Cyfrowy Polsat S.A. (CPS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. It is my pleasure to welcome you to Polsat Plus Group's Results Call for the Second Quarter of 2023. As always, the results will be presented by Mr. Miroslaw Blaszczyk, CEO; Mr. Maciej Stec, Vice President, Responsible for Strategy; Ms. Katarzyna Ostap-Tomann, CFO; and Mr. Stanislaw Janowski, President of TV Polsat. [Operator Instructions] Mr. Blaszczyk, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon. The agenda of today's meeting is as follows: I will briefly present the key events of the second quarter. Afterwards, Staszek and Maciej will talk about the operating results of our business segments, and Kacha will follow with an overview of our financial performance. We will end the presentation with a short summary, and then we will move on to the Q&A session. Next slide, please. Okay. Let's begin with the key highlights of the second quarter of 2023. Next slide, please. The macroeconomic situation in Poland remains difficult. Despite challenging market conditions, we post growing ARPU in all our customer segments, in B2C, B2B as well as the prepaid segment. We were also able to maintain the level of churn at the low level of only 7.3% per annum. We are also consciously building our position in the media segment. In August we acquired the internet portal called naEKRANIE.pl, which really support our performance in the online business. Additionally, we bought 3 new TV channels, which brings a total number of channels in our portfolio up to 42. In July, we completed our strategic acquisition of green assets from ZEPAK by acquiring a controlling stake in PAK-PCE. This means that starting from the third quarter of 2023, we will fully consolidate the clean energy segment in our operating and financial results. Since we are on the topic of clean energy, I'm delighted to inform you, that our first 2 wind farms in Miloslaw and Kazimierz Biskupi are already in the face of test production. The commercial launch of both farms will take place in September. What is more, we have completed the construction of our very first hydrogen refilling station in Warsaw. We have obtained all the necessary permits to launch the station, and the official opening is planned for September. In the second quarter, we expanded our operation in the B2B photovoltaic micro installation market. We signed the contract for the installation of photovoltaic units on 750 rooftops of the DINO store chain. As part of the continuation of our investment in Port Praski, we acquired a 32% stake in Pantanomo. This is a step towards simplifying the ownership structure in our real estate segment. And finally, in June, Fitch Ratings assigned a new rating to Polsat Plus Group at the level of BB with a stable outlook. This shows trust and confidence in our strategy and our vision of the future of this group. Next slide, please. That is all from me for now. I will give the floor over to Staszek, who will discuss the operating performance in our Media segment. Thank you.

Thank you. The performance of the Media segment in both the second quarter and the first half of this year were very good. Let's look at the details. Next slide, please. We continue to effectively build our position in the market of internal portals. Through our horizontal portal, Interia.pl, we are the leading internet publisher in Poland with 21 million real users and almost 2 billion page views per month. Interia's financials are also very good. Revenue is growing at a low double-digit rate, while EBITDA grew at a mid-single-digit rate in the first half of the year. We are steadily catching up to our competitors. I'm proud to say that in July, for the first time ever, according to media panel statistics, our portal, Interia.pl, had more users than [indiscernible]. It's the effect of the successful execution of the synergies between Interia and Polsat. Also, as Mirek mentioned in his introduction, in August, we acquired the website, naEKRANIE. This is a popular internet website that focuses on movies, series, books, games and technology. Going forward, this acquisition has strengthened our position on the online market. Next slide, please. Moving on to our TV business. We recorded very good viewership figures of our TV channels in the second quarter. Our main channel, Polsat, had the leading audience share of 7.9%, and our thematic channels had 14.2% of audience shares in the commercial group. Altogether, our channels had 22% in the second quarter of this year, which is a little less than a year ago. This is the result of the negative impact of the refarming to the new terrestrial television standard that took place in the first half of last year and was mandatory for commercial broadcaster, but not for public television. This impact will continue to influence our results for the next 2 quarters. In 2024, all broadcasters in Poland will use the new DVB-T2 standard. I would also like to share some exciting news with you. We are expanding our portfolio of channels. In August, we acquired 3 new TV channels: 4FUN TV, 4FUN DANCE and 4FUN KIDS. As a result of this transaction, we have a total of 42 channels in our portfolio, which makes us the undisputable leader in the content market in Poland. The new channels have about [ 0.5 ] of audience shares, and starting from next quarter, will support our viewership figures. Next slide, please. The second quarter of 2023 was an excellent quarter in terms of advertising. The broad market increased by 4.3% year-on-year. And I'm very pleased to say that our revenue from advertising grew slightly above the market trend. We generated PLN 345 million in revenue from advertising, that is 4.4% more than last year. As a result, we had a very high share in TV advertising and sponsorship market at the level of 28.7%. Our performance in the Media segment in the first 6 months of this year was also very good. The entire portfolio of TV Polsat channels posted audience shares of 21.9%. Our main channel, Polsat, contributed 7.9% to this result, while our thematic channels generated 14% of audience share. Again, very satisfactory results given the negative impact of the refarming to the DVB-T2 standard that I have already mentioned when presenting Q2 results. In the first half of this year, the advertising market was very strong. We increased our revenue from TV advertising and sponsorship by 4.3%, and outperformed the broad market, as you can see on this slide. We maintain very high shares in the TV advertising and sponsorship market, also over the long time horizon. In the first half of the year, we recorded a market share of 28.4%. To sum up, I'm extremely pleased with the operating results of the TV segment and the online segment. We have very good viewership results despite regulatory headwinds. We maintain high market shares in the advertising market, and we posted excellent results in the online segment. The acquisitions that we made will support our operations in both online and TV business. Let me also say that this quarter, the Media segment recorded very good financial results. This quarter, we finally turned around the trend and reported growing EBITDA year-on-year, but I will leave these details to Kacha. Thank you very much. And now, Maciej will tell you about our performance in B2C and B2B segment, as well as Energy segment.

