Haci Ömer Sabanci Holding A.S. (SAHOL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, good morning to all depending on your time zone. Welcome to Sabanci Holding Q2 results webcast. As you can see, we would like to welcome you quite different this time. Right now, I would like to draw your attention to our disclaimer for a moment. And now I would like to leave the floor to our CEO, Cenk Alper. Sir?

Thank you, Kerem. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today at Sabanci Holding's Second Quarter Results Call. As always, we hope you and your family, your loved ones remain safe and healthy. We are still having a new wave of COVID all around the world, but hopefully, your families and loved ones remain safe and healthy. While we continue to deliver very strong financial performance, as you have seen from our announcements, which I will touch on shortly, we continue to keep our efforts to deliver our strategic commitments. Since the beginning of 2022, we have maintained our strict focus on executing on our group commitment of the Unite Turkey and the world for a sustainable life with leading initiatives with leading enterprises. Despite the challenging operational and macroeconomic backdrop, we have intensified our efforts on transforming our portfolio into new economy including renewables, climate technologies, advanced materials and digital technologies, while solidifying leadership position in our core businesses. Throughout this period, we benefited from our strong balance sheet, which gave us the confidence and flexibility to mitigate the local and global risks. Orhun and Kerem will touch on these points more in detail in the next slides. After completing a key divestiture from tobacco business, successful acquisition of Arvento, Turk Telecom's stake sales in our banking business and initiating Turkey's first hydrogen usage in the first quarter of 2022, we have continued to invest in our businesses up until today with an increasing pace to support our group's midterm ambitions further. In April, in building products, we continued to pursue opportunities in high value-added and sustainable products, including calcium aluminate cement and decided to increase our production capacity with additional investment by spending $45 million in our [indiscernible] plant. In May, Kordsa, our [indiscernible] business, decided to expand its production line, HMLS polyester yarn to meet the increasing demand of our customers and consolidate our strong position in the market. The new production line amounting $9.8 million is expected to start its operations in the third quarter of 2024 and will contribute 7,000 tons of HMLS polyester yarn capacity to Kordsa Turkey's operations. In digital, as we have communicated before, we have established a new company in Netherlands, Sabanci DX BV and acquired 100% of a digital marketing company, SEM, which is operating in Turkey and 51% of a global OT cyber-security company, Radiflow, which has a wide range of product offerings to the Middle East, U.S.A., European and Asia. We successfully closed deals in May and June by spending $45.3 million. In addition to these acquisitions, we also contributed to the development of the startup ecosystem through our corporate venture capital fund, Sabanci Ventures, while pioneering in transformation of innovative ideas and practices into global value as evidenced by our investments in [ Balochistan, Zek AI ] and [indiscernible] . Since ESG is an important part of Sabanci Group companies -- excuse me, company's daily routine to reduce our carbon footprint. In June, our building materials and tile businesses decided to build solar energy panels with the cooperation of Enerjisa Enerji. I will go more in detail on our ESG developments in the next slide, but these initiatives are, for sure, an integral part of our strategy, an important milestone towards our net 0 emission targets by 2050. In July, we successfully closed on the sale of some of our cement plants with total value of EUR 110 million for network optimization purposes in the Building Materials business units. Moreover, I am happy to share with you that Esarj, our e-charging company won the right to install 495 high-speed charging stations in 53 cities and planning to invest approximately TRY 300 million in the next 2 years to reach 1,000 stations in 81 cities in Turkey. Once these investments were completed, Esarj will be the Turkey's largest and fastest electrical vehicle charging station network, which is in line with our transforming the core businesses into sustainable new growth platforms. And finally, in August, in our tire reinforcement business, Kordsa successfully closed the deal of the acquisition of 60% of Microtex Composites in Italy. With this investment, we aim to increase product diversity in our tire reinforcement business, diversify our markets and also diversify the product range by expanding into automotive and motor sports businesses in Europe. Yes. Coming to ESG sustainability. We also focused on identifying opportunities within the group for further improvement in our sustainability performance and reporting. As we seek to continue reducing our emissions within the scope of our group-wide net 0 emissions target by 2050. Let me share some of the recent achievements of Sabanci Group in sustainability area on Slide 4. And I'm happy to say that there are additional details in our recently published sustainable reports. We reduced our total emissions and its total combined revenues by 20% -- 27% and energy intensity 25% compared to 2020. The ratio of waste reintroduced to the economy was 80%, and for water, the same ratio was 23%. Renewable electricity used was up by 116% comparing to the previous year. Our total environmental investments and expenditures, together with our sustainability related R&D expenditures, reached to almost TRY 1 billion in the last 2 years. Non-bank revenues from sustainability-related products and services amount to TRY 7.7 billion. The