Cyfrowy Polsat S.A. Ord

Good afternoon everyone and a warm welcome to the earnings call of Polsat Plus Group for the first quarter of 2024. Could I please have the next slide? Today's presentation will be delivered to you by Mr. Mirosław Błaszczyk, CEO of Cyfrowy Polsat, Mr. Maciej Stec, Vice President responsible for strategy, Ms. Katarzyna Ostaptoman, CFO and Management Board Member responsible for ESG and finally Mr. Piotr Żak, President of Telewizja Polsat. After the presentation, we will hold a Q&A session, but I encourage you to post your questions in the chat section in advance. Thank you. Mr. Błaszczuk, the floor is yours.

Good morning and a warm welcome to everyone. The agenda for today's meeting is as follows. I will begin discussing the key events of the past quarter. Next, Piotr and Maciej will present the operational results of our business segment and Kasia will share our financial results. I will conclude the presentation with a brief summary followed by a Q&A session. Can I have the next slide, please? Let's begin with the key events of the first quarter of 2024. Next slide, please. In the first quarter of this year, we achieved very good results in the B2C and B2B service segments. RRPU increased across all our customer groups. RPU per contract customer grew by 4.5%, RPU per business customer by 3.9%, and prepared service RPU increased by 1.2%. We consistently maintain a low churn rate. Additionally, we are systematically expanding the coverage of our 5G network. Already 23 million people are within the coverage of 5G+, and 6 million can access the 5G Ultra network, offering speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. In the first quarter, we concluded an agreement to sell a portion of our IPv4 address pool for $56.1 million. In the media segment, TV and online, we recorded strong growth in advertising revenues, up by plus 8%. Also, our spring programming achieved very good viewership results. I'm pleased to inform you that our new business segment, Green Energy, generated 47 million zlotys in EBITDA during the first quarter, thanks to the dynamic execution of our strategic projects. Next slide, please. Now let's look at the detailed operational results of each segment. Piotr, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Marek. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome. Let's begin with the viewership figures and our position in the advertising market in the first quarter of 2024. Could we have the next slide, please? In Q1, our main channel achieved an audience share of 7.1%, while our thematic channels had 14.4%. This gave us a total viewership of all TV Polsat group channels of 21.5% in the commercial target group. This translated into very good results in the advertising and sponsorship markets. As you can see from the graph on the bottom right, the group's advertising revenues grew to 307 million zlotys, recording an increase of 8% compared to that of the first quarter of last year. Our ad revenues grew just a slightly bit slower than the broad market, which grew at 9%. As a result, the share of the TVPulse ad group in the advertising market in the first quarter settled at 28.1%. Can I have the next slide, please? Moving on to the online segments, we are consistently and successfully realizing our strategy. So in Q1 of 2024, we had a very strong position in the online market. As you can see, our sites were visited on average by 21 million users every month, which gave Pulsat Interior Group a very strong second position in the market and actually On a daily basis, we alternate with regards to who's first and who's second in the online market. So it's an eternal competition for our editors, which actually makes them try very, very hard every day. We also maintain a very high and stable number of page views, with our users generating nearly 2 billion of them every single month. On to the next slide, please. Ladies and gentlemen, as a response to many questions we had on the previous conference, we created this slide showing a little bit about our strategy in our market. Today, we repeat this every time we can, content remains absolutely crucial, content is king, and it is the key source of competitive advantage. As a result, over the years, the TV Polsat Group became Poland's largest unique content producer. We offer the largest and most diverse portfolio of channels in the Polish market, Currently, you have access to as many as 43 of them at any given time available on a wide variety of topics. We have channels dedicated to sports. We have channels dedicated to news services, games, music, TV series, everything you can think of. You'll find it with us. A large portion of this content is produced independently by us using our own infrastructure in our own TV studios. Thanks to the very hard work of our people. So big thanks to them as well. And we focus on producing in the Polish language. And all of our content is generally very well received by our viewers. And if ever it isn't, that's okay. We adjust. We try something new. That is the nature of the entertainment industry. Additionally, in order to deliver our content to the widest possible audience, we make it available via terrestrial television, satellite television, cable TV, IPTV, OTT through our set-top boxes, And of course, you can always watch online on our streaming platform, Pulse Hotbox Go. And if you're ever on the move, you can always watch on mobile as well. So summarizing, any content you can think of, any device you can think of, and any time that you wish. That's all for this slide. So just a few quick words of summary before I pass on to Maciek. We closed the first quarter of this year with very good results in both TV and the online segment. I'm satisfied with our viewership figures. The spring schedule went well. And as a result, we recorded a very high increase in the advertising revenues, plus 8%, and we maintain a strong position in the advertising market. Thank you very much, Maciek.

