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Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (TKC)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 18, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2015 Results Conference Call. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Nihat Narin, Director of Investor Relations and Business Developments. Please go ahead, sir.

Nihat Narin

Management

Thank you, Alex. And ladies and gentlemen thank you for your participation. I would like to say, welcome to our call on behalf of the management team here and we will start today with the presentation by CEO, Kaan Terzioglu, and followed by presentation by CFO, Murat Erden. And then we will go into the Q&A session. Just before we start the presentation, I would like to remind you of the brief legal notice. In this presentation, we will make statements that are forward-looking about our future targets and expectations. These are based on our current views and assumptions, which may of course change in the future and our actual results may be different. So, now, I hand over to Mr. Kaan Terzioglu. Sir, please go ahead.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Thank you, Nihat. Good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. And welcome to Turkcell's fourth quarter and full year 2015 results call. We have a full house here today. I am joined by our executive team, including our Chief Financial Officer, Murat Erden; Chief Marketing Officer, Burak Sevilengül; Chief Sales Officer, Murat Erkan; Chief Technology Officer, Ilker Kuruöz; Chief Legal and Regulation Officer, Serhat Demir; Strategy Officer, Ilter Terzioglu; and Chief Business Support Officer, Seyfettin Saglam. The year 2015 ended up a strong quarter, building up the momentum. We have closed the year with 9.5% growth in Turkcell Turkey and 6% in the Group overall, with 32.4% EBITDA margin and TRY2.1 billion net income. Q4 was extremely strong with the revenue growth of 7.5%, EBITDA margin of 31.7% and the net income of TRY584 million. I have provided some updates you during the year, but before going into the details of the number, I would like to do a quick recap of 2015 in terms of the critical events. As you know we had a major year in terms of transforming our organization into a converged platform. We have combined two of our operating units, Turkcell as the mobile operator, and Superonline as a fixed operator into one operation, with one management team allowing us to create synergies around network as well as our channels organization, marketing and sales teams. We have followed the year with a strong performance on our 4.5G spectrum tender, where we have acquired the largest spectrum with 47% of the available spectrum in the market and over that spectrum; we have concluded our tests reaching up to 1.2 gigabit speeds last month. We have later on improved, as we have promised our globally relevant services portfolio, reflecting this strategy, we have launched a couple of digital…

Murat Erden

Management

Thank you very much, Kaan. Good afternoon, and good evening to all participants. I will now talk in more detail about our financial results. In the fourth quarter of 2015, Group revenues rose to TRY2.3 billion with the strong operational performance from Turkcell Turkey, due to solid data and mobile service and solutions growth. For the full year, Group revenues increased 6% year-over-year. The main growth driver is again Turkcell Turkey, mainly due to the 52% yearly devaluation in revenue [ph] against U.S. dollar in Ukraine, and 57% devaluation of Belarusian ruble against the U.S. dollar in Belarus. Turkey Turkcell International revenues contracted 24.8% year-on-year. Other subsidiary revenues comprised of our information and entertainment services and wholesale revenues grew by 1.6% to TRY432 million. Let me move onto page 19. In the fourth quarter, consolidated EBITDA rose by 15.4% year-on-year to TRY1.1 billion. EBITDA margin improved by 2.1 percentage point to 31.7% on the back of efficiency measures and our focus on higher value generating customers, which resulted in a declining S&M expenses by 1.9 percentage points and the direct cost of revenues by 0.5 percentages points. For the full year, consolidated EBITDA rose by 10.1% to TRY4.1 billion, while the EBITDA margin was up by 1.2 percentage points to 32.4%, driven by the mainly higher revenue generation and lower S&M expenses. This marks the highest full year EBITDA margin print of the past five years. Let me move onto the next page. In the fourth quarter, pro forma net income increased by 28.7% to TRY671 million, whereas as per IFRS net income was TRY584 million. Net income increased mainly due to higher EBIT by TRY155 million, higher contribution from Fintur and translation gains of TRY45 million in the last quarter as opposed to the translation losses of TRY383 million…

