profile of our debt remain unchanged. This brings me to the end of my part. I think that in terms of financials this was a very good quarter. We boosted our revenue and stabilized our EBITDA through partial mitigation of the negative impact of several external factors. Strong recurring cash flows allow us to continue building our business, both in the old TMT leg and the new clean energy leg. And I believe that today's investments in clean energy and green hydrogen will shape the future of Polsat Plus Group. Thank you very much. Mirek, over to you.

Thank you, Kasia, Staszek and Maciek. Let me quickly summarize the operating and financial performance of our group this quarter. We continue to implement our Multiplay strategy, as its positive effects are clearly visible in our results. We have record low levels of churn, only 6.8%, and our RPOE remains in a growing trend, 70.2 zlotys. As a result, we experience stable and recurring growth in retail revenue. We execute our strategy 2023 plus in the areas of clean energy and green hydrogen very dynamically. We have contracted over 140 megawatts of onshore wind power and we are building a hydrogen bus factory. At the same time, we are actively promoting our NSO bus in various Polish cities. Following the acquisition of Port Pratski, we have entered into a cooperation with HB Revis, a real estate developer engaging the construction of the highest office building in Europe. Our sand financial results enable us to pay out 661 million zlotys to our shareholders in dividends, 1.2 zloty per share, the same as last year. Our strategy 2023 Plus answers the challenges of the dynamically changing economic environment and our customers' needs, and also supports the stable and planned development of our business. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's presentation and we can move on to the Q&A session. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you, Mr. President. We'll now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, please post your question in the chat section or raise your hand. We got the first question from Mrs. Nora Nagy from Erste. The first question comes as, on a quarterly basis, energy prices were under control in second quarter 2022. When shall we expect a bigger positive impact of the natural hedge of clean energy investments?

Well, at the moment, in the second quarter, we rely on the Brudzef solar power plant for the hedging of our energy cost. Please remember that the photovoltaic farm is a seasonal source of energy, so it depends on the level of sunshine. This will be also offsetting the risk and cost in Q3, but in Q4 I wouldn't expect much of the positive impact of this plant. The rest is depending on the moment when we actually finalize the transaction of acquisition of the rest of these green assets from ZEPAC, because then we will be offsetting more. However, it also depends on this pace with which we'll be installing the wind farms. So with the time, with the progress of our investments, you can expect bigger positive impact. It will be the first quarter, the second quarter, following quarters of 2023. Thank you.

The second question is, are there any plans to speed up the strategy investments in order to secure EBITDA development going forward?

Actually, at the moment, we are investing as fast as we can. it's not depending only on our effectiveness. It's also depending on regulatory bodies, on the effectiveness of our contractors. So this is something that sometimes is just outside of our reach. We are progressing as fast as we can.

Thank you. And the third question. Could you please explain how the sale and rent of properties related to Port Pruski impact the P&L of Polsat Plus Group?

Well, in the revenues, we have revenues from sale of the apartments and from lease of the commercial space. It's included in other revenue at the moment because it's not so significant in comparison to the rest of the revenues of the group. So in order not to blur the data, we put it in other revenues. With time, I would say rather mid-term, when we start bigger or finalise bigger development project in Port Prosky, you'll see it in the separate line, it will be more material. At the moment, the scale of this business remains negligible.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. If you have any other questions, please post them in the chat section or raise your hand. I do not see any other questions coming, so I pass the floor to Mr. President.

Thank you for your participation in today's presentation. And I hope that we have presented you with a full picture of our operational and financial results of our group. I would like to wish you a peaceful holiday time and see and hear you during the next presentation of our results for the third quarter of this year. Thank you very much and have a nice day. Thank you.