Go ahead, your turn. Thanks, Piotrek. Good afternoon, everybody. As always, I will present the operating results of the B2C and B2B services segment first, and then I will show you the results of our green energy segment. Let's move on to the next slide, please. As you know, we have been consistently and successfully implementing our Multiplay strategy over the past years. As a result, today we have a base of nearly 2.5 million Multiplay customers who use almost 7.5 million services from our portfolio. Multiplay customers represent 43% of our total customer base. This is a very high, but most importantly, stable customer base. I have emphasized this for several quarters already. We have maintained this base despite unfavorable market conditions. We are still operating under pressure from high inflation. Over the past two years, prices have increased by about 30% and interest rates also remain very high. In these difficult conditions, we have maintained consistently low churn. In the first quarter of 2024, we posted churn of only 7.6%. Please notice that the churn rate has stabilized on a quarterly basis. We are very happy with these results because it shows that we have a base of lawyer customers who are satisfied with the quality of our services. Next slide, please. Turning to our RGU base, as you can see, we maintain a high and stable base of contracted services. At the end of the first quarter, we provided over 13 million contract services to our customers. We provided 6.3 million mobile telephony services and 2 million internet access RGUs. These numbers consistently remain on a high and stable level. If you look at pay TV, we are still under some pressure in this area because of the price repositioning of our online video services a couple of years back. This decline is partially offset by the growing number of pay TV services provided in the IPTV and the OTT technology. But please notice that pressure on pay TV is subsiding quarter on quarter, and I expect this negative impact to disappear in the next few quarters. Can I have the next slide, please? The core of our Multiplay strategy is building customer value, and as you can see on this slide, we are consistently increasing average revenue per customer in the B2C segment. In the first quarter of this year, our PU increased by 4.5% year-on-year to 74.6 zlotys per customer. The solid growth was driven mainly by the implementation of our Multiplay strategy and also by the popularization of 5G, which drives demand for larger data packs. The ratio of RGO saturation per customer increased to 2.27 in Q1. Again, this is the result of our efforts to upsell products and build the value of our existing customer base under the Multiplay strategy. Next slide, please. Let's now take a look at our prepaid segment. Also in this segment, we maintain a high stable base of provided services. In Q1, we provided over 2.6 million prepaid services. We recorded growth of RPO per prepaid services by 1.2% year on year up to 17.3 zlotys. This is a satisfactory results given the high level of competition that we observe in the prepaid segment nowadays. Next slide, please. On this slide, we have the results of our B2B services segment. We provide services to over 68,000 customers, and this base remains relatively stable over time. Average revenue per B2B customer increased by 3.9% year-on-year to nearly 1.5 thousand zlotys per month. This is a very good result considering that this market is also a very competitive one. Let me quickly summarize the results of the B2C and B2B services segment before I move to the energy segment. This was a very good quarter for us. We have 2.5 million Multiplay customers, high stable basis in all our business segments, Multiplay prepaid and B2B. Q1 operating results show that thanks to our value oriented Multiplay strategy, we are successfully building ARPU across the board. and we are able to maintain a low level of churn. Next slide, please. Let's take a look at our performance in the green energy segment. As you know, we have two goals in our new business segment. Goal number one is to become a leading producer of green energy. And goal number two is to become a leading producer of green hydrogen and complete the full value chain based on green hydrogen. These are no longer plans. The execution of our strategy is well advanced. You can see the results on the photos in this slide. Our wind farm is in Czuchów and our solar plant in Brudzew on the left, while on the right we have our Nesobus and electrolyzer. Next slide, please. On this slide, we have the roadmap of our strategic initiatives related to the production of clean energy from renewable sources. As