Good afternoon, everybody. As always, I will start with the operating results of the B2C and B2B segment. Before I start discussing the results of this quarter, I would like to repeat what Mirek said at the beginning. Current market conditions are still a challenge for us and for our customers as well. Inflation is still very high, growing at a double-digit rate, even though the situation on the energy market is much calmer than last year, energy prices are still high. Also, high interest rates mean that our customers have to deal with much higher loan installments. And the accumulation of all these factors translates into lower disposable incomes, and we can see that customers are more cautious when it comes to their budgets. Despite these challenging market conditions, we maintain a high stable base of multiplay customers. At the end of the second quarter, we had almost 2.5 million customers who used 7.4 million bundled services. This [ operation ] of our customer base with our multiplay products remains at a very high level of 42%, which in my opinion, is a very solid result. At the end of Q2, we recorded churn at the level of 7.3% per annum. This is a little higher than a year ago, but let me point out that this is still a very low level, and I'm very pleased with this result. This result shows that, despite a difficult situation, our customers remain loyal to us and that our multiplay strategy is resilient. Next slide, please. We maintain a high and stable RGU base. At the end of the second quarter, we provided 13.1 million services to our contract B2C customers, minus 2% year-on-year. 6.2 million of the services are mobile telephone RGUs, and 2 million are internet access RGUs. These 2 product lines are stable over time. As you can see, the number of paid TV services provided is still in a downward trend. This is because we are still experiencing a drop in the level of low-value paid TV services, which are no longer available in our offer. Almost 2 years ago, we replaced the services with a full value stand-alone TV product, Polsat Box Go, which offers TV packages at PLN 30, PLN 40. I expect this effect will still be visible in our RGU base over the next 2 or 3 quarters. But after that, it should subside. We are partially compensating this decline by growing a number of pay TV services provided via IPTV and OTT. Next slide, please. Despite the unfavorable situation and market conditions, we continue to increase the value of our existing customer base, mainly thanks to our multiplay strategy and our 5G tariffs. In the second quarter, ARPU per year, B2C customer was PLN 71.8, growing by 2.3% year-on-year. One of the pillars of our multiplay strategy is to upsell products to our customers. The result of our efforts in this respect is visible in the level of RGU saturation per customer, which remains at a high level of 2.24 services per B2C customer. Next slide, please. Moving to the prepaid segment. The second quarter was very good in this line of business. We have a high and stable base of prepaid services, almost 2.7 million at the end of the second quarter. Please remember that the base reported last year is not comparable because in the first half of last year, we provided support to Ukrainian refugees by distributing 3 starter packs. Most of these temporary RGUs have already been deactivated, and the prepaid RGU base has returned to the pre-war levels. I'm happy to say that ARPU in this product line is also increasing ARPU per prepaid services was PLN 17.8 in the second quarter, up by 2.3% year-on-year. Next slide, please. In the B2B segment, we successfully maintained the scale of our customer base and focused on value creation. In the second quarter of this year, we served 69,000 B2B customers and recorded ARPU growth by 6.2% year-on-year, a highly satisfactory result. ARPU per B2B customer settles at nearly PLN 1,500 per month and we are very satisfied from these results. Before I move to discuss in the Clean Energy segment, let me sum up our operation as -- in the TMT space in towards. We are focused on building value and loyalty in all our customer segments. Despite challenging market conditions, we maintain high customer bases, growing ARPUs and low churn. Turning to our new business, Clean and Green Energy segment. As you remember, we have 2 strategic goals in this line of business. First of all, we want to become a leading producer of clean, green energy. To this end, we are executing an extensive pipeline of the investment projects related to building renewable resources, photovoltaic and wind farms in particular. And our second goal is to become a leading producer of green hydrogen. In order to achieve this goal, we are successfully implementing all the stages necessary to complete a full value chain based on green hydrogen. Also, as Mirek already mentioned, starting from July, we own a controlling stake in PAK-PCE. This means that during our next results call for the third quarter in November, I will share the operating results of this new segment with you. Next slide, please. Let's take a look at the progress that we are making in terms of renewable energy projects. The third quarter is going to be very exciting because we are going to launch commercially our 