Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. ($TCELL)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Polina, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Turkcell's conference call and live webcast to present a discussion follow-up Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] With that, I will now turn the call over to Mr. Ali Taha.

Thank you very much, Jose. Good afternoon, everyone. We delivered a phenomenal quarter. We successfully launched 5G nationwide on March 21. This landmark launches reinforce our clear leadership in mobile. We executed with precision at every stage of the 5k deployment from spectrum acquisition to network rollout from network rollout to marketing in all aspects, Turkcell is the leader. Our Spectrum acquisition was both strategic and efficient. We secured 25% more capacity than our closest competitor creating a network of superior scale and positioning it for long-term demand. Our launch was supported by a powerful go-to-market strategy. To accelerate 5G adoption, we expanded data package allowances fivefold and introduce compelling smartphone campaigns. Our ads featuring global celebrity Shakil loan yield resonate strongly with customers. We improved the real-world power of our network through high-impact use cases. We successfully tested remote driving of a top 10 over 150 kilometers distance. At the same time, we conducted live fittest across Turkey. T1 different cities at live from all the cities, we have 5G and with 5G speeds exceeding 2,000 megabit per second means more than 2 gigabits. No one has that kind of capability. No one has that kind of speed other than Turkcell. We secured the best frequencies, deliver superior network quality and executed the strongest launch campaign. Our market is now more solid and resilient than ever. Next page, please. We started the year with flawless execution across all our domains. We have been the leader in the mobile. We are the leader today, and we will continue to lead the future. By securing 40% of the 5G spectrum in the tender, we further reinforce our long-term capacity dominant. On the fixed side, we are driving value-led growth by promoting multi-gigabit per second fiber offering. Currently, 20% of our customers are on 1 gigabit per second, means 1,000 megabits per second and above plan. Digital business service delivered robust growth through corporate digitization, supported by sustained momentum in data center and cloud services. We further strengthened our balance sheet by securing $1 billion in Maraba financing. This preserves our investment capacity while supporting a healthy leverage profile. Finally, we continue to expand our strategic partnership. We introduced up to 50% discounts on Samsung smartphone support 5G penetration. We also secured a managed service collaboration with swat in the defense industry and a strategic cooperation with HBO Max to strengthen our TV platform strategy. Next page, please. In the first quarter of 2026, our revenues grew by 9% year-on-year, exceeding TRY 68 billion. This robust top line performance was driven by a combination of operational discipline and strategic execution. Key contributors include the strong momentum in digital business services the scaling of our Tecan segment and a high quality subscriber acquisition across both mobile and fixed segments. Group EBITDA increased to TRY 28 billion with a margin of 41.4%. Our bottom line performance strengthened further with net income increasing by 15% to TRY 4.6 billion with disciplined financial management. On the subscriber side, we have 661,000 postpaid net additions. We achieved a great quarter in the mobile number portability market, driven by targeted and segment-based offers. We continue to free subscriber quality and reach content packages to strengthen our leadership. Our data center and cloud business maintains a strong trajectory with revenues increased by 20.8% as we continue to scale our digital infrastructure. Overall, these results once again proved our ability to monetize the broader digital system. Next page, please. Now let's look at the operational drivers behind our performance this quarter. Market competition remained relatively stable. We have 661,000 postpaid net additions in this quarter, our strongest total mobile net additions in the past 14 quarters. This performance reflects the success of our targeted offers and our focus on high-value subscriber growth. The share of postpaid subscriber rose by 4.6 points year-on-year to 81%. Mobile ARPU remained broadly flat year-on-year. This reflects the lagged impact of last year's competitive pricing, our contract-based structure as well as the rapid increase in inflation in the first quarter. As we transition into 5G, we are taking a balanced approach, we are carefully managing pricing to protect our subscriber base, while sustaining our clear leadership in the revenue market share. Our strategy is also reflected in lower churn rates supported by an effective churn policy. Next page, please. Moving on to our fixed broadband operations. We achieved a strong quarter in fixed broadband supported by solid subscriber growth. We recorded 36,000 net fiber subscriber additions, including 21,000 from Turkcell fiber domain. Residential fiber ARPU increased by 9.7% year-on-year, supported by active upselling, pricing actions and the growing contribution of our IPTV offering. We expanded our Turkcell fiber on pets by [indiscernible] 138,000 in the first quarter, reaching a total of 6.5 million home passes in 30 different cities. Our take-up rate reached 41.8%, reflecting effective monetization of our infrastructure investments and the strength of our fiber growth strategy. Next page, please. Digital Business Services had a strong start to 2026, with revenues increased by 64% year-on-year. This performance was driven by higher hardware revenues from large-scale end-to-end corporate projects. We also delivered robust 21% growth in our data center and cloud business. Our system integration backlog remains strong, exceeding TRY 10 billion. Our cumulative data center investment have reached close to EUR 600 million. We are on track to finalize our fit module in Ankara. Our Google Cloud Hyperscale partnership is on track as planned. Next page, please. [indiscernible] , the growth engine of this segment. In this quarter, Paycell revenues increased by 15%, fueled by strong momentum in our post and pay later businesses. Active users of pay later increased by 16%, exceeding 3 million. On the finance side, revenues declined primarily due to ongoing installment limitations. Looking ahead, we see 5G penetration as a natural growth catalyst, a more supportive regulatory environment for installment limits would unlock the full expansion potential of this business. Despite revenue pressure, Finance as net interest margin expanded significantly by 3.6 percentage points to 8.3%, supported by lower funding costs. Balance sheet risk management remains disciplined with cost of risk is at 3.3%. I will now hand over to our CFO, Kamil Kalyon, to walk you through our financial highlights. Thank you.