you can see, most of the projects in our pipeline are already completed or contracted. That's why this is the last time that I'm using this slide and starting from next quarter, I will talk about the energy segment using operating KPIs only. To summarize our investment process in renewable energy, we initiated our strategy 2023 plus in December 2021, two and a half years ago. Once we finish all the projects shown on this slide, we will have 740 megawatts of capacity installed in 2026, almost half of which is going to be wind power, which is the most efficient and cheap source of renewable energy today. Let's move on to the next slide, please. Our second goal in the energy segment is to become a leading producer of green hydrogen. In this area, we started from scratch two and a half years ago. Since then, we have created the storage and transportation system for hydrogen consisting of 10 trailers. We have designed and constructed a hydrogen-powered bus, the Nesobus, which we produce in our own manufacturing plant in Świdnik. We are building the Neso brand and our hydrogen-powered bus has already won three tender offers for public transportation in Rybnik, Gdańsk and Chełm. What's more, we are building a network of hydrogen refuelling stations. Two stations in Warsaw and Rybnik are fully operational and four more stations are almost completed in Gdańsk, Gdynia, Wrocław and Lublin. Last but not least, I expect that we will finally start the production of our own green hydrogen from the 2.5 MW PEM electrolyser in June. and we will start the installation of our very own half-megawatt AlkyLine electrolyzer shortly after that. This will close the value chain of an economy based on green hydrogen that we've been building over the past years. Can I have the next slide, please? Here we have production of green energy. I'm very excited. We already produce energy from all energy sources that we anticipated in our strategy 2023+. And in the first quarter of 2024, we produce a total of 199 gigawatt hours of green energy. Decomposing this figure by source, 135 gigawatt hours of energy was generated by our biomass units, 12 gigawatt hours by our solar power plant, and 52 gigawatt hours by our wind farms. Let me underline that the last figure 52 gigawatt hours was generated by 100 megawatts installed capacity in wind farms and we are planning to install 300 megawatts by 2026. In Q1, we started technical commissioning at the Chłuchów wind farm ahead of schedule. This contributed to the volume of energy produced from wind because Chłuchów is producing energy since February this year. We have also completed the installation of turbines at the Przerów wind farm ahead of schedule. This means that we will add another 50 megawatts of capacity to our resources already in the third quarter. Let's move to the next slide, please. In the first quarter of 2024, we sold 199 gigawatt hours of produced energy for an average price of 651 zlotys per megawatt hour. As a result, our green energy segment generated revenue from the sale of our own energy in the amount of almost 130 million zlotys in the first quarter. I'm extremely happy to say that the green energy business is beginning to contribute visibly to the results of Polsat Plus Group. In the first quarter only, EBITDA of the green energy segment amounted to 47 million zlotys. Next slide, please. This is my last slide and I wanted to quickly summarize our performance in the green energy. We are implementing our strategic projects in this area very dynamically and we are increasing installed capacity in renewables as planned. The execution of our investment plan will result in an increase in installed capacity in renewables by 2.5 times compared to 2023. More importantly, we will double our capacity installed in onshore wind, which is the most efficient renewable source of energy production, as I've already mentioned. At the end of 2026, we expect to have over 740 megawatts installed, and this will enable us to produce up to two terawatt hours of green energy per annum. This was the basic goal of our strategy 2023+, because sales of this production will generate approximately 500 to 600 million zlotys of incremental EBITDA for our group. Just to summarize, I'm very happy that despite unfavorable market conditions, we have executed what we announced in December 2021 when we presented the strategy 2023+, And we have been building the strong leg of our business in green energy segment with 500 to 600 million EBITDA for long years ahead. And that's all from me today. Thank you for your attention. Let me pass the floor to Kasia for the discussion of our financial performance. Kasia, go ahead, please.

