Hi, good morning, and afternoon, and thank you for everyone joining us today for VEON’s Third Quarter Presentation for the Period Ending September 30, 2023. I'm Faisal Ghori, Head of Investor Relations. I'm pleased to be joined in the room today by Kaan Terzioğlu, our CEO; along with Joop Brakenhoff, our CFO. Today's presentation will begin with the key highlights and business updates from Kaan, following discussion of detailed financial results by Joop. We'll then hand it back to Kaan to discuss our outlook and priorities for 2023. We'll then open up the line for Q&A. Before getting started, I would like to remind you that we may make forward-looking statements during today's presentation, which involve certain risks and uncertainties. These statements relate in partly to the company's anticipated performance and guidance for 2023, future market developments and trends, operational and network development and network investments and the company's ability to realize its targets and commercial and strategic initiatives, including current and future transactions. Certain factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, including the risks detailed in the company's annual report on Form 20-F and other recent public filings made by the company with the SEC. The earnings release and the earnings presentation, each of which include reconciliation of non-IFRS measures presented today can be downloaded from our website. With that, let me hand it over to Kaan. Kaan Terzioğlu: Faisal, thank you very much. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone. Thank you very much for joining us for our presentation of VEON's third quarter results for 2023. Before we jump into it, please allow me to take a few minutes and zoom out and talk a little bit about where we are today, and how we got there. I have been…

Thanks, Kaan. I'll outline some of our revenue highlights for the third quarter. We have delivered another quarter of double digit year-on-year local currency revenue growth across all of our six markets with group service revenue rising 19.8% year-on-year and total revenue up 19.3% year on year to reach $945 million. While our reported revenue also demonstrated growth, up 6.1% year-on-year. This was impacted by significant local currency depreciation across our markets, particularly in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Revenue growth was driven by market share gains and the expansion of our digital platforms across all our operations, as well as the effect of disciplined inflationary pricing. Let's now take a closer look at our EBITDA and EBITDA margin. VEON’s local currency EBITDA rose 30.6% year-on-year in the third quarter, while our EBITDA margin increased 4.4 percent points to 47%. It is important to note that EBITDA growth was impacted by extraordinary one-offs in Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan in both the second and third quarter. Adjusting for these one-offs, normalized group EBITDA increased by 27% year-on-year in local currency terms. On Slide 32, we can direct our attention towards our CapEx and CapEx intensity. In line with our asset-light strategy and focus on maintaining strict financial discipline, CapEx and CapEx intensity have decreased year-on-year and fall within our full year 2023 guidance. CapEx in the third quarter stands at $131.1 million, the CapEx intensity of 17.8% helping drive our 4G network expansion and deliver on our 4G for all strategy. Given the challenges of Pakistan and Ukraine, our CapEx spend was less than anticipated at the beginning of the year. We remain disciplined and flexible with respect to where, when, and how we will spend CapEx to ensure our customers have the best service possible across our platforms. Moving now…

Thank you, Kaan. We can open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions]

I think we have some questions in the Q&A, so let me start from there then. Our first question comes from [Sean Cook]. With the Russia sale complete, are you now able to pursue a credit rating from a reputable firm? Joop?

Thanks, Faisal. Yes, indeed with the Russia operations being sold, we really want to go back to normal and we start the process to pursue a credit rating with one or more of the credit agencies. Yes.

Thank you. Our next question is from [Anjali Doshi]. Can you comment on the following, what is your comfort level of net debt to EBITDA range, excluding inclusive and excluding leases going forward?

Yes, I think we've given a lot of information in this update. Going forward probably we talk around 1.5x post IFRS, including leases, for us in an acceptable level. And as you know, we are optimizing our capital structure and also increasing our debt maturity. So we think about 1.5x.

The second part of the question. Can you discuss the opportunities to repatriate cash from each of your markets to HQ?

Yes, Faisal, thanks. And these are relevant questions of course. We have no formal limitations to repatriate cash to the center except for operations in Ukraine, of course due to the martial law. But for the other operating companies, there are no formal limitations to upstream cash.

The next question is from [Roman Ivanov]. Can you please clarify your plans with respect to the RCF? Do you plan to repay the facility or at least partially extend it?

Yes, as mentioned, we are optimizing our capital structure with a smaller organization. Of course, we are also reviewing our RCF. At this moment, we're in discussion with our RCF holders to look for possibilities to reduce and extend the current RCF. As mentioned, we also want to increase our debt maturity. That's a good combination of this discussion.

Our next question is from Stella Cridge from Barclays. Can you explain the move in net debt quarter-over-quarter in between September and October? What other steps need to be taken before VEON can return to debt markets?

Yes, these are two questions. The first one, as presented, you've seen the numbers of September 2023. These are the numbers where the Russian operations were still part of VEON Group. We've also explained, showed you the current cash gross debt and net debt level as per October 2023. And these are, of course, the numbers without Russia. So there you see changes which mainly have to do with the redemption of intercompany balances with Russia.

