Operator
Operator
Telecom Argentina S.A. (TEO)
Q3 2020 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 11, 2020
$11.18
-0.36%
Same-Day
-6.60%
1 Week
+0.69%
1 Month
+11.69%
vs S&P
+9.45%
Operator
Operator
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
Good morning. On behalf of Telecom Argentina, I would like to thank everybody for participating on this conference call. The participants on today's conference call are Roberto Nobile, Chief Executive Officer; Gabriel Blasi, Chief Financial Officer; Fernando José Balmaceda, Director of Investor Relations and myself, Solange Barthe Dennin, Manager of Investor Relations. The purpose of this call is to share with you the results of our third quarter ended September 30, 2020. If you have not received our press release or presentation, you can call our investor relations office to request the documents or download them from Investor Relations section of our Web site located at www.telecom.com.ar. This conference call and presentation is being broadcasted and can also be replayed through our investor website at institutional.telecom.com.ar/inversores. I would like to go over some Safe Harbor information and other details of the call. We would like to clarify that during the conference call and Q&A session, we could mention certain forward-looking statements about Telecom's future performance, plans, strategies and objectives. Such statements are subject to uncertainties that could cause Telecom's actual results and operations to differ materially. Such uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the effect of on-going industry and economic regulations, possible changes in the demand for Telecom's products and services, the effects of potential changes in general market and/or economic conditions, in legislation and the impact of the outbreak of COVID-19 on the global economy and specifically on economies of the countries in which we operate as well as on our operations and financial performance. Our press release dated November 9, 2020, a copy of which was included in the Form 6-K and send to the SEC, describes certain factors that may affect any forward-looking statements that could be mentioned during the call. The company has reflected the effects of inflation adjustment adopted by Resolution 777 of 2018 of the Comisión Nacional de Valores, the CNV, which establishes that the expression will be applied to the annual financial statements, for intermediate and special periods ended as of and included December 31, 2019. Accordingly, the reported figures corresponding to the nine months 2020 including the effect of the adoption of inflationary accounting in accordance with IAS 29. In this presentation, we will also include figures of historical values which are easier to understand. Our press release is complemented by our earnings presentation. The audience should read the disclaimer contained in Slide 1 and 2 of the presentation. The agenda for today's conference call is described on Slide 3, and includes our business and financial highlights. So we will end the call afterward with a Q&A session. So now let me pass the call to Gabriel Blasi, our CFO, who will start with the presentation.
Gabriel Blasi
Analyst
Thank you, Solange. Good morning and welcome to everyone. Slide 4 shows a summary of the company's figures as of September 2020. During the first nine months of 2020, Telecom's revenue totaled P$2.7 billion. Revenues measured in constant basis decreased 4.6% year-to-year. EBITDA totaled P$1 billion implying 35.8% EBITDA margin growing in constant pesos 2.4% year-over-year. Our mobile subscribers in Argentina amounting to 18.7 million decreasing in approximately 150,000 subscribers when compared with the previous quarter, due to a decline of around 250,000 subs in the prepaid segment that was partially offset by an increase of close to 100,000 clients in postpaid. Broadband and paid TV clients increased totaling around 4.2 million and 3.6 million respectively. Fixed voice subscribers without considering IP telephone lines, amounted 2.9 million. Thanks to our successful commercial strategy focused on the bundling and upselling of our products. We currently have 1.8 million convergent unique customers, which 43% of our broadband customers have mobile bundle. Going to Slide 6, we summarize our main achievements so far during this year, Telecom has been enabled to refinance and reduced an important portion of instead exchange its 2021 bond refinance debt in multilateral agencies. Our capital structure has been improved and our future debt maturities have been extended with only P$150 million, approximately for 2021. OpEx has been reduced substantially and our collections have improved since 67% of our clients are paying digitally. Our collection period has been normalized when compared to the delays, we had at the beginning of the pandemic. The local soccer activity, which we stopped billing will return in the fourth quarter thus improving our revenues. In addition, we are working on other projects such as IoT, FinTech and Personal Cloud that will be added to our revenues. We continue being under a scenario where…
A - Solange Barthe Dennin
Analyst
Thank you, Fernando. With the presence of our CEO, Roberto Nobile, we are more than pleased to answer any questions you may have. However, before we start, we like to remind how you could direct your questions during the Q&A session, which will be opened immediately. Please send a message to IR Telecom Argentina to the Q&A menu, identifying yourself and state in any other question or alternatively, use the hand button to let us know that you want to formulate the question. We let you know when it is your turn to speak and we will unmute you so you can proceed with your questions. Thank you. So the first question we have received from [indiscernible] make the following questions. Would you please share with us an update on potential conversation with the government to be able to raise price for telecom services in 2021? The second question is, assuming the government does not allow you to increase prices, just that the negative impact of your personal structure from inflationary pressure, which alternatives are you considering? And then, finally, there is a third question that it says, would you please share with us your CapEx targets for 2021? What will you be focusing your investment?
