VEON Ltd. (VEON) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for our Capital Markets Day. My name is Faisal Ghori, I'm the Head of Investor Relations at VEON. We're very excited to have you here. Before we get started, I would just like to state that we have some disclaimers. We will be making forward-looking statements today, and the usual disclaimers apply. With that, I will hand off to Kaan Terzioglu, our CEO.

Thank you very much, Faisal. So first of all, thank you very much for being here with us. I see very familiar faces. And our shareholders, investors, creditors, industry analysts, researchers, both in this room and also joining us over video. We will be webcasting this event and later on, we will do also videocast. So whenever anyone would like to go back, they can watch and keep us accountable for what we have said. First of all, thanks a lot. Things have changed, some things, but some things never change. And I will start with reminding us about that a little bit. But let me first start with today's agenda. So after myself, laying down our strategy, fueling our growth ambitions for the next 3 years, I will leave the floor for Joop, our Chief Financial Officer, to take us through the financial execution and outlook. Then we're going to have, one by one, our general managers, starting with Aamir from Pakistan, Sasha from Ukraine. We have Gaukhar here, our Chief Financial Officer from Kazakhstan, because our CEO, Evgeniy, has a family commitment. And we have Erik here from Bangladesh, and Andrzej from Uzbekistan. One by one, they will tell about their operations, and they will confirm that we all believe in this growth that is expecting us over the next 3 years. And finally, we will do a fireside chat with Chris. And we also have one more guest, Hasnain will be with us talking about some macroeconomic trends, specifically impacting frontier markets. I hope today will be rich in terms of conversations, and I hope you will see the potential that we are looking at and our ability to execute, looking back to our track record as well as our plans for the future. I mentioned some things changed, and some things never change, they evolve. Let me start with about some changes that are quite important. Last Friday, we were in London in NASDAQ offices, and I want to thank again our shareholders for their support for our new Board. Efficient 7 people Board, all having an equity stake in the company and committed to the success of VEON. Thank you for supporting with your votes and appointing this phenomenal Board. As you can see, our Board is well equipped with what is necessary to be successful in frontier markets. Potential is huge, but only the ones which can manage geopolitical risks and navigate through rough markets can be successful. I feel amazingly well equipped as the management team for that. I also would like to highlight the importance of our founder, Augie Fabela, with an amazing story of establishing this company back maybe 30 years ago. He's here with us today, and Augie, if you would allow me to have you on the Board and basically remind ourselves what we stand for. Augie Fabela, our Chairman.

Thank you. Well, thank you, everybody. Thank you to those online, all of you here in the room. We have 140 people joining us this morning and really thank you for your confidence and trust in us. We've all heard the saying, let the numbers speak. You've heard and seen the performance management has delivered great performance. But you're going to hear today from our global world-class leaders under the, of course, amazing leadership of Kaan, our CEO. And I think you're going to like what you hear. We're doing some amazing things. The headwinds that were kind of holding us back a little bit, they're behind us. We're really excited about going forward. Firstly, as Kaan said, very excited to be back as Chair. It's been 33 years since we started this company. And we have a Board that is absolutely committed. And please know, as shareholders, stakeholders, as people who are friends of VEON, that as a Board, we will be fiercely focused on creating value. That is our job. So with that, thank you very much. Enjoy the day.

Thank you, Augie.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot. Yes, the days of freedom to talk continues with freedom to connect and freedom to enjoy a digital life. Now I also mentioned that we have changes in really about the profile of our company. Over the last 3 years that we have last met, it was November 2021, we were right out of COVID. We didn't know where we were heading. '22 started with an interesting uprising in Kazakhstan, which settled down, and then the war. And at that time, our company's profile was totally different. As part of our profile, we had Russia, actually quite a developed market, investment grade with relatively low single-digit growth. Our decision to exit Russia and successful execution of it, has changed the profile of our company. Today, we might be more compact as a company. To be precise, pretty much half the size we were before. But as a company, we are growing much faster and we have a phenomenally healthy balance sheet as part of the deleveraging that we have executed. I will come back to some of these numbers. But still, I would like to highlight a couple of things. When I talk about the higher and faster-growing company, look at the Q1 results. This is the 4 months, $1.3 billion of top line for the first 4 months of the year, including April, 8.6% U.S. dollar growth and almost 13% local currency growth. Now please keep in mind that we have not normalized these numbers for the cybersecurity impact in Ukraine. Actually, we are missing $46 million of top line and $47 million of EBITDA. Put that into consideration, we are growing almost towards the 20s, local currency, and double-digit growth in U.S. dollars. To be precise, mid-teens. So I'm extremely happy that our new compact company with a healthy balance sheet is very well positioned to take on the next stage of development. 520 million people. Pakistan in the new VEON is almost 35% of our business. 72 million subscribers. And as you can see, we developed new pillars of success and stability, like Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan. All of them gaining not only market share but also wallet share. Please have a look to these numbers, 160 million SIM customers, traditional telecom customers. Look below, almost 30 million financial services customers, almost 30 million entertainment customers, almost getting 40 actually moving onwards. We have 4 million customers who do their doctor appointments over our platform on Helsi in Ukraine, and Sasha will talk more about that. But as we move on, we have an amazing market to harvest value. Now I mentioned some things change. These are the things which are changing. We have a new governance. We have a different type of a profile, but some things never change. What never changes is our commitment to you in terms of creating value. And let me remind you, going back to the ambitions we shared with no edits, no changes back in the Capital Markets Day in 2021. We practically said we can grow this company 10% to 14% on a CAGR basis for the next 3 years. We said if our assumptions are right, this would correspond to single-digit U.S. dollar revenue growth as well, 3 percentage points of EBITDA and margin expansion, we will get below 20% CapEx to sales ratio and we will reach 70% 4G penetration. Now keep in mind, this was the profile of Beyond with Russia, a developed market embedded. And clearly, while Bangladesh was around 12% 4G penetration in those days, Russia was already at 50%. Now where are we today after 3 years? I'm very happy to say that the performance we have delivered over this time brought us 15.4% CAGR on revenue growth and 14.8% growth on EBITDA, on average, for the 12 quarters that we have passed. Yes, we have not made the single-digit dollar growth. But keep in mind, the black swans we had during this time, including the war, including the fact that U.S. Federal Reserve increased interest rates from 0 to 5.5%. Now even with that in mind, if you would take Ukraine out of this equation, we actually delivered 4% CAGR growth on a U.S. dollar basis. And we have delivered actually the 3 percentage points of EBITDA expansion because Ukraine still continues to be an extremely profitable business in terms of EBITDA, but we moved from 67% EBITDA to maybe 57% EBITDA. And that has made that impact. So flat EBITDA margin, 18% CapEx to sales ratio, and we have, as of Q1, 62% of our customers enjoying 4G. Again, if you exclude the impact of Russia, this is an outstanding result. And 1 out of 4 of our customers enjoying our digital services, either financial services, entertainment services or education and health care offerings that we have brought into the marketplace. Now again, our commitment to grow this business and create value continues. And first, I'm going to tell you our next 3 years, what we have in our minds. And then I'm going to share with you how we are going to achieve it. But before going to the next 3 years, let me share with you that this performance has been actually quite balanced across our portfolio. Before the war, Ukraine used to be our top highest growing operation. Not anymore, but still Ukraine has delivered 7.7% CAGR over the last 3 years. And I'm so happy to see Ukraine back growing double digit, starting from actually April and meeting their targets. As you can see, we have companies who have achieved: Pakistan, 17.3%; Bangladesh, 10.8% Kazakhstan, 21.7%; Uzbekistan, almost 21% CAGR in the last 3 years. Now you're going to hear today, one by one, why they plan to continue this ambition and take it on notch higher. Let me go back. This is our ambition for 2027. Before I start going over how we are going to achieve this, let's look at those. Local currency growth of 16% to 19%. EBITDA growth of 19% to 22%, again, creating a 3 percentage point margin expansion. By 2027, we expect to generate $900 million to $1 billion free cash flow. And again, we will refer it back later on, but we expect, including even Ukraine which has recently relaxed its capital controls for 2025 onwards, we expect no restrictions in upstream. And it's not about 4G penetration anymore. 4G is the basis, the table stakes, that allows us to be a player in digital space. We expect 1 out of 2, not 1 out of 4, 1 out of 2 of our customers enjoying a service from us beyond connectivity, either financial services or entertainment or education or health care. And that's the ambition we have. Now let me also remind you, when we expressed our ambitions 3 years ago, what was the strategy we shared with you that we would execute. It had -- if you remember, 2 important pillars. Pillar number one was a value proposition for our investors and, frankly speaking, also creditors. And pillar number two was the customer value proposition. Let me start with one. We are not a traditional telecom company. We don't believe in vertically integrated telecom model. And we committed to you that we would be an asset-light company. That's why actually, over the last 3 years, we have sold some of our tower businesses and we have segregated and created a tower company structure in every single one of our operations, and we are in talks to find the right independent tower company operations to take them over. Over time, we did transactions. We started with Russia back in 2021 for $1 billion tower sale. We continued in Bangladesh. Recently, we signed an agreement for a fiber passive infrastructure company also to be monetized in Kazakhstan. You may have seen it for Bangladesh, tower was $100 million. It was 1/3 of our portfolio, and TNS plus about $140 million. Why is it important to create this? Because infrastructure companies, especially tower companies, have a completely different type of investors, investors who are looking for very predictable bond-like returns and we would like to tap into those returns. And we don't believe that any telecom operator can actually survive having exclusive infrastructure. These assets are for multi-tenant use. That's why we believe it is best interest of us to be asset-light, and this will evolve as I will explain to you, our next stage. Let me move to the other side, digital assets. Today, we have entertainment platforms like Toffee and Tamasha with tens of millions of users. We have a mobile financial services arm in Pakistan, another one in Kazakhstan, which actually reaches out to millions of people. To be precise, 17 million people in Pakistan and almost 5 million people in Kazakhstan. They are the crown jewels of fintech businesses in these countries. We again believe that these type of digital assets is a different business model, and they have specific investors. That's why we are keen to make sure that as we move into these businesses, we create value by bringing the right investors as well together with us. Let me go to the digital operators or the traditional telecom companies' future version. Maybe VEON, as a collection of emerging market operators, could not be fitting into the appetite of certain type of investors. But Banglalink in Bangladesh, Jazz in Pakistan, Kyivstar in Ukraine, Beeline in Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, these are the blue chip companies in their respective markets. Every Pakistani, every Bangladeshi, every Kazakh wants to own a piece of these assets, and we cannot deny them from this right. And we will play our role as the largest enterprises in these countries to make sure that capital markets evolution continues. And you will see us also active getting investors locally for these assets. Divest, grow with partners and IPOs in local markets. That was our investor value proposition, and we are progressing on that. It will evolve, and I will explain you how it will evolve as well. When it comes to customer value proposition, Again, a traditional telecom company has a 32-minute relationship with its customers. On average, around the world, you can check your records as well, we make 16 minutes of calls, we received 16 minutes of calls, up and down. On average, this is always the same. The value you can create for your customers and importance of you, relevance of you, depends on the relationship you have. As a company, we decided that this 32-minute relationship is not enough. We have to be relevant to our customers every single minute of the day. To be precise, there are 1,440 minutes in a day. And that's our objective. DO1440 stands for Digital Operator, providing meaningful services every single minute in a day. How do we do that? We define our adjacent markets, financial services, entertainment, education and health care. We develop world-class applications, utilizing Pakistan's data in Pakistan, developing digital services by Pakistani engineers, creating jobs, paying taxes locally. And this model, with the right messaging with the government, where our success is based on. We are not a company which aspires to sell any more number of gigabytes, number of minutes, number of SMSs. We want to provide our customers with meaningful digital services like TV, like AI, like financial services, education platforms, health care platforms. That's when you become relevant. And that's what fuels our growth beyond the general demographic dividend. Last 3 years was an amazing success in this area. As I mentioned to you, 160 million telecom customers. 111 million as of, actually, March. And 100 million as of April, because whenever there is cricket games, it may increase and decrease, but the trend is 40% growth year-on-year. 111 million users end of March has consumed our digital services. Amazing potential for us to not to gain only market shares in the traditional business, but gain wallet shares and expand our harvesting capabilities. We will talk more about this. We will go in detail country by country how we are executing on that. So don't be surprised if actually you see us as a company who focuses on enterprise and consumer services, but happens to have a telecom license. There are 2 things which I value in telecom business when you have a license to operate. It gives you an incredible capacity to acquire customers at very low costs, and it gives you an unbelievably effective distribution platform. We take those 2 important strengths and we apply it in every adjacent market. And that's not a plan, that's actually what we did in the last 3 years that brought us here. Now I think we talked quite a lot about what brought us here, and thank you for trusting us by allowing us to execute. What will take us to the next step? Allow me to explain how our strategy will evolve. First of all, on the passive infrastructure side, consider this mission to be completed over the next 24 months. We still have 35,000 towers and we will find the right owners for that. Good unlocking of value there. This element is the next infrastructure. As we divest ours, we still believe that Net-Co, the active component of our network comes into play. Again, I will tell the same. No telecom company in the world can afford to have exclusive networks. And it is important for us to be prepared for that. You will see us ringfencing and creating Net-Co companies in every operation. And you will see us and monitor us talking to our competitors to create combined Net-Co companies to enable another level of effectiveness. While we do that, the services component will evolve. And services component will not be only about providing telecommunication services. Telecommunication services, financial services, education services, health care services, entertainment services, services for specific segments from small businesses to farming industry to retail, and these services will be the basis of our revenue-generating capacity in every country. And finally, technology companies. Don't be surprised if I tell you today, we are the #5 largest technology company. I'm not talking about telecoms, I'm talking about software engineers. Gaukhar, you'll share the number, it grows every day. But I left -- I think last time, it was 600. Maybe now you will tell us 800, I don't know. But we have 800 software developers in [ KazCo ], which is a technology company in Kazakhstan. What do they do? They develop our digital services. What they will do, they will do system integration for our enterprise customers. They will provide cloud services for our enterprise customers. And these businesses will generate actually fueling growth to consumer services and enterprise services as well. We talked about the DO1440, how we attack the adjacent markets. Let me share with you what I see in the next 3 to 5 years to come. The world of smartphones and apps on smartphones will probably come to an end. Generative AI will bring a totally different type of interface. I think maybe Elon Musk's vision of having implants is not going to happen in the next 5 years, but be ready for [ on-plants ]. Maybe it is a small box you will carry with. Maybe it is glasses. And the interface will be all about ability to convert artificial intelligence into augmented intelligence. That's why we are heavily working in every country in terms of creating local language models and making sure that we are ready for that. From digital services that we provide, of course without eliminating them, we will evolve also in being and augmented intelligence providers in local languages, including Urdu, Bengali, Panjabi, Uzbek, Kazakh, not the languages which are currently available in research libraries. That's why we need to do the hard work to get there, and we are doing those as we speak. And imagine a moment where we are not only a digital operator, but we deliver value propositions for our customers in terms of offering them the ability to become the best doctor in Dhaka in the world. The best teacher in the world actually working in Islamabad, because we will create the co-pilots for them, specifically for their jobs in their local languages. And the offers we will have will not be a number of gigabytes, it will be offering them a better version of themselves, an unbeatable offer and value. And only and only licensed operators will be able to play in this world because it will be so nationally important and strategic. So as we move on, on the customer value proposition, you will see us embracing in addition to Digital Operator strategy, AI1440, augmented intelligence for every single minute. Now let me share a couple of things explaining you why I believe a growth of 16% to 19% CAGR is possible. Let me start with this picture. 520 million people living. Today, 1 out of 3 is our customers. 1 out of almost 4 is our digital service customers. But the reality is only half of them are connected to the Internet. We are not living in Paris, London, Bucharest even. We are living in countries only 1 out of 2 people are connected to Internet today. We are going to be seeing 126 million new mobile broadband connections. And when we talk about Internet, the path to connect to Internet is true mobile. There's no fiber in most of our operations. 1/3 of the people has never banked, and 1/3 of the people has never utilized the mobile payment capability. And this opens up an incredible opportunity for us because this shows, actually, that with the customer acquisition capabilities we have, with the effective low-cost distribution capabilities we have, we are here to embrace the opportunities in the adjacent markets. And we already see the results around that. And let me give you a couple of other statistics. Smartphone penetration, 57% in Pakistan, 53% in Bangladesh. You think these people will buy smartphones? I think yes. Think about the opportunities for retail business. Think about the opportunities for buy now, pay later type of services. And think about the opportunities when they understand that this device can connect them and this will increase their consumption by 13x. And 13x increases for the ones who will move from a voice-only player to a multi-play customer. And then there will be additional new players into the marketplace. Now we enjoy the demographic dividend still. Our country's growth, GDPs of these countries, despite all sorts of black swans that we have seen, continue to grow. And this organic growth is the #1 reason why we believe that this growth can lead to where we are aspiring to. The second part of this growth, accelerator number one, is the multiplay impact. We do not look to our customers as an average. We don't look to ARPUs. We don't look to churn in the way that everybody else communicates. We actually analyze the consumer behavior. We have customers who use only our voice services over a Nokia 2110 phone. Well, we still have them. Actually, we have about 40 million of them -- and then we have customers who utilize our voice and data services, we call them double-play. And then there are customers who consume a digital service. The revenue potential in between a voice-only customer and a multiplay customer is almost 3x. When we put the fixed networks in place, it can go up to 8.7x, like in Kazakhstan. And this is why we are committed to the DO1440. Digital Operator strategy allows us to grow the revenue potential, not only by generating more revenues but also driving consumption and reducing churn. You can see the statistics in a minute about how that actually plays in. But remember, in Q1 '21, we had only 15 million or less than 12% of our customers who were utilizing our digital services. Now 1 out of 2 does. From 1 out of 8 to 1 out of 2. And this growth is going to be continuing, and that's why we expect even an acceleration over the normal organic growth. Market share gain is not enough for us, we are after wallet share. Distribution advantage is what will enable us to access the adjacent markets, and we will focus on creating offers which cannot be compared. Price competition is not the game that we are in. We have a price control, we enrich our offers by unrefusable value propositions. I mentioned to you about the impact on the ARPUs in Pakistan, a voice-only customer creates one, a multiplay customer who enjoys just cash services, Tamasha services, creates 3.2x of that. And when it comes to churn, it's almost 30% less. In markets where we have fixed networks as well, look at the churn rates. They don't go. A customer who has a fixed network and a mobile network from us, who has an entertainment service embedded and mobile financial service embedded, is a lifetime customer, as you can see in Kazakhstan. And look at the revenue potential, a single voice customer versus a customer who is embedded to our services. And this is why I truly believe that on top of the organic growth that the market offers to us, we are able to take it to the next level. This is our portfolio today, 100 million end of April, as I mentioned. In March, we had a cricket game. Now in June, we have another cricket world championship, these numbers will probably be 120 million by the end of this month. But look at the segments, entertainment, financial services, health, learning or education, super apps and enterprise services. We monitor and develop all these different brands and value propositions. None of them are captive. So every application we do is open for everybody in the country. That's why we have almost 20 million of our customers, which has never been our telecom customers enjoying our services, which will, in the future, be our customers because they will understand the privileges of watching TV service over the platform that they provide telecom. In certain countries like Pakistan, we transact today 7% of GDP. Over our financial services platforms, we transacted $26 billion and 70 billion minutes have been consumed on our platforms. All the reasons why we believe that growth of 16% to 19% in the countries, on average, is possible. I mentioned to you about the next generation of the customer value proposition, and that's going to be AI1440. We will work with every single country, every single research institute. We started already in Kazakhstan, putting local language models in countries especially where there is a research library problem and create specific language models so that we can be relevant to our customers. You will hear many operators talk about AI. And you will hear them talking about how they intend to use AI and save money. Shame on us if you don't do that, of course. Shame on us if you don't use AI to provide customer service or do network optimizations. We have been doing that for a long time. But the real value will become how we impact the lives of our customers. That's why our products will focus on generating real impact and value. Best doctor in Dhaka, best teacher in Islamabad, best farmer in Lahore. Best small business operator in Astana. That's our objective. That's what we mean by augmented intelligence for every single minute in a day. Now let me continue on the investor value side, because we have a lot of value to unlock. And let me start explaining what I mean by that. Infrastructure, digital operators, digital assets. Again, the 3 business models that we operate in every country. And we have to make sure that we unlock value in every single piece to create shareholder value. How are we going to do that? We still have 37,000 towers. We are committed in execution of the asset-light strategy when it comes to tower sales. We are going to create Net-Cos, companies managing our active network, both fiber and mobile networks with the license and the spectrum ownership. And we are going to be seeking [ it fresh ] in every country that we operate, okay? Here, we create cash. Here, we reduced CapEx, maybe to the extent of 50%. No more 18%, 17% CapEx to sales, right? Because you share the network with your competitors, an incredible way of creating value. We are already in talks in some of our countries, and we actually even announced it in Bangladesh, to create this type of joint Net-Cos to serve better the country supported by the country regulators. Consumer services from entertainment, financial services, education and health care, we believe we are there to serve the customers in the way that they deserve in frontier markets. Our customers are underserved. They don't get banking, they don't have proper retail. We are there to provide them those services. And with our low-cost acquisition capability and distribution potential, I believe we will be #1 or #2 in every one of these adjacent markets. Enterprise Services. Yes, you may say there's hyperscalers everywhere, how are you going to be at Amazon and Google. The answer is in Pakistan, Garage exists, not Amazon. Pakistani government will trust Garage, not Amazon or Google. And we will make sure that we will be #1 or #2 cloud provider in every market. We are going to utilize our advertising technology capabilities. Andrzej will talk about this more. We already have the sell-side and buy-side advertising markets. that we already integrate into our entertainment platforms. Keep in mind, we are the biggest entertainment platform in Bangladesh, in Pakistan. There is advertising space in there. Which advertising is more valuable, the big screen advertising which nobody knows who is watching; or the small screen advertising, which we can precisely target for? We are already seeing significant advertising revenues in all the markets. And technology companies, not to only serve the expectations of the government or the corporate government relationships. No, these countries require technology companies, system integrators, cloud services. And again, you're going to see us being #1 or #2 in every one of these areas. Now why it is important? You may not be seeing the last line, these 3 buckets, they will all be investable entities. We will go after IPOs, as I mentioned to you in the countries, but we will be seeking also investments for our technology companies, enterprise service companies and digital service companies. Investable entities, IPOs, create cash, cut CapEx and cost, create investable entities. I believe this blueprint for unlocking value will be one of our major success drivers over the next 3 years. Now maybe I talked a lot, but you will hear hopefully the same messages from my general managers from the countries. And in today's agenda, I want first Joop to give you an overview about the financial execution. We will have Hasnain to come over and share with us the macroeconomic trends in our region. Then we'll have Aamir talk about Pakistan. Sasha will give us Ukraine. And we will have Gaukhar, Kazakhstan; Erik, Bangladesh; Andrzej, Uzbekistan, and we will end today with a wrap-up and a Q&A session. Thank you very much for listening to me, and I wish you a very productive day. Joop, please join me.