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Thank you, Murat. Alex, we are done and now please initiate the Q&A session. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We have an opening question from Roman Aberazoff of UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Roman Aberazoff

Analyst

Thank you for taking the question. So, it's a two question please. The first one is on Tower's. There is an announcement on the Ukraine that has just come through. So, it seemed like you are preparing for a Tower sale in Ukraine. So, could you please explain your intentions there? But perhaps more importantly, could you please elaborate on some recent speculation or the possibility of you potentially IPOing or otherwise monetizing your Tower assets in Turkey, please. So, that's the one sort of set of questions. And secondly on Fintur, please. Could you just give us an update sort of where you are in that process and perhaps as part of that answer, could you please confirm that you have the right to tag along and you have the right of first refusal, when it comes to Fintur. Thank you very much.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Thank you very much. Let me start with the Tower's question. Yes, you're right, today we announced the sale of Tower on by our Lifecell subsidiary to Okur Telekom which is an 100% owned subsidiary of Global Tower. We are very much inspired by the asset light approaches in the industry and we would like to make sure that we get the best shareholder value for our assets. So, you can consider this as part of the preparation for monetizing our passive infrastructure assets as Turkcell Group. So, this was the first action on that. We are exploring our options of understanding, what is the best way to create shareholder value in this area. Following, on with the Fintur question, as it is known, we have provided a non-binding offer to TeliaSonera to actually acquire the remaining shares in Fintur. We already own about 42% of Fintur and we are interested in buying the remaining shares to make sure that first of all we protect and maximize the value of Fintur for our shareholder. We do have tag along and first write-off refusals as you asked and with the due diligence process is progressing as we speak.

Roman Aberazoff

Analyst

Okay. Could you please tell us how many towers you have in Turkey please?

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

We are not disclosing that number, but if further developments happen we will make a public announcement about that.

Roman Aberazoff

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We will take our next question from Ivan Kim from VTB Capital. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Ivan Kim

Analyst

Good afternoon. Two questions from my side, please. Firstly, on the mobile price in Turkey. So have you started to implement the inflationary pricing this year and what was the response of your competitors to that. And then secondly on the share buyback. So apparently the Board has sort of key to TRY200 million for the share buyback from company's resources and cash flow. I was just wondering whether you can use leverage as well for the share buyback or should we expect the total amount of buyback at TRY200 million this year. Thank you.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Thank you very much. This year we have a very clear focus on by getting more high end value customers and postpaid customers. And I believe the telecoms industry over the last three years with the penetration increases in the smartphones has become a vital element of our customer base. This actually position us to make sure that we deliver more service, higher quality services and also demand for the right prices for the services we deliver. Our focus has been profitability and making sure that we increase our high value customer acquisitions and lower the churn to make sure that we make the best margins in the business. We are not a market share focused company and we are not going to be on the price competition and the inflationary pricing decisions we have taken has paid back this year. We - therefore, I won't to make specific comments about the competition, I suggest that you ask the question to them. With regard to the share buyback decision, we have as you know announced a three-year mid-term plan. As announcing the three-year mid-term plan, you will also notice that in our announcements this quarter, we have also announced maybe as one of the leading first companies to announce a long-term incentive plan. For the time being, the share buyback agenda item for the general assembly that we have announced is regarding the long-term incentive plan and basically the necessary hedging that we may need to do on that regard. We do not intend to leverage the company to buyback our own shares.

