Vodafone Qatar P.Q.S.C. (VFQS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Vodafone Qatar Q3 2021 Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bobby Sarkar. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thank you, Emma. Hello, everyone. This is Bobby Sarkar, Head of Research at QNB Financial Services. I wanted to welcome everyone to Vodafone Qatar's Third Quarter 2021 Results Conference Call. On this call from Vodafone Qatar management, we have Sheikh Hamad Abdulla Al-Thani, who is Vodafone Qatar's CEO. We have Masroor Anjum, who is the acting CFO; and we have Diego Camberos, who is the Chief Operating Officer at Vodafone. So we will conduct this conference with first management reviewing the company's results followed by a brief Q&A. I would like to turn the call over now to Pauline Saab, who is the Head of Investor Relations at Vodafone. Pauline, Please go ahead.

Thank you, Bobby. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Vodafone Qatar Q3 2021 financial results call. Today's presentation is available on our website on vodafone.qa. Please note the usual disclaimer on Slide #2. So to begin, I now hand over to Sheikh Hamad Abdulla Al-Thani, our Chief Executive Officer, to present the quarterly highlights.

Thank you, Pauline, and thank you, Bobby, and thank you, QNB, for organizing this call. Hello, and welcome to all of you. First, I would like to say that we are very proud of the continuous improvement across all KPIs. This is an evidence that we are on the right track with the right strategy. Almost 3 years ago, we built our strategy, and we put it into strict execution. We called it Digital 2023, where it will act as our lighthouse to take us from being a mobile-only operator evolved into a telecom service provider and the later by 2023, the transport into a digital company, capitalizing on our IoT, Big Data, artificial intelligence, complex solutions and FinTech. The strategy has 5 pillars with objectives each simplify, customer experience, grow, diversify and being responsible. Simplify, to simplify the way we work, to be data-driven, employment of Big Data and data analytics before taking any decision in the country -- in the Company. Automation, to embrace automation and the latest automation tools and AI tools to enhance our operation internally and many more. Customer experience, to be a mobile-first approach -- to use mobile-first price approach, digitize and enhance all of our channels. Giving more focus to self-service and our target is to have zero calls into our call centers because nobody would like to call us because everything is clear, everything is self-service. Growing our core, we mean that we would like to build a world-class mobile network, accelerate fixed, pioneer IoT. And the diversify to diversify Beyond Core, ICT, managed solutions, digital services and any adjacent revenue opportunities. The last is being responsible, the employment of a smart CapEx and cost optimization program that we have been running for the last 3 years. I'm very happy to say that with confidence that we are on track. And for the next 25 months, we are going to experience the transformation of Vodafone Qatar and to becoming a digital Company, which we set as a target to ourselves. Next, I would like to ask you to move to the page titled key messages. I would like to start off by mentioning that our profitable growth continued for the 15th consecutive quarter on year-to-year basis. Our top line growth, combined with the optimization initiatives has resulted into more than QAR 200 million of net profits for the 9 months, which represents approximately 85.1% growth year-on-year. The second point I would like to touch on today is that, the world-class infrastructure we have been building over the last years, we will be able to provide a seamless experience for our visitors and local communities during the FIFA 2022 World Cup event, hosted by Qatar. In that regard, we are -- we have increased our number of Radio Access Networks since 2017 by almost 43% and increasing and including an expansion of our 5G coverage in Doha to be approximately 85%. The third point I would like to highlight is that, our competitive strength is on solid track. We gained revenue market share of 1.1 percentage points based on a 12-month trailing basis as of Q2 2021. This performance is a result of well-executed strategy and the consistent improvement of our quality of service and passionately focusing on the needs and demand for our customers. As part of this strategy, we are continually developing and introducing innovative IoT and artificial intelligence-based Big Data solutions to lead the digital transformation of the enterprises across the entire country, as seen in the next page. The last point I would like to touch on is that, we are bringing these positive results despite the headwinds in the environment. The population has declined 3.2% year-on-year basis in the last -- in the third quarter, although that we have seen a seasonal recovery of 5.2% versus previous quarter. Additionally, the ongoing chipset shortages, crisis in the world creates a risk on both revenue and cost across many industries, including telecom operators. Fortunately, we have a comprehensive business continuity plan in place since the emergence of the shortage, and we are building a mitigation plan to minimize those risks without any impact of our Company performance. So all in all, again, it has been an excellent quarter, and excellent 9 months. And now I'm going to hand over to Mr. Masroor to take you over the financials. Thank you.

