Ali Taha Koc
Analyst · Bank of America. Please go ahead
Thank you, Ozlem. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. This year marks a special milestone for us, our 30-year anniversary, which we proudly celebrated with all our stakeholders. On July 8, I had the honor of hosting a closing bell ceremony at New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest financial center, to commemorate this occasion. What stands out over the past 30 years is, what has remained constant, our core value of placing technology at the center of our business, leading innovation in Turkiye and nurturing the expertise of our people. We are committed to growing our business and meeting the needs of our customers across all the sectors we serve. Our commitment has made Turkcell resilient during extraordinary times. In the second quarter of 2024, annual inflation peaked in May, exerting pressure on the financial performance of leading Turkish companies. However, Turkcell, with its diversified business portfolio and disciplined management demonstrated financial resilience. Our top line reached TRY35 billion, reflecting a strong focus on profitability, we delivered an EBITDA of TRY15 billion and a solid 42.6% EBITDA margin. This is enabled by the Turkcell Turkiye segment, mainly due to our rational pricing strategy and successive upsell campaigns which allow us to sustain real ARPU growth. On the other hand, macroeconomic pressure impacted equipment revenues for both consumer and corporate segments. Our focus on value-generating postpaid and fiber customer acquisition resulted in 346,000 net additions. Supported by operational profitability and strategic financial risk management, we delivered a net income of TRY2.9 billion. Next slide, please. Let's take a look at our operational performance. On the mobile front, as the market leader, we focus on market rationalization. During the second quarter, we faced the aggressive pricing actions of our peers, starting in May, which triggered mobile number portability market activity. Despite this, we implemented a 25% price adjustment in July. Focusing on value-generating customers, we gained 477,000 postpaid subscribers. Over the last year, our postpaid base grew by 1.8 million net additions, with the postpaid customer share reaching 73%, marking a three point raise year-on-year. The widespread use of alternative data providers resulted in a net loss of 232,000 prepaid subscribers. Despite this, through innovative campaigns like the Smart Control Service and the 30th year Double Up campaign, along with our retention strategy, we maintained a churn rate of 1.5%, the lowest of the past six years. 1.5%, the lowest of the past six years. Driven by sequential price adjustment and upsell efforts, Mobile ARPU rose by 82% year-on-year, delivering 5% real growth and continued to outpace CPI. The quarter-on-quarter weakening in ARPU growth was expected, as the earthquake disaster negatively impacted the first quarter's base. Next slide please. In the fixed broadband market, we remain focused on fiber, adding 42,000 subscribers. The share of 12-month contracted customers in the residential fiber customers reached 78%, raising 28% year-on-year. Complementing our fiber services, IPTV sold 34,000 net additions. The fixed broadband market remained rational into Q2, allowing us to implement a price adjustment in August, following the incumbents move in June. In addition to market rationalization, with sports from TV+ and pure fiber technology, we achieved a record low churn rate of 1.2%, the lowest in 18 years. Residential fiber ARPU grew 84% year-on-year, with a quarterly rise when excluding the earthquake's base effect. The take-up rate rose 2.2 points year-on-year as we continue to prioritize fiber subscriber net additions over home passes. Lastly, we are pleased to see continued interest in high-speed plans. The weight of these packages in the total residential fiber portfolio has increased by 10 percent points year-on-year. Next slide, please. Let's discuss our strategic focus areas. Starting with Digital Services and Solutions. Our Digital Services and Solutions enable us to connect with our customers and meet their evolving needs. Our goal is to ensure these services reach the right audience, those who truly value them, with the right positioning. In recent quarters, for profitable growth, we have focused on attracting customers who are genuinely engaged with our services. In line with this strategy, we saw a 4% decrease in our standalone paid user base, now at 5.3 million. However, revenue from standalone Digital Services and Solutions grew by 5% year-on-year, driven by our pricing actions. Additionally, this quarter, we are pleased to see Lifebox and TV+ integrated into our national car brand TOGG, Turkiye's electrical vehicle, alongside with fizy. Moving on to our next focus area. Digital Business Services generated TRY2.6 billion in revenue this quarter. Recurring service revenues rose 8% year-on-year. However, hardware revenues were impacted by macroeconomic challenges, including reduced demand, particularly in the public sector due to authority measures and the absence of one-off projects from Q2 of last year. We remain committed to maintain our leadership in the data center market combined with our cloud services. Revenue from these services grew by 57% to TRY540 million. Next slide, please. The last strategic focus area is Techfin. In the second quarter, Paycell revenues grew by 16%, driven primarily by increased commissions and transaction volumes from Pay Later and POS Solutions. The active users for Pay Later rose by 10%, thanks to wider usage in app stores and nationwide QR payment eligibility. Meanwhile, Paycell's EBITDA increased by 14% year-on-year. Financing the technological needs of customers, Financell's revenue rose by 34% supported by a larger loan portfolio and higher average interest rates. However, the net interest margin declined by 1.6 percentage points due to higher funding costs. At the same time, our cost of risk stands at 2.2%. Next slide, please. Lastly, our performance in the international markets. Turkcell international revenues, which account for 3% of group revenues, rose 2.7% to TRY890 million. BeST revenues rose 22% on a yearly basis in local currency terms, primarily driven by a focus on high segment tariff exposure, enabling higher voice and data revenue. Better interconnection costs and lower energy expenses sustained the 1.5 percentage point improvement in EBITDA margin. We successfully finalized the share sale of our Ukraine operations this Monday. Moving forward, our primary focus will be on driving value creation within our domestic operations. Before diving into financials, I would like to briefly touch on our 2024 guidance. With monthly inflation trending higher than expected recently and the revised year-end projections announced in Turkiye's medium-term program last week, we are now in a period that we closely follow our guidance. We plan to provide an update along with our third quarter results if needed. I will now leave the floor to our CFO, Mr. Kamil Kalyon.