Thank you, Maciek. The operational results previously discussed by Maciek and Piotr have clearly translated into our financial results. On top of that, we have a number of external factors and I will summarize the impact on our results for you on the next slides. Can we move to the next slide, please? Here you can see a summary of our group financial results for Q1 2024. We saw a strong growth of revenue this quarter, up by 6.4%. This was primarily driven by the consolidation of energy revenue. The contribution of the green energy segment to consolidated revenue amounted to 282 million zlotys. Comparable EBITDA in Q1 increased by 1.5% to 772 million zlotys. This figure excludes the sale of the first tranche of IP for addresses for 164 million zlotys and the gain on the sale of Muzo of 10 million zlotys. I will present a detailed decomposition of both EBITDA and revenue on the next slide. Our net profit increased to 184 million zlotys mainly as a result of the sale of the IP addresses that I just mentioned. Free cash flow for the last 12 months settled at 442 million zlotys up by about 30% compared to the level reported at the end of 2023. I will discuss the key elements of our free cash flow later in the presentation. Finally, net debt to EBITDA ratio excluding project financing at the end of the first quarter was 3.4. Here I would like to point out that this is a temporary decrease as a result of lower spending on renewable energy projects in the reported quarter and the positive impact of asset disposal. In line with my earlier declarations, I expect net leverage to steadily increase in the coming quarters, in particular on the back of plant higher capex in the green energy segment and the renewal of the reservation of the 2.6 gigahertz band. Can I have the next slide, please? On this slide, we have a breakdown of revenue and EBITDA growth drivers by segments. As I mentioned earlier, the main driver of revenue growth in Q1 was the consolidation of the energy segment, which was not recognized in the comparative period. As Maciek emphasized, within the segment approximately 130 million zlotys in revenue came from the high margin sales of our own energy, while approximately 170 million zlotys was revenue from resale of energy. Regarding the decline in revenue in the B2C and B2B services segment, this was due to the impact of reduced empty air braids and lower equipment sales. However, I would like to draw your attention to the 2.1% year-on-year growth in retail revenues, primarily driven by the solid increase in RPU across all the customer groups, which Maciek discussed in detail earlier. Moving on to the EBITDA breakdown, we saw a comparable group EBITDA growth of 1.5% due to the positive contribution from the green energy segment amounting to 47 million zlotys. This was a result of several factors, including mainly the early technical commissioning of the Człuchów wind farm and the lack of negative regulatory impact. I expect this contribution to grow in the coming quarters. In my opinion, the slowdown in EBITDA erosion in the B2C and B2B services segment is worth noting. The reasons behind this are a high margin on equipment sales and the previously mentioned retail revenue growth. Additionally, in the first quarter, we recognized a profit of 10 million zlotys from the sale of Muzo and 164 million zlotys from the sale of the first tranche of IP4 addresses. In the second quarter, the sale of the second tranche will amount to approximately 20 million zlotys. Next slide, please. On this slide, we return to free cash flow for the last 12 months. We have decomposed free cash flow so that it is easier for you to track our cash outflows. The level of interest rates remains high in Poland as a result, we still observe significant pressure in free cash flow from elevated interest payments. Factors that partially offset this negative effect and were supportive for free cash flow include lower capex in the TMT business and the positive impact of the change in engaged working capital over the last 12 months. We adjust free cash flow for telco frequencies payments, refinancing costs, M&A and sales of shares in subsidiaries and affiliates. Most of these events occurred in 2023, and you have already seen this impact on our annual results. In Q1 2024, we paid the remaining amount due for the 5G auction in the amount of approximately 267 million zlotys. As I already mentioned, closer to the end of this year, we are planning the renewal of the 2.6 GHz TDD reservation. We also excluded the asset disposal in the amount of 164 million zlotys and the sale of MUZO. Excluding development capex for green energy, which amounted to nearly 800 million zlotys over the last 12 months, our LTM adjusted free cash flow was 442 million zlotys at the end of the first quarter. Next slide, please. Let's take a look at the breakdown of our capex by segment. Our TMT business is capex light. In this area, we have capex under control and the capex to revenue ratio remains low at about 8% in Q1. CAPEX in the green energy segment in Q1 amounted to 87 million zlotys. The relatively low level of capital expenditures on our renewable energy project this quarter is connected with CAPEX phasing of these projects. We are now at the point where we are making the last payments for farms already commissioned or nearing completion. I expect CAPEX in the energy segment will accelerate in the coming quarters as we will be making payments for the development of our largest wind farm, Drzezewo. Our plan for CAPEX in the green energy segment for the full year 2024 remains unchanged at around 1 billion zlotys. Next slide, please. On my last slide, as always, I would like to summarize the group's debt. Let me just start by reminding you that all of our debt is sustainability linked. Turning to the table on the left, our key ratio net debt to EBITDA excluding project financing was 3.4. If we include project financing related to the implementation of renewable energy projects, the net debt to EBITDA level was 3.7. As I said at the beginning of my part of the presentation, the decrease in net leverage compared to the level reported at the end of 2023 is temporary and will increase in the subsequent quarters. Our weighted average interest cost remains stable quarter on quarter at 8.5%. The maturity profile and structure of our debt, which you see on the right hand side of this slide, is the final structure for the nearest future. About one third of our debt are bonds and the rest are bank loans. Approximately 16% of our debt is denominated in Euro. We are facing a maturity wall on our bank loans in 2028 and our bonds mature in 2030. Let me just remind you that in the reported quarter we repaid the Series B and C bonds and in Q3 we will start repaying the capital under the Senior Facilities Agreement. That is all from me. Before I pass the floor over to Mirek, let me just say that I am satisfied with Q1 results. The B2C and B2B segment is showing signs of a turnaround and I expect increasing contribution from the energy segment in the coming quarters. Thank you for your attention. Next slide, please. And over to you Mirek for the summary.