Thank you very much. Let me walk you through our financial results. We are very pleased with our solid first quarter performance with a 9% increase, our top line exceeded [indiscernible] 68 billion. This growth was primarily driven by TKSE Turkey, which rose 8.6% year-on-year. Our nontelco revenues were instrumental in this performance, particle lease digital business services. Accounting for 12% of our revenue this quarter, Digital Business Services delivered strong momentum through managed services. Our expanded postpaid base and fixed broadband services also provided a robust foundation for expansion. Additionally, our other segments contributed [indiscernible] 0.5 billion to the top line, fueled by the robust performance of call centers and better subsidiaries. The EBITA margin was 41.4%. The increasing share of hardware sales from large-scale integration projects made a significant contribution to top line growth, but we on the overall margin mix. This impact was partially mitigated by disciplined cost management, favorable energy prices and reduced funding costs at finance. Next slide, please. Net income rose 15% to TRY 4.6 billion primarily supported by strong operational performance and robust EBITDA generation. Another key driver was the monetary gain, which benefited from the capitalization of the 5G license and contributed TRY 4.2 billion year-on-year. This year, we are scheduled to make several major payments. We have proactively positioned ourselves to manage them effectively. The payment of the first installment of the 5G license in January amounting to USD 653 million, together with the recognition of future installments at higher swap transactions led to an increase in FX expenses. In addition, the redemption of USD 500 million-euro bond last October and the license payment in the first quarter resulted in a slight increase in net interest expense. OGG delivered a significantly stronger contribution compared to last year. This improvement was supported by effective cost management and pricing policies, while relatively stable euro TL parity also had constrained FX funding costs and the cost of goods sold. Finally, the effective tax rate increased this quarter. This was driven by higher corporate tax expense and deferred tax impact stemming from the absence of inflation accounting in statutory financials. Next slide, please. Now let's move on to CapEx management. In the first quarter of 2026, our CapEx to sales ratio stood at 21.5% and 85% of our operational CapEx was allocated to connectivity businesses, naturally reflecting our intensive preparations for the 5G rollout. On the fixed side, we continued our fiber expansion in 138,000 new homes this quarter. Our base station fiberization has now reached 47%, significantly enhancing our overall network quality at 5G Redis. Data center investments accounted for approximately 5% of our CapEx with construction currently underway for the fleet module it module in anchored data centers. Seasonally, we experienced lower CapEx intensity in the first quarter. However, we expect higher figures in the upcoming quarters, driven by our ongoing investments in renewable energy and data center expansions for Google Cloud. Next slide, please. Moving to our well-positioned balance sheet. The first quarter ended with a cash position of TRY 96 billion. In January, we completed the first installment payment for the 5G license and paid [indiscernible] 3.2 billion wireless usage fee. However, our cash position was significantly bolstered by the successful Murabahas indication. Considering both cash financial assets as part of our overall liquidity, we maintained a stable position quarter-on-quarter. Our current liquidity remains robust providing full coverage for both upcoming 5G payments and all debt maturities over the next 4 years. Driven by the new loan utilization and the impact of significant regulatory payments on our cash reserves, our net debt increased to TRY 49 billion. Consequently, and as expected, our net leverage ratio rose to 0.42x. We expect leverage to remain below the net threshold despite this being a high investment year. Next slide, please. What's the foreign currency risk management. We proactively balanced hedging costs supported by our strong natural hedge position. Currently, 77% of our cash is held in hard currencies, while 88% of our total FX-denominated debt is in hard currencies. To avoid excessive hedging costs during periods of relatively stable FX levels, we have strategically opted to maintain a higher short FX position, supported by $2.8 billion in FX basis and a USD 1.3 billion derivatives portfolio against USD 4.4 billion in FX debt our net short FX position has now risen to USD 1.2 billion. This position reflects cash outflows related to 5G license, FX-denominated CapEx and our optimized use of hedging instruments. Moving forward, we target an FX position of approximately USD 1.5 billion to support our ongoing investments and 5G obligations while maintaining the flexibility to adjust our strategy in line with market conditions. That concludes our presentation. We will now be happy to take your questions. Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Maddy Singh with HSBC .