proportion of expenditures related to sustainability in total R&D and innovation expenditures increased from 44% to 51% compared to the previous year. We aim to contribute transition to a sustainable economy with operational excellence products and services of our group companies. Let me express what I mean. Brisa Energy initiated a collaboration that will help to reduce the carbon footprint and Enerjisa Enerji installed more than 10,400 solar panels on the roof of the Brisa Aksaray factory. Cimsa also made a major investment both for solar energy and waste management areas. Cimsa is preparing to establish one of Turkey's largest solar power solutions in the cement structure in its Afyon factory with an investment amounting to TRY 52 million. Other investments, which is Afyon waste dried fuel feeding facility is put into service in order to achieve its sustainability goals by reducing the use of fossil fuels. With this investment, it is aimed to prevent the release of 46.2 tons of carbon-dioxide annually. This amount is equivalent to the annual carbon capture capacity of 203,000 hectares of forest area. We believe that transforming -- transformation should not happen just for Sabanci but in the entire economy. One of the important examples is Akbank as it has provided financing worth TRY 27 billion to support transition to a sustainable economy. In addition to these achievements in 2021, 40% of managerial roles and the group level -- at the group level and 44% of the BoDs at the holding level were women, which are higher than EU average. Currently, there are no group companies that have no BoDs without women directors. All these efforts and developments enable us to reach our better performance in ESG ratings. Top rank company in Refinitiv ESG score among investment holdings, first and only Turkish conglomerate in 2022 Bloomberg Gender Equity Index. Moving forward, we will continue to improve our performance and disclose our metrics transparently. Let me now share our financial performance highlights briefly before Orhun and Kerem will be taking you through it more detail. While we continue to keep our efforts to deliver our strategic commitments, they are right on track. We had yet another successful quarter and managed to achieve very strong financial results in the second quarter. Following a successful first quarter, we accelerated our growth, driven by solid performance across all key business units in the second quarter. We have achieved a combined revenue growth of 165% year-on-year in the first half and more than tripling our EBITDA. Consolidated net income reached to TRY 13.6 billion, led by overall improvement in the quality of our earnings. Consolidated ROE reached 33.6%, while our balance sheet and liquidity remained healthy. This is at the core of all our efforts to transform our portfolio in new economy and take advantage of growth opportunities. So overall, we are in a very strong position in the first half of the year, and we maintain our midterm guidance despite very challenging operational environment. We will continue to act on our strategic priorities, transforming our portfolio by investing in new economy such as renewables, climate technologies and advanced materials along with disciplined capital deployment and continuous commitment to our net 0 emissions target by 2050. This, in turn, will enable us to deliver greater long-term value for all our stakeholders. We look forward to sharing more details on progress with you in the coming quarters. Thank you. Now I will leave the word to Orhun for details.

Thank you Cenk. Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. We are very pleased to be with you in another successful quarter. As Cenk has underlined, we have a set of strong financial results. Our revenues have increased by 165%, our EBITDA 242%, this is combined revenues and combined EBITDA for the group, and our consolidated net income was up by 300%. Now the numbers are -- looks great, but a few things we need to underline. One, we believe the earnings quality was well. We have not only grown but also being able to expand our margins in the period. Secondly, as you know, we are reporting in Turkish lira and then the CPI at the end of June was about 79%. So we're also happy that the -- that our results have exceeded the top line inflation, and we have been able to deliver in real terms. Now the other thing, of course, the bank's contribution was quite strong in the period. And we are quite happy with the bank's capitalization and its competitive position in the market. Having said that, we would need to underline that our nonbanking businesses also performed quite well. In that sense, of course, I'm sure you must have noticed that the second quarter performance overall has accelerated in this period, which I'm going to touch base quite soon. Now the nonbank piece, as I said, the reason why we also look at it very closely, is there is also a high increase in energy prices, fuel prices, raw material prices as well as interest rates globally, not only in Turkey, obviously. So therefore, our delivery of about 177% of revenue growth, 113% EBITDA growth and about 192% of net income growth for our nonbank businesses is also quite important for us. In the next page, what I would like to show you is, again, our return on equity has come up to 33.6%, which suggests actually, we have more than doubled our return on equity versus the same period of last year. And at the end of the first half, we have had investments in the period. I'm sure you must have followed, but we still have about TRY 5.5 million of cash. So therefore, we believe we have a very good liquidity position. On the next page, I would like to walk you through the cash flow and indebtedness. Now obviously, if you recall, our first quarter's call, you will see that this number was negative. There is a significant rebound from the first quarter to the second quarter of 2022. Having said that, compared to the first half of