Thank you, Kaan.

The last 3 years was not very easy for our company. But nothing is so easy for us, we have to a little bit work harder. But congratulations for landing an Airbus 380 on an aircraft carrier successfully. Please? Thank you.

Thank you very much. Thanks, Kaan. My first Capital Market Day, I hope it will not take another 3 years to get one. Hope to see you earlier than in 3 years' time. I will give you an outline how we grow and how we create shareholder value. We maintained laser-focused on optimizing our capital allocation. We grow by our fair value pricing. That means that we enable our customers with tools, giving us the opportunity to reprice price with inflation and GDP growth into account. A very important part of our strategy. And also with run lean operations in European companies, but also at the center. As we communicated with you earlier, our run rate of the center HQ is round about $85 million and we have around about $80 million interest burden after we repaid a big part of our debt. So we run with around about $160 million. Big improvement after our reorganization last year. In combination, where Kaan mentioned the organic growth part, the excellent growth with our DO1440 strategy. And our strategic transactions, our strategic activities, we will be able to grow shareholder value. With our strategic activities in looking value, we talked about selling towers, IPOs, really optimizing our organization. That combination will bring us to optimize our total shareholder value. We will optimize it in such a way that we can deliver the growth to ourselves. Good to know that management, all the management you will see on stage today, but also the executives who will not see and top management in the group, are rewarded in such a way that they also feel the pain and the benefit of being a shareholder. Their reward is also based on shares. We have skin in the game. Over the last quarters, we have been listening to you. We've listened to your ideas. We have listened to your thoughts, wishes, sometimes also demands. You shared with us that you want to be part of the growth and you want to see us being a growth stock. Others of you told us, we want dividend. And other said, you will have to start the share buyback. These are all things we take into account, and we will come up with ideas to let you share in the growth of our company. We know it's important not only for you but also for ourselves, we will come up with a planning in that sense. In addition to the growth story, we also are optimizing our balance sheet. Over the last years, we did not attract new capital, new debt. We really paid debt, a lot of debt, based on selling part of our assets. And here you see the overview of companies we sold to repay the debt. Large amounts, Algeria of course, but also don't forget Russia. Selling Russia led to a much smaller company, but much fast-growing company. And as a result, you'll see how we deleveraged from more than $7 billion debt to $2.7 billion gross debt, $2 million net debt. And we deleveraged to 1.5x. Strong performance focused on optimizing our capital and our debt structure. Going now to our numbers, Q1. You see growth numbers, 11.6% total revenue growth. In local currency, 6.6%. Kaan already mentioned, if we would include the cybertech impact in Ukraine, we had to add $46 million. That will bring us to 20.5% local currency growth, 15% dollar growth. But it will also bring us to a company close to $1 billion of revenue a quarter. Don't forget, we are an $11 million revenue company a day. At the end of this day, we've earned $11 million. Included in the overview, you see the impact of FX differences. Over the last years, there were significant. Kaan showed you negative dollar-related revenues impact. We see now in those coming first months that we really have tailwinds from the FX impact. That's a good sign. On EBITDA, same story line. You'll see the growth, 5.1%, plus 2%. If you would compensate, if you would normalize for Ukraine, it would go to 17.3% and 12% growth in the quarter. Good growth numbers are expected to grow further in that sense. Same story line, you see the flow, you can see also that the impact of FX compared to last year is significantly smaller in that sense. Going to our balance sheet, our debt position. As I mentioned, going back from $7 billion to net debt of $2 billion. A cash position of $630 million in total, at a center, $260 million. Good to understand that all our operating companies are fully self-supporting. We don't send money from the center to our operating companies. Included in the numbers is our RCF cancellation. We repaid and canceled our RCF. Very important step for ourselves, again, to optimize our debt position. And as you are aware, last month, we asked for consent for our bonds to do with the late filing of our financials and also changing all for new bonds because of our bond position in the group ourselves. We've received overwhelming positive reactions on our bond consultation. And we would really like to thank you all because we've been part of the whole process. Great results and happy that we were able to continue with the process and have been very successful in that sense. Lastly, I would like to share our strong balance sheet, but also the growth ambition we've got going forward. You'll see that -- and we've mentioned before, you see that our debt average leverage should go to below 1.5x. With that, good growth of the company. We really like to have a maturity of our debt longer than 4 years -- 4, 4.5, 5 years. Also that we mentioned it before. And we think that our currency should be below 50% if you talk about the dollars. You know we are deleveraging. It means that as a group we deleverage. At the center we deleverage, and we are leveraging up in the operating companies. There, we will increase our debt, reduce it at the center. So we have a total different mix in that sense if you compare dollars and local currencies. Repeating the ambition, as mentioned by Kaan, going forward, we feel very strong about the CAGR, 16% -- 19% CAGR revenue in the coming years and EBITDA around 20%, and we will do everything we can to deliver the $1 billion cash flow in '27. The overall combination of things that will help us focus on delivering the growth, on optimizing our balance sheet, deleveraging our balance sheet and creating shareholder value in a way that will also be very helpful for yourselves. Thank you very much. Thanks.

Joop, thank you very much. I love the way you simplified that we are an $11 million daily revenue company. Beautiful. We create $11 million revenues today, $5 million EBITDA, $1.5 million cash every single day. The question is, how do we make that $1.3million $3 million a day? So looking forward to that. Thank you very much. Now let me Hasnain. Is he here? Here he is. Hasnain, thank you very much for joining us. One reality that we have, we are in frontier markets and frontier markets have a different type of risk and return balance. And Hasnain, thanks a lot for joining us, giving us your macroeconomic perspective where we are heading. Please, let me give you the slide?