My first question is on the consumer segment. I think your release rates consumer revenue growth was about 3%. So if you could talk about that, what is the context there? Because your overall revenue growth is high single digit in line with your guidance, but consumer growth is much slower. So if you could talk about the drivers? And then secondly, if you could talk about the pricing action within the mobile segment, how many -- have you revised the prices year-to-date? And how much was the price hikes, what periods or your future plans around the price hike as well? So that's the second question. And then finally, have you seen any impact on your operating costs from the higher fuel prices, energy costs and so on. So any potential impact there? If you could talk about that.

Let me start with the price adjustments. In 2026, segment-based dynamic pricing and offer strategy will be maintained. We're going to closely follow up the competition and act upon it. So we utilize actually AI-powered tools to provide dynamic and customer-specific offers. So we cannot have a mass change in the pricing. But from a segment by segment level, we are doing the change in price differentiation. On mobile side, this year, we applied a 26% price adjustment in January and 16% in April to restore pricing to the expected baseline. This year, did happen. And on the fixed side as well, we apply price adjust broadly in line with the incumbent pricing actions. Accordingly, we implemented an approximate 12% price increase on the shared infrastructure and around 18% on our fiber products in February. For the -- regarding the first question, this quarter, we have lots of great news with the digital business services. And then our digital business services and Paycell has a huge growth. And one of -- currently, we are the biggest digital integrator in Turkey, and we are working very closely with the industry and another public sector. We gained lots of momentum on that perspective. So that's the reason that our growth is higher. Secondly, data center and cloud businesses grew around 21% year-over-year. So that's also helping us our growth. And Paycell also remains a strong contributor to say that it's our main growth engine. It grew 15%. So we have a balance sheet right now. So we have multiple options that we can grow. So consumer segment is still the biggest one, but we have other options that we can have a higher growth.

For the third question, we are closely monitoring the volatility in the global energy market, especially the food prices. while high fuel prices put upward pressure on costs, the actual impact will depend on the conflict situation and the intensity. Currently, it's a little bit early to say, how can I say, estimation for the future, but it depends on the duration of the conflict.

The next question is from the line of Jamal with...

My first question is about the ARPU side. We see a real term contraction Q-over-Q and year-over-year. Could you further elaborate that how should this trend go in the following quarters? And the other question is about the cost side, your participation. We see that it turned to positive net income, around QAR 305 million contribution to your side. What do you expect for the following quarters, at least? And the last question is about the tax rate, effective taxes. How should we assume for the rest of the year?

