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

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Vodafone Qatar Q2 2023 Financial Results Investor Call. My name is Pauline Abi Saab from the Investor Relations team. On this session, we have Sheikh Hamad Abdulla Jassim Al-Thani, our Chief Executive Officer; and Masroor Anjum, our Chief Financial Officer. We'll start the call with a presentation from our CEO on the financial and operational performance highlights, followed by an update on the financial performance for the period ending 30 June, 2023 by our CFO. As usual, after the presentation, we'll have a Q&A session, where you can ask your questions by virtually raising hands. Today's presentation is available on this webinar and on Vodafone Qatar website under the Investor Relations section. Please note that this session is being recorded and also note the disclaimer on Slide #2. So to begin, I will now hand over to Sheikh Hamad.

As-Salaam-Alaikum. Good afternoon and welcome, all. Please turn to Page #4. In general, we are very happy with the company's performance in H1. The strong performance comes despite the challenging economic situation worldwide from interest rate hiking, cost increases, impact on supply chain and many others. Despite all of that, we managed to continue our profitable growth for the 22nd consecutive quarters with a total revenue growth of 8% year-on-year with a net profit growing by 20%, reaching a record of QAR 260 million for the period. During the last quarter, we also gave more attention to enhancing our customer experience. For example, we have launched an instant SIM activation journey via eSIM. We also launched an enhanced high-value customer plans to cater for their roaming needs. In addition to that, launching our new fixed service portfolio with gigabit speeds only making us one of the few in the world and the first in the Middle East and the GCC. We also continue to build alliances and partnerships with big technologies player to develop and enhance our offerings to both Consumer segment and Enterprise segment. Page 5, please. Another point that I would like to highlight is that despite continuous growth of our company and despite being the challenger in this market, we continue to act in a rationale way when it comes to preserving market value and market size, of course, while continuing to providing exceptional service and cater for our customer needs. As you can see in Page 6, as an example, from an index cumulative revenue and EBITDA growth, Vodafone has realized 55.7% revenue growth, while the market revenue increased by 13.7% only since 2016. Vodafone has also realized 132.8% EBITDA growth, while overall market increased by 14.3% since 2017. This also can be seen very clearly in Page #7 in the Indexed Mobility ARPU. As you can see, our decline in ARPU is outperforming the market, both in mobility in general and prepaid ARPU also, of course, in the sense of declining and much less compared to the overall decline in the market. Again, and I'm repeating, despite being the challenger, we continue to work to preserve value in the market. Page #8, please, can also see some good indicators of the overall market. The Consumer Price Index is a strong evidence that the industry needs to focus on preserving value. As you can see, the telecommunication has declined more than 10% or close to 11% -- points compared to 2018 prices level and behind the majority of the industries. So, the next page. This page is also just highlighting what I have mentioned earlier during the highlights where we have moved and trying to bring more value to the customer, more offering to the customers in fixed, which we just started 3 years ago. And as you can see, we moved from 200 megabit per second to 1 gigabit per second as an end to the point and almost with the same level of pricing. And this comes because of the investment that we have been doing during the last few years and giving the customer the leading services and exceptional services benchmarked regionally and internationally. The last page is showing our development from radio access networks. As you can see, you -- there is not much of growth in number of sites. However, we took the first half to try to relocate capacity sites that we have been investing for the FIFA World Cup and to try to put it in the right place in order for us to monetize it in the right way. And we believe going forward, we'll start investing whenever there is a need for capacity or enhancement, which can be seen perhaps at the end of the year. With that said, I'm going to turn the microphone now to my colleague, the CFO, Mr. Masroor Anjum, to go over the financials. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Hamad, and good afternoon, everyone. As usual, I will start with the presentation with key highlights on Slide 12. The momentum we saw in quarter 1 continued in quarter 2 as well, resulting in strong financial performance in the first half of 2023 compared to last year. Total turnover is 8% higher year-on-year, led by 11.8% service revenue growth. There is an increase in operating expenses due to significant expansion in mobile and fixed network. However, the OpEx intensity is declining. This reflects our continuous endeavor to remain cost conscious and continue to undertake initiatives that drive cost efficiency. Higher revenue enabled continuing profitability growth, EBITDA is QAR 634 million, that's a growth of 7.5% year-on-year, while net profit reached QAR 260 million, registering a growth of 20.1% year-on-year. Our subscriber base remains robust and growing. Compared to last year, June, we have added 4.1% more mobility subscribers. Now moving to Slide #13, our financial performance for the first 6 months period ended 30 June, 2023 compared to similar period last year. Overall revenue grew by QAR 115 million, translating to 8% growth year-on-year, led by a very pleasing growth in service revenue of 11.8%, together with the impact of higher handset sales, partially offset by lower projects revenue. Expenses have increased by 8.4%. Increase in direct cost reflects growth in revenue and subscribers. Specifically, it includes the impact of higher managed services cost corresponding to growth in managed services revenue. Looking at the OpEx, increase is mainly attributable to network expansion and its allied costs. We also have an impact of timing of publicity cost in year-on-year