Thank you very much, Kaan. And good morning, everyone. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation to share my views. My name is Hasnain Malik. I have been in investment research for about 30 years now. Over half of that in emerging markets. And for the last 10 years, I've been at a firm called Tellimer, which is a company that exclusively focuses on emerging and frontier market investment research. So there are 3 things I really want to address and talk about in this session. The first is the bad news, and we've heard illusions to this already, which is the crisis that's been suffered not just globally, but in some of the markets that VEON addresses over the last 5 years. That's the bad news. The good news is actually in most of those markets, there has been a response. There's been a policy response. There's been a degree of a course correction. And the optimistic message is, I'd argue, we are on the way to some sense of recovery in almost all of these markets. Crisis, globally, we've all lived through this. COVID, the Russia-Ukraine war, Kaan alluded to the fastest rise in risk-free rates or U.S. Federal Reserve rates that we've seen in a generation. And of course, the ever-present friction between the 2 strongest countries in the world, the largest countries, the largest economies, the U.S. and China. And that's had an impact. That scared the economic pie available to anybody addressing the markets that we have in front of us here. And this is simply an attempt to capture in data the sort of damage that we've seen to the economies in these different countries. To explain in the dark blue parts of these bars, that is a comparison of how real GDP growth has progressed over the last 5 years compared to the forecast that were being made in 2019. So before we went into this round of crisis, how much worse has real economic growth been. And you see it's been pretty damaging, 5% to 10% across most of the markets and almost 40% less growth than expected. Not a 40% shrinkage in the economy, 40% less growth than expected. And those are in real GDP terms. But of course, most people who invest in stocks, look at dollar returns. And in these markets, that's been compounded by significant FX erosion, depreciation of currencies, particularly in Pakistan and Ukraine. And if you look at those global crises in Pakistan, you've had a change of government, the impact of very high commodity prices where Pakistan is a net importer of things like food and fuel. In Ukraine, obviously, we've seen the conflict. In Kazakhstan, we saw a generational change in the political system, a long-standing group centered around the former President Nazarbayev, removed in the course of which there were substantial mass protests and that led to a local crisis of sorts. In Bangladesh, we've seen relative political stability, but remember, Bangladesh is an economy geared heavily towards the garment export industry. That industry renegotiates its wages with workers on a centralized basis every 5 years. And towards the end of last year, that negotiation became pretty fractious. And in line with Pakistan, Bangladesh is also a big importer of commodity, fuel and food. And then Uzbekistan as well has suffered, to a degree, from the fallout from what's been going on in Russia and Ukraine. So global crisis, local crisis, genuine economic scarring, output that won't be recovered quickly. But now the good news, there has been a policy response. There has been, to a degree, a reset. All of these governments and these political and economic systems have been tested by these crises and they have reacted. So if you look at Pakistan, there is again an establishment of an equilibrium relations between the military and civilian arms of government. If you look at the economic policy, Pakistan has very clearly corrected course on fiscal policy, why deficits have been narrowed. The IMF program and IMF relations, which have been blown off track 3 years ago are now back on track. We just had the end the successful completion of a program at the start of May, with all the right noises coming out of the IMF for the potential for a follow-on much larger program in the next couple of months. In Ukraine, if we compare where we are right now to the early days of this conflict, substantial territory has been regained, and most importantly, a very significant flow of financial assistance has now been established, tested and reestablished. And we'll talk about that more. In Kazakhstan, as I said, there's been a sea change in the political economy of Kazakhstan. Responses have occurred in the course of those mass protests. What came out of that was a set of political reforms that Kazakhstan has been waiting for, for 3 decades. And in Bangladesh, in the face of much tougher commodity input pressure, finally Bangladesh has moved its macroeconomic policy to ones that are much more responsive to market forces, whether that's around how it treats its currency or its interest rate policy. And again, Bangladesh also has established policy anchors around its economic framework that are being supervised under an IMF program. There is already plenty of evidence that this reset is having an impact on the economy. So here, what I've charted, using 5 different metrics, is what the outlook is for 2024 and on these different metrics compared to the worst point over the last 5 years. And the basic message here is the worst has passed. So if, for example, you look at GDP growth, there is a range of, excluding Ukraine, 3% to almost 10% faster growth expected this year than where we were at the worst point of the crisis over the last 5 years. If we look at inflation, take the example of Pakistan or Ukraine, almost 20 percentage points lower inflation expected this year on average compared to the worst point of the last 5 years. If you look at fiscal balance, take Kazakhstan as an example, 5 percentage points of GDP improvement in the fiscal balance this year compared to the worst point of the last 5 years. For dollar-based investors, one of the most important metrics, current account balance. Again, look at Pakistan, in the midst of incredible pressure from food and fuel inflation globally, 3.6 percentage points of GDP, stronger current account balance this year than we've seen at the worst point of the last 5 years. And we see something similar in Bangladesh, to a lesser degree, both in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. And the most critical issue, which is how much cash do you actually have to facilitate FX transactions, FX repatriation, to worry less about the risk of capital controls. Well, in Pakistan, foreign reserves have increased in percentage points by 135%. They have more than doubled. Same in Ukraine, almost the same in Kazakhstan, much more liquidity to support any foreign company operating in those countries that wishes ultimately to repatriate the returns it's making in those countries. And that's my message that we have seen, policy responses that are both, in nature, political and economic to this round of crisis. These countries haven't simply stood still in the face of these global pressures. And so now some more optimism on the outlook. The outlook short term is, very simply put, high nominal growth in the economic terms across all of these countries for the next couple of years. Now if you look at this chart, again, there are 2 shades to the bars. There's dark blue and light blue, dark blue is real GDP growth, light blue is average inflation. Of course, you would want as much of this to be driven by the dark blue, by real GDP growth. But then if you are operating in countries where competitive intensity is if not benign, at least manageable, it should improve your ability to match your pricing a little bit more to inflation than maybe in other sectors or other countries. And if what you're providing is a product that is very much a consumer staple, that reinforces your ability to potentially match macro inflationary pressures. So if you look at nominal growth rates, almost -- over 20% in Pakistan, 10% to 15% in all the other countries. Again, we come back to the biggest risk for a dollar-based investor, which is FX rate risk, currency risk. The crisis has passed, but there are still pressures in, I would say, at least 2 of these markets, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Now if you look at the case of Pakistan, the good news is there's still a great deal of prudence in the way Pakistan is managing monetary policy, almost a positive 5% real interest rate. Real interest rate is the policy rate minus the current level of inflation. When it's positive, it means that the country is ahead of the curve on inflation. It's being prudent. It's wanting to attract foreign capital. When it's very negative, it means the country is being aggressive trying to push for growth, maybe a little too aggressively if growth is not there. That's not the case in Pakistan. It's correctly calibrated. And again, that's why the presence of the IMF is so important as a guarantor of well-behaved policy from a foreign investor standpoint. FX reserves, however, are still very low. That's the bad news. The good news is, if there is a high single-digit, double-digit billion-dollar IMF program in the works, that will very quickly be addressed. 2 months of import cover is normally critically low, below 3 months is where you worry. If you are going to get a $5 billion, $10 billion, $15 billion program in Pakistan, that's going to more than double, perhaps triple, that number very quickly. External financing requirement. So that's how much your current account deficit is and how much of your external debt is maturing over the next year. And if we look there, we've talked already about Pakistan, Kazakhstan has quite a high number, as much external financing requirement as it has FX reserves. But that ignores the fact that Kazakhstan also has 2 very large sovereign wealth funds. So plenty of assets to cover that and to refinance that borrowing. And then if we look at the valuation of the exchange rate, the valuation of the exchange rate measured by the slightly academic measure called a real effective exchange rate, which, in a way, is a long-term average of what your currency should look like if it always matches inflation differentials versus the U.S. I'd say it's highly academic, but these can be good reasons why you don't trade anywhere near your real effective exchange rate for a long time. But one cause for concern remains Bangladesh, a relatively expensive exchange rate on that view. But that's why, again, it's very important that Bangladesh currently is in the midst of an IMF program, and actually initiated that IMF program when it didn't need it in terms of external capital. But in the transition to a more market-based economy, it engaged with the IMF, adhered to the conditions in the program to establish credibility in that transition. So in the 2 countries where I would identify relatively higher currency risk, there are mitigating factors for that risk. And when we're talking about the risk of currency erosion, we are not considering the quantity of erosion we've seen over the last 5 years. Something much more modest, much more manageable. Something you can plan around. We talked about short-term outlook, long-term outlook. Plenty of opportunities but risks as well. So when you look at Pakistan, young population. Very densely packed population into urban centers. The mobilization finally, after many years of an institutional structure that will bring in foreign direct investment. And the Special Investment Facilitation Council, which is the practical embodiment of the marriage of military and civilian relations within Pakistan. If you look at Ukraine, when there is ultimately a cessation of the conflict, the reconstruction opportunities that tragically are now there, but will be very large for that economy. Kazakhstan, the unique location of Kazakhstan, sitting as a land bridge between China and Europe, but also having relations with Russia because of its oil exports, and we'll come to talk about that a little bit more in a minute. Bangladesh, plenty more to go for in the garment export industry. Before we have to worry about what else can Bangladesh export, let's just remind ourselves that there's an awful lot more to go for and what's worked very well over the last 2 decades. And in Uzbekistan, actually, perhaps one of the most exciting reform stories, pro-business market-friendly risk reform stories in the former Soviet Republics. But risks without question. If you look at Pakistan, very long term, Pakistan needs to transition at some point from sucking in capital from friendly neighbors and partners and support and economic band-aids to a move to genuine manufacturing exports. That means it becomes much more resilient in the face of global volatility of the things that imports, like oil and food. Politically, there is a disenfranchised part of the electorate out there, but -- and we'll talk about that, we'll address that in a minute. In Ukraine, external funding is obviously the key issue short term. We'll talk about that. In Kazakhstan, there is gearing to the oil price and there is sensitivity around its geopolitical relations, which we'll address. In Bangladesh, perhaps one of the key issues is succession in the political system. For so long governed by one party and one prime minister, what follows that remains a little bit uncertain. And in Uzbekistan, again, succession is also an issue, the political succession. So let's talk about some of those factors in more detail at a country level. In Pakistan, what was the toughest challenge when you put politics to one side was the economic issues. Now this is a country that imports a lot of fuel and a good amount of food. The good news is those global commodity prices are now 25% below where they were at the outset of the Russia-Ukraine war. That is an enormous relief for an economy like Pakistan. The one thing I'll say about politics in Pakistan right now is to, anyone who's worried about this, to pay attention to the last interview published with the most popular leader in Pakistan, where his words were chosen so carefully so as to signal his willingness, in my opinion, to work with the new system. So I'm talking about Imran Khan, I'm talking about his interview with Hasan Mehdi, where he does not use any language to suggest that he wants fractious relations to continue with the current military chief, and all of his language is dedicated and targeted towards the former military chief. That is a very interesting signal in how the politics of Pakistan may progress. There is already military civilian harmony. That interview suggests that, actually, we will evolve now to the next stage where there will be more political inclusion. That's foundational for the -- addressing for the investment story in that country. Ukraine, without, in any way, offering a view on how the conflict progresses at the battlefront beyond an observation that, obviously, there's been geographical stalemate for some time, a key issue has been funding. We can't shy away from that. And there was a very severe test for that at the start of this year because of dysfunctional operations within the U.S. Congress and some decent towards the end of last year within the EU. And what's very interesting is how forcefully that level of funding has come back. So both with the passage of legislation in the U.S. Congress and the agreement within the EU, quarterly funding for Ukraine is now arguably higher than it has been at almost every quarter since this conflict started. And that's obviously critical for how the situation progresses there. There is an elephant in the room with orange hair, and that is the potential return of Trump in the U.S. election. And most people draw the conclusion, well, if Trump comes back, that's just bad news for everyone globally, for anyone that depends on the U.S. relationship or U.S. funding or U.S. support. And people particularly focus that concern around Ukraine. And I think what a lot of people are missing is it always seems odd to say we should look for nuance in the rhetoric from Donald Trump. But actually on the issue of Ukraine, there is important nuance. When Donald Trump has talked about Ukraine most recently, on April 18 -- and he never talks, he tweets or he sends messaging on his own platform now, his words are really interesting because what his focus is, in my opinion, is not support for Ukraine per se, it is to make sure that other members of NATO in Europe are pulling their weight when it comes to spending on military expenditure broadly. And that is why I do not see the same event risk for Ukraine funding that others do should the Republicans win the election in the U.S. later this year. I'll say that again. I think Trump's focus is raising the level of spend by all other NATO members on military matters, not specifically on what the pipeline of funding will be for Ukraine. And I talk about Trump rather than Biden because in all the 7 states that are considered the swing states, that are very marginal levels of opinion poll leadership, Trump is leading in all of them at the moment. And so I'm trying to address what I think would be, for most people, the worst-case scenario. I'm not as worried about it as maybe some others are. And that's the reason why. Kazakhstan, an extraordinary round of political reform. Unthinkable 10 years ago, 5 years ago, 3 years ago. You can't have economic reform that actually matters without the political reform first. So most people look at Kazakhstan and are a little bit frustrated that there hasn't been the implementation of economic reforms that have been planned for a while. And my point is it could never have happened unless you engage in political reform. And essentially, a number of reforms that apply checks and balances and limits around presidential executive power are a necessary step towards implementing economic reform, and we've got those done in Kazakhstan now. The other is location and geopolitical relationship. Some people look at Kazakhstan and worry because a lot of its oil is transported through Russia, and oil is the major export for the country and the creator of sovereign wealth. When I look at emerging and frontier markets, and all of the markets I look at are caught between different superpowers around them, whether it's between Russia and the EU, whether it's between the U.S. and China, whether it's between all of them. Kazakhstan is almost unique in terms of actually managing to tread a very narrow tightrope between all of those geopolitical camps. Kazakhstan has very constructive relations with China, because as I said, if China wants to get manufactured export goods into Europe over land, it has to go through Kazakhstan. Hence, the commitment for China to invest in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan obviously has relations with Russia that it seeks to maintain. What's so interesting is despite these 2 relationships, both the EU and the U.S. remain very interested in court in Kazakhstan. And it is one of the only countries I can identify, caught in the middle of this roundabout of these super tankers going around it, where it has managed to maintain very good relations with each one of those larger powers and it has done it through a political transition. These relations were good with external powers under Nazarbayev. They are still good under Tokayev. I can't find another example like that in the universe I look at. Bangladesh, some people worry that, oh, Bangladesh is a "one-trick pony". It's just -- its growth story is entirely dependent on garment exports. And what comes next? And I would still say, well, there's still some time to run in this particular movie. Bangladesh, which as I mentioned earlier, renegotiated centrally its wages in the garment sector, still remains one of the most competitive globally. I've listed about 10 peers in the garment sector there. I've left off 25 below that, that are a great deal more expensive. The one that really matters is the comparison between Bangladesh and China, where Bangladesh is about 60% of the wage level of China, so much more competitive. But Bangladesh market share in global garment exports is still about 1/4 that of China, 1/5 to 1/4 of that of China. There's a lot more to go for. And the counterargument in most manufactured products as well, let's not look at Chinese wages, let's look at Chinese productivity. China has a much more advanced machinery in most of its factories, so therefore, actually, it's much more -- it compensates for those higher wages. Garments remains an exception. Why? Because in garments, you need human hands and fingers. It's much more a human capital-intensive manufacturing sector than, for example, electronics. And that's why I argue there's a lot more to go for in Bangladesh. So where does that leave us? We've had the bad news, the crisis. We've had the good news, which is some policy reset. I want to reinforce what I think is an optimistic outlook. As the worst passes in terms of politics, geopolitics and bad policy, what remains is pretty compelling consumer addressable markets in these countries. Different types of markets. Pakistan, Bangladesh, very big, very big populations, very young populations, incredible urban density. What I mean by that is the number of people that live in every square kilometer in a city. You look at Bangladesh, probably at the back you can't see this, but at the bottom of this chart, it shows you in the fourth column, Bangladesh, in cities with over 0.5 million of population, have almost 30,000 people living in every square kilometer. To give you an idea, the comparison in a country like India is more like 10,000. That is an enormous figure. Pakistan is also very urban dense, 13,000. So these are markets that, in a way, for any company running consumer or infrastructure-based assets, the availability of economies of scale is much greater than in less-densely populated countries. And again, I'm being very clear. I'm talking about urban population is. I don't care about what the population density is for the whole country. What matters is where is it living. In cities, these are incredibly dense countries. If you look at Ukraine, of course, there's no shying away from the fact this is a country at war, but also mobile telecom is a service that is the last almost before food that one can do without. And that is before we look forward, hopefully, to an environment where there's reconstruction in Ukraine. And we've seen historically from examples like Iraq, how powerful that can be for foreign capital inflow once hostilities cease. Kazakhstan, very different market. Much smaller in population, only 20-odd million people. But by far, the richest. Almost $15,000 per capita of income. Very different market. Uzbekistan, again, surprisingly, what's often kind of ignored is how young the population is, median age of 29 only. To give you a context, Bangladesh is 25, Ukraine is more like 35. So a very young population in Uzbekistan. And as I mentioned before, one of the fastest liberalizing ones in this group. So that brings an end to my comments, which as I say, to reinforce, we've had a lot of bad news, we've had global crisis, local crisis. We've had policy responses, both in economic terms and, equally importantly, political terms. And when you look at the growth rates available, mitigated by the FX risks that I think are reasonable to expect, that still leaves a very high nominal growth environment, which will gradually transition from a lot of nominal growth from inflation to gradually more nominal growth driven by real GDP drive. With that, I'll draw my comments to a conclusion.

Hasnain, thank you very much. Great presentation. This slide I love, because this actually talks about the consumer opportunity in front of us in a fantastic way. Now before we open for a couple of questions. I want to mention one takeaway from your slides. I just noticed when you went through the crisis part, it's incredible, actually, how many opportunities for us to create excuses for you for our nondelivery. We did not do that. We will not do that. It's not us. But please don't tell us you got lucky in the next 3 years because the macro economy gets better. Nothing is about luck. It only is hard work, and we will deliver again what we promise. So thank you very much, Hasnain. And please, let's open some questions if anyone would like to initiate a question.

Chris?

Okay. So the question, I'll just repeat, is how important is the scope and the timing of the U.S. interest rate cycle for this broad picture. So the first thing is it's unlikely that U.S. rates go higher, most important baseline because this has been the worst change of conditions in the most rapid fashion for markets -- for countries that need external financing, that need dollar financing. And those are countries that import. So again, we're back to, particularly, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The cycle for U.S. rates is not so important for a Kazakhstan, for example, in the way that it's not so important for Saudi Arabia as a large oil exporter. Now the question is if -- I think what your question is really driving at is if the cuts in U.S. rates has been delayed, because U.S. inflation is higher today than maybe some would have thought 6 months ago, it was going to be, how damaging is that. If these countries have not put in place better policy environment, it would have been very damaging. They would have been very vulnerable still. But the fact that both, in the example of Pakistan and Bangladesh, you're in IMF programs or you're about to go back into IMF programs, that provide some guardrails and gives you credibility to go out and raise external finance. The other thing to mention is if we'd had this conversation at the start of the year, I might have been a lot more nervous. But one key event happened in February, which is Kenya, not a market we're talking about here, was the first to enter the world of Eurobond issuance and they've got that bond away incredibly easily. At a high interest rate, but the trigger that then had for currency appreciation, which is something I heard earlier about currency turning into a bit of a tailwind, was a very important moment for these frontier markets that rely on external funding. So would it be an easier world if U.S. rates were coming down now? Absolutely. Is it in any way something that I worry about in the way I would have done 3 years ago? An order of magnitude less.

[ Gabe ]?

Particularly with respect to Pakistan and Bangladesh, can you talk about the importance of private capital interest in investing in those economies and how they get beyond the requirement of IMF type funding?

Okay. So the question is in Pakistan and Bangladesh, how protected, how encouraged is the private sector and private sector capital, which I'm going to interpret as both domestic and foreign, but particularly foreign. And will it forever be seeking one IMF cast for a broken leg after another. Is that a fair reflection of the question?

Yes. [indiscernible].

Okay. Okay. So how much of these countries want external capital in them?

How much [indiscernible].

All right. Okay. So we got about 4 questions there. The first one, which I'll address is, will these countries forever require external assistance? And as long as they're running current account deficits, they will. Does that make them uninvestable? No. Because if the returns are there and safeguarded, they could be very, very attractive places to invest. So now on to your second question, which is are -- is there an encouragement for foreign capital? Well, the Bangladesh garment industry wouldn't exist without foreign capital. Uses local labor, but it was foreign capital that actually kick-started that industry, whether ironically, from initially Pakistan, but then when it really scaled up from places like South Korea. In Pakistan, that foreign capital has generally come in the form of multinational capital. And most of those experiences have been positive, but obviously, there have been 1 or 2 cases where they've been difficult in terms of when there's been changes of government that has changed the rules of the game for some of those companies. That's why in the case of Pakistan, there are 2 important issues. One is, is the political environment stable. If military and civilian relations are in equilibrium, they are stable, and they've been tested a great deal in the last few years. This is arguably the most stable they've been for the last decade. The second part is, is there an environment where foreign capital can invest, operate and repatriate. One of the most interesting issues in Pakistan compared to a lot of other countries which have gone through external account distress, is it is the one that has pulled the handbrake up in terms of capital controls, currency restrictions the least. So if I compare Pakistan to Nigeria, Egypt, Bangladesh, those are 3 countries which have applied effectively -- Argentina, those are countries which have gone through crisis and have immediately applied the handbrake on capital controls and currency restrictions. Actually, Pakistan has not done that. There couldn't be a more powerful demonstration of the willingness to keep foreign investors, private investors, engaged. And now the last part of what you're asking, which is, is there actually any appetite to invest in those countries. So I think there's one part of the foreign investor community which has become a lot smaller, which is that segment of the foreign community which runs public equity funds dedicated on, what you would call, very much sort of frontier markets of which Pakistan would be included. That universe has shrunk dramatically. And at the same time, in emerging markets, equity funds dedicated to stock markets for large emerging markets has expanded enormously. That has nothing to do though with private equity, multinational foreign direct investment or fixed income, high-yield Eurobond investors. So there's no letup in the appetite to invest where the return potential is high. And that's why I gave the example earlier of Kenya. Kenya offered high yield with the prospect of repayment and was able to issue very easily in February. And if you look at the performance of, for example, Pakistan Eurobonds, it shows very clearly over the last year that as some of this refinancing risk has reduced, that old foreign fixed income investor base has rushed back into Pakistan. So I hope that addresses. Not perfect, because otherwise, these countries wouldn't be in the situation in the first place. But definitely not at the most extreme end of distress and bad behavior and unwelcoming environment that you can see in other countries.

I think it's time for a break that we can have maybe some phone calls, lunch. And we will be back hopefully by 12:30 with the country updates. Thank you very much, Hasnain. It was great.

Thank you.

So now we can take a break, and we will have lunch and back here at 12:30. [Break]

Gentlemen, Welcome back, and welcome to you and also 130 people over the webcast. Thank you for being with us, and we will start promptly now with country presentations. And the first speaker will be Aamir Ibrahim, Pakistan. Actually, when I told 3 years ago in my visit to Islamabad, and I said one day, you will be the #1 player in our portfolio. It happened earlier than I thought. Aamir, please take the floor. [Presentation]

Good afternoon, everyone. It's difficult to describe a country in a few words. But if I were to take a shot at describing Pakistan, I will have to start with growth. 250 million people, 5 million added every single year. It is a growth engine. But this demographic dividend has to be delivered through demographic duties. These kids need education, they need entertainment. They need health, they need meaningful livelihoods. Today, me and my team are excited about providing these opportunities to the future of Pakistan. Resilience is also part of our DNA. And as a country, we have gone through more than our share of the polycrisis from COVID to climate, to conflict. Now I know Hasnain has done a really good job talking about Pakistan and the optimism that lies before us. Some of these numbers in terms of growth and how it has trickled down over the years, may not do justice to the optimism that we feel on the ground. Pakistan is a resilient country, and I sense it every single day. Just let's look over here. 100 million people still do not have a bank account, 45% have never used the internet. While these could be somewhat underwhelming stats for some of the faint-hearted for the team at Jazz, these are the rallying cries to unleash the opportunities for the country at large. We remain committed in our mission to put a smartphone in every hand and a broadband connection in every home. How did we get to this thing now? Ten quarters ago in this room, [indiscernible] talked about promises made and promises delivered. I made only two, one of top line growth and the other of digital services. And if I remember the numbers correctly, the top line growth was 15.3% and digital services was 45%. We clocked 23% growth last year. And for the first 5 months of this year, we're at 29%. On digital services, over this time period, we have delivered on 55%. How did we do it? We stayed committed to the core, and we were very intentional about the more. And when we combine the core and more, we came up with our version of what [ Can ] calls do 1,440, where we don't have a transactional relationship of 32 minutes selling minutes and messages but a transformational one, where we're helping define the moments for customers every single minute of the day. Over the next few minutes, I'm going to talk about the core and the 3 big bets on the more. But as I [ can ] mentioned in the introduction, we are not only growing within the context of Pakistan. We are also becoming more and more relevant in the context of VEON. More than 1/3 of the revenue, 37% of the EBITDA, 45% of the customers and 47% of the VEON universe in terms of population is from Pakistan. It is not only an honor, but a responsibility, and the responsibility that we take very, very seriously. Before moving forward, I want to talk a little bit more about Jazz, perhaps VEON Pakistan would be a better name because Jazz is the telecom company. And then from there, we have evolved to being many different things. In some ways, Jazz is a group within a group. Over the last 3 decades, we have been building towers, selling SIMs, and we are very proud of our legacy. We're very proud of our commitment. We're very proud of digitizing and providing connectivity services to Pakistan. But we didn't stop there. In the connectivity line of business, we have our GSM business with 70-plus million customers. We have a captive tower company with more than 10,000 towers. Our first big foray into an adjacent business was financial services. We acquired a bank, so we are into banking, and from there on, we pivoted towards financial services, and I'll spend some time talking about JazzCash and why it is such a huge opportunity for us. So we have now a complete line of businesses until last year, about 13% or 14% of our revenue was coming from financial services in the context of VEON Pakistan. From there on, we got the confidence to do a bit more. We got into entertainment. And today, the largest OTT entertainment platform, Tamasha is another service that we started. And it's a completely telco-agnostic service. So we learned our lessons from JazzCash. We didn't really want to anchor everything around Jazz. And most of the new products that we are launching, we are actually non-telco-oriented in a sense that we don't really want to anchor it with the Jazz brand. So the Tamasha our first foray into new brand. Since then, we have gotten into SIMOSA that you saw in the video and then Garaj. So beyond platforms, when we talk about the opportunities in Pakistan, enterprise is a huge opportunity, just like everywhere else in the world, the data, cloud, data centers, analytics software services are exploding and cloud is our offering over there. The CAGRs below show the excitement on the digital services. Yes, we will continue to push on the telecom services. But the real excitement is what do you do on top of the captive customer base? How do you actually monetize them? How do you actually keep on delivering the evolving needs of the customers as time goes by? Let's start with -- and these are the next 4 slides, I'm going to start with where we have leadership, the core and then the 3 elements on the more. Leaders and connectivity. And there are 2 numbers I want you to focus on. The first one is mobile subscription market share, 38%. And the second one is revenue market share of 45%. So we are punching way above our weight. And since 2018, we have increased this revenue market share by almost 5%. So we were close to about 40%, which was very similar to our subscriber market share. But today, we have 45% revenue market share while having only 38% of the SIMs. And how have we done that? We have been conscious of the inflation in the country. We've been very disciplined around inflationary pricing. We have a multiplayer strategy. And what does that mean? That means offering the right digital service for the right customer at the right time in the right context. We have one of the largest data lakes in the country. And on top of that data lake, we add our analytics layer. And we utilize that analytics to make sure that we can engage with our customers and that relationship of 32 minutes gets converted into more and more moments and memories. And that's what we have effectively done with JazzCash with SIMOSA and now with the Tamasha. It's not very common when you can actually see a mobile telco increasing its ARPU. And we have done that not only in nominal local currency but now also in dollarized currency. Pakistan came very low to being a sub-$1 ARPU market, and Jazz was hovering just about $1. We are now at $1.30 and our ambition over the next 2 years to start hitting coming closer to $2, $2.5, which is a sizable number given the population and where the economics start working for us again. But again, this is a very encouraging signal, and I hope that us as a market leader, also signal that this is possible for the rest of the industry. It's not just an issue for Jazz alone. It's an sectoral and industrial issue. And Jazz with its leadership position is conscious that it sets the tone for the rest of the industry. Moving to JazzCash. And this is one of the businesses that excites me the most. JazzCash is not just about transactions. It's about transformation. It's transforming an economy from cash to digital. We get a seat at the table, sitting next to the Central Bank governor, the Finance Minister and the Prime Minister because they all have the same challenge in terms of digitizing the economy. And nobody is better suited than us in terms of doing that. We started with 2 simple products, utility bill payments and domestic remittances. And today, we are a 360 fintech, which does everything from nano lending to merchant acceptance points to credit scoring to distribution. I want to focus a little bit more on merchants. Pakistan is a cash-based society with 95-plus transactions actually happening on cash. This is where the biggest digital opportunity is. And today, JazzCash has more than 300,000 locations where the QR code is accepted. And we have an ambition to take that to 1 million over the next 2 years. There are a total of about 3 million micro, small and medium enterprises. And when I sit down with the government, they wanted to digitize these transactions to digital. And this is where Jazz again, plays a larger than life role when it talks about the country at a whole. Today, more than 55% of all transactions, financial transactions that happen on a mobile phone are on the JazzCash platform. And we are competing with one other big fintech player, 33 commercial banks and 11 EMI operators. So there is JazzCash on one side and this universe of competition on the other side, and we are more than half of that. So it's a great position where we continue to build our strength. I know the 24% number doesn't sound that impressive. But if you actually factor in the currency losses that we've incurred over the last 2 years, this year, I can tell you that in local currency, we are growing at about 80%, and that's what we achieved last year also. And we are growing not only in terms of number of transactions, but also in terms of rebuilding our monthly active users. So we had for a while taken a pause in terms of not going with the vanity KPIs of MOUs. So we started focusing more on the use cases and making sure that the unit economics of every use case is positive. And we have done a great turnaround in terms of making sure that this is a sustainable business and not a business which is just a valuation-creation element, that world has consistently or that world has changed over the last years. Now it is not just the growth of transactions, numbers, but also real cash flows and EBITDA. So JazzCash today is the largest fintech, a profitable one and growing at a fast pace. I'd like to highlight one or two more numbers over here. Every single day, we issue more than 100,000 nano loans. These loans are to the tune of $20 to $30. And these are productive loans. So there's a richer driver in the morning, who gets a loan, gets his passengers, 2 days later, generates the revenue and pays the loan back. These are productivity-oriented loans, exactly what the country needed. And JazzCash is proud to be servicing that need. Every single day, there are more than 7 million transactions that happen on the JazzCash platform. I already gave you the scale. That's more than 55% of all the transactions that happen over here. And with our wide universe of more than 300 acceptance points, 200,000 agents, Jazz and JazzCash is the largest distribution network. Moving on. Tamasha. Pakistan, is also a cash -- sorry, is also an entertainment start environment. And through Tamasha, we're actually providing that entertainment to the small screen. Now this trend is doubly important in the context of Pakistan because not everybody has access to a large screen in a comfortable living room. Many people rely only on their smartphone as their universal remote control to the life. And on top of that, there is also that mobile population, which is always on the go, and they don't want to miss their cricket match. So Tamasha, within a span of only 2 years has now become the largest entertainment platform in Pakistan. Last year, when there was a cricket match between Pakistan and India, we had the peak concurrency of 21 million customers, 21 million customers -- people watched cricket on Tamasha, which was the same number as those watching it on the large screen. That was an extremely important inflection moment. The trends of viewership has changed. And it's only a question of time before the trends of advertisers will also change. We saw very good traction in terms of Tier 1 brands coming in advertising on the Tamasha and that trend we continue to see. The last thing that I'd like to mention on Tamasha is that not only are we building content, we are also creating hyperlocal content because it's not just the size of your library, it's the relevance of that library and people want to watch what they care about. We are also building and developing Tamasha Originals, small series, short series. And on top of that, we are complementing it with shots and reels. We piloted this product 2 weeks ago, and we've already had more than 75,000 views on it. So just like TikTok and shorts and reels of every other platform, we are developing user-generated and professionally-curated content on the short reversion. I know there was something else that I wanted -- Yes. Tamasha. 60% of the customers are non-Jazz customers. Now that's a hugely important thing. We are now a completely telco-agnostic brand when it comes to entertainment and our competition is advertising on Tamasha. This is the biggest proof that this is now being disassociated with Jazz in a healthy manner. While we still orchestrate and benefit from the common data lake, we have now positioned Tamasha as a separate identity with its own CEO, its own management team, and it's soon going to be carved out so that it operates in the right entertainment platform, attracting the right level of investors from there. The third big bet, Garaj. Garaj actually means thunder because the world Badal, which is cloud was already taken. So we're now creating brands which are actually more Urdu-sounding and appeal to the local environment. Like everywhere in [indiscernible] world, Garaj and data centers and cloud is a fast-growing business. The beauty of this is that we have a relationship with 95 of the top 100 PSX companies in Pakistan. So we already have an unfair advantage. We have a foot in the door, and we are going back to our corporate enterprises and saying, "Listen, Mr. Bank, your business is banking. Why do you worry about IT services? Why do you worry about storage? What do you worry about analytics? Give those problems to us and we here to solve them for you. On top of that, not only do we provide them Infrastructure as a Service, we provide the Platform as a Service, but we're also providing them relevant use cases in terms of Software as a Service, starting from cybersecurity to all the unique things that they want. So the cloud offering over here, one of the fastest-growing ones, as you can see over here, almost did not exist 2 years ago. And an exponential rise, this is something that is difficult to measure in CAGRs. We are just growing 3x this year, and we're going to grow 3x next year. And the appetite is humongous over here. This, complemented with the fact that we have been able to work with the government to create regulation where the Pakistani data stays in Pakistan. And for geopolitical reasons, I don't see and I don't anticipate the big hyperscalers coming into Pakistan yet. So the field is wide open. And a brand like Garaj backed by Jazz is the right combination that gives confidence to our enterprise businesses that these are the right partners to continue with. Jazz and our story is not just about creating good exciting products. We stand for a lot more. As a leading corporate, we have a responsibility. We have an opportunity to be a catalyst for change, for a prosperous and progressive Pakistan. And we take this responsibility very seriously. Jazz exists because we want to help improve the lives and livelihoods of people through technology, especially marginalized communities, women and youth. And we over-index our support to make sure that we can challenge the cultural and societal norms, especially around smartphone ownership for women and providing financial freedom to them. On top of that, we are committed to some of the ESG commitments. By 2050, we want to get to a net zero. And by the end of next year, 10% of our network is actually going to be on solar. I hope over the last 10, 15 minutes, I've been able to articulate our brand's bull's eye and have shared with you our exciting journey pivoting from being a monolithic telecom company to being a services company with a digital heartbeat. And before I end, I want to make one more promise. I want to share our ambition of 20% growth for the next 3 years. Thank you very much.

Very well done. Thank you very much. Really a fantastic success story, especially thinking about -- I'm sure many people think, what are they doing, entertainment business? There is Spotify, there is Netflix. There's this and that, how are they going to be successful? We see paper tigers where other people see big tech. In our markets, we rule, we have our customers. We have our data sovereignty with us. And frankly speaking, we don't have the ambition of serving just the 3%. Who can pay $499 a month or who has a credit card to be able to pay that? We serve 97%. And that shows actually how powerful when we enter into entertainment, and we enter into financial services, we can capture the customers. I think Pakistan is a fantastic success story when it comes to that. Now we are moving to another country, a country that has gone through a lot. Sasha, please join me and tell us about Ukraine a little bit what when you went through and what you are doing and what you will. Thank you. Here you go. [Presentation]