Thank you, Jan. Thank you very much for the question. I'm going to answer the first one and the talk part and the tax part, Cam is going to answer that. So let me start with our primary objective is to actually maintain a healthy ARPU growth that aligns with macroeconomic indicators. The mobile market currently was characterized by intense competition throughout 2025, as you may know. Consecutively, our strategic churn management and pricing actions taken last year have had a temporary restrictive impact on our current ARPU growth because we already did this strategic churn management systems last year, so we can see the impact this year. For the full year 2026, our target is to achieve ARPU growth that closely tracks the inflation cycle. However, we must remain mindful that any unexpected shifts in inflation dynamics as we can see that nowadays, will create some influence on our real growth trajectory. Our dynamic pricing model will manage this and continue to migration to higher value segments remain our key strategy to ensure ARPU resilience. We implement a strategy that will enable us to maintain a healthy growth. So in 2025 has also affected this year's growth as our ARPU growth is coming with a lag. So we need to always know that there's a lag between the inflation and our ARPU growth because we are doing our contracts, 12-month contracts. So that's the reason that increasing trend in inflation is also putting a pressure on current year's growth. But if you look at the numbers, we have a healthy ARPU for the users. And then also, we don't do any strange operations with the machine-to-machine communication. So our ARPUs are always stable and growth is there.

From the T side, Talk's net loss initially eased starting from the third quarter of 2025, Jamar, mainly supported by change in the special consumption tax space, which led to higher vehicle prices in the company. The new model an also supported the sales momentum in Q4 '25 and 2026 within the light of this fact in Q1, to registered a net income of TRY 306 million. There are various reasons of this profit in the top side. This improvement was mainly driven by the increased benefit of current incentive mechanism with higher vehicle sales. This is the first well, the other one, financial expenses also improved due to relative stability of Euro parity in Q1. Additionally, to continues to be court monetary gains under the inflation accounting due to significant fixed asset base, therefore, when you combine these 3 effects, the company declared a good result in Q1. We also expect the momentum in the coming periods. For the last question, as you know, from the tech side, the termination -- as you know, you might aware, the termination of inflation accounting in accordance with the Turkish tax procedural law led to tax impacts of the indexation effects of accounts other capital items is longer taken into account with another thing, the inflation accounting in the local side is canceled or postponed for 3 years period. Therefore, there are some negative effects of this issue in the deferred tax side. Therefore, since the taxable nature of the motor loss care capital items have been eliminated the effective tax rate has increased naturally. Therefore, higher fixed asset revolution effects are included at the end of year. Termination of inflation accounting impact has been limited from this side. In addition to this, for the inflation accounting, the profit of the term is also increased in the first quarter. Therefore, this is the second reason which we have tax expense in our financials in Q1.

Okay. And do you expect any upward revision to your revenue growth after around 9% growth in first quarter, you have like 5% to 7%.

It is really early to say something about the guidance savings revised because we should -- first of all, we should see the economical conditions in Turkey and the other one, the most important one is the conflict -- duration of the conflict. If the conflict, for example, duration, for example, extended for many months therefore, it's full -- it's still, how can I say, influenced the inflation rate in Turkey. Therefore, we will look at the position of the inflation in the coming future. Therefore, it's really early to say something about this one. I think we should see the Q2 results maybe in the Q3 side, it would be more feasible or more rational to say a revise in the guidance side negatively or positively. It's really too early to say to talk about this one.

And one last thing about your promotion came, it was very, I think, affected at least from a consumer perspective like me, whenever I look at -- see it, it made me smile. So I think from my side, it was very effective. But from your side, do you think it reached crowds in Turkey, any reaction on that? Because really it's one of the best commercial I have experienced during the last several years. So I just want to appreciate it from the consumer perspective. But do you have any major that it had any positive effect on your activities in all around Turkey.

First of all, thank you very much for your comment. It is very -- you are making us happy so that you with these comments. And also, our marketing teams are very happy about the impact. overall, what happened is -- so we missed that kind of great ads in Turkey. And Turkcell DNAs to publish a great ad I think it is going to go back to the future or whatever you can say that a long time before, we didn't have that kind of big grade adds but see true that everybody knows the -- especially the story is very nice. So -- and explaining the 5G technologies that we the very funny and Turkish away, I can say that. So that's the reason that there's a huge interest on that and everybody's 5G speed is just very well aligned with the Turkcell terminology. So it helps a lot. But we are seeing that and we continue on the campaign, especially on the consumer side we have a huge campaign about the fivefold. And so we are waiting for that to be over. And this month and the next month, we're going to see the real impact. On top of it, we just bought a new market, which is called fixed wireless access. It means that we are going to give super ducts -- 5G supermarts and then we have a new ad about it as well. So overall, we are expecting a positive impact, both the campaign and how we deploy for our 5G technology in Turkey.

[Operator Instructions]. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further the questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Turkcell management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Jon. And hopefully, you're just going to see each other in the second quarter results. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us. .

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant evening.