OpEx growth. With the growth in service revenue, our EBITDA grew by 7.5% year-on-year, translating into an EBITDA margin of 40.9%, while the net profit has recorded a very healthy growth of 20.1% to reach QAR 260 million. Now looking at the service even details on Slide #14. Postpaid continuing its growth momentum compared to previous quarter. The growth of 2.1% is mainly driven by higher subscribers. During the quarter, as mentioned by Hamad earlier, we revamped our postpaid product portfolio with enriched unlimited plans for high-value and mid-value segments. The early response for these products is positive. Drop in prepaid is primarily due to a decline in prepaid market. Post World Cup in H1, we have seen a slowdown in certain sectors of economy, mainly the construction sector, which has a direct impact on Prepaid segment. In addition, as mentioned by Hamad earlier, competition in prepaid market remains aggressive, resulting in further reduction in prepaid ARPU. Our approach to competitive moves is cautious with the objective to preserve the overall market value. Having said that, in H2, we expect these economic trends to reverse as new projects are commenced, resulting in bounce back of population and the Mobility segment, specifically prepaid. In addition, as explained in the previous quarters, managed services revenue from projects commenced during quarter 4 of last year and is contributing to year-on-year revenue growth in H1, 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 11.8% year-on-year, led by growth in managed services, wholesale and fixed. Now looking at the efficiency and profitability margin trends on Slide #15. We continue to improve our operational efficiencies, resulting in reduction in our OpEx intensity to 24.5% in H1, 2023. That's a reduction of another 0.4 percentage points versus last year. This is despite significant expansion in our mobility and fixed network and its allied costs. The next chart shows the growth of our EBITDA margin over the last few years on a comparable basis with the red trend line being the reported EBITDA margin, while the gray trend line being the EBITDA margin, excluding equipment business and one-offs. As explained in previous slides, higher service revenue and rationalized costs enabled us to sustain 40% plus reported EBITDA margin, despite increasing mix of lower-margin revenues. Reported EBITDA margin is 40.9%, with a growth of 0.7 percentage points versus last year. EBITDA margin, excluding equipment business, however, has reduced by 0.4 percentage points and this is mainly due to higher mix of lower-margin revenue. And the final graph shows the growth trend of our net profit margin, which has increased by another 0.4 percentage points compared to last year and now has reached 16.8%. CapEx and return on capital employed on Slide #16. CapEx for the period is QAR 192 million with an intensity of 12.4%. We continue to expand our fixed and mobility network, giving better and wider coverage and also enhanced our digital capabilities for a superior customer experience. Increase in profitability as explained in previous slide, has resulted in significant improvement in our return on capital employed. We have been successful in cautiously allocating CapEx into growth areas at right time, bringing the best in technology for both Consumer and Enterprise segments, while continuously controlling our expenses. This has helped us increase return on capital employed by another 0.3 percentage points this year, which has now crossed 10% mark for the first time. This represents significant growth in returns in a span of only 4 to 5 years. Now coming to cash flows and net debt on Slide #17. The first chart represents cash generated from operations, which has almost doubled as compared to similar period last year. In addition to growth in EBITDA, key driving factors for this increase 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 a high CapEx-intensive period and carrying over its liabilities to H1, we have taken various steps to optimize our cash position and working capital. As a result of strong cash flows, we were able to keep our net debt stable despite 67% increase in dividend payout and this has greatly helped us keep our financial costs lower. Lastly, this has also resulted in improvement in net debt-to-EBITDA ratio from 0.53x to 0.49x versus last year. Our financing covenant remains at 2.5x of EBITDA. Moving on to next slide and looking at our current quarter financial performance versus last year. As mentioned earlier, our growth momentum continued in quarter 2. Revenue grew 9.9%, strongly supported by growth in service revenue of 11.2%. Again, growth in postpaid, fixed, managed services, IoT and wholesale are supporting this growth in overall revenue. Expenses have increased by 10.8%, mainly due to increase in direct cost corresponding to growth in revenues. The increase in OpEx reflects expansion in network footprint. It is notable that OpEx intensity in Q2, 2023 reduced by 1.3 percentage points versus last year. With the increased service revenue, our EBITDA grew by 8.6% and the net profit by 16.1% to reach QAR 126 million for the second quarter of 2023. Turning to the summary income statement on Slide #19. We have already covered major year-on-year movements. Increase in financing cost reflects the increase in effective borrowing rates in the current market situation and also the discounting impact of leases and long-term liabilities. Earnings per share has also increased in line with the growth in our net profit. Lastly, looking at the full year guidance, there's no major change from the previous outlook we discussed back in January. On revenue, management expects continuing top line growth in FY '23. Our top line performance in the first half of 2023 is largely in line with our forecast. Coming to EBITDA margin. Higher revenue, along with cost optimization initiatives is expected to increase EBITDA margin between 1% to 1.5%. As compared to the previous outlook, we have rationalized EBITDA margin growth forecast in line with the actual revenue mix so far. Lastly, the CapEx investments into profitable growth segments will continue and we still believe the CapEx intensity will remain between 17% to 18% for the year 2023. As usual, the balance sheet, detailed statement of income, subscribers and ARPU details are available in the appendix. That concludes my review, and back to Pauline.