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
Okay. good morning everyone. This is Roberto. I will try to be very conservative on the information that we can share with you. We as an industry are having negotiations with the government with ENACOM, which is the regulator of the industry. Trying to consider how to implement the decree in terms of giving the industry the incentives to keep on growing and to keep on investing. And that means that we as an industry together with the government are working on trying to define the targeted customers, where we should try to focus in terms of special product like an entry level product for certain services and trying to free of the public service degree to the rest like higher premium services such as broadband or mobile. So, we are optimistic that we will be able to increase prices, we do not know how far from the real inflation rate, we will be able to do the catch up. But we're still working on that, but we're very optimistic that we will be able to increase prices during 2021 that is something that we all agree upon. We don't know yet that how we will schedule those increases, and we need to keep on discussing the rates of increase. Regarding the second question, that was, if we assume that we do not have any price increase and we do not assume that. And on the other hand, we still have a lot of room to grow in terms of reducing these promotional discounts, the industry has been very, very aggressive in terms of competition and trying to gain market share in that marketing activity, most of the other customer base are -- have a promotion or a discount in the price. So, I believe that if it by any chance, formal prices will not be able to been increased, if that that could be a possibility, which I personally don't believe it. We will have enough room to work in a less competitive environment I would say and therefore, we will be able to increase prices through taken away discounts or being less aggressive in terms of promotions. The third one, CapEx target is around 76%, 77% of our revenues and we will try to keep it that way. We've been investing about 20% for the last -- 17% of our revenues, we have been investing more than 20% over the last two years. This year we and that was due to a catch up of CapEx that was not done previously by the former telecom companies incumbent and also we did a lot of CapEx to integrate and make one network out of the two companies and trying to integrate also IT platforms. That CapEx will be reduced to this target of 17%. We will love to make it 18 or 19. But that will also be aligned to the possibilities that the company have in terms of financing and price increases.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
Following question Marcelo Santos from JPMorgan. Marcelo, please go ahead.
Marcelo Santos
Analyst
My question was on the mobile performance, if you look sequentially I think it was quite good despite the price freeze. So, if you perhaps could comment on this and talk some of the initiatives that lead to this performance, when I compare the sequential growth in mobile versus the fixed line it actually was good. And the second question is about Paraguay, would you share your longer term goals especially when it comes to the fixed broadband product there? Thank you.
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
On the mobile we have been very successful in trying to convert prepaid into postpaid and that is probably the main reason why our performance has been good. If you take a look into the COVID, the lockdown period, prepaid customers have stopped charging their service, because they are at home, they are not commuting, they are not going to work by public transport, because public transportation is locked down too. So basically, the strong thing is on the postpaid, where we have been working very heavily trying to migrate pre into post and keeping the revenues pretty stable, I would say. Going back to Paraguay, Paraguay today we have almost 33% market share in the broadband services that has been a successful story because we were coming from zero and 1.5 years, we were able to grow to 120,000 new customers. And as far as we are moving forward, we believe that we can keep on growing very fast during 2021 especially considering the gap of service between our service FTTH service and our FTTH network -- new network compared to the competitors.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
The following question we received is from Pedro Soares, who is asking, one question on prices and cash flow. What was the impact of the 267 since December on the [indiscernible] business, it is possible to have a better sense of that? And looking ahead, what are the company's perspective for 2021?
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
We probably we can share the answer with Gabby and I will start and I think Gabby can complete it. The decree -- in the past how to say, the decree is asking us not to keep customers that are not paying. That's the main point of gap. And we have 700 -- between 600,000 and 700,000 customers in that situation. If we compare that number to the number that we have in 2019, that date, that is probably around 30% increase. So basically, the difference between last year and this year is that we are not eliminating the customer from our customer base and the customer is still using the service, but the amount is probably a 30% increase in that day compared to last year. If we look at the final numbers, we have come from 2.4% bad debt too -- 2.7 to 3.8 bad debt that's probably the number that we should look up and that's the main impact of the decree.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
Moving to the following question we received from Andrew Deluca, he is asking, the 2021 bond maturity is beyond the CB measure, but could you please provide us with an update on how you are thinking about the remaining 2021 maturity and the CB measures are extended? And the second question from Andrew is, can you also provide an update of the competitive environment in Paraguay?