last year, the number is significantly down. That's primarily owing to working capital. There are 2 main reasons. One is in our nonbank businesses, industrial businesses as the prices increase, and as our growth have picked up quite significantly, our absolute working capital numbers are increasing. And also on Enerjisa Enerji, I'm sure you must be following, that due to price equalization, the working capital requirements have increased on the retail side of the business, which the Enerjisa Enerji has successfully funded. Nevertheless, it had an impact on the overall free cash flow -- operating cash flow generation. That being said, if you look at our net financial debt to nonbank EBITDA on a combined basis, it stands at about 1.3x, still compares favorably towards the end of the same period of 2021. So we still run a very, very healthy balance sheet. In the next page, if you look at the quarter performance, as you see, our combined revenues were up by 187%. The number for the first quarter was 141%. So as I said, we've picked up acceleration in the quarter. Except for the bank, obviously, the key drivers are coming from the energy businesses. Obviously, energy demand is high and -- especially generation business has a very competitive market positioning with a variety, diverse supply of sources. Therefore, it benefits through this special operations that actually increases its revenues quite significantly. If you look at the industrial business, obviously, on one hand, given the mobility versus the same period of last year has increased. That actually adds up to the demand. So therefore, in addition to the volume growth, obviously, we're quite happy with the revenue growth management initiatives. We are executing thereby increasing revenues. And on retail, obviously -- and both of the businesses, both of [indiscernible] businesses are growing quite well actually and saw that in the second quarter. Altogether, if you look at the nonbank revenue growth adds up to 198%. But for retail, obviously, you also remember that in the second quarter of 2021, there was -- there were closures due to COVID, et cetera. So it's coming off a very relatively soft base in the second quarter of 2022. If we get to the EBITDA, the EBITDA growth was 286%. Again, the first quarter was 192%. So we also picked up growth here. Again, except for the bank, the nonbank business' EBITDA growth was 121%. So solid growth on an absolute basis. Here, obviously, the drivers of growth, again, is energy. And this time, obviously, as I'm sure you must follow Enerjisa Enerji's call that their operating income levels are improving in addition to Enerjisa [indiscernible] . So both contribute to the well-diversified portfolio to the EBITDA growth of our portfolio. On the building materials this time, since part of the -- well, more than 50% of the building materials revenues go through exports, we have a solid volume performance in the first half and through the fuel mix optimization whereby we are increasing our alternative use of fuel to about 25% compared to a Turkish average of 9%. It obviously contributes positively to our cost base at this otherwise challenging period. Industrial, again, as we discussed, also contributes quite favorably to our EBITDA growth in this quarter. Kordsa, as we have discussed, enjoys a wider global footprint. From a competitive point of view, enjoys the fact that its production locations are not concentrated in certain geographic areas and therefore, have been able to supply the market very effectively. That obviously helped the business. And also across the board in industrials, we have seen very disciplined expense management, which obviously compares favorably in terms of EBITDA performance. Now we also need to tell that in absolute terms on our nonbank businesses, you've seen a very positive absolute growth, but you have also seen margins less than last year. This was part of the plan. Given the fact that we were expecting electricity, energy price increases, raw material price increases, this was part of the plan. I can say that we have so far have been able to deliver better than our original plans for 2022. Maybe the exception is our consumer-facing businesses on retail, where obviously, any price adjustments can be done relatively quicker than some of the other businesses we have, thereby reacting much quicker to such cost increases. If you look at the consolidated net income, of course, the increase is about 385%. Again, a very good increase here. On a nonbank -- if you look at the nonbank businesses, the increase in the second quarter was also 237%. So very healthy bottom line growth. On the energy side, again, that's one of the key drivers, the generation business have been deleveraging. And the net debt to EBITDA of the business compared to the previous period has come down a full multiple to about 0.8x at the end of this second quarter. The Building Materials business, as we said, exports was driven the top line and the EBITDA growth of the business. And obviously, as we report in Turkish lira, the favorable currency helps the EBITDA and net income generation of this business. And then the industrials, again, for example, in Kordsa, Kordsa reports in now dollars, as you know, revenues and earnings are in dollars, whereas [indiscernible] in euros and therefore, enjoys the parity changes during the period. So again, a very healthy and strong bottom line generation. Now before I have Kerem walk you through details by business unit, I will need to say we're quite happy with what we have achieved in the second quarter and the first half. But of course, the -- the rest of the year is ahead of us. And although we started the second half of the year quite favorably, we are also aware of the fact that the energy prices, or inflation or raw materials prices could remain high. So we continue to be vigilant in terms of our conduct of our business. Now with that, I'll hand over to Kerem to walk us through the details.