Thank you, Hamad. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's move to the next slide, financial performance highlights on Slide #7. We continued our strong financial performance in 9 months period ended September 2021. We had a strong growth in our top line, primarily driven by postpaid, fixed and managed services revenues. Q3 service revenue is the highest quarterly service revenue for Vodafone Qatar. At the same time, we managed to keep our costs under control, driven by cost optimization. This led us to report highest-ever profitability metrics for the 9 months period ended September 2021. EBITDA growing nearly 22% to QAR 720 million, with a margin of 41.3% and net profit reaching QAR 200 million. As mentioned by Hamad earlier, population has declined, a 3.2% reduction is reported year-on-year. Regardless of this, our mobility subscribers grew 119,000 during this period. That's a growth of 7.1%. Moving on to Slide #8. Our key financial performance metrics for the 9 months ended September 2021 in comparison to the similar period last year. Total revenue grew by 8.3%, led by strong service revenue growth of 8.7% or QAR 130 million as a result of growth in our fixed, postpaid and managed services. Expenses are QAR 6 million higher due to growth in direct cost corresponding to growth in revenues. It is notable that despite growth in costs due to network expansion and higher subscribers and revenues, expenses are well controlled and cost optimization helped us to keep the cost stable. Direct cost is higher by QAR 15 million, but that is due to higher interconnect and roaming costs corresponding to higher customers and revenues, while OpEx is lower by QAR 9 million. As a result of cost optimization, our OpEx intensity, which is OpEx as a percentage of our total revenue, has reduced from 29.3% to 26.5%, a reduction of 2.8 percentage points year-on-year. Higher service revenue and largely stable costs have contributed to the EBITDA growth of 21.8% year-on-year to QAR 720 million, which is our highest-ever EBITDA for a 9 months period. Higher depreciation partially diluted the EBITDA gains flowing through to net profit. But nonetheless, we still recorded a very healthy growth of more than 58% in our net profit to reach QAR 200 million, our highest reported net profit. Moving to next slide, Slide #9, and looking at the third quarter financial performance compared to the similar period last year. Q3, again, has shown strong financial performance with continuing growth year-on-year. Total revenue grew 8%, driven by growth in service revenue of 10.4%. Fixed and postpaid being the key drivers. Also, within the enterprise segment, as mentioned by Hamad, the Company has extended beyond connectivity with a portfolio of managed services and smart ICT solutions, such as Internet of Things, Big Data and cloud that are adopted by some of the country's biggest entities. Visitor revenue has also increased year-on-year in this quarter due to easing of travel restrictions. Costs continue to be well controlled and slightly declined year-on-year despite growth in service revenue and higher 5G and fixed-related operational costs. This is the benefit of our continued cost optimization. With the increased service revenue, our EBITDA grew by 23% to QAR 47 million, with EBITDA margin reaching 42.7%. Net profit also grew by 45% or QAR 20 million with higher depreciation charge, absorbing some of the EBITDA flow through. Now taking a closer look at service revenue on Slide #10. Postpaid, continuing its growth momentum, up almost 7% versus last year. This is mainly driven by higher subscribers. Our unlimited plans are selling well, helping to penetrate into high-value segment and the price increases that we did at the beginning of March for some selected consumer plans has also helped. The slight decline that you see quarter-on-quarter is due to seasonality. We offer our postpaid customers with a functionality of park your number, whereby they can retain phone number for a nominal fees when they travel on long holidays and reactivate on return. This helps us retain our customers while impacts revenues during travel season. The decline in prepaid is primarily due to lower ARPU. Encouragingly, prepaid revenue has been largely stable over the last few quarters. Q3 year-on-year reduction in prepaid revenue is lowest in the last 6 years despite -- and that is because of stability and prepaid market pricing and prepaid portfolio simplification despite lower population year-on-year. Overall, total service revenue increased 10.4% year-on-year, with increasing contributions from fixed, managed services and IoT. Now taking a quick glimpse of ARPU on Slide #11. Mobility ARPU is 2.5% or QAR 2 higher year-on-year, resulting from increasing postpaid ARPU. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, ARPU has declined by QAR 2, and this is mainly because of seasonality that I just explained in the last slide. Now looking at EBITDA on Slide #12. The first bar chart on the left side shows the steady growth in our absolute EBITDA over the last 5 years. Our EBITDA has almost doubled this year compared to FY'17. This is the result of steady growth in our top line, coupled with rationalization of our cost base. Line graph to the right shows the EBITDA margin over the last few years with gray trend line being the reported EBITDA margin and the red trend line showing EBITDA margin, excluding equipment business. As explained in previous slides, higher service revenue and lower costs enabled us to reach reported EBITDA margin of 41.3%, with 4.6 percentage point improvement year-on-year. A similar growth is reflected in our EBITDA margin, excluding equipment business, which is a true reflection of our core business at 43.4%, growing 4.4 percentage points year-on-year. These are our highest EBITDA margin levels. Now looking at CapEx on Slide #13. CapEx is QAR 87 million in this quarter, and that takes us to the year-to-date CapEx of QAR 226 million for this year. As you [ know ], this is primarily focused on investment for capacity expansion and coverage footprint enhancement, investment to enhance digital capabilities and products; and lastly, investments to maintain the network. Moving to net profit margins on Slide #14. Again, the bar chart on the left side shows the growth trend of our net profit. We turned net profit positive in FY'18. And since then, our profit has increased at a CAGR of 39% to reach QAR 200 million during the 9 months period ended September 2021. And these results are reflected in our net profit margin trend shown in the line graph, which has more than doubled since 2018 to 11.5% in 2021. Moving to the next slide. We have, for the first time included return on capital employed on Slide #15. The increase in net profit, as explained in previous slide, has resulted in significant improvement in our return on capital employed over the last 4 years. If you analyze this carefully, our invested capital largely remains the same over these years, while we have been really efficient in allocating capital into areas where we generate value, and this is done in the most efficient manner to monetize the new, as well as existing assets. We have been successful in cautiously allocating CapEx into growth areas at right times, bringing the best in technology for both consumer and enterprise segments, while continuously controlling our expenses. This has helped us double return on capital employed since 2018 to 5.6%. Moving to Slide #16, income statement. I think we have already covered the major year-on-year movements, both consumer and enterprise and other revenue increased year-on-year. The higher depreciation and amortization charge is a result of the elevated CapEx incurred during the last 4 quarters, the investments in fixed, 5G and growth in sites and also accelerated depreciation of some of our old assets. These assets were identified as part of our review and re-estimation of useful lives of certain categories of assets. Lower finance costs of QAR 8 million is due to lower interest rates compared to FY'20 and lower outstanding loans. Reduction in other financing cost is resulting from one-off cash benefit of a litigation settlement and also extinguishment of a previously recognized liability relating to this. The accelerated depreciation after offsetting the litigation settlement benefit had a net negative impact of nearly QAR 10 million to the net profits reported for the 9 months period. Now that concludes my review. The usual balance sheet, subscribers and net debt are included in the appendix, which are self-explanatory. And now back to you, Pauline. Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, Masroor. We will move now to the Q&A session. Operator, can you please explain to the participants how to ask questions?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Ziad Itani from Arqaam Capital.