Thank you, Hamad and Masroor. So, now we can start with the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] I'll take the first question from Nishit Lakhotia. Nishit, please, can you unmute yourself? The microphone is open for you.

Congratulations on a strong set of results.

Nishit, can you unmute yourself, please?

Yes, Hello? Hello?

Hello?

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you now. Please proceed.

Okay. Okay. Yes. So what I was saying, a good set of results. So, congratulations on that. And I have more of a macro broader questions going forward, given that there is a pressure on the prepaid market and it seems that the competition, your competitor is very aggressive and you might be losing some market share there. How do you see this moving forward? If I mention that the population is expected to grow from current levels, so do you think that is -- would be significant for you to improve on your prepaid side of business? And the other thing is on the managed services. It's been very good jump this year in last few quarters. Is this growth sustainable on your managed services side?

So, as I have explained in my speaker notes as well, yes, prepaid mobility market and specifically prepaid is under pressure and we've explained the reasons for that. Yes, we do expect population to bounce back. And definitely, once that happens, Mobility segment will definitely take an impact from that. Prepaid specifically is under pressure continuously for the last many years. Only in the last year, we were able to show year-on-year growth. And that is, again, goes back to the emphasis on customer experience, improving our network and very cautious in terms of taking pricing decisions. If you look at quarter 1 specifically, Vodafone prepaid revenue reduced by 8.4%, while market prepaid revenue reduced by 14%. So, coming back to your question, I mean, we haven't lost market share in the face of declining prepaid market and we expect that to continue going forward. Managed Services, again, we have been explaining this in the last few quarters. So we have diversified our revenue streams. We were able to, as part of our strategic pillar of diversification, our managed services, fixed and other segments, if you look at Slide #14 used to contribute 13% of our total service revenue back in 2019. This has now increased to 33%. And this goes on to show that how resilient our top line and bottom line has become as compared to 2017. Continuity of managed services revenue, yes, it's a separate segment of our revenue stream now. We have projects who are giving us managed services revenue and we expect that to continue in future as well. Hamad, if you would like to add anything?

Yes. Thank you, Masroor. In regards to prepaid, yes, the expectation, as mentioned by Masroor, it might continue to slightly decline. However, we haven't yet penetrated into the high value. And we mentioned it earlier is that whenever there is more pressure on the low value, which is prepaid, we automatically go for the high value, which is still untapped, to be honest. And so we're trying to balance it from that perspective. However, I think prepaid is very important to keep for certain segments. I'll give you an example. A few years ago, we made a mistake and we learned from it where we actually pushed more postpaid for low value, which they were prepaid customers and it hit us back with the bad debt. And we learned our lessons 3 years ago and we tried to ensure that prepaid has its own segment and we ensure that this segment continue to use a prepaid. So, we ensure that our bad debt is under control. And hopefully, this will continue with us. The other thing, as I mentioned to you, whenever there is pressure on low value prepaid, we always go automatically to high value because we still -- this is still an area that is unpenetrated. Note that we still have an area to grow to take our fair market share there. So, this is where we will balance it. From -- as mentioned by Masroor from the managed services, this is -- we started about 4, 5 years ago to build the capability. And now we're starting seeing the benefits. With the 5G coming, definitely, there are so many use cases that has not -- that -- that has been delayed because of the COVID and supply chain impact of COVID. And we believe that those use cases of 5G is going to help the country and especially from a smart city perspective. And we believe there will be a lot of opportunities growing into this field. Also, looks like the country's digital transformation agenda is fully packed. And I believe we can play a significant role being a telecommunication and technology company to help and support the government organization or even big enterprises into delivering and realizing their digital agenda. So, the bottom line, yes, we believe managed services will continue to grow in a variety of ways and we have been developing ourselves and preparing ourselves for this time. Thank you.

Just to follow-up on managed services. How are the margins in this segment for you currently?