Good afternoon, everyone. So yes, Ukraine is at war. It's Russian war against Ukraine, but I will try -- I will use this word only one time despite. Despite the war, we are moving, we are developing, we are modernizing, we are building. And I can see the company in a relatively good shape despite very difficult conditions. So we have agreed with the shareholders that we have 3 main priorities for the next few years. The first one is to save value. Safe value means to protect our market share, to protect our assets, to protect our people. The second priority is to increase value, increase value with the development of our core business, with the disciplined implementation on the inflationary pricing. So through development of DO 1440 strategy. So we are running according to the group blueprint. And the third priority is to upstream this value to the shareholders. And I see at least a few opportunities that will led us to do this. First of all, we see easiness of the monetary policy in Ukraine step by step. Second, we are considering monetization of our tower business. And the third one, I will be really proud to be a General Director who will lead this company to the first international IPO after the war. And what is also important, we are in war already 834 days. And despite this fact, we have delivered 7.7% growth in the local currency. Adjusted to that cyber-attack, it is 11.6% growth during the 3 last years. And I think it is quite remarkable. So we are moving, we are developing, we are developing digital customers. Three years ago, in 2021, we promised that we will have 8 million digital customers, users of our ecosystem. In first quarter 2024, we reached 9 million customers who are using our digital services. So our market is quite well developed. And I can say decent telecom market with 3 players, okay? And you see our dynamics during the last 10 years. So we were able to grow our relative market share in subscribers and in revenue. During the last 3 years, our market shares in these both domains are stable. We have a few core priorities. The first one is extra 4G spectrum auction which we will face during the autumn this year. We are facing a new integrated player who will come into the Ukrainian market quite soon. And the market is converted into the FMC market, convergent market. So all 3 mobile players will play a significant role. And from our perspective, it's an opportunity, okay? And we are in phase of European regulation because most probably in 2025 or just after the war, Ukraine will be covered by roaming like home imposed by the European countries. So quite fundamental changes, and we are performing according to our promises. There are challenges associated with the war, serious challenges, of course. The first one is occupy the occupied territories. At the beginning of 2022, 25% of the Ukrainian territories were occupied, 7% [indiscernible] occupied, we recovered all these territories. They are fully functional right now. We are building, rebuilding sites across the front line on a regular base. Of course, very big challenge is migration out. We have 2 million 3 months customer base who are active abroad, mainly using our roaming like service provided in 27 European countries. Of course, energy, especially thermal energy destroyment damage. We have 2,500 generators connected to our network. We fully upgraded our batteries. And right now, we can actually survive during the 4 hours totally without electricity across the country. We have problem of mobilization. Our answer is protection of our employees from the mobilization. We have 50% quota fully realized of protection of our employees. We have strict monetary policy, and we are quite disciplined in keeping our assets in the hard currency. 75% of all our cash is in hard currency. And cyber-attack, it's a separate, very, very big challenge. But probably you know, we faced the biggest cyber terrorism in the world, we were able to recover our voice service in 30-plus hours and our data service in 50-plus hours. We did not lose even one customer because of this. We have introduced probably the biggest loyalty program in the world to retain and to thank our customers for their loyalty. At the same time, I do understand that somehow because of the circumstances, okay, Kyivstar Valuation is to some extent, partially or maybe even completely discontinued from the VEON Valuation. And I think it is not fair because as our guests presented the perspective, and this is also my opinion. We have quite a lot of fascinating opportunities that might be realized quite soon. The first one is EU integration. EU integration means significant funds for integration for recovery. This is a business. This is about development. Population return. I don't know how many people will return. But if 40% or 50% of current migrants out will return, this will be a significant impact on the Ukrainian consumer market, on Ukrainian business and actually business activity. I think this all together will create enormous investment opportunities. And this is on the top of the fully digitalized society. Ukraine probably right now is the most digitalized country where we are as a Kyivstar, as a strong backbone, of course, and where, as a Kyivstar is the biggest service provider in the different domains. Kyivstar right now is a group of companies. There are 3 business units Kyivstar; #1 in mobile, #1 in fixed, despite the war -- I'm using this again, but despite the war -- it's a number -- and we are #5 top profitable business in the world, telco business in the world. We are a top 5 investor in Ukraine, and we are the strongest consumer and employer brand in Ukraine right now. Helsi is the biggest e-health operation in Ukraine, and I will have some details later on. Ukrainian power company, company was created in 2021, according to our promise. We are monetizing this value. We already reached 1.2 tenancy ratio and our third-party revenue is growing more than 100% year-on-year. We actually created a market from scratch, from a barter market to a transparent and taxable market, okay, that can be monetized. And this is confirmed by our financial results. So stable top line growth, record high marginality around 60%, 38% free cash flow on the base of 46% return on capital employed that we actually reached last year. Okay? And of course, it's on the top of growing ARPU and relatively stable customer base. This is our current setup in the core business. Our growth is significantly fueled by new businesses. You see Telco is growing 10%. TowerCo business altogether, it's growing 33%, third-party revenue more than 100%. Helsi is growing 60% in local currency. Big data is growing 70%. OTT TV is growing 30-plus percent. Cloud, almost 50% growth. Cloud did not exist a few years ago. Right now, Kyivstar is the biggest partner of Microsoft in Ukraine for medium -- small and medium business. We are the fastest-growing partner of Microsoft. We are selling our own cloud. We are selling Microsoft Azure, and we just entered into a partnership agreement with Amazon because our vision that customer will not choose only one provider or one solution. Customer needs an integrated solution provided by reliable partner. And this is the way how we are going to develop this business. We are #1 in a fixed business, and I am sure that this is a land of opportunity. We still, as the #1, okay, we reach 4 million households. 25%, 1.1 million of these households our clients. From this 1.1 million, 85% are our FMC clients. From this 1.1 million, 25% are triple play clients. So they're using mobile services from Kyivstar, they're using TV services, OTT TV services is from Kyivstar. So I think that with this package, which is actually unique for the time being in Ukraine, and it will be unique for the next few years, we can ensure an organic double-digit growth. At the same time, taking into account the structure of the market, we are ready, we are preparing and we are ready for market consolidation. So from my perspective, it is inevitable. So it will happen. This is our DO 1440 strategy or "DO" 1440 strategy. And we, as a part of the group, we are developing. We have a few fundamental platforms like Kyivstar Super up, Helsi, Kyivstar TV and the constellation of entertainment ups that lets us to drive this figure to the 9 million customers who are using our digital services. B2B, quite essential part, just one figure. 40% of our large accounts are using extra services, extra from telco services from Kyivstar, cloud, big data, integration services that are provided by Kyivstar on the top of the core telco services. And of course, this is a fuel for our multiplay revenue and multiplay users growth. So 15% multiplay user growth is being translated into 35% multiplay revenue growth. And this is about importance of the multiplay customers. This is about their loyalty. This is about the readiness to spend together with Kyivstar. Helsi. Right now, Helsi is a bridge. It's a bridge between 28 million registered Ukrainian patients with 1,500 communal and private clinics. So this is a SaaS for the clinics provided by Kyivstar. What we want to achieve? We already integrated quite a lot of synergies in infrastructure, in [ AdTech ] and in big data together. But our main goal on the top of this platform is to create an appealing value proposition that will combine Helsi services together with the telco services. We want to create the most powerful value-added service for our Kyivstar customers in the health area. We want to create your health cloud adviser, provider, okay? That will be every day together with you. Kyivstar TV is one of the leading -- market is not transparent. We can't be sure -- But this is definitely fastest-growing OTT TV platform in Ukraine with 1.5 million active customers, 80% are paid customers, okay? And majority of them either FMC or mobile, so there are double play or triple play customers. And it is fully competitive national platform. Investments. We have, last year in London, we have declared readiness to invest USD 600 million into the Ukrainian economy. This year, most probably based on the 2023 results, during the next week in Berlin, it will be Ukraine in Recovery Conference in Berlin next week, we will declare readiness to commit USD 1 billion investments into the Ukrainian infrastructure, mainly telco business, new frequencies and the business development. These are 3 opportunities that we want to combine together in order to strengthen our core business, in order to develop new services, new digital services for our customers. And of course, within the current circumstances, social agenda is extremely important. Kyivstar is recognized as a #2 socially responsible brand in Ukraine. And this is among all categories. It's not a on telco category. So we are one of the strongest social responsible brand in the country. And we are proud of this, and we are doing quite a lot. There are a few directions, of course, support to our employees, support to our customers, support to Ukraine, okay? We did, at some point of time, the biggest single donation to the UNITED24 platform in 2024. And it was something like first months of this platform establishment. So it was extremely important to give a kind of example to the Ukraine and international community, okay? We are running the most successful social campaigns, big national fundraising campaign. The last one was focused on humanitarian demining. We were able to collect [ UAH 180 million ] that were streamlined to the humanitarian demining of the Ukraine and the occupied territories. And yes, we have our objectives. The first one is our employees and their families. The second one is a social one, LTE everywhere. We are moving from 95% population coverage to the 98% to the full coverage of the national and international roads. We are considering this as a partial as our social obligations, because Ukraine is quite mobile country right now. We have plenty of people migrating around the country. And it is our responsibility to provide people with the modern communications, literally everywhere. In inclusivity, our main focus are veterans. So we want to be ready to integrate them, to regain them and to support them and their families. And of course, we will run more new campaigns, focused on the fundraising in order to support Ukraine. Of course, I'm greeted to see Pakistan's aspirations about almost 20% growth. So our focus is to grow business 10%, 13% during the next 3 years. We want to achieve a new business growth more than 50%, okay? We want to have 10% of the new business in our total operating revenue. Right now, it's 5%. So we want to double this figure during the next few years. And of course, we want to translate all this growth into a healthy growth of the free cash flow for the shareholders. And thank you very much for your attention.

Sasha, we are so proud of you and the team. Thank you very much. And remember, I said don't expect to hear excuses from this company. If you have teams like this under war under the most difficult conditions, every 2 AM, an air attack and the sounds of sirens, and he still delivers double-digit growth. Thank you. Now we're going to listen from Gaukhar. Gaukhar is our Chief Financial Officer in Kazakhstan, and we are all looking forward to hearing the Kazakhstan story from you Gaukhar. Please. [Presentation]

Hello, everybody. My name is Gaukhar Adilova and today I am here to represent Beeline Kazakhstan. VEON operating an expansive market of Kazakhstan of 20 million people. Before I start talking about our success story, I would like to give you some useful insight about the country where we operate. Kazakhstan today has very friendly investor business climate, stable regulatory environment and quite favorable tax regime. In fact, the country has signed with more than 50 countries separate agreement to avoid double taxation. Digitalization is a top priority for the government of Kazakhstan. So in this sense, in 2020 to stimulate 4G coverage in Kazakhstan, the government has approved 5-year program, which provided tax incentive of more than USD 200 million for mobile operators only to expand 4G coverage. So this kind of program, together with many other initiatives that actually allowed the country to do serious progress into digitalization. Today, the number of the volume of the cashless separation has reached almost 82%. That is USD 315 billion, which demonstrate 40% increase year-on-year. 8 out of 10 transactions today are done using mobile banking platform. Of course, all this kind of success has been done because of the aggressive digitalization of the public sector, which created quite favorable environment for digitalization of the financial transaction ranked 28 out of 193 countries on the United Nations Government Development Index. Today, we have these wonderful results in the digitalization of the country. Today, Kazakhstan is among the top 30 countries in the world in terms of the volume of data consumption. In 2023, the citizens of Kazakhstan consumed about 5.1 billion gigabytes of mobile traffic only. That is 20% increase year-on-year. And interestingly, over the past decade, this figure has risen by 107x and today, the level of the mobile internet traffic consumption has already reached the level of fixed internet consumption, which last year amounted almost 7 billion gigabytes of user. So this kind of trends, of course, in digitalization creates very favorable environment for our businesses. Today, Beeline Kazakhstan is a market leader. We are #1 in the mobile segment. We are #2 connectivity -- fixed connectivity provider. Today, we have in our portfolio 11 million clients who daily enjoys our mobile fixed connectivity and various digital products. Beeline Kazakhstan has the highest, largest 4G coverage with 80% smartphone penetration and 73% 4G user penetration. And of course, all this create quite solid foundation for our digital evolution. Today, our superapp application MyBeeline is in the top 3, the best super application in the Kazakhstan. And we have #1 BeeTV platform. A year ago, we have created our own IT company, Qazcode. And today, it is among the top 5 IT companies in Kazakhstan, implementing AI technologies. You might have heard about our recent partnership with Barcelona Supercomputing Center and GSMA to support the use of AI in local languages. Our Qazcode IT team developer has created large language model in Kazakh language, which is already extensively used by us and our customer services. So we are very excited that this kind of joint partnership with Barcelona Supercomputing Center and GSMA, would allow us to close this AI language cap and bring Kazakh language to a world of AI. In the last years, we are the top innovative company in Kazakhstan. And for us, it is a very important recognition because behind the business are people, our talents our strong entrepreneurial culture. And it's always been a top priority for us. That's why over the last 3 years, we continue to be the best employer in the market. Several years ago, we have identified our digital strategy or Operator 1440. And this strategy has proven to be successful. As you may see, over the last years, we have doubled our business. We have tripled our digital revenue, ensuring inflationary pricing, rising growth of ARPU, rising volume of data consumption per subscriber driven by this converged fixed and conductivity and digital offerings. Just you could see better how our market share has changed. Today, we are the market leader. In 2020, our market share was around 37.7 percentage. Over disease year, we have grown up to 43.4 percentage points, and we are continuing to grow. You might be wondering how these figures look like compared to what we promised in 2021. What I can tell you that these figures have significantly exceeded the promises that we have made. I like this slide. It's -- I think the number speaks for themselves. We are committed to demonstrate the growth that we already have. In the last years, we have grown significantly and 46% in revenue growth. And by 2027, we want to double our revenue. We will continue to improve our marginality. And by 2027, it will improve by additional 1 percentage point. And of course, it will convert into double increase of equity free cash flow, which would create quite strong potential and our increase our capability for dividend payments. Today, Beeline Kazakhstan is a big group, diversified digital. And this structure is well prepared for value creation opportunities and insurers business diversification. Today, we have a strong connectivity and digital business, which makes almost 77% of our total revenue, which demonstrated over the last year, 76% of revenue growth. Digital revenue already makes 11% of our revenue, which grows even more aggressive by 240% increase over this period. In our structure, we have our nail bank, providing fintech services. And today, it represents almost 36% of the revenue that is generated by the digital streams with 151% revenue growth. Like I said before, we have created last year our own IT company. And today, it has almost 750 IT specialists. And the company provides all the digital services that we have today. And of course, it has a further focus on export of its IT services. Kazakhstan Tower Company is a good example of the realization in practice of the asset-light strategy. Today, we have a separately created entity Kazakhstan Tower Company, which in its portfolio already have 1,600 towers in the management. TNS+, I think, a good example also of the asset-light strategy realization in practice. You might have heard recently and I can talk about it at the beginning that this business is about to be sold for up to USD 140 million. After the regulatory approval, the deal will be finalized. And we have created last year our own charity fund, Zhyly Zhurek, which is translated from Kazakh language means kind heart. I will have a more opportunity to talk about it as a part of our CSR agenda later on. So we have been expanding our presence in the -- on the screen of our customers, expanding our services and giving the first-class portfolio of digital products, catering the needs from financial services, entertainment, multimedia cloud services. And today, we have 8.4 million users, which grows quite dramatically if you would see 34% year-on-year growth. Today, Multiplay players already make 61.3% share of our total revenue with 10% growth and which is, of course, driven by the robust ARPU of USD 7.4. I would like to take a moment and maybe give you a better understanding what are the beloved digital product that we have. So let me take a moment and show you our pride and enjoy our super application, MyBeeline [Presentation]

And next is Simply, our digital wallet product. [Presentation]

Than BeeTV, the largest mobile TV service in Kazakhstan. [Presentation]

Following that our rising star hitter, a music streaming service with a local flavor. [Presentation]

And finally, entertainment powerhouse, our digital brand Izi. [Presentation]

So this was the most beloved digital products of our company. And in the coming years, of course, we will increase the digital product to ensure we close all the lifestyle of our customers. So let's move to another very important for us topic about sustainability, about corporate social responsibility. For us, it's a top priority in our agenda. I think mobile connectivity in one sense is social because we connect people. We close this gap between rural and city areas. But of course, we want to do more than that. And in this essence, we have identified for ourselves 4 key focus areas: our people, we are proud with the level of the NPS that we have today, about 70% and the numerous best employee awards. And our goal for upcoming years is to sustain our market position as the best employer with the highest NPS level. Education. Education to change society and education has been a key focus for us over the last 10 years. In this area, we have done a number of social projects increasing the digital literacy of the children. And among all of them, I would like to mention the latest one that we had last year, we call it [ Hubschool ] program. And in 8 villages, we have selected 8 old schools, which we modernize, renovated, well equipped and brought the best educational program. And today, the children of the school have the access to the best education and have, hopefully, in the future, become the future leaders of Beeline. And emergency, another important stream for us when natural disaster happens. Of course, we are always there. We provide free minutes. We provide free internet. But of course, we do not want to limit ourselves for this, we do more than that. In 2022, in Kazakhstan, we had a serious flood. And to help the victims of the flood, we have constructed 50 houses. So we will continue our participations in this kind of situation in the future when it happens. And the final stream, diversity and the inclusion. We are very proud about our gender representation in the company, in the workforce. It's almost 50% and in the top management position. And we will try to continue to work on this area. And in terms of the inclusivity, for us, we devote special attention to make sure that all our digital services, all our digital products are accessible to everyone. And we will continue to form this our inclusivity agenda in all our upcoming events. So this kind of initiative that we have been doing and will continue to do in the future, made us in certain point of time to think about creating our own charity fund. And last year, we created this charity fund, Zhyly Zhurek and more importantly, we as a management took the -- and with our Board took the decision to allocate to this charity fund on an annual basis, 1% of our total revenue to ensure sustainable realization of all our corporate social responsibility agenda. So the final, the most interesting slide. How does the success look like for Beeline Kazakhstan in coming years. We want to repeat our success. We want to double our revenue by 2027, double our equity free cash flow and dividend payment capabilities, we want to triple our digital revenue by 2027 and ensure that we continue to be the market leader in terms of the quality of the service and in terms of widest net coverage in Kazakhstan. Following AI 1440 strategy, of course, we will be AI native operator, AI inside and AI outside. And we will increase the share of Multiplay subscribers in one month's active base and we will strive to gain 11 million 1-month active users by 2027. Thank you for your attention.

