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

Hello, and welcome to the Vodafone Qatar conference call. I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Bobby Sarkar to begin the conference. Bobby, over to you.

Thank you, Julien. Hi. Hello, everyone. This is Bobby Sarkar, Head of Research at QNB Financial Services. I wanted to welcome everyone to Vodafone Qatar's First Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. So on this call from Vodafone Qatar management, we have Sheikh Hamad Jassim Al Thani, who is Vodafone Qatar's CEO; Diego Camberos, who is the COO; and Masroor Anjum, who is the Chief Financial Officer. So we will conduct this conference with the management first reviewing the company's results, followed by Q&A. I would like to turn the call over now to Pauline Saab. Pauline, please go ahead.

Thank you, Bobby, and good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Vodafone Qatar's Q1 2023 Financial Results Call. Our investor presentation is available as usual on our website, 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 performance highlights.

[Foreign Language]. Thank you, Pauline, and thank you [ Julien ]. Thank you QNB for organizing this call. Welcome, everyone, who are listening to our first quarter results presentation and [Foreign Language] or maybe shall I say [Foreign Language] in advance. Please go to slide titled, Key Messages. I wanted to start off by mentioning that our revenue growth has continued for the 21st consecutive quarters on year-to-year basis. This length of consistent growth is not common in any industry, not only in telecom, considering many factors that's impacting the world economy in recent years. The growth in top line along with the cost discipline resulted in 24.2% year-on-year increase in net profit for the quarter. This is our highest ever recorded first quarter net profit. I would like also to mention that our -- that one of our strategy for the growth is -- our growth performance has been delivered despite the aggressive promotions and propositions in the market. For Vodafone Qatar, the strategy is to preserve the overall telecom market value in Qatar. We believe that the telecom value given to customers in Qatar market is generous compared to the region. And we have been very cautious with this fact in designing our products or promotions. The second point I would like to highlight today is that we have been named as the World's Fastest Mobile Network by Ookla Speedtest based on Q3 and Q4 for the year 2022. I believe you have heard this in the news. Of course, those who are in Qatar and are on our network have already witnessed the world's fastest mobile network experience. We are happy to see that years of focused efforts we put in building a world class network have finally been [ crowned ] with this award. The third point I would like to touch on is our plans for the future. We acknowledge that the company's success is defined by the customers. Therefore, enhancing customer experience will continue to be top priority for our future. Over years, we have developed the new capabilities in network, digital, Fintech, IT, cyber security, or ICT in general. We are now in the phase of leveraging these capabilities to serve different needs of our individual and enterprise customers, especially in their journey of having seamless digital experience in their work or personal lives. Lastly, I wanted to mention that, despite the challenging times that the world is navigating, our country has demonstrated a strong resilience, and we are pleased to see that this reflects in the macroeconomic indicators. As a company that is mainly operated in Qatar, these macro tailwinds will continue to support our company's performance, and we will continue to grow together. With that said, I'm going to hand over to our CFO to go over the financials. To you, Masroor.

Thank you, Hamad, and good afternoon, everyone. I will start with the key highlights for Q1 2023 on Slide #6. We continued our journey of top line growth, an increase of 6.2% led by strong service revenue growth of 12.3%, also assisted by higher handset sales. And despite higher revenue, subscribers and significant expansion in mobile and fixed network, growth in expenses remained lower than the revenue growth. Higher revenue and optimized cost enabled continuing profitability growth. EBITDA is QAR 320 million. That's a growth of 6.4% year-on-year with a margin of 41.3%. And this led us to report the net profit of QAR 133 million, and that's a growth of 24.2% year-on-year. Our mobility subscriber base is now 4.1% larger compared to the same period last year. Now moving on to Slide #7 and looking at our key financial performance metrics for the quarter compared to the same period of last year. Overall revenue grew by QAR 45 million, translating to 6.2% growth year-on-year, led by a very pleasing growth in service revenue of 12.3%. Together with the impact of higher handset sales, this is partially offset by lower project revenue. Expenses also increased by 6%. Increase in direct costs mainly corresponds to growth in revenue and subscribers. Looking at the OpEx, the growth is mainly attributable to network expansion and its satellite costs. We also had higher publicity cost this quarter due to the ongoing campaigns. With the increased service revenue, our EBITDA grew by 6.4% to reach QAR 320 million. Reported net profit for the period is QAR 133 million, which is 24.2% higher year-on-year, resulting from EBITDA growth and lower depreciation, partially diluted by the impact of higher financing cost and industry fee. Now, taking a closer look at service revenue on Slide #8. Postpaid continuing its growth momentum compared to same period of last year and the growth of 3.4% versus last year is mainly driven by higher subscribers. Decline in prepaid was primarily due to reduction in prepaid ARPU, and this is driven by 3 main factors: lower market activities post quarter; Ramadan coming earlier into Q1 this year; and aggressive market promotions and propositions. As explained previously, managed services revenue from projects commenced during mid of last quarter and is contributing to year-on-year service revenue growth in Q1 2023. This is in addition to growth in our wholesale, fixed, and other mobility revenue, mainly visitors roaming revenue. Overall, total service revenue increased by 12.3% year-on-year, led by growth in postpaid, managed services, fixed and visitors roaming revenue. Now looking at the efficiency and profitability margin trends on Slide #18. We continue to see improvements across all KPIs. Despite increase in our OpEx, underlying OpEx intensity continues to decline and reached 24.1% this year. This is the result of our cost optimization program, which helped in the cornerstone of our strategic pillar of being responsible over the last few years. Underlying OpEx intensity excludes the impact of World Cup and one-off adjustments. The next graph in the middle looks at the EBITDA margins. As explained in previous slides, higher service revenue enabled us to improve the reported EBITDA margins to 41.3%. Similarly, EBITDA margin excluding equipment business is at 45.3%, slightly improving versus last year. Finally, the graph on the right shows the growth trend of our net profit margin, which has increased to -- by another 0.8 percentage points to reach 17.2% in Q1 2023. CapEx and return on capital employed on Slide #10. CapEx for the period is QAR 26 million with an intensity of 3.3%. CapEx in the quarter is lower as we came out of the World Cup and a major investment period. This is expected to catch up in the coming quarters to be in line with our expectations of 17% to 18% intensity by the end of the year. The success of our strategy and CapEx investments continue to yield better returns, helping the business grow return on capital employed by more than 3x since 2019. Return on capital employed crossed 10% for the first time to reach 10.2% in Q1 2023. Now coming to cash flow and net debt on Slide #11. The first chart represents cash generated from operations, which grew 157% year-on-year or QAR 175 million. In addition to growth in EBITDA, key driving factors for this include: focus on our cash collections, mainly the receivables spilling over from last year related to World Cup and related projects; and secondly, despite coming out from high CapEx-intensive period and carrying over its related liabilities to Q1, we have taken various steps to optimize our cash position and working capital. As a result of strong cash flow, we were able to keep the net debt stable despite 67% increase in dividend payout, and this definitely helped us keep our financing costs lower. Lastly, this also resulted in improvement of net debt-to-EBITDA ratio from 0.61x to 0.46x compared to last year. Our financing covenant remains at 2.5x of EBITDA. Now turning to the summary income statement on Slide #12. We have already covered the major year-on-year movements. Both consumer and enterprise and other revenue increased year-on-year. As mentioned in previous calls, network modernization for World Cup resulted in accelerated depreciation on few old assets last year. This resulted in reduction of depreciation and amortization charges year-on-year. Increase in financing cost reflects the increase in effective borrowing rates and earnings per share also increased in line with our net profit. As usual, the balance sheet, detailed statement of income, subscribers and ARPU details are available in the appendix. The guidance previously given for full year results still reflects the management's expectation for this year. We will update this during H1, if required. That concludes my review. Thank you, everyone. And now back to Pauline.