Our next question is from [Daria Naumenko], could you please provide more updates on asset monetization, and on the recent tower deal, are you planning to upstream proceeds to the HoldCo level? Kaan Terzioğlu: Sure, Dario. First of all, you would remember that back in two years ago, even actually in 2021, when we set our strategic plans, we said we are going to be an asset-light company. And we believe that there are better specialized, dedicated, independent tower companies to manage the towers rather than keeping them buried in our balance sheets. Since then, we have done actually quite a lot of heavy lifting. We have, as of now, ring fenced and spin out all our towers into separate companies in all the operations that we are currently operating in. Regulatory wise, Bangladesh was an exception because we cannot own a tower company in Bangladesh. It's a licensed operation. But apart from that, all our other operations already have tower companies, and we are working with and talking to different independent tower companies in terms of how to engage them, managing our towers in a better way and allowing us to crystallize the value. Since the beginning, we have sold before the war our towers in Russia. Later on, we have now sold one-third of our portfolio in Bangladesh, and we still have close to 30,000 towers in various different operations, which we will be working on.

Thank you, Kaan. Our next question is from Chris Hoare of New Street. Regarding CapEx guidance, do you expect 16% to 18% of sales going forward, or can you reduce it further? Kaan Terzioğlu: Maybe let me take this question, because if you remember, we said that we are targeting for 70% 4G penetration and we will continue to be elevated at the levels of CapEx. There are two important things happening. First of all, we are growing faster, and we are happy with that naturally, and that is of course releasing the CapEx to revenue sales ratio in favorable way. Secondly, if you, for example, take a country like Pakistan, today 15% of our revenues in Pakistan is actually from mobile financial services and entertainment platforms, which are totally different business models and does not require same level of CapEx. So if you put all these things together, and if you add the fact that we are now getting very close to 70% and actually already exceeded 70% in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, you would naturally see a reduction on the CapEx to revenue ratio. That's why you see 16% to 18%. And I would expect this figure to go below 16% over the next three to five years as we further generate more revenues from non-telecom businesses, as well as reach the penetration levels that we desire.

Our next question is from [Roman Ivanov]. What actions would you take to crystallize value of digital assets? Kaan Terzioğlu: We are unique in the sense that the population in the markets that we operate in is more than 510 million. What we observe is the consumer business, consumers in these markets are significantly underserved. There is an unmet demand, especially when it comes to entertainment, financial services, education and healthcare. Therefore, every single investment we do in this area, and as you can imagine, investment in digital services, considering the power of distribution we have through the, thanks to telecom is much smaller in size, it gives us to create the largest player in a vertical over 12 to 18 months. This is what happened with Tamasha. This is what happened with Toffee. What happened with JezzCash, Simply, IZI, and Helsi. So, what we would like to do is to make sure that to further accelerate the growth of these digital services, we will be seeking out strategic partners who can enhance our offers and create differentiation. And you will see us moving in that direction when it comes to looking for partners that will also, of course, crystallize the value of these assets as well.

Our next question is again from Chris Hoare of New Street Research. He's asking about the EBITDA margins, specifically regarding our currencies. Normally, when currencies are under pressure, you would normally expect margins to fall. Why aren't you seeing that? And then secondly, does that imply OpCo margins can rise next year if we have stability in the currencies? Kaan Terzioğlu: Yes, I will also -- Joop, you can add to what I will say. But clearly, we see our revenues growing actually much faster than our cost structure is growing. This is thanks to two things. One, of course, us having more wallet share from the adjacent markets and ability to increase our prices, while keeping the customers, which is very important. It's not only about inflationary price increases. It's actually increasing the value that we offer to the customers and them embracing this in a positive way. And of course, the second important thing, especially this year, while we have gone through our restructuring, we have lowered our headquarters cost by 55%. And this is basically a sign that as a company we are agile, we can adapt to new conditions. As we exited from Russia, we reflected this also in our HQ run rate cost. And that of course will -- has its impact for next year. I'm very happy currently with the margin expansion that we have demonstrated in Q3 with -- or more than 4 percentage points. And I think, given our structure with higher growth expectations, I think, this trend will continue at least one or two more years. Joop, anything you would like to add?

Yes, Kaan, I think it's good to mention that, of course, in our challenging markets, Bangladesh and Kyrgyzstan, where we're not the number one, our margins are a little bit lower. And also more difficult to increase compared to the markets where we are number one, like in Pakistan. So that also has an impact, of course, on how we can manage EBITDA.

Our last question comes from [Anjali Doshi]. How do you view the optimal mix between HoldCo and OpCo debt in local currency. On a normalized basis, what is the cash level you'd like to keep at HoldCo?

Yes, we -- it's very clear that we want to de-leverage the group as a total, whereby we also want to leverage operating companies in local currency to a normalized level. That means that we will have going forward more local currency debt than dollar debt at the center, right? That balance will shift. And what we also think about is that probably we need a cash level of several hundred, $300 million, $400 million at HQ.

Thank you everybody for joining our call. Kaan Terzioğlu: So maybe if I may add something. You know, naturally over the last two years, we -- I named it as the fortress of balance sheet. We needed it, we did it well. But of course moving onwards, you should expect us reaching out effective use of cash balances. And we realized that over the last two years it was difficult to spot this. We had always ample liquidity and we needed it. I think that was the right thing to do. But moving onwards, you will see us much more lean when it comes to cash management. Thank you.

Thank you everybody for joining our call. And with that, we'll close.