Congratulations on the strong results. Just 2 questions from our end. First, if you look at the total service revenues, it has been growing quite strongly lately. And we're just wondering if you can possibly give us the split remaining other than mobile, that being fixed and ICT. So if we are to take out the QAR 552 million in service revenues and take out the prepaid and postpaid mobile revenues, we end up with QAR 138 million. Is it possible for you to quantify from that QAR 138 million how much is related to fixed, broadband and B2B ICT? That's the first question. The second question is on the accelerated depreciation charges. You mentioned QAR 10 million impact for the past 9 months. How much is this expected to last the accelerated depreciation pressure?

So to answer the first question, other than prepaid and postpaid revenue, there are 3 or 4 line items included in the total service revenue other than fixed as well, which includes visitor roaming as well. For competitive reasons, we have not been separately disclosing the fixed revenue. And for this quarter as well, we would not like to comment on that specifically. Coming to your question number two, regarding accelerated depreciation, as I explained, we -- as part of a normal business practice, we continue to review the useful lives of our assets. And as per IFRS, whatever change in the estimate is required, we do that. Whatever was required based on a review has been reflected in the financial statements as you see. If anything comes up in future, which we don't know as of today, we will definitely let you know guys.

Okay. And when it comes to the 5G CapEx plans, where are we in the cycle? I know you mentioned in the beginning of the presentation that 5G population coverage in -- is more than 85%. Where does that put you in terms of the CapEx intensity? And how much are you targeting for next year?

As we continue to expand our network footprint, 5G, as well as 4G and fixed as well. We explained in the last quarter as well, we expect our CapEx intensity to be around high-teens this year, as well as next year.

Our next question comes from [ Nikhil Phutane from Commercial Bank ].