Thank you. Like always, let's start with energy. First of all, we continue to benefit from having a portfolio of businesses in the energy in terms of generation and distribution and retail. In Q2, Energy segment delivered a robust performance as EBITDA growth reached 140%, thanks to both Enerjisa Enerji and Enerjisa Generation contributions. Enerjisa Enerji recorded a strong performance as the distribution segment's EBITDA more than doubled compared to last year in Q2, thanks to higher financial income based on higher short- and medium-term inflation assumptions. Despite lower OpEx and CapEx outperformance due to the impact of higher commodity costs, [indiscernible] grew and collection increased as a result of better fuel pure performance and higher national tariff. As of first half, regulated asset base growth reached 73% year-on-year, mainly reflecting revaluation of opening balance with inflation. In the retail side of our energy business, gross profits increased, driven by volume growth, impact of increase in procurement costs and inflation and to some extent, the base impact in [ globalized ] segments. Higher gross profit in core business and increasing contribution of solar projects supported EBITDA despite higher OpEx spending as a result of high inflation. Financing costs increased, driven by both higher financial debt due to temporary price acquisition mechanism and interest rates and also increased revaluation expenses of bonds and customer deposits due to elevated inflation. Thanks to the positive contribution of strong operating performance, the company's net income increased by [ 117% ] year-on-year, offsetting higher financial expenses. It's important to note regarding the cash flow, now the risks are skewed to the upside given the possibility of [indiscernible] to start supplying volumes for regulated retail segments with the prospect of a recovery in cash flow of retail business in the second half of the year. Looking at the Generations performance. Revenue surged fivefold compared to last year, driven by much higher spot electricity prices as well as weaker Turkish lira and higher energy trading income despite lower generation volume. Even though hydro generation volume increased compared to last year, total generation volumes declined by 4% as a result of efforts to optimize natural gas plants production to reach highest profitable level as far as spark spreads are concerned. EBITDA growth reached 135% year-on-year as natural gas and lignite profitability continued to drive higher spark and [indiscernible] spreads in the Generation business in Q2 due to higher market prices. Moreover, our team's ability on energy trades, which led us to capture market opportunities and higher dispatch contribution, supported EBITDA growth in the quarter. Despite increasing effective tax rate, net income registered solid returns, thanks to robust EBITDA contribution and declining financial expenses. Moving on to Industrials. Segments combined revenue grew by 147%, thanks to steady growth in both businesses on the back of volume growth and well-managed pricing strategy. Higher [ fire ] costs, commodity and energy price hikes, pressured segment profitability. Yet, note that better pricing flexibility as well as strict cost management offset a part of that negative impact of inflationary pressures at the EBITDA level. Coming down to the bottom line, net profit grew by 60% year-on-year, thanks to operational performance pass-through and declining net financial expenses. As the recent developments, in addition to organic growth, our tire and tire reinforcement companies have successfully finalized the acquisitions of our rental and Microtex Composites, as Cenk mentioned in the beginning of the webcast. One positive note after almost tripling from January to May as the impact of pandemic fades, Baltic Dry Index declined by 53% as of August which could be perceived as a positive factor for our exporting companies. On Building Materials, segment's revenue tripled in the quarter, thanks to solid volume and pricing strategy. Cimsa Sabanci Cement BV's revenue contribution reached a material level as the ramp-up process of Bunol plant has completed. Despite fuel mix optimization that led to better energy margin and better OpEx sales ratio, negative impact of higher fuel, electricity and raw material costs resulted in a lower EBITDA margin. It is also important to mention that alternative fuel usage ratio improved even further, reaching 25% compared to 14% last year, which is much higher than Turkey's average of 9%, with the completion of new investment at Afyon plants. As for this segment's bottom line, net income grew by 228% on solid operational performance and lower net financial expenses. Just to remind that the transfer process of [indiscernible] integrated cement factories has completed as of July 28, and Cimsa received EUR 110 million. On retail, segment's revenues increased by 111% year-on-year, thanks to strong contribution from both electronics retail and for retail which was well above average inflation in Q2. Like-for-like traffic in both businesses have shown double-digit improvements due to last year's low base, when there were COVID restrictions, especially in May 2021. More that both companies, specifically electronics retail, benefited from consumers' early purchasing behavior due to the high inflation environment. On the online sales, despite last year's high base, both companies recorded strong performances, as you can see on the slide. Solid top line growth managed to cover elevated operating expenses and operating profitability improved in both businesses. Segments IFRS adjusted EBITDA