Gabriel Blasi
Analyst
Okay. Regarding the maturity the first thing is, our interpretation is that as the original maturity of the debt was $500 million, the personnel standing is 100, it is learning that debt has been already defined. So company has already complied with that rule, although we are behind that reach as the role is extending that too much and the maturity of the bond is after that. Regarding how we can cope with that maturity. It's interesting to see that the only -- total maturity that the company has next year is in dollars is that plus about something less than $50 million of a transaction related to vendors, which in one case of them prefer a foreign chain channel because it's related to a multilateral agency. So, we think that first of all, the risk on that is very low. Besides that, the company still has a lot in dollars in Argentina, $50 million and also has a very strong cash position and always the ability to go to the market and refinance as we have been doing during all this year and probably the hardest environment that we can imagine in parallel now, we are also developing which are great lines that we expect to announce pretty soon that will also give us additional room not depending only from international capital markets or from the local capital markets or we can issue a very easily the amount related to the maturity of next year.
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
Okay. I will go back to the previous answer. First question actually, the target for 2021 in terms of bad debt, we are considering something closer to 3 instead of 3.9 because we believe that this whole situation of pandemic, we will go probably until April, March or April of next year and then slowly going back to previous levels. So we are targeting the difference 50% bad debt for the next year. Now, going back to Paraguay, Paraguay, we have a very competitive market. Basically three, major competitors. We were the only one that were able to increase ARPU, increase revenues and increase EBITDA. When the competitors, I'm not going to mention them, but they are losing basically EBITDA. They are very, very aggressive trying to sustain their market share and therefore being very aggressive in subsidizing devices and that type of things. And we are very, very conservative in that. We're not that aggressive and we are making sure that we have a long-term business and we are trying to keep on growing month after month.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
We have the following question from [indiscernible] AR Partners, he says what should we expect in terms of dividends for next year?
Gabriel Blasi
Analyst
Regarding -- I see, no, it is public information an assembly has been set and will take place next Friday. So I think that we need to wait to that event to see what's the decision of the shareholders assembly about this.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
We have received another question from Andrew DeLuca, what he says, cost cutting initiatives were quite strong to the bottom, how much more room do you see to cut costs?
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
Not much, I think we have tried to squeeze all that we can, of course, when you reduce costs, that match you are losing something, the OpEx is not that -- we are reducing OpEx that is not necessary. The OpEx that is necessary marketing our brands are not speaking and we need our brands to start talking again and trying to reach all our customers with our value proposition. So there are a lot of things that under this, I would say crisis having cut down, many of them need to be invested in the timeframe. But we have started to achieve synergies coming from the merge, for example, in terms of, we have -- by the end of this year, we will have all our mobile customers in one platform, once you're in a platform that has a lot of benefits in terms of costs, in terms of holding time, in terms of first of all resolution. So, there are a lot of good things that are coming out from the projects that we are deploying. So, I believe that these type of things, we will keep on doing them as long as we keep on deploying the new venues, systems new applications, probably by mid-2021, we believe we can finish the migration of all the converging customers into the salesforce platform, and therefore that will allow us to keep on working on the synergies that should be important. Throughout the last two years, we have reduced headcount by 10%. And we have a lot of third parties that we need to keep on reducing as long as we start deploying the new systems.
Gabriel Blasi
Analyst
Just to illustrate what Roberto said, as mentioned, we can remember that prior to the big search of the COVID in Argentina, the company margin -- EBIITDA margin as of March was nearly 39% that give you an idea in a different environment, without the problem being completely exposed an idea of the potential of the situation, we are in a situation improvement in the economy in general and the normalization of activities, thanks to all the investment done.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
The following question we have received is from César Medina from Morgan Stanley, what it says, can you please quantify the current magnitude of promotion and discounts and in what -- ARPU would be if 100% of that system promotions are eliminated.
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
Thank you, César, for the question. That is impossible because to eliminate the discounts 100% that means that there's no competitors, there is no competition in the market and that is something that will not happen. Today, we used to have between 20 and 20 something percent discount on conversion services and today that that number is closer to 30. So, I believe that we can reduce that gap that going into conversion a bundle needs a discount is part of the value prop and probably we can reduce the whole promotion from 30 closer to 20s.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
The following question is from [Alex Welby] [ph], what he asked, can you discuss your plans for the ability management in 2021?
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
Well, Alex. Well, in fact, as I mentioned for 2021, I will say that there is not too much to do from the original $1 billion of maturity, we are only having $150, from that 100 is the bond. We have $50 million in cash -- in our cash position today. And they we have the ability to go to the capital market both locally and outside if that's the case. For the other 50 is related to vendor financing, which are lines that we have constantly renewing in an and also related to some agency. So we don't foresee a problem besides that. Also we have the ability of tapping the local capital markets where we can get, I will say in the range of $100 million per quarter with the present liquidity situation. And also, we have -- most of the banking lines we are using today about a third of the available banking lines beside the position that we already having cash in local governments. So we don't foresee a significant risk from the financial side for 2021. Of course, it will depend on the market, it is always a constant point of analysis. And if the market price, opportunity will -- if the economy gets better in Argentina, the vaccine allows a better outlook in general, we can consider a continue working on the future maturity as of today, the total debt book of the company with the reduction of those $200 million that Fernando mentioned is yielding 7%, we want to keep that type of cost control.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
Following question is from [Akbar Kouser] [ph]. He asks, hi, I want to get a sense of the affordability level of your customers. What percentage of your customers do you believe is dollarized and can withstand significant price increases?