2 first wind farms. The farms in Miloslaw and Kazimierz Biskupi are currently in the technological start-up phase. Miloslaw will start production at the turn of August and September, and Kazimierz Biskupi will be launched by the end of September. These 2 projects will already contribute to our results in the second half of the year. All the energy produced by these farms has already been contracted in PPAs by subsidiaries of Polsat Plus Group. What is more, we are also going to launch the photovoltaic farm, Cambria in Q3. This is an extension of the Brudzew farm that's already operational. In the first half of 2023, the Brudzew farm produce almost 37 gigawatt hours, and we are very happy about that. We are also working hard on other projects in our pipeline. We are making good progress on the Czluchów and Przyrów farms and both are going according to the schedule. The planned launch of these 2 farms is the second and third quarter of next year. Once constructed, the energy production from our renewable units will fully satisfy our internal need for energy. We have a couple of projects that are scheduled for 2025. We are going to execute the photovoltaic plant in Przykona Incorporation with ZEPAK. Right now, we are working on optimizing these projects and obtaining relevant permits. We are also working on the Drzezewo wind farm, a project that we have recently extended to 139 megawatts of installed capacity. This is going to be the biggest farm in our portfolio with 63 wind turbines. Once we complete the projects listed on this slide, the total installed capacity of our renewable energy sources will add up to 740 megawatts by the end of 2025. Now let's take a look at our hydrogen projects. Next slide, please. The installation of the first 2.5 megawatt electrolyzer seems complete, and we are waiting for our supplier to finish the last technological adjustments. At the same time, we are getting ready for the launch of our very own half megawatt electrolyzers. I will show it to you on the next slides. We received a delivery of new hydrogen trailers. We now have 6 trailers in use with transportation, capacity exceeding 5 tons of hydrogen. Our hydrogen refueling station in Warsaw is ready and has all required permits and decisions to start operations. All we are waiting for right now is the ribbon cutting ceremony which is planned for September. We are also constructing hydrogen stations in Rybnik, Gdansk and Gdynia. The construction of the station in Rybnik is in its final stage, and the station will be launched by the end of this third quarter. While the station in Gdansk and Gdynia are planned for the turn of the year. As you remember, we won our first big tender for the delivery of 25 million powered buses to Rybnik. 10 buses are almost ready and will be shipped to Rybnik in September, while the other 10 will be ready by the end of year. At the same time, we are actively submitting bids in other tenders that are being announced in various cities across Poland. As you can see, there is a lot of interest among municipalities in green transportation. And in my opinion, we are in the right moment, at the right time and with the right product to address this new market demand. Lastly, our hydrogen bus factory in Swidnik is almost completed, and we are planning to move production from a rented facility to our own plant already in September. Next slide, please. I think that pictures speak louder than words. So I want to show you a couple of real photos of our projects. On the left, you can see the production process of our hydrogen powered buses. If you look closely, you will see the hydrogen tanks on the roofs. Like I said, the first batch of 10 buses is going to be delivered to Rybnik next month, and we are moving production to our own factory. At the end of the day, we can produce over 100 buses each year in this factory. On the right-hand side is a photo of the 2.5-megawatt electrolyzers installed next to our biomass blocks in Konin. This unit has the capacity to produce 1 ton of hydrogen per day. We will be transporting this hydrogen in our trailers to refueling stations across the country. Over the next slide, please. This is the prototype of our alkaline electrolyzers we are very proud of. We developed this product ourselves through our subsidiary, Exion Hydrogen. This is the first Polsat electrolyzer, it's a half megawatt unit, which can produce 200 kilograms of hydrogen per day. Its biggest advantage is that it is a plug-and-play sort of device. It's mobile, so we can transport it and plug it into a chosen source of energy, such as one of our wind farms, and it will produce hydrogen on the spot. This offers a lot of flexibility and can help optimize cost of transportation of hydrogen, which are relatively high at present. So as you can see, we are focused on the execution of our Strategy 2023+ and on the achievement of the goals that we have set. And I strongly believe that once we complete the first most difficult phase of the strategy, the investment phase, this new business will contribute a strong recurring stream of EBITDA to our group's financial and support value creation for our shareholders. Okay. That's all from me. Kacha, over to you for the financial performance.