Gaukhar . Thank you very much. Excellent presentation. And of course, when I look to Kazakhstan, the most digitized operation we have in our portfolio. I actually kind of see that 3 years out in terms of per capita income $14,000, $7 ARPU. That's actually where our operations in frontier markets will slowly grow into. But one thing I would like to highlight among the things that Gaukhar said, very important because I realize that our industry is probably the only industry in the entire world, which complains about higher demand. I don't know if you realize, I have seen so many executives from telecom companies come and present the slide and they say data consumption is going up, our revenue is going down. Data consumption is demand. The revenue is your ability to convert demand into revenues. Now Gaukhar said data consumption in Kazakhstan grew 20%. We grew 22% in Kazakhstan. The secret is we don't sell raw data. We sell digital services. It's the same thing. Oil, right? Raw oil is $83 per barrel. If you process oil, it's millions of dollars, because you become relevant to a specific use case. And that's the story actually behind DO 1440. And the best example, proof point is that we overachieved the growth of data consumption in terms of revenue growth. Thank you very much, Gaukhar, for making that point. Now we move and the next in line is Erik Bangladesh. [Presentation]

Very good afternoon everyone. Good to see you all. Let me give you a few updates about Banglalink. This country is, as we have heard earlier today, a very populated, highly populated country, 175 million people in a relatively small area. We heard earlier today that the population density in the cities is up to 30,000 people per square kilometer, but it's actually a highly populated country all over. The average, the average population in the whole country is 1,200 people per square kilometer, one of the highest in the world. The young population, average age 26, half of the population belong to 26, it belongs to that story that this young population are all getting a relatively good basic education. That means the literacy rate of the country is improving very fast. All these young people. They will -- they are digitally savvy. They want a smartphone, and they will know how to use it. Today, only 37% of the population is using internet, but you can imagine when this population -- this young population is growing up, everyone will use internet. The GDP growth is in the range of 6% to 7% consistently. This country is growing fast. At the back, of course, all the RMG export, RMG stands for ready-made garments but also at the back of very strong development of the infrastructure of the country. Wherever you are in the country, you will see infrastructure development, you will see bridges, you will see metros, airports, tunnels, [cover] plants, industrial areas, economical zones, educational institutions. I have known this country for more than 2 decades. Even if you have -- even if it's 10 years ago, since you visited this country, you wouldn't even recognize it. And a very big difference from a decade to decade ago is, at that time, most of the economy was in a way developing around 2 cities, Dhakka and Chittagong. Chittagong is basically the harbor capital. But now, you see the economy is developing all over the country. You see 10, 15, 20 cities with a very good infrastructure, airports and middle-class shopping centers and a totally different ability for the country as a whole to be productive. We recently had an election in Bangladesh, the ruling party is now into its fourth 5-year period. This means we have a stable political regime, and stable political regime also means a stable, predictable regulatory regime. And several institutions, including UN, World Bank, they have their graduation scheme. So you will see, for example, the UN is saying that they believe Banglalink will graduate from being a least developing country to a developing country in 2026. World Bank is having a similar graduation system. All of this, of course, is a platform for growth in our industry. Our industry as a whole today is a $3 billion per year industry. $3 billion is less than 1% of GDP. The GDP is $460 billion. It's growing at the rate of around -- if you take the whole industry today, around 7% or so, we believe it will go faster when the internet penetration and the 4G penetration is increasing. Currently at 52%, 53%. And this is increasing. The industry contribution to GDP will also increase. And it's driven primarily by data services. If you circle back to what we said 3 years ago. We said we will have double-digit growth by 2024. We managed to accelerate that, and we had double-digit growth already in 2020. We did what we promised, rolling out a nationwide high-quality 4G network. And we are covering 88% of population in 4G and we have maintained throughout this process, our speed position, the Ookla speed position is a very integrated important part of our brand. We have built 2 very strong digital assets, Toffee and MyBL, which I will come back to. We have tripled the number of Multiplay customers and their revenue contribution has quadrupled. When you look at our financials, you will see that we are not only growing our revenues at the back of customer growth, but you also see a decent ARPU growth. And this will continue when people continue growing their digital adaptation. Last but not least, we have executed the asset-light strategy. We have already sold 2,000 towers at $100 million, we will continue selling the rest of the portfolio. On top of that, we have recently entered into discussions with one of our competitors to look at active network sharing. There are new regulations in the country that allow us to share network as active network sharing, even up to the level of sharing spectrum. This will not only allow us to save money, but it will also allow us to be more highly competitive in areas where the market leader is strong. By the way, you will see when you study the industry over the years, the market leader is losing market share, consistently because of the competition that we are providing. So this growth that we have has taken us now up quite significantly in market share. The network expansion we did, we built another 70% base stations. And that rollout was basically done and finished towards the end of 2022. So we have only had this nationwide network for around 16, 18 months. But we already started to gain revenue market share at the back of this. Not only did we build 70% more base stations. We also upgraded everything we have. And we took a strategic decision to sunset 3G. We wanted to take all our assets and provide an excellent great 4G for all experience. So all the spectrum, all the electronics, everything is being used to deliver 4G with a backhaul of 2G for the legacy firms. Data revenue is the growth -- the main growth on the revenue side. And you would see that our data revenue market share is now higher than the total revenue market share which means we are a true digital operator, and our growth is driven by the growth market. We have a higher ratio of data services than the market leader. We have also maintained a very premium good spectrum position. And by having the best spectrum, we have more spectrum per customer than our competitors, and that helps us keeping the quality experience and the speed position. Last but not least, you may not see this at the bottom. We have spent an enormous amount of energy on developing our teams be it all sorts of behavior being work ethics, attitude, culture, they are working together. And we have spent an enormous amount of time and energy on this. We have developed leaders. We have been strong in ESG. All of this together has turned us into in a matter of a few years into the top 5 most attractive employers in the country. In a country with 170 million people, being top 5 is giving you some opportunities. We recently, as you saw from the video, we had a talent and innovation competition with 35,000 senior students and graduate signed up for that competition, 35,000. A perfect place to recruit talents, much better than LinkedIn and interviews and any other thing. We could see the students in action, and we recruited quite a few of them. Plus, they provided also a lot of good ideas for new products that we will launch in the market. Digital assets. Let's start with Toffee. 52 million people have signed up for Toffee. Toffee is the most highly rated entertainment app in this category for the last 230 weeks, more than 4 years, consistently every week for more than 4 years. We are providing all sorts of streaming services, be it drama, movies, live TV channels and sports events, all major sports events. Sometimes, we do exclusive sports events. We did that with FIFA 2022, which really made Toffee very popular and famous. And we also now currently holding the exclusive rights for all major cricket events this year and next year. 170 matches, both men and women, these 2 years, including, of course, the ongoing Cricket World Cup. And I'm happy to report that all the content costs that we have for these exclusive rights is fully funded by our ad tech and subscription fees. And of course, on top of that, we are getting the data usage from the customers. And we are getting the customer insights. And we have a new ability to talk to customers and have a dialogue with customers beyond the telco relationship. We expect Toffee to deliver non-telco or nonconnectivity revenues of around $50 million in 2 years time alone. Then we have MyBL. MyBL started as a relatively simple self-service app. We have developed it further. We have added a number of DO 1440 ads and business opportunities. We are providing health services, educational services, other entertainment, we're doing gamification. We have also included VEON's ad tech technology, and we have, of course, AI services included. More than half of the customers that are using MyBL are now also using non-self-service -- services in this app. So this is a very, very promising and popular app, and a big part of our business and customer interaction. If you look at the time line of the company. I think we are openly admitted that we had a little bit of a turnaround 6, 7 years ago. And we had to turn around quite a few things, everything from network experience, customer experience and a number of other things. We have gone through that phase. We have gone nationwide as promised. We have become a true digital operator with the best digital services. And now, of course, in the coming period, we have a brand-new, very modern state-of-the-art nationwide 4G network, which has further potential to be monetized. And we are gradually unlocking the nonconnectivity services, Toffee included, but also other services. So at the back of all of this, we believe in a very strong growth in the country. We have also done significant efforts in restructuring our balance sheet. So we mentioned a tower sale as one example. We have also gradually started to move from international dollar-based funding to local currency funding. And we have already paid down a significant part of the shareholder loan, which was in dollars. So we are restructuring that part. We are also looking into a local IPO opportunity when the market conditions are right, and we are already in dialogue with authorities and [foundation] on this topic. Of course, that will create another access to stakeholders in the country. All of these growth enablers are in place, the country enablers and the company enablers. We strongly believe we will deliver more than 15% annual growth on top line. With the nationwide network, economy of scale, network sharing, all this, we will bring our EBITDA above 45%. Connectivity and nonconnectivity revenues up to 20% of the total contribution. And we will get into a consistent free cash flow that will, in the medium and long term, provide a consistent dividend contribution to the VEON Group. Thank you.

Erik, thank you very much. Great success story moving from being a regional player who doesn't know what to do next to a national committed player, which is authentically local. You have a fantastic team in Bangladesh. And to be authentically local requires more than the ability to pronounce the name of the founder properly, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, we follow his steps and deliver growth there. Thank you very much. Andrzej, we are looking forward to hearing the story of Uzbekistan. Thank you. [Presentation]

I am Andrzej Malinowski and I am honored to serve as the CEO of Beeline Uzbekistan for 3 years. I'm here today to talk to you about 2 things. Number one, what it means to grow the business, 13 quarters in a row double digit. Number two, how do we deliver CAGR top line growth by 2027 amounting to high 20%. All of the components of our future success are here. The biggest in terms of population country in Central Asia with the youngest and fastest-growing population with 2% of newborn babies every year. Ever since I landed in Uzbekistan, more than 2 million newborn babies were born, not because of me because that's how the country operates. That's how the country grows. That's how the government makes this country growing together with very firm and confident execution around the country on digital agenda. Countries own digital agenda that is the actual book says Digital Uzbekistan 2030, and we are the very part of this strategy. We are the very partner of the government, not just a single institution in order to deliver on this objective and have everyone connected. Allow me to draw your attention to the message that I got personally from an individual living in a very center of the country. A while back, Ali asked me the following question, can you help me getting connected? This is the voice of Uzbekistan population, 77% of the population, only 77% of the population has mobile access to the internet. This shows you the headroom for the growth. This shows you the potential what more can be delivered beyond just selling a simple SIM card, what more can be built on this foundational element and the word help symbolizes the fact that even in the smallest places in the country, people understand their right to be connected. And we are, as Beeline Uzbekistan, as VEON operations in Uzbekistan as a whole, we are in the country in order to deliver on that objective. This is who we are. VEON operations in Uzbekistan is not just Beeline. Beeline, name of our entity unit existing on the market for 18 years, mobile operator, the holder of the license, the one of the most valuable brand in the country. But they are runner up. There is a runner-up that we've built on our own OQ in Uzbek, meaning transparent what our customers want. Our customers told us very openly late 2021, we don't want hidden charges. That is why OQ, meaning transparent is a first operator offering 0 hidden charges, offering more, and I will be referring to this going forward. Why I'm putting so much effort and so much attention of yours into this, because Beelab is where OQ was born. Beelab is our own software house with 100-plus software engineers delivering, building applications, building everything that circles around our digital agenda. We are self-sufficient in that matter, and we became, following the path of our colleagues from Kazakhstan, again, more than operator. We are becoming the technology company with the newest kid in our family being VEON AdTech. I will spend a sizable amount of time in order to give you the flavor of what VEON AdTech is and why this is actually the illustration of the words that the data is new oil. In that case, data is probably new gold. And last but not least, fully carved out investable infrastructure company, National Tower Investment Company that we've carved out and they own 4,000 sites that formerly belong to Beeline Uzbekistan, already they wait to be invested into. Narrowing down this pipeline about VEON operations in Uzbekistan, allow me to guide you briefly through who we are in our core of operations. Number one, in terms of revenue market share because we are the only one. And we decided to make this bold move back in a day soon after I landed in Uzbekistan in late 2021. We've introduced bundles, bundling products, not selling gigabytes and minutes, selling certain specific lifestyles. That is what we call a market-leading portfolio to premiumize the core. We have built on the top of it. We've built on the top of it, and we offer numerous lifestyles, numerous way of spending time and when of investing the time into certain elements that gave us this competitive advantage. One of the most valuable brands in the telecom and #1 market leader without any doubt, confirmed by Antimonopoly Committee, which is a very valid confirmation in our country, #1 in terms of data users. Significant investment in 4G following our group strategy 4G for all with the ambition to have 89% to 90% of population covered with our 4G network and the best employer to start the career with. This is something that we are very proud of because we are the employer of choice, specifically for graduates. Stable financial performance, stable financial performance lies the foundation. For whatever we plan to deliver to the shareholders in the future. Otherwise, none of those things that I'm going to introduce you to would not be possible. 12 quarters in the row, 12 quarters in a row, double-digit growth. Very, very disciplined inflation repricing. Continuously reviewing the prices of our bundling tariff day in, day out in order to maximize the value that is being delivered. And the components of the value that are being delivered as you see data revenue, digital revenue coming from our own digital products, Multiplay growing exponentially almost 40% and data usage per subscriber as the outcome of the way we treat our customers as the outcome of the offering that we have been building. How do we do this in order to fulfill our own digital strategy translate in a way, group strategy into Uzbek language. Following the best examples that you've heard so far, we have our own Multiplay applications, which are operator-agnostic. I'm privileged to see a member of our Board sitting on the audience. So it's great to have. I can now spoil because all of those brands are all over Tashkent. One is Kinom, formerly known as Beeline TV streaming platform for television and rhythm formerly known as Beeline Music streaming platform for music, advertised all over -- soon to be launched specifically oriented for Uzbek content and specifically in the area of music also for content creators. We will be front-running this. Nobody even thinks about doing the stuff that we are soon to be mastering currently known as self-care, the application, which will be turned into superapp or lifestyle application. I will ask you to pay a little bit more attention going forward about some details of how do we transfer simple self-service into the actual lifestyle platform. All of those other components, OQ, I've already mentioned, Bemarket our own price comparison engine soon to transfer to full-fledged e-commerce platform, focus on devices selling in order to increase devices penetration on the market, telemedicine and Beepul, which I will also draw your attention to going forward. That's what currently known as MyBeeline application will turn into. Telecom, obviously, usual suspects, the key component of our real games, entertainment, e-commerce everything will be available at the fingertips of our customers. So having this done, I honestly believe that 3.3 million, current monthly active users, will soon grow in the number that will be much bigger and the penetration with our own base will also grow. But this is not the key component. The key component is that this application will become available to everybody. You don't have to be Beeline customer in order to use this. Certain things will be available for everybody and this will gradually turn into customer acquisition mechanism, because certain key components, certain cherries on this cake will only be available to Beeline users. Beepul, our own peer-to-peer -- back in the day, peer-to-peer money transfer platform soon to be full-fledged fintech driving growth of our revenue mechanism self-built by people team and constantly modified in order to grab a bigger and bigger chunk of extremely competitive fintech market in Uzbekistan. With banking industry, catching up with fintech, we feel the pressure in order to deliver better and better features, more and more user-friendly engines and more and more accessible services in the country where 40% of people never did any financial transaction other than cash. I believe this tells the story how we will harvest the growth that we will be facing very, very soon because of this growth of the population because of those people who are sending me the message, we need your help in order to get connected. OQ, homemade teletainment platform with capabilities to transfer into mobile operator onboarding from European perspective, from Global's perspective, onboarding on the mobile platform, becoming a customer of mobile operator is putting a SIM card into a slot. Normally, in Uzbekistan, it takes 17 pieces of paper and the visit in the retail outlet in order to get onboarded before OQ was born. Now it takes 1.5 minutes one selfie and selfie of your identification document, a connection to the governmental or platform called my ID, identification of who you are vis-a-vis the documents that you presented. And immediately, you get the number, you get the tariff plan, which is not called tariff plan anymore. You select entertainment, games built in robots and all of those other components, which will make OQ unique born late 2023, 200,000 monthly active users by the end of April. Now the key component of our future growth outside telco. We decided to bring yet another operations to Uzbekistan and harness growing potential of the country and locate this newly built entity called VEON AdTech in what is called IT park under specific preferential taxation regime supported by the government in order to provide unique services that are actually illustrating how data can be turned into gold, into revenue of the very, very sizable amount. AdTech, bunch of local data scientists, data engineers, transfer data into money using enriched telco data in variety of used cases, starting from designing new quarters of Tashkent, managing the traffic, suggesting the banks what is the best location for ATMs, supporting [indiscernible] retailers, using any video feed in order to support health and safety in the workplace, and obviously, offering scoring models for financial institutions, including our own depot. As you see, a lot of synergies between operations across VEON footprint can profit on what is being produced by the skillful team of VEON AdTech located in Tashkent. But the actual cherry on the cake is our advertising capability in that specific area. We have the platforms. My esteemed colleague, Aamir and Erik were mentioning extremely successful cases of both Tamasha and Toffee. We plug in our capabilities into those 2 platforms, offering Tier 1 commercial opportunities to our biggest brands in the world. We can advertise and we are already in application that has been used in our -- by our colleagues in Kazakhstan. And we -- during the month of May, we've recorded 22 million people seeing the impressions all across the footprint where we already use this technology to advertise. We have direct linkage with the big players on this market. Google, Meta and TikTok. So potentially, we can plan for whoever is interested, we can plan the campaign ranging through our own platforms and applications to the biggest platforms in the world. Delayering our asset-light model is also our story. 4,000, 25% of base stations existing on the territory of the country, carve out into a separate entity, national tower infrastructure ready to be invested the team of extremely skillful people carve this out with the huge help coming from HQ, carve this out from Unitel. This is the asset that is easy to be invested with 5 mobile operator that will need a colocation that we need the locations on the specific base stations on the specific towers. We see the huge potential in it. We are now quite advanced in the process of searching for the investment in this asset. But speaking about assets, this is where our key asset sits, our people and our social agenda. Despite being the biggest taxpayer in the mobile industry, of Uzbekistan. We understand our commitment and we understand our obligation to local communities. That is why we decided to open our own learning facility called Beeline Academy, we decided to continue and reinforce the oldest training program in the country, 16 years old Bee generation, of which 85% of the people who ever started this are now our employees. And we were the ones bringing international organization women in tech to Uzbekistan in order to accelerate the role, the female colleagues of ours and the female of Uzbekistan will be playing in the growth of the country. Everything I said boils down to the following numbers. Our ambition is to deliver 2.6% CAGR top line growth, until 2027. The team of people who managed to grow the business 12 quarters in the row, every single quarter, double-digit higher than inflation in a very competitive market is committed to fulfill this promise. I honestly believe I'm fully confident that when given the opportunity by the end of 2027 to report back to you that this commitment was delivered whoever will be on my position will be proud to tell you that whatever we promised back in a day being today was delivered or even overachieved. Thank you for your attention.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I would like to remind you that what Hasnain said in the macroeconomic analysis under the leadership of President Mirziyoyev. The transformation of Uzbekistan is remarkable. We have turned -- we have seen this country turn into a very investor-friendly environment and especially that's the reason we selected our AdTech business to be headquartered in Tashkent Techno Park with excellent incentives from the government as well. So maybe just doing a quick recap about a couple of things that we try to pass to you top-down bottom-up with the fantastic participation of our country general managers. High-teens revenue cumulative average growth. I hope you can understand why we think it is possible to grow the business, 16% to 19% in top line, 19% to 22% in EBITDA. Now clearly, I'm sure you have also noticed that this higher margin, high growth in revenues, cost management, capital expenditure reduction due to infrastructure sharing, margin expansion, these will lead into an equity free cash flow generation capacity. And I also think that this is representing our total $11 million, $5 million EBITDA, $1.5 million everyday cash to EUR 3 million cash picture. Our operations are extremely aligned. Digital Operator, DO1440, Augmented Intelligence, AI1440. This is going to continue driving our market share gains as well as wallet share gains. Effective balance sheet management. And this is critical we live in frontier markets. When you live in frontier markets, political risks, macroeconomic risks and operational efficiency to be balanced. Political risks, geopolitical risks. That's why when I started the day and talked about the changes we have done in our governance. And the guidance that we keep on getting from our board with the participation of Sir Brandon Lewis or Secretary Pompeo is an enormous asset for our operation. We understand the complexities, we proactively manage these complexities. When it comes to macroeconomic risks, there is a recipe for success. It's a big secret, but I will share it with you. If you are in emerging markets, I'm born in a hyperinflationary environment. Number 1 rule, disciplined pricing. Disciplined pricing according to inflation plus real GDP growth, companies who can keep their discipline in this area will have a chance to succeed. Second, you have to leverage the companies in local currency. Hard currency leveraging of the company when you make your money in Takas, in Rupees, in Soms, in Tenges. And then spending and being exposed to foreign currency interest is just little, keep your assets in hard currency as much as you can and make sure that your average maturity is matched to your average return on investment in terms of payback periods. If you do these things, it's not rocket science. Maybe 1 year, you will be unlucky, the other [year too], but on the third year, you will win. And that's a discipline that you can count on us that we will keep keeping our balance sheet in the right position. We will continue with [ delayering ] no more towers and infrastructure sharing through net cost. We are going to create investable entities. We will not be shy of going to IPOs. And the most important thing everybody you have seen today, you have listened today or you have seen on the slides, has a stake in the game and our equity holders. We are all on the same boat. And I'm so proud that over the last 4 years, we have honored every single commitment we have to our creditors, and we will keep this discipline as well. Now I will stop talking. Chris, please join me on the stage, and we will do a Q&A session. And during this Q&A session, the questions will not be only to me, please, we have all our general managers here, Joop here, Lasha here, whatever question you have, you can ask, and we will be honored to answer. Chris I will leave the word to you. I don't know if you need it. But if not, please, let's start.