It was a wonderful presentation. Actually, my questions have been answered in terms of the first question, which you mentioned about the fixed and the broadband. Secondly, on the CapEx plan, can you just quantify what would be the likely growth which we could be seeing in FY 2022, given that World Cup is going to be coming up along with other [ VoLTE ] and your 5G plans? So that's able to get an idea.

Specifically talking about what CapEx plans for the last 3, 4 years, we have been cautiously planning for that, keeping in mind the World Cup happening in 2022. Regarding expected CapEx intensity for the next year, I think we've already explained that. We expect that to be in higher teens next year as well, which is definitely higher than the industry benchmarks.

We now have a follow-up question from Ziad Itani from Arqaam Capital.

Yes. So just looking at the cost structure, can you explain a bit in detail how you managed to decrease substantially the network rental and other OpEx-related costs in Q3, specifically, they're down 17% sequentially and 16% year-on-year despite the growth that you're seeing on 5G, which all of the other operators actually had quite an increase in the costs over there, and you're growing the top line as well? So we'd appreciate some color on that.

Okay. Specifically commenting on network rental and other operational costs, so the reduction is driven by 2 things. One, we did in-sourcing this year. And as a result of that, we are saving some costs in this line, but the negative impact of that is reflected in employee salaries and benefits. And that is roughly 40% of the cost reduction that you see in network centers and other operational expenses. Secondly, we have been talking about our cost optimization program, which is a broad program, includes a number of initiatives that we have taken over the last 3 years to reduce our cost base. Those initiatives definitely include renegotiation of costs, identifying costs which we can avoid and eliminating waste. So that is helping us in reducing these costs year-on-year basis.

Okay. And when it comes to the employment in-sourcing benefit, this is mainly happening in Q3 and not before, right?

There was a phasing of in-sourcing. The major benefit definitely that you see is happening in Q3, but we got this in the first 2 quarters of this year as well.

[Operator Instructions] It appears we have no -- we do have a question now from Zohaib Pervez from Al Rayan Investment.

I've got a couple of questions. Firstly, on the depreciation, now that the depreciation has increased from like QAR 74 million on a quarter basis in the first quarter to about QAR 98 million. Is QAR 98 million the new -- can we assume the QAR 98 million as the new level that depreciation is going to be? Or is it going to be higher, lower once the accelerated depreciation reduces -- finishes? That's the first question. The second question is on other finance cost. So in other finance cost, we can see that your lease liability expense is reducing. I think it halved in the first half, we don't have the third quarter numbers. So could you give us some insight on what is leading to this expense reduction on that front? Plus, what would be the impact of this litigation settlement? What is the quantum in numerics? That would be great.

So higher depreciation, as I explained in my presentation, is primarily driven by elevated CapEx levels in Q4 of last year, as well as the first 3 quarters of this year as well. Plus, as I explained, we had charged accelerated depreciation in this year on some of our old assets. And as a result of that, I can say that current levels of depreciation are higher than the normal levels that you would see. Coming back to your question regarding the other financing cost, so that is the benefit of a litigation settlement, cash benefit, that is one-off, plus previously recognized liability relating to the same litigation that we had reversed. So this benefit is reflected in Q2, as well as partly in Q3. I cannot give you specific numbers about the benefit of the litigation, but just to answer based on your interest, our underlying impact on net profit of these 2 adjustments, which are one-off in nature, is roughly QAR 10 million negative on the net profit of the Company.

Okay. And I've got one other question on the receivables. So if you see last year also in the first 3 quarters, we saw built up in receivables, and there was a paydown in the fourth quarter. We can see something of the similar happening this year also. There's a built up of receivables in the first 3 quarters of this year. Can we expect the same thing happening, paydown in the fourth quarter? Or this is more of a regular business now?

Yes. The increase in receivables is mainly driven by increase in our bill revenue. That is the primary reason. As we grow our revenues, our receivables grow, and you will see the increase in trade and other receivables. And you should expect to continue this increase. We will expect this to go -- increase further in the following quarters.

As we have no further questions at this time, I'd like to turn the conference back to the speakers today for any additional or closing remarks.

Operator, this is Bobby Sarkar again. If we have no further questions, I guess, we can end the call for today. I want to thank Vodafone Qatar management for taking the time to talk to investors, and we will pick it up next quarter. Thank you.

Thank you, Bobby. Thank you, operator, and thank you for all joining today's call. Please feel free to contact the Investor Relations if you have any additional information or visit the IR Vodafone Qatar website. Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, ladies and gentlemen. You may now disconnect.