Thank you, Maciej. Can I have the next slide, please. Here, we have a snapshot of our key financial metrics in the second quarter of 2023. Our revenue increased by 1.9% year-on-year and amounted to PLN 3.29 billion. EBITDA decreased by 10.6% and reached the level of PLN 799 million. I will discuss the key drivers behind these changes on the next slide. As you know, our net profit for the quarter came in much lower than expected by the market. We posted net profit of PLN 8 million, down by 97% year-on-year. First of all, this result was impacted by lower profit at the operating level, which is mainly the effect of inflationary pressure on OpEx. We are also feeling the burden of persistently high interest rates. As you can see in our financial statements, our debt service costs increased significantly over the past year. Additionally, this quarter, we recognized a number of items below EBITDA that depressed net profit, most of which are nonrecurring and noncash. Namely, we recognized costs related to the early repayment of our bank loans, and we recognized a share in the loss of PAK-PCE, which fully offset the share we had on the profit of Asseco. These 2 factors will not impact our results going forward. Moreover, at the level of income tax, our debt financing costs exceeded statutory limits of such costs that can be recognized in the calculation of current income tax. And we also incurred tax losses in our investment activities. I do not expect this factor to have such a strong impact the future. Free cash flow for the last 12 months amounted to PLN 579 million and recorded a decrease by 24.6%. This is a significant improvement compared to last quarter. At the end of the second quarter, net leverage amounted to 3.26 net debt-to-EBITDA. Let's move on to the next slide, please. Looking at the key drivers behind the changes in revenue and EBITDA, in the B2C and B2B segment, revenue growth was supported, in particular, by excellent handset sales and very good results of our operations on the photovoltaic market for B2B customers. In terms of EBITDA, inflationary pressure still outweighs the growth of revenue. The main factors that impact our results negatively include indexation of rental contracts, higher energy prices and inflationary pressure on salaries. As for the Media segment, as Staszek said, in Q2, we saw a turnaround. The segment generated solid revenue from advertising and settlements with cable and satellite operators. And as a result, it contributed positively to EBITDA. A word on the Real Estate segment. Q2 2023 is already fully comparable to 2022 because we started to consolidate this segment in April last year. As you can see, contributors to consolidated results is marginal at the moment. Next slide, please. In Q2, our free cash flow significantly improved and reached the level of PLN 566 million, which translated into LTM free cash flow at the level of PLN 579 million following a weaker first quarter. Of course, we continue to observe pressure from high inflation and high interest rates on our free cash flow generation. This negative impact was partially mitigated by dividends received from Asseco and lower working capital employed in Q2. In particular, there was no further pressure from changes in inventory this quarter. We adjust free cash flow after interest for 2 nonrecurring items this quarter. Net loans granted primarily for the development of our Clean Energy business and refinancing costs paid in connection with refinancing our debt in April and May. At this point, I would like to flag that starting from the third quarter, we will recognize CapEx of the Clean Energy segment. As you know, the development of renewable energy project requires large front-loaded CapEx, so it will weigh heavily on our free cash flow. To give you a better picture, we will present clean energy CapEx separately to show you free cash flow before and after development CapEx. Next slide, please. Looking at the detailed composition of our cash flow for the first half of 2023. I would like to turn your attention to the low ratio of CapEx to revenue. The blended ratio at the group level was 7.9%. Given that CapEx in the Energy segment is going to significantly impact these metrics, we decided to show you the split between segments already this quarter. So 7.8% in the TMT business and 15.7% in the Real Estate. Moving to the right, you have the net effect of our refinancing. In the first half of the year, we had net inflows of almost PLN 2.4 billion from the new SFA, and PLN 1.1 billion from the issue of bonds in January. We paid a little over PLN 850 million for concessions. The most important was the renewal of the 1,800 megahertz band in January. Let me highlight that in July, we renewed our reservation for the 900 megahertz band for approximately PLN 300 million, and we are participating in the 5G auction, which is expected to be resolved before the end of this year. The last item are loans granted. Net of loans repaid in the amount of PLN 210 million. Most of this was dedicated to the acquisition of the [ Drzezewo ] wind farm in June, starting from Q3. Instead of loans related to the development of our Energy segment, you will see the full amount of CapEx used in this segment. We ended the second quarter with almost PLN 3.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents on our balance sheet. Let's move to the next slide, please. Net leverage was at the level of 326 (sic) [ 3.26 ] at the end of June. I have flagged this before, but I think it is important. So I will repeat that I expect the net leverage to increase in the coming quarters because of the heavy investments that we are making at the moment. I think that the turnaround should come at the beginning of 2025. And we expect to start leveraging them. Weighted average cost of debt remains high at 9.5% per annum. This is, of course, mainly due to very high interest rates in Poland. And this factor is beyond our control. On the right side of this slide, we presented the structure and maturing profile of our debt at the end of June. Bonds constitute 25% of our total debt, 75% are bank loans, 18% of our debt is denominated in euro. As you can see on the bottom chart, we have frozen capital repayment under the new SFA until the third quarter of next year. The new SFA matures in 2028 and the new Series D bonds in 2030. We still have some remaining Series B and Series C bonds maturing in 2026 and 2027. I would also like to remind you that we have decided to continue our bond issuance program. And at present, we are contemplating an issue of approximately PLN 500 million in Q3, depending on market conditions. This was my last slide. Thank you. And I will pass the floor to Mirek for a summary. Thank you very much.