Perfect. So maybe just a very brief introduction about myself. My name is Chris Hoare, I've been a telco analyst for just over 25 years longer than I want to think about, honestly, I work for a company called New Street Research, which we think of ourselves as leading global TMT equity research company, and I lead the EM Telco franchise within that space. And I was very pleased to be, if not the first -- one of the first equity research analyst to relaunch coverage on VEON after the exit from Russia. And I'm also very pleased, obviously, to be here and able to ask some questions. So thank you for that. And a bigger thank you also to the whole team for today. I think it's been super interesting and useful.

Chris, by the way, thanks a lot from my side to you because I remember February 21, 2022, we were being followed by 13 different research analysts. We had relationships with all international banks. Two days later, we have none. And thanks to your awareness, you picked us, you started to follow us. And I think we will return that making you the best picker of stocks in the entire industry.

Definitely. Yes. Thank you Yes. Maybe should we start with something that I think really differentiates you and it's come through very strongly in the slides, but it's the multi-play strategy. And I'd just be super interested to hear, from your perspective, top down, how you see the benefits from that flowing through to the company obviously, over the medium term.

Look, I am actually quite new to the telecom industry. The first job I got in telecoms was the CEO job in Turkcell. Before I come from Arthur Andersen and then Cisco background. And during my career, I did a lot of consulting to telecom companies. I did -- I sold lots of equipment to the telecom companies later on. And then I sit on boards, which acquired services from telecom companies. But when I joined the telecom industry. I remember like yesterday, it was sometime in April 2015. I received my first WhatsApp call. And that was like a punch in the face because I suddenly realized what was going on. And I kind of felt like our industry has been waiting on the bus stop and the buses were coming and passing by, and we were just missing every single bus. That day, I decided that we can't let this happen because if you lose relevance to the customer, even in the -- what you would define as basic telecom communication service of messaging and voice services, you don't have a purpose. And that was the beginning of a journey that I started and I came up with the idea that the revenue potential depends on your relevance to your customers. And every time you lose the relevance, you lose the revenue potential. And that's how we came with this Digital Operator model. And I think VEON proved that. This is exactly the right thing for emerging markets. But I have to make one important comment for our colleagues listening and who are also following European and American telecoms industry. Forget about it. As long as the toxic policy of net neutrality exists. This strategy doesn't work, right? Because this strategy works only if you are allowed to leverage your customer acquisition capabilities and distribution potential with the services that you bring to the customers. And of course, in frontier markets, where these what I call the paper target -- tigers have no presence. This strategy is the perfect fit to drive higher customer relevance and higher revenue potential and wallet share gains.

Yes. That's super interesting. And following on from that and also your comment about how Uzbekistan is growing revenue ahead of data volume growth. I suppose the other area where the industry has been much more focused, I think, relative to you is on commercialization of 5G. And so it'd be sort of also interested in just your thoughts about the opportunity in 5G and how VEON wants to address those or should not address them.

You may have noticed most of our countries refer to our policy of 4G for all. Actually, our policy has a second center attached to it. 4G for all, not 5G for few. Look, we still have less than 70% 4G penetration. Less than 5% of smartphones. By the way, smartphones are only owned by 1 out of 2 people and 50% of those only 3% to 5% in different countries have 5G capabilities. Then the question is, what are we deploying? Who is going to use this? And what is the difference about 5G versus 4G because the 4G we are deploying is actually 4.9G. It has carrier aggregation, our core is virtualized. We have maximum antennas. We actually provide the service level that 5G hardly reaches. In markets where 5G is launched, actually, customer experience goes down. I lived in Amsterdam. I shut down my 5G. I'm living here in Dubai now. I shut down my 5G again because when the moment you are out of 5G, it goes back to 4, the call drops, the connection drops, you hardly reattach, your battery is drained faster. And with 4G, you have exactly the same capabilities. 5G is only interesting when it comes to industry-specific use cases. And we have no problem in doing that if we are a customer who's going to pay for it, of course, we will do it. But 5G is out of our scope. We have not deployed 5G in any one of our markets, and we have not suffered anything. And I have not seen until today any telecom company who said, we have a vary 5G result. So I think that explains, we will hopefully skip 5G. We believe in continuous adaptive networks. I believe the future is all about, of course, utilizing spectrum as efficient as possible, but terrestrial networks will also be complemented by satellite networks and open run will be the future, and we will be focusing on those technologies.

Fair enough. Maybe moving on to some of the OpCos. There was a mention of elephant in the room. Maybe the second elephant in the room is the risk of nationalization in Ukraine. Can you -- is there any update you can give us on the thoughts around that?

Sure. But I think the real hero is here. And I would love to have him answer this question. Sasha, you live every day. please.

Let's take it into the, I will say, framework. The first one, there is no legitimate way to nationalize Kyivstar. No, Okay? Whether it is possible, everything is possible in Ukraine, we should take it into account, okay? But I think it's a very, very significant obstacles, a plenty of new localized legislation, which will be against mutually agreed with Western partners legislation should be adopted, okay? At the same time, let's look at this from a different perspective. Kyivstar is fully integrated into the national security framework, okay, partially under the Martial law, Kyivstar is under the direct command of the National Security Council, okay? So we are running critical infrastructure and critical humanitarian service in Ukraine on a very efficient way. And this is a private business responsibility. This is actually transferred by the state on the shoulders of the private business, okay? Within the current limitations, we are reinvesting all our funds into the Ukrainian economy into the Ukrainian bonds, okay? And we are one of the best taxpayer, actually Kyivstar is paying 50% of the whole telecom industry taxes in Ukraine. We are one of the best employers, and we are one of the most social responsible business in Ukraine. So somehow, if you will ask me about probability, I think that it is relatively, relatively low.

And does the -- what's happening with lifecell, where I think the courts have cleared the asset seizures there. Is that relevant, do you think, for the Kyivstar situation?

Yes, I think, yes. I think somehow when Ukrainian government realized that it is a kind of attractive deal on the table, attractive for Ukraine deal on the table, they're quite receptive.

And also fully agree with Sasha. And of course, we are extremely respectful for the Ukrainian government's concerns around any kind of influence. I think what Kyivstar has done is an outstanding job. And every day, they continue doing it, and it is being appreciated by the government, expressed by the government. And in return of our respect, we have demonstrated, I think no other company could -- even before Secretary Pompeo joined our Board at VEON Group level. He became a Board member in Kyivstar. And I think there is no doubt -- there should be no doubt in anybody's mind that there can be -- there cannot be any influence to anything we do other than the patriotism that the team expresses every single day. So I have no concerns. Yes, there is a 100% asset on the set of VEON. And we are a publicly listed company, which have shareholders all around the world. And I believe this is going to be a joint effort to make sure that it stays that way.

Yes. And obviously, this all links back to ownership at VEON level [indiscernible]. As an analyst on the company, that's a consistent question I get is whether there's anything that can be done about that ownership. Is there anything you can say about that?

Look, the way I see it, I'm very respectful to our all shareholders. They have done an amazing support to our management team. LetterOne is a U.K. fund and who is not under any sanctions, who is managed by an international independent Board. And from that perspective, of course, the question should be answered by them. But I'm respectful for every shareholder that we have. And as management, we are committed to creating value. But of course, this is a question maybe our Chairman would also jump in and add some perspective. Augie?

With pleasure. Thank you, Chris. We haven't a chance to meet but thank you for the coverage. And hopefully, others will follow your lead in getting coverage for us. No, as Kaan said, we have a board -- we ran new board. We had 96% of shareholders show up. We have 7 board members. Myself, I go back to the roots I founded this company 33 years ago, well before we ever had any LetterOne ownership. And the future with who we have, it's all independent. We are governing this company for our shareholders, all of our shareholders, and we're very focused and we don't -- do we have external reputational issues in the beginning, yes, it was more difficult. Today, we have good dialogue with the Ukrainian government. We have good dialogue with our vendors. We had issues as Kaan said, 2 days after the war, we lost everybody. Nobody wanted to be with us. That's changed. Everyone now is working with us. So we don't see that as a barrier. We focus on the business. We have our strategy, our vision the team, which is phenomenal here. So no, we feel very confident going forward.

Okay. Yes. Maybe a final question on this issue. You've been around in emerging markets long enough, you know you have to prepare for the worst. If the worst happened and it was nationalized, how would you see that impacting the group as a whole?

Look, I don't want to imagine the hypotheticals, but I don't see that really happening. Look, and if a crazy person does a mistake, we will show all our strength in teeth and claws, and we will keep our assets.

Yes. Okay. Maybe moving on to think about the cyber-attack. Obviously, a very tough situation to deal with. Could you talk through a little bit what you're doing to prevent future attacks?

Chris, first of all, it's really important to understand that this was not a cyber-attack done by 2 teenagers in AdTech. And I don't think that in this type of a terrorist attack to a network, any measure you take will only have an impact on how fast you can recover. And I'm very proud with the team. What we have done in an environment where our entire virtual core was destroyed. It took us just 50 hours to get back. And today, in all metrics, number of customers, number of people on the roaming, number of gigabytes consumed on our network, calls made quality of services, we are better than even pre cyber-attack. So we will always be prepared for these cyber-attacks. They can still happen. If it happens, it will be the best response you can see from any company that you can imagine. And Sasha mentioned, we actually initiated the most impactful loyalty program to keep our customers, and they responded back with their loyalty, and I'm very happy to see that happen actually.

Yes. Parts, obviously, of the process that you're going through in Ukraine is around investment, investment now. You, I think, mentioned today, that you'll be talking about $1 billion of investment over the next few years. What is the shape of that? How should investors expect that to come through?

Look, first of all, as Sasha also mentioned, we are a profitable cash-generating company. And we believe in the model where all of our operating units creates the funds necessary to invest for the future of the networks. And the capacity that we can create to invest, which we understand, which will not be the normal investment cycles will be enough over the 5 years to fund $1 billion of investments into the country. And with the strategy we have in terms of being Asset-Light and potentially sharing infrastructure, which will be critical for building the future of Ukrainian infrastructure. I think this is a task that we can shoulder. And I'm also very happy to see that the industry at large in Ukraine since the war started has shown great solidarity by opening up national roaming immediately. And I'm sure that as we build the future networks, this is going to be a textbook case of how to build a proper redundant network at the lowest cost.

Okay. Maybe just a final question on Ukraine. What's the status of networks in the occupied areas? How does that actually flow through for you as a business?

I will leave Sasha to answer this question.

For the time being, all networks on the occupied editors are fully connected, fully disconnected. So Russians are built in a kind of quasi network, okay? They have been connected. We had the Russian territory to the outer road. But we do not deal with this at all.

Okay Yes. Thank you. Maybe moving on to Pakistan, Aamir you may want to answer some of these. There's consolidation going on within the Pakistani market, is that impacting competition? Or how are you seeing competition develop in that space?

Aamir, would you like to answer because this is a topic that he is the expert on.

Sure. I think as Kaan mentioned somewhere that like the days that people build their own networks are gone. We started with sharing towers and now we have to start sharing spectrums. And further consolidation is actually good for the industry. We're duplicating expensive infrastructure in a country where there is limited effects. So from a macroeconomic perspective and a country perspective, it doesn't make sense. Customers need to have perhaps 3 good choices rather than 4 poor choices. So this consolidation, I think, is good for the industry. It will have a positive impact on what we can deliver in terms of our commitment to the countries, not just us, but they are the other 2 operators. So I'm actually quite optimistic that this is the right step for the industry. It would also reduce pressure on trying to kill each other with reducing prices. So all in all, I'm very much in favor of industry consolidation, the way it's pursued.

And have you seen any changes in the environment as a result...

The approval process -- the approval process is still ongoing. So I think they will probably -- the 2 competitors, Ufone and Telenor will probably get their regulatory approvals by the second half, sometime second half of the year. And the real consolidation actually would start maybe 6 months from that. As of right now, we still have 4 operators, but I think the die has been cast. And it's just a question of time whether these -- when these 2 companies merge.

Yes. And I suppose the other big changes on the political side with new coalition, are you seeing any impact from that? Or is that...

It's positive so far. And I don't want to say it's calm before the storm, but it's certainly calm. And like we are a country where we have many storms and political ones, too. But for the last 6 months, the currency is stable. Inflation has started coming down. Last month's inflation was mid-teens, down from 30%. Now the next thing we are looking at is perhaps some softening on the policy rate. It still is about 22%, which is very high. And there are indications that we will probably come down by 200 basis -- so when this starts happening, I think all the things that we were hoping for, and you saw some of that by Hasnain, I think maybe the worst is over, and we are moving towards an environment where we can be a little bit more than cautiously optimistic. So I think the macros are stable and encouraging.