Kasia, Piotr, Maciej, thank you very much. The first quarter of this year was a very good quarter for our group in terms of operational and financial performance. Next slide, please. Summarizing the B2C and B2B service segment, we consistently execute our multiply strategy, which is centered around building value and customer loyalty. This is reflected in the growing RPU across all customer groups and in a 2.1% increase in retail revenue in the first quarter. At the same time, we are working on our 5G and 5G Ultra networks. To do this, we are using our unique frequency 2.6 GHz TDD spectrum aggregation in the 1.8 GHz, 2.1 GHz and 2.6 GHz TDD bands and the newly acquired 3.6 GHz frequency. In the media segment, we maintain a strong position in terms of viewership. Our TV advertising revenue grew by 8% on a strong market in the first quarter. I take great pride in the fact, thanks to the dynamic execution of our strategy 2023+, we produce green energy from all sources – biomass, solar and wind. In the first quarter, we already generated 200 GWh of clean green energy. Our new segment also delivered excellent financial results. Revenue from sales of green energy produced by our renewable sources reached 130 million and the segments EBITDA amounted to 47 million zlotys. Thank you all for your attention, and let's move on to the Q&A session.

Thank you very much. Let's, like Mr. Bartek said, move to the Q&A session.

And I don't have any questions in the chat section. Anyone? Anyone, any questions? Okay.

In that case, let me pass the floor to Mr. Błaszczyk for a goodbye.

Thank you for your participation in today's presentation on the results of our group in the first quarter of this year. Thank you again for the meeting and see you during the next presentation of the results of the Postal Group for the second quarter of 2024. Thank you and goodbye.

Thank you bye bye. Thank you bye bye thank you.