Ivan Kim

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our final question comes from the line of Kray [ph] of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you very much for the presentation. Two questions, if I may. First, the postpaid sub-additions in the first quarter has been quite strong. Can you share your expectations for the year end for 2016 postpaid prepaid mix and smartphone penetration on your network specifically? And secondly, you have voice necessity of five infrastructure pools into ahead of 4G or 4.5G` launch. Over the past months, do you think or what is your view in terms of the regulator taking an action in that regard.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Okay. Let me first of all pass the question of the postpaid additions and the strong additions performance to Burak. Burak Sevilengül: As Kaan mentioned earlier, our focus on adding more high value customers our subscriber mix continues. So we expect to keep our strong growth trend in the postpaid subscriber going forward in 2016. And we believe we will be finishing the year of all slightly above 55% postpaid share and around 60% smartphone penetration.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

And Kray [ph] can you repeat the second question again, the regulatory issue you mentioned.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yeah, in terms of the 4G fiber infrastructure in Turkey, you have voiced the necessity of creating a unified pool in effect combining or the combination of your competitor networks and yourself. And to lower the overall CapEx. Do you think you or do you see a probability that the regulators may take an action in that regard and i.e. going forward and essentially maybe not souring, but incentivizing the operator to combine the fiber network?

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Sure, now I understand. Thanks a lot for the clarification. Moving on with 4G and 5G over the next couple of years, we'll require a robust fiber infrastructure. If you look to this requirement, it means that operators in Turkey will need to invest heavily in fiber networks. We have strongly stated our position that doing this without a coordinated way will be waste of investments in Turkey and we believe that the operators should consider joining their forces to deploy a fiber to increase the capacity in the entire country. So, we have indicated this offer and I think this has been also being reviewed and positively supported by the latest comments of the minister. And we consider this as not as specific competitive advantage for us but as something that needs to be done for the Turkish economic vitality.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you very much.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Thank you.

Nihat Narin

Management

Alex, we have another question is coming from the actual webcasting and Faros Kumar [ph] from JP Morgan is asking. The question is what's the Turkcell's strategy of following the end of the Turk Telecom's regularity fiber follow that in '16. So I hand over to our CEO to respond the question please.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Yes, I actually will refer back to the answer I have provided a minute ago. The new requirements of 4G and 5G networks and the consumer patterns basically require a widespread fiber deployment in the country. And I think this will require a coordinated approach and it will be essential that the right regulatory environment for the competitive landscape be addressed by the regulator and the ministry of telecommunications.

Nihat Narin

Management

Thank you.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Thank you.

Nihat Narin

Management

Alex, we may have following questions. Please go ahead.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. We have the follow-on question from the line of Roman Aberazoff of UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Roman Aberazoff

Analyst

Thank you for the opportunity. I was just looking at your guidance for 2016 as well as the medium-term guidance. So, I think the 2016 guidance within the context of 2016 to '18 looks perhaps a little bit less ambitious. So, I'm just wondering what gives you most confidence that you can accelerate growth in '17 and '18 versus '16. And also, just to follow-up on CapEx, what is the rate do you think to your medium term CapEx spend given that some of your peers have rate and see that CapEx ambition.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

As you can imagine, this year we're going to be deploying 4.5G infrastructure in Turkey, as well as 4G in Belarus and 3G is Ukraine. So, this is going to be a quite an investment year for us and that's why we expect this year's CapEx will be around 20% maybe slightly 20-21 ranges for this year, which is very normal. And I would not be worried about this considering that this is an investment that we need to put in place in a timely manner. Over the long-term, I expect this to go '17, '16 ranges actually and normalize at those levels. We expect over the next three years including the license payments, a CapEx investment around TRY13 billion. And this includes all the license payments as well. With regard to the guidance for 2016 and mid-term, we believe our operations in international markets as well as increase of triple play and double play customers both on mobile and fixed will give us the right growth momentum. And for 2016, our EBITDA margin in between 31 to 33 simply reflects the launch of 4.5G and potential additional expenses on launch and the customer acquisitions spree we will see in the first quarter.

Roman Aberazoff

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

As we have no further questions, I would like to turn the call back to the speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

Kaan Terzioglu

Management

Well, thank you very much for being with us on this call. Very, very glad to report to you 2015 and looking forward to 2016 results in three months from now. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.