I will quickly sum up this quarter, and then we will start the Q&A session. Next slide, please. We are consistently implementing our multiplay strategy in our TMT business. Despite the challenging macroeconomic situation, report growing RPU in all 3 customer segments and a consistently low level of churn. The second quarter was very good in the Media segment. Revenue increased by 5%, and EBITDA increased by 10%. We have successfully refinanced the group's debt on the difficult debt market and we have raised funds for renewable energy and hydrogen projects under our Strategy 2023+. We have already granted loans of nearly PLN 600 million to support the execution of these projects. And I'm very happy that they are finally under our roof and are already contributing to our results in the third quarter of this year. We are consistently developing the complete value chain based on green energy, from production of green hydrogen for logistics and distribution to its using everyday life in the form of green environment-friendly municipal transport. We consistently and dynamically implement our Strategy 2023+ in the area of Clean Energy. And by doing so, we invest in the future of Polsat Plus Group. Thank you. We are now ready to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Okay. So we have the first question from Nora Nagy from Erste. I will read them out one by one. What can we expect in retail segment for the second quarter of -- in second half of 2023? Growth dynamics are slowing down here.

Maciej Stec here. So let me just tell that we are very satisfied with our first half 2023 results, particularly the macroeconomic situation in Poland remains difficult, as you know. Inflation is still very high, energy prices are still very high, and in fact, touched people from January. Interest rates are very high, and our customers have to deal with all these challenges. So the accumulation of all these factors translates into lower disposable incomes and customers are more cautious when it comes to the budget. So in our multiplay strategy, we are fully focused on building value and loyalty in all our customer segments. So as you can see, despite challenging market conditions, we maintain high customer bases, growing ARPUs and low churn, which we are very satisfied. It means that our multiplay strategy works for good times and bad times. So just to answer your question, in the second half of the year, we will be very active. We have prepared new offers and at acquiring new customers and upgrading our current customer base. So we've just announced last 2 days, our new offering. In Mobile segment, we have announced a new offer. This is like an offer for European champions in the volleyball. As far as you know, the volleyball is very popular in Poland and now we are the lead nation champion and volleyball is very popular. So we've just set a new offer, 2-for-1, starting from PLN 59. So it's going to give us like additional subscriptions. We will offer promotional price for PLN 79 package selling it for PLN 69. And here, there is also 2-for-1 offering. So this is the offer for upgrading customers from PLN 59 to PLN 69 and given other -- like people another card. In terms of Polsat Box, we will be also active in the TV segment. So we will offer 12 months for free, for the lowest STV package. It will give us also opportunity just to support people at the first stage of buying the suffer in this difficult times, which we experienced. So then we will present attractive bundle offer also for TV and internet fiber and the mobile starting from PLN 19 for the first 12 months. So it's also just giving people the chance just to survive this difficult times, with 12 months offering. And in the end, we have a big change in our streaming services business offers. We will close, free of charge, at supported service of TV Polsat called Polsat Go, and we will fully focus on development of Polsat Box Go. It will be more clear for customers. So one streaming service from Polsat Plus Group. That's why we will present new packaging, Polsat Box Go called Polsat Box Go Start. And this is like, I can say, very attractive offer because this is like PLN 30 a year. So it's not a mistake. It's PLN 30 a year. It means that this is like PLN 2.5 a month. So it will be a subscription package with a lower number of ads. So this is like partly -- so this is subscription package, but with advertising. So then we will have 3 packages in Polsat Box Go and prepackage Polsat Box Go Start for PLN 30 a year. So then we will sell and upsell Polsat Box Go premium for PLN 30 a month. So this is like package with the premier movies and service and quite a lot of TV channels. And then we will offer also Polsat Box Go Sport for PLN 40 a month. So this is a very big package and there is like all Polsat Sport content -- Polsat Sport channels content, 11 channels content, Eurosport, so -- and Polsat Sport premium, which is like champions league offering inside. So that's what we do. And we really believe this offer should bring us both new customers, upgrade current customer base and build long-term value. So I believe that it's -- it will finally sustain our very low level of churn. So as you can see, we will be very active in our multiplay offering. So it will be just -- offers just to really bring us new customers and upgrade current customer base.