increased by 284% year-on-year in Q2 and margin improved by 2.6 percentage points. Despite higher financial expenses, segment's bottom line improved with a bit positive contribution from both companies. Financial Services segment is one of our important businesses that once again proved the importance of having a diversified portfolio. The segment's top line growth reached 109% year-on-year on strong performance, both life and nonlife businesses. In the life business, technical income increased by 77% year-on-year, driven by life protection volume growth and pension assets under management. In nonlife business, underwriting results were reversely affected by 30% in trading minimum wage hike in June, which resulted in additional reserve buildup in motor and nonmotor lines at around TRY 100 million. In addition to the negative impact of ongoing increase in inflation and TRY depreciation on claims costs, upward revision to ultimate loss ratio led to an additional reserve increase in the motor line. In non-motor line, underwriting results hit by negative impact of frauds in [ Ankara ] and [ West Lake Sea ] region in June. Consequently, combined ratio deteriorated to 131% in the quarter compared to 102% 1 year ago, yet it showed an improvement from 156% in Q1. Even though non-life business underwriting results had a negative impact on segment's profitability, higher financial income offset its operational negative impacts. Separately, as you may all aware, there will be a capital increase in Aksigorta by TRY 1 billion in cash. It is projected that a total of TRY 720 million cash will be injected to Aksigorta by both Sabanci Holding and [indiscernible] . The reasons for the capital injection are higher-than-expected inflation and negative interest rates. The aim is to keep sustainability of Aksigorta and recover the company's profitability. Finally, moving on to Bank. Despite all the [indiscernible] and challenging market conditions, Akbank's strategic priorities have always remained intact. Akbank is one of the best-positioned banks in this environment with its robust capital, highest among peers, solid liquidity, low leverage, highest level of efficiency, low operating cost base. Akbank's first half net income was up more than 5x compared to last year to TRY 21 billion. Return on assets came at an eye-catching 4.9% and ROE is 47.1% for the first half. Across the board fee performance, market share gains in SME and consumer banking, strategic securities positioning and stellar customer acquisition contributed to solid core operating performance. The bank also further built capital during the quarter, reaching a robust figure of 18%, excluding forbearances, which will continue to provide the bank significant competitive advantage going forward. Due to the soft performance so far, which is well ahead of full year guidance, the bank has revised its guidance for the remaining of the year, resulting in a revised ROE of 50%. I now would like to hand over to our CEO for closing remarks. And then there will be a -- and then we will continue with Q&A. [ JP ]?

Yes. As you have seen from our presentation, actually, we have an excellent first half. Our consolidated ROE has reached to 33.6%, doubling last year's same periods. We have maintained our midterm guidance. We have continued our sustainability and new economic investments. So this is a great progress in the strategic front. Also, digitalization is becoming a new business vertical for us. So really, I would like to thank to all our employees contributing into this. But of course, we have a difficult macroeconomic environment in Turkey and globally. So we will be watching closely all the risks monitoring them and mitigating the risks. I want to thank to our operational and financial excellence muscles. So while delivering all the strategic priorities, we will keep working hard on day-to-day operations and will guarantee the promised results, midterm results of the group companies. Really, thank you. Thank you for your participation. Now we can have your questions. I am traveling right at the moment, so I have to leave the call as soon as possible. So if there are -- if I have -- if you have any questions directly to me, please ask them first, then Kerem and Orhun will try to answer your questions related to financials.

[Operator Instructions] We have a rating question. How do you see the second half outlook for Energy and Cement businesses?

So let me take that question. Energy, as you -- as we have explained to you, the cash in the overall system was a problem. So despite the very good P&L results in bottom line and top line, we had liquidity problems in the whole energy system. We believe that a regulator is working on alternative solutions to support the system. Otherwise, the whole energy system businesses in Turkey will be in danger. We follow the regulator closed and hope to receive a positive impact. But both in Enerjisa Uretim and Enerjisa Enerji, we have strong resilient companies and a portfolio of products. So despite all the negative improvements in energy prices, et cetera, I believe that we can close the year with successful numbers. In cement, it's a question of energy and commerce prices. So far, we could reflect all the ingredients and energy prices to our sales prices. But as the whole world economies are getting slower on growth, we might have a slowdown in the cement market, cement businesses in the second half of the year.

We have another question. Do we have a plan to unlock value in generation business through an IPO or other instruments? Can you please provide total dividend income for 2022?

Orhun, why don't you get this? Yes. go ahead.