Yes. Obviously, in Pakistan, you've been super successful in the adjacent markets and in particular with JazzCash. Can you talk about a little bit more about the specific product offerings and how you monetize and sort of what return profile is in that business as it grows.

In the JazzCash, business...

Yes. Yes.

So like most financial institutions, you can either make money through lending through float or through services. We are focusing both on nano-lending, which is about 40%, 45% of the total revenue of JazzCash. And we do it a lot more effectively because, as I said, we have one of the largest data lakes. So we use that data very intelligently to credit score, the right customer, and then we complement it with an insurance product. So our nonperforming loans are quite low compared to other nonbank institutions. So that's an advantage that we have, and it really resides on top of really solid analytics and credit scoring engines. So that's the biggest chunk of the revenue. And then when it comes to services, whether it's the merchant ecosystem that we're building or government to public, public to government payments. We're actually going through the volume game over there and really expanding the number of transactions and taking over a small little share of the transaction fee. So that's the other thing. And what we have done relatively well in the last 1, 1.5 years is that we have gone through every single product, and we are looking very clinically at the unit economics for everything. So unless there's a strategic reason why a product needs to be a loss leader, we have a very clinical focus on if it's not making sense short term and it's not operationally working for us, we dropped that service. So laser sharp focus not just on the growth in numbers and transactions, but also on marginality and whether the business is generating cash.

Okay. And one of the things, Kaan, you mentioned is the strategy to bring outside investors into a number of these businesses. And I guess, JazzCash is one of the more mature ones. We've seen like some Mastercard, for instance, invest in African telco and fintechs. So who would you -- what -- I mean, I don't want you to take names, but what kind of investors would you be expecting to be bringing into those adjacent businesses.

Look, of course, there are important choices to be made. First of all, these type of investors for us, the cash generation is a secondary issue. The important thing by developing these partnerships can we acquire certain competencies faster than we can build or can we create capacity in terms of balance sheet that doesn't exist today. So we will be looking from a very strategic perspective to decide who would be the right partner for us. But it could well be the case that we can actually do certain things ourselves and end up with a listing of these entities in markets where there are lots of interested investors. So we will keep our options open, but strategic investors will only come in if they are worth the competency or the capacity that they represent.

Okay. Interesting. One of the other things I thought was interesting in your presentation. I mean, it was the focus on enterprise and particularly [ Garage ], which seems like that's moved on a fair amount actually in the last 6 months. Could you expand on thoughts there around the market opportunity? And I guess, what you see as the returns opportunity in that business as well?

So this is like for most of us who have grown up in a traditional consumer environment, we typically don't spend that much time working on enterprises. But I think what we have seen in the last few years is the data explosion -- and countries like Pakistan, which are data producing countries, there are small businesses, and they're medium businesses. And they have historically gone through a service provider, which was outside of the country. And now with the focus on keeping the Pakistani data in Pakistan, I think we are very well positioned to actually build the capabilities in the country. We're also reselling products from hyperscalers. But at the same time, we are competing with them, and we are also selling their products. It's a question of time when we build enough capacity and capability ourselves that we can actually be a serious contender for the business. Now anybody who says that I could be the next Google or AWS is going to get laughed at. But I think in certain pockets, these are really good opportunities. And as I've showed you through the numbers, a business which is now doubling and tripling every year, and we see the trend coming in the next few years also. So very excited about this thing, like the blooming businesses in Pakistan. The start-up culture is there, and everybody needs not just storage, but everything that resides on top of that storage, which is analytics, how do you analyze the information? How do you actually store what are the services that you provide to small and medium enterprises including cybersecurity that we just spoke about.

I mean you're absolutely right. The objective here is not to be Google or Amazon Web Services. Actually, we expect them to be our partners in addition to our own capabilities. Frankly speaking, I hope neither Amazon nor Google nor Microsoft are expecting the government entities in Pakistan to be their customers. By the way, they would reject even not accept it to us, who will serve that. And for the rest, they will be hosted on our data centers, and we will have business competition together.

Yes. No, this is music to my ears because I mean, I think most investors looking at EM Telcos are so focused on the consumer business. And the reality is if you look at developed market telcos, the enterprise assets are similar order of magnitude to their consumer businesses. And so I'm certainly very optimistic about the opportunity there. It's great to see that you're sort of trying to capture that. Yes. Maybe it's -- maybe should we move on to Kazakhstan on that basis. I think just be interested again, a little more detail on how you see the competitive environment in Kazakhstan. I think there is a new entrant coming in, isn't there, Freedom Telecom. Just wonder if the perspective is that, that's going to be damaging to growth? Or how do you deal with that?

Well, first of all, I think Kazakhstan is an exemplary regulated market, hats off to the Kazakh regulators. It's a 2-player market until today, and there is a third player, but it's not Freedom, it's actually -- Qatar is just bought Tele2 in Kazakhstan, and we will see how it will fold out. But over the last 4 years, Kazakh regulators did a fantastic job in terms of making to operators, us and Kazakhtelecom work together to bring connectivity to the rural areas. Outstanding job. They have provided tax incentives, tax rebates to make these investments to happen. But that created the country that we have today. And I'm really thankful and I hope this will be an example. But this is important because for a country like Kazakhstan, a 2-player markets. We talked about Pakistan, 4 players to 3 players, Frankly speaking, I think 2 players, like in India is enough. Beyond that, it is actually wasting resources of a country. And Kazakhstan is a beautiful example, but I believe in the consolidation. I think the biggest failure in the world about telecom industry, sorry to say this, but Brussels, you failed the telecom industry in Europe. 200 telecom operators in a population of 400 million people. But Gaukhar, anything you would like to add.

Just in addition, yes, we are indeed operating currently where we have 2 operators, but we are expecting that after this sales transaction will happen with Tele2, we'll have a more competitive landscape and we understand that we are right now very well shaped to pay this competition.

And I guess you're including the impact of that in the guidance from the beginning.

Yes.

Absolutely. And I think our NetCo, which we will establish in Kazakhstan will be driving some sort of a share net capability there to support that.

I mean, just following on from that, is also an area I'm super interested in because I think, as you mentioned, one of the key things that differentiates actually emerging market from more developed markets is the depth of consolidation that we've been through. And I think this idea of carving out network codes and being able to capture some of those network synergies, even if you're not allowed to do full merger is super interesting. Can you add to what you've talked about already in terms of CapEx savings or OpEx savings that you'd see from that space?

Sure. I think there are 2 important things to recognize why we are excited about the NetCo model. One, the NetCo and the service Co has completed 2 different business models. One is a CapEx savy business. The other one is about effectiveness and OpEx. I believe in clear cut businesses. If business model defines a certain type of a management, it should focus on that management. So that's number one, why I believe there is value. But more than that, when you start having NetCos, that means that's a basis for sharing infrastructure, sharing infrastructure, even if you build redundancy, right, will save minimum 35% from CapEx. And especially in frontier markets, this -- what we call CapEx is import cost, right? And it is so easy to align with the governments in this area, demonstrating that, look, the reason we are doing this and the reason we have to allow us to do this is because we're going to save you $400 million next year from import costs. And I truly believe that it's a win-win-win. And this way, we will be able to reach out to rural areas more people in a more cost-effective way. And we will, of course, also create a huge cash generation capacity. Today, in a typical operation we have, we would be having about 45% EBITDA and 20% is spent on CapEx. Imagine where you can actually create this 10% additional cash generation capacity.

Yes, interesting. On the carve out story, obviously, the first tower, you've done this in Bangladesh. Why did you only sell a proportion of the towers in that market?

Look, $100 million is a big money for the banking system in Bangladesh. And it requires capacity to create this type of investment. So that was the reason why rather than waiting for to build this capacity and put a strain on the banking system. We decided to do 1/3. But it's actually a proof point that it is doable. It's just a matter of time to build the capacity of investments.

Okay. Can you talk about the margin impact from that deal as the lease fees start to flow?

Expected always on paper margin impact over tower deals is about 6% on EBITDA. Reality, it's going to be 0.

How does that work?

It works like this. When you have 2 different business models embedded with each other, right? They are like water mixing with color. And you don't focus on the right things. We probably mismanaged these assets, both from an OpEx perspective, but also from selling towers as a service to the third parties. So when you separate this, first of all, the operating company understands that there is an actual cost which was hidden before, and they start to put it on pricing. And finally, this additional 6% maybe margin impact will be reflected on proper pricing. Of course, if you are disciplined in pricing, if you apply inflation in the pricing. And in none of the deals that I have seen in tower separations, we have seen any impact on the margin. We recover very fast. And it was not the first deal we did in Bangladesh, some of the deal. As you know, we did it back in '21 in Russia as well. And that has resulted in the same thing as far as I followed up before the war.

Yes. Okay. So staying with Bangladesh, it's mentioned that the leader has been losing share. You've been gaining share. Can you talk a little bit about how you see that going forward? Do you think that trend is sustainable?

Look, the market leader in Bangladesh Grameen has, I think, an unsustainable market share, and they have been long time applying certain techniques, which are actually not helping, I believe the competitive environment to work properly. The regulators have been quite aware of the situation. And I believe it is just a matter of time that our market share, which was 17%, now almost 19.5% will reach 25%, which is our fair share according to the spectrum ownership. Eric, any comments?

No. I think as you mentioned, Kaan, the market leader is dominant and regulated as S&P. And they have, in fact, reduced their revenue market share with 5% in the last 4 years or so due to strong competition. At the same time, at the back of this, we have managed. It was a -- until we very clearly set the strategy of inflationary pricing. We saw that tariffs were declining in Bangladesh. We managed to stop that decline and you have seen recently that both APPM and APPMB are actually slowly but surely going up. And I believe this will continue I consider the competition as strong, but still rational. They are rational owners of the competitors. And as such, I believe this will be a rational market where we will increase our market share due to everything we have spoken about today. And I think we will have rational pricing over time.

Chris may ask you a question.

Go ahead.

How do you explain that? There are operators with $20 ARPU, there are operators with $1 ARPU, they all have the same EBITDA. How does that work?

It's network quality, isn't it? I think.

You see it's such an interesting thing that every metric we set results in actually driving certain type of behavior. So as the country gets more populated, and because we measure people on that magical number about 42% to 45% EBITDA, we always meet that. We need to change our methods of looking to the business. It's not how much EBITDA we make. It's actually what value we give to the customer and try reflecting this. And that's why we have to move away as an industry as fast as possible into this cost-plus model of pricing, we have to move away from selling raw data and really putting ourselves in the right place like Netflix, it has a price because that price is the value that the customer perceives. It's a change. It's a transformation, but I'm 100% confident that our team in this room will make that for those changes.

Okay. Super interesting. And so that leads into this idea that a lot of your multiple apps are open access, right? And so I think, for instance, Toffee, 70% or something of subscribers or users of Toffee are not subscribers of your network. How do you see that opportunity over time to either convert or monetize those people?

Look at the moment, when you look to an application like Toffee where we have 19.5% market share. And Toffee is the biggest OTT platform. It's normal that 70% of consumers of Toffee are non-Banglalink customers, right? And now naturally, as you interact with these people. And as we employ our AdTech capabilities, analytics capabilities, there is that sweet moment where are we going to make an offer that they cannot refuse. Not now, but there will be a moment when Erik will be making that offer they cannot refuse.

That leads me to the horses head in my mind. Let's save this, I like that. Maybe bringing this all together, you've given the midterm guidance looks very optimistic to me. To what extent are you assuming inflation in local currencies in that guidance? And so if inflation does ease, how much of a headwind would that be to the local currency guidance that you've given?

Look, first of all, thanks for asking this question because, of course, we make our simulations based on assumptions. And the assumptions that we have taken is, first of all, the inflation levels sustaining at this level and more importantly, through that recipe that I mentioned, how do we convert this local currency growth into hard currency growth. Our current assumptions actually imply that -- this type of local currency growth will translate into mid-single-digit dollar growth. Now if the inflation goes down, maybe the nominal growth could be maybe 1%, 2% less -- and that's why we provide actually a range -- but I want to keep that assumption of mid-single-digit...

Dollar growth...

As the anchor. And that's how we will plan everything.

Okay. And what are the -- I mean if you just had to put out 2 or 3 of the key things that give you confidence that you can deliver that real hard currency revenue growth.

Frankly speaking, 2 important things and 3 basically supporting issue. One, we talked about the demographic dividend. Whatever we do, these countries will grow. People will buy smartphones. They will consume more. So that natural growth element is there. Now -- and this is real growth, right? There is an inflation element, right? That will also bring a nominal growth. But more importantly, like the example Gaukhar made and actually, we have the same situation in Uzbekistan. Data consumption grows 20%, and we are able to monetize the entire growth. Normally, this is not there in many of the other operators. So that means that we are able to differentiate us, and we are not anymore selling raw data, but processed data services. This is another accelerator. So real growth in-person, in number of devices in practically the youth and growing consumer spending. On top of that, the nominal, of course, growth of inflation plus this accelerator frankly speaking, when I repeat these things, I think we can do better.

Chris, I'm going to just pause here just for a second because we're about to run out of time. We have one question from Stella Cridge that I wanted to ask. We've talked about further about going through the Asset-Light strategy and monetization opportunities, but also highlighted some ongoing macro challenges in key markets. What do you see as the most achievable transactions in the near term for the group? Example for the next 1 to 2 years?

In that time frame, next 1 to 2 years, I see none of the transactions nonexecutable. None. All can be executed within that time frame.

Maybe you've -- sort of kind of a follow-up from that. But I mean from my perspective, there's a very deep holdco discount being applied here. When I look at the various strategies Asset-Light, bringing investors into the various businesses. What's your overall strategy for trying to deal with the holdco discount?

Look, I think it's not realistic to look to the current discount and even name it as holdco discount. There are multiple reasons. One of the reasons that you and I think, Telenor are the only 2 companies that follow us. Frankly speaking, I don't know if you -- I'm sure some of you have tried -- if you talk to a broker, 1 out of 2 will accept the sell orders, but will not accept the buy orders. Or if they accept the buy orders, they will accept 2 of them. And the third one, they will not accept it. So the market is broken. It will be fixed. Market always fixes itself. And I'm sure what we do, our execution, our track record will be perceived in the right time and when the time comes.

Yes. And when you talk to investors, how important do you think is the leverage on the balance sheet at the moment. So I mean, is that deleveraging strategy you think key to this.

Look, I think there's always a healthy level of leverage for a company to carry. But as I mentioned to you, our revenues are driven by local currencies, Taka, Tenge, Rupee, Som, Hryvnia. And we have to reflect that our debt portfolio matches that. I think it will be a very wrong decision to have a mismatch at that level. And one thing why I'm so confident in saying that we're going to do all those Asset-Light deals because beyond creating cash, this is a matter of hedging for us. We sell the towers and create a long-term local currency liability, right? We take the cash, and we deleverage the hard currency debt. This is the perfect way of refinancing and also matching the hedging requirements. And that's why it is one of our top priorities, Joop and Jagan, all of us are focused on this because this is the way to expand the maturity terms. This is the way to get rid of the exposure to hard currency risks and matching potentially devaluation risk with the debt you have locally. Sometimes the valuation can be excellent. If you have discipline on pricing and the valuation hits you with a big debt locally in local currency. That's not a bad case, right?

Yes. Yes. No, I hear you. I mean on that just also be interested in your thoughts on your ability to cash upstream and how you see that developing over the long time.

Look, I'm extremely happy to say. And I think Hasnain also mentioned that we have no limitations in upstreaming currently. Of course, in Ukraine, there is a specific case. And even there, as Sasha mentioned, there are improvements in terms of flexibilities in the capital controls. But overall, we see quite a good picture.

Yes. Okay. Maybe just one final sort of big picture question from me. My takeaway from today is you're very confident in your ability to continue to deliver real revenue growth, meaningful level and to see operational leverage lead to better margins and cash flow to the parent. I mean, am I -- is that the message? Is that how you see the future over the next kind of 3 or 4 years? Or is there anything that we're missing that you'd want to sort of add to that?

No, I think you're spot on. I think our objective was really to explain that the strategy we mentioned 3 years ago actually worked. Now we are even making that strategy more precise to the opportunity, and we strongly believe that this is under our reach. We have a team with a track record. All of the people that you have seen. They did this already in the last 3 years. And I have no doubt that they will be successful in the next 3 years. And the message we would like to give probably if there is an award to be given to an industry analyst, it should be Chris because he has covered at the exact time.

Thank you, Kaan. It's -- present coming your way shortly. No exactly. Thank you. Thanks very much for your time. And thank again for today.

Thanks a lot for being here. Thank you, everyone, on the video.