Nora's next question is, do you have a long stop date for the remaining targeted stake in PAK-PCE?

No, we don't have a long stop date as such. However, I don't exclude in the future that we'll be converting the loans that we grant to PAK-PCE into State Capital. So into equity. That would be increasing our stake in PAK-PCE in a different way.

Nora's next question, can we expect the change of covenants given your high net leverage?

As far as the covenants are concerned, when we have renewed our finance facility -- so when we refinance our SFA, we actually have introduced a new set of covenants that is more in line with whatever we are planning to invest, which basically means that covenants allowed by the documentation are higher at the beginning in 2023, 2024, part of 2025, and then they decrease to mirror our -- willing to deleverage the company after we invest in the green field.

We have a question from Kevin Lewis, who says, well done on a robust quarter and developments in Clean Energy segment. One question in relation to the group's debt. Is there a planned time line on paying down drawn balance in the RCF?

No, we don't have such timeline in RCF. So it basically means that first time when we have more money that we need at the moment, we'll be repaying it down.

I don't see any more questions. So I will pass the floor over to CEO, Mr. Blaszczyk.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation in today's presentation of the results of our group in the second quarter of 2023. I hope that we have answered all your questions. I wish you a nice day and see you at the presentation of the results of the -- for the third quarter of 2023. Thank you very much.

Thank you.