Thank you, Masroor. So, we can start now with the Q&A session. [ Julien ], can I ask you please to explain for the participants how to ask questions, please?

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of [indiscernible] from SICO.

I have a couple of questions. First, on the -- your revenue profile. It seems that there were an increase in handset sales that drove your total revenue in this quarter. But the interconnection and other direct expenses did not go up so much. And I would assume a lot of this cost was booked of handset there as well. So were there any one-off there in terms of lower expenses? Or this is something that there's more efficiency that is sustainable that has come into in this quarter because of -- given that your revenue per main driver -- or a big driver was the handset sale year-on-year? So that's my first question. Second, yes, you mentioned that D&A is lower now because of the accelerated depreciation last year. So this is something that we should expect the run rate, the first quarter, something to continue? And any guidance on the CapEx intensity in the next -- this year and the next year? Something on that front would be helpful. And third, on the competition, you mentioned the prepaid market is very competitive, and we've seen some decline because of that. So what's your strategy in this market? You want to be aggressive in protecting your prepaid market, focus on postpaid market? How do you see this competitive landscape evolving this year in the mobile market?

So I'll first answer your question about accelerated depreciation. So we have been explaining all through last year, because of the advancements that we have been doing for -- the modernization we've been doing for the World Cup preparations, we have been doing accelerated depreciation last year, and that is more or less done. I mean, accelerated depreciation is a normal thing to do, but I mean, it was at an escalated level last year, which is not going to be the case anymore this year. So you can expect the current depreciation charge to be more in line with the trends, and you will see that going forward, it will increase in line with the CapEx. Regarding CapEx intensity, as I explained during my presentation, we expect to reach 17% to 18% of the revenue by the end of the year, as we've already given at the end of last year. I actually want you to elaborate on your first question, you asked about interconnection and direct costs. I did not get that.

My question was more that, on the year-on-year delta, if I look at your first quarter, a good chunk is coming from your higher handset sales in the revenue component. But your interconnect and direct costs where bulk of this handset sales also get booked, did not really increase that much. So I'm just wondering where is that efficiency coming? Because if equipment price would have been similar in cost, so some other expenses have been much lower in this quarter. So is that sustainable?

So yes, handset sales have increased year-on-year. But last year, we also recognized that equipment revenue related to some projects. And there was a cost related to that as well, and that is also booked within this line. So that revenue has come down year-on-year. And definitely, when that revenue comes down, the related cost also comes down. So that offsets the increase in handset costs.

On your question about the market and our view on the market, I mean, we have been pretty much very consistent on our goal, which is to serve as much as we can value in the market and go for that. And that has been our strategy. And we believe between that focus and robust commercial strategy we have, we will try to preserve as much as we can. Of course, we'll have to respond to certain moves of the competition because also we have to defend. However, if you put those 2 together, we are quite focused on creating value in the market.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. I turn the call back over to Bobby.

Okay. Thank you, Julien. If there are no further questions, we can end the call for today. I want to thank Sheikh Hamad, Diego, Masroor and Pauline for taking the time to answer our questions, and we will pick this up next quarter. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Bobby, and thank you, everyone. [indiscernible] from now. And if you have any further information, please do not hesitate to contact the Investor Relations team. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect. Thank you.