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
It's a difficult question. All our customers are in pesos. They are not dollarized because we have a pesos economy -- pesos denominated economy, so it's not a dollarized one. For the most part of our customers, they are and they have been able to pay throughout lockdown without any problem. And basically, the strongest thing about our services that we are really essential today and probably that need of connectivity will remain after the lockdown after the pandemic. So I think that the service is resilient to, I wouldn't say pricing freeze, I would say price inflation adjustment, because we are not working and we have as long as you have seen throughout the quarters, we have been always able to keep prices with inflation. We have not been going beyond inflation. Probably, if we can change the mix of products and going to products of one gig or other premium products, we can increase the price because the value prop is increased. But if we take a look at the whole business, we believe we will be able and our customers will be able to keep on the inflation adjustment. That has always been the real thing. And what we have been able to demonstrate throughout so many years.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
Thank you. The following question, we received it from [John Mohu] [ph], he said, how do you reduce services compared to those of your competitors? What kind of measures are you -- your competitors taking in response to the tariff raise?
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
How you compare?
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
How do you reduce services compared to those of your competitors? And what kind of measures are your competitors taking in response to the tariff raise?
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
No, basically, that's ruled by decree. So, all the competitors are reducing the product -- to the product that is requested by the government. So we have we are sharing the same reduced product as the entry level or the -- we should say that the non-paid product, so there's no difference in that. I don't see any other difference.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
Thank you. The follow-on question will be from Alejandra Aranda. So, Alejandra from Itau. If you are here, ask please go ahead.
Alejandra Aranda
Analyst
Just, Roberto I wanted to -- there was a little bit of break up in the line, could you confirm the percentage of your client base with promotions and the average discount? And then, I was hoping to get a little bit more color on the competitive landscape, you said that some of your competitors were not being quite rational. So I'm wondering even in a world where you could increase tariffs next year, what would be the pushback from your clients and the need to extend promotions going forward? And the last question that I have is on personal and severance cost and how should we think about it in the next few months?
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
Okay. You mentioned many things Alejandra, the first one was -- we talk about a 30% average discount for our customer base and it has always been 20% around 20%. So, that's the gap that this whole thing has produced in the last quarter. The second one was the competitive landscape. On the mobile side a competitive -- as you saw in the presentation, month-by-month, the port-in and port activity has been important, we I would say are the less aggressive of the market and trying to keep balance, especially in this moment in time to not to push portability. Therefore, portability means discounts, so we are trying to pull down our own activity. But the real truth is that the other competitors are not cooling down the activity. Right now, I believe that they will start pulling the activity very soon because we are in a very difficult economic situation. And on the severance, when I saw that one of the major cost reductions was in the labor force and that is due to a reduction in severances during the year. Last year, we have -- agree with, with many entities to accept or to negotiate leaving the company, and this year that that situation because the economy of Argentina is very bad. It's very difficult to find someone that wants to leave the company by its own sake. And that is one of the reasons why the severances have been very low.
Alejandra Aranda
Analyst
And going forward, what are you expecting for 2021?
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
The same as this year. As long as the whole economy of the country does not improve, it's very difficult to find people that wants to leave the company being paid a severance and trying to start a new business outside. People will try to keep it this way and without leaving. So I believe that the number will be very similar to this year.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
Thank you, Alexandra. So we have a final question from Nicolas Petrone. That is saying considering the price freeze and perhaps following perhaps question, does the regulation considers lower incomes as changing prices or it is just point [indiscernible] price?
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
The decree is based on prices, general prices, the real thing is that with the new customers, will -- the major effect on the discount is that all the new customers will not have the promotions, promotions are not part of the it, promotions are still and always be part of the company's commercial decision. So you can sell a product at 100% price or you can sell a product on a three month discount price, I would say 70% of the price, 50% of the price. So that's a commercial decision and that's not part of it.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
Final comment for Andrew DeLuca. Thanks to everybody and congrats for the results.
Roberto Nobile
Analyst
Thank you.
Gabriel Blasi
Analyst
Thank you very much. Fernando José Balmaceda: Thank you.
Solange Barthe Dennin
Operator
So having no more questions. We thank you very much for participating in our quarterly conference call. Please do not hesitate in contacting our Investor Relations department for any further inquiries you may have. Good morning to all and had a nice day.