So, margin on managed services ranges from project to project. I mean overall, at a blended level, we have a pretty healthy margin on managed services revenue, I would say, above 40%.

[Operator Instructions] The second question from Ejayan Al-ahbabi. Ejayan.

As-Salaam-Alaikum. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you. Please proceed.

This is Ejayan Al-ahbabi from Al Rayan Investment. My question is regarding the outlook for the current market? And which segment in particular are you most excited about and why?

Okay. So, I think we've already shed light on that during our presentation. We expect Mobility segment to bounce back in second half of the year with the economy coming back and population coming back into the country and new projects coming in. So, we definitely are excited about Mobility segment from that perspective. We have been gaining market share in that for the last few years and there is still the scope to gain more market share as explained by Hamad earlier in the high-value segment. And specifically, as we continue to diversify managed services and ICT is another segment, which we think has a lot of scope and we can definitely increase our market share in that segment further.

Sorry, I missed the first part of the presentation. That's why I didn't get that part.

[Operator Instructions] So, another question from Abdulelah Hakami. Abdulelah.

Hello?

Hello, Abdulelah. We can hear you.

This is Abdulelah Hakami from Hassana Investment Company. I just have one question. You've touched base on the population on the back of new projects that are coming. I just wanted to get the management view on how sticky these revenues over the mid-term, 2 to 3 years?

Can we ask you please to repeat the question. We didn't hear you well.

My question on the projects that are coming to Qatar that you've mentioned -- can you hear me well. Is my voice clear?

Yes. Yes. What about the project?

My question on the projects that are coming from Qatar. I just wanted to get the management view on how sticky these revenues are over the next 2 to 3 years? Or should one expect them to be somewhat similar to the World Cup?

I'll take this one. There has been a lot of announcements by the government, especially in the North Field industrial areas where there are big developments in the oil and gas, which we believe is going to be a major focus for us in the next 3 to 5 years, which we believe we can deliver, participate in those projects either from a technology or from -- from a telecom or a technology perspective. We have seen the announcements in the news multiple times right after the World Cup, we see things moving in the industrial areas, which we believe is going to help the economy even to accelerate faster. In addition to that, there has been a lot of projects that we hear that got delayed because of the World Cup because they wanted everything to be ready for the World Cup and those projects that was not necessarily related to the World Cup, they were put on hold. We're starting seeing those projects to start kicking off again. So, we believe, especially in the real estate and this -- in the real estate and construction zones, I mean, industries. So, we believe this will continue and there are other projects that we believe we can announce later perhaps, which we believe is going to be offered and announced to the public. So, I'm very positive to be honest, especially for the gas -- oil and gas development in the North Field or at least for the short period -- for the medium terms.

[Operator Instructions] I have a question from Ziad Itani from Arqaam Capital.

Just one question from our end. What's your plan with regards to the tower portfolio? Are you in discussions with Ooredoo? We've seen news that they're collaborating now with Zain Group on tower monetization and creating a tower company?

As we answered about 6 months ago during one of the calls, we are -- there is nothing on the table right now. We have built our own towers and we have reached significant levers comparable to the competition. We have agreement however, in place between us and the competition where we are actually sharing towards either passive -- either ideas in building solution or even towers. And I believe if I'm not mistaken, they will be in around 10% to 15%. I need to verify this number, so far from outdoor sites or towers. So as of today, there is nothing is going on. We have already built the towers e own them, they are on our books. So, if something develop, definitely we will inform the investors.

And just one more question. With regards to the CapEx intensity guidance, 17% seems a bit elevated given the heavy investments you already did last year to accommodate for the inflow of visitors for World Cup, especially that the mobile market is not really growing in Qatar and you have 85% of your radio network already 5G enabled. So, what are you spending on specifically?

So, CapEx for this year includes our network software renewal actually and that's more than QAR 100 million. That's something which is impacting, you can call that as a maintenance CapEx. In addition to that, we have plans to increase the quality of network specifically. Hamad, if you would like to...

Yes. As mentioned by Masroor, there are some software planned for this year. In addition to that, we are working continuously to improve our efficiency and some of the efficiency require some IT enhancements. And from the radio perspective, you are right, yes, we have 85%, but there a certain obligation that we need to meet as per the regulatory, which we cannot share at this point of time. And don't forget that we have mentioned that we started fixed 3, 4 years ago. And this big part of that is actually going -- or a sizable part of this CapEx is going for the fixed businesses.

Any other questions. I don't see any more raised hands. So, since there are no further questions, I would like to thank you all for joining today's call. We'll keep you updated on all our upcoming investor calls. Please feel free to contact the Investor Relations team if you need any further information or visit our IR section on Vodafone Qatar website. Thank you.