Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Grameenphone's first quarter earnings call for the year 2026. I'm Chowdhury Tazrian Israt from Investor Relations. Joining me on today's call are our CEO, Yasir Azman, and our CFO, Otto Risbakk. Before we begin, please note that the recording of this call, along with the earnings release presentation, financial report, and other documents pertaining to the results, will be available on the investor relations website. Like every quarter, we'll be conducting the Q&A session on Microsoft Teams following the presentation. Invitations have already been shared with our investors and analysts. If you'd like to participate, please share your email address during the call and we'll ensure to include you. With that, let's now get it over to our CEO, Mr. Yasir Azman, to tell us more about the quarter updates.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our Quarter One 2026 earnings call. I'm Yasir Azman, Chief Executive Officer of Grameenphone. Let's start the call with some industry and macro updates. According to the latest report from our regulators, the telecommunication industry in Bangladesh recorded a total of 185.84 million subscribers as of February 2026, reflecting a decrease of 50,000 subscribers since December 2025. During the same timeframe, mobile data users also decreased by 1.54 million, reaching 113.5 million in February 2026. Bangladesh Telecommunication Act 2026, which was revised by the interim government, been passed as a law in the parliament with some modifications. Arbitration mechanisms have been incorporated in this act to enable a structured dispute resolution in the sector. Key spectrum bands are up for renewal this year.
We are actively engaging with the regulator, both individually as an operator and through industry forums with other mobile operators to ensure timely renewal under appropriate pricing and terms that support continued network investment and service quality. Let me now turn to some of the key developments in the macroeconomic landscape. The point-to-point inflation rate in March is still high at around 8.71%. As of March 2026, the foreign exchange reserves stood at $29.5 billion. The exchange rate is stable but under mild depreciation pressure, hovering around BDT 123 per United States dollar. As per IMF projections, Bangladesh's GDP growth for fiscal year 2026 is expected to be in the range of 4.7%, reflecting a modest recovery amid ongoing macroeconomic challenges. Private sector credit growth has further slowed to around 6%, hitting its lowest level in a decade over time. Let's go through the highlights of the quarter.
As we saw in the macro slide earlier, the quarter was shaped by multiple external headwinds. January, being a pre-election period, brought uncertainty, leading to softer growth. This was further impacted by an extended winter and the Ramadan period, both of which impacted business activity and operating hours. These factors came on top of an already very weak macroeconomic environment, and the recent geopolitical tension from Iran conflict further heightened uncertainty, making consumers more cautious in their spending. Despite these compounded external challenges, I'm pleased to share that we have navigated the quarter with resilience and discipline and secured a stable EBITDA margin of around 58%. Overall, both financially and operationally, we have contained external vulnerabilities well and maintained stability in our performance. Throughout the quarter, we remained focused on reshaping customer behavior while strengthening our core business.
Our priority was to deliver greater value through improved products and more relevant features while encouraging a shift toward higher data and bundle usage. These efforts are starting to show results. Data and combo grew by 3.6% year-over-year. We also leveraged key seasonal events such as Eid through targeted efforts and packs, further supporting usage growth. Overall, we are seeing a gradual but meaningful shift in customer behavior toward higher engagement and usage. Our growth continues to be anchored in our network leadership. During the quarter, amid heightened global uncertainty, we executed CapEx in a very disciplined manner, fully aligned with our long-term strategy. We have recently acquired 700 MHz of spectrum, which will help us to enhance rural coverage and significantly improve our indoor network experience in cities, addressing long-standing coverage gaps while supporting the next phase of data growth and digital inclusion into the country.
Finally, we are actively transitioning towards a future-fit digital growth model by leveraging the digital assets we have built over time. We are steadily positioning ourselves as an integrated digital operator. In our ambition to become an AI-first telco, we have started our AI journey, under which we are advancing multiple AI-driven initiatives across network and operations. Benefits of this program will start becoming visible in the coming quarters. Building a digital flywheel. Let's focus on this one. Let me now touch upon our performance on this digital growth. At the center of this is our MyGP app, which continues to scale with 22.7 million monthly active users, driving deeper customer engagement and strengthening lifetime value. Next, digital reload now accounts for nearly half of our sales to subscriber share, showing strong adoption of digital channels while maintaining a balanced and resilient distribution mix.
This was proved particularly important during this quarter, helping us sustain revenue through digital channels when physical operations were disrupted. Turning to the customer layer, MyGP penetration has reached 51.7%, emphasizing how deeply digital has been embedded into the customer journey. MyGP has evolved into a digital experience and lifestyle platform, driving engagement through content, gaming services, and hyper-personalized customer journeys. This scale allows us to engage customers more frequently, more relevantly, and more efficiently. All of this translating into tangible financial outcomes. Digital channel revenue grew by 15% year-on-year and has seen accelerated growth in the last three quarters. Taken together, these elements reinforce one another. Greater digital adoption drives engagement. Engagement supports higher monetization. Monetization enables further investment in digital capabilities. This is the digital flywheel we are building, one that supports resilience today and unlocks future growth.
With that, let me now walk you through the key digital growth updates that is driving these numbers. Distribution has been backbone of our business, but it has also been traditionally complex. Today, I'm proud to share that we have fully digitalized this distribution process, achieving 100% nationwide enablement of touch-free distribution. We saw some strong adoption from the market, with around 60% of electronic recharge system lifting this quarter done through this system. At the same time, our Cockpit platform, which is the largest digital retail network, is now connecting over 366,000 retailers across the nation, creating a zero-time distribution model that ensures immediate fulfillment of our customers' demand. MyGP continues to play a central role in transforming the customer journey.
Today, it engages 22.7 million active users, which is around 27% of our total base, who interact with the app daily, not just for services, but also for content, news, and gaming. We began our hyper-personalization journey last year, and this year we are actively scaling it across the platform. Our focus now is to scale these capabilities, further driving deeper engagement and making MyGP the primary digital touchpoint across the entire customer life cycle. Finally, on new avenues of digital growth, direct operating billing has seen renewed momentum, supported by our regulatory advocacy and expanded transaction limits through our engagement with Bangladesh Bank. Customers can now seamlessly use their Grameenphone balance for subscriptions, driving double the DOB, direct operating billing, revenue growth this quarter, alongside a strong uplift in content revenues.
At the same time, we are strengthening our role as a trusted digital partner through GP Shield, Bangladesh's first network-level smartphone security solution. We are ensuring a secure, worry-free digital experience, safeguarding our customers' data, financial transaction, and online transaction, while reinforcing our commitment to a safe and resilient digital ecosystem. Network leadership with a future-fit core, let's talk about this. This quarter, we strengthen network resilience by transforming how energy is managed across the network, ensuring uninterrupted connectivity across peak demands, large-scale events, and highly dynamic conditions. Thanks to our cloud-native 5G-ready network architecture that we were able to manage up to 10x signaling surge during important political events, national election, and Eid al-Fitr. Amid external uncertainties, including regional geopolitical tensions, we reinforced our operations with comprehensive monitoring of power continuity, transmission resilience, fuel supply chains, and critical spares, resulting in no abnormal increase in outages.
In parallel, we have implemented industry standard EDR, endpoint detection and response, across new telecom systems supplied by Huawei and ZTE, which is an approach that is the first in our telecom industry. This extends advanced security capabilities into HLR and core network nodes, securing the most critical layers of our network. A key enabler of our network efficiency has been 90% of our sites operating a near fiber performance alongside a comprehensive revamp of our IP architecture with MPLS. At the same time, our MPLS-enabled architecture is delivering industry-leading low latency, further strengthening overall network performance. We have accelerated the decentralization of our data centers, supported by tier three facilities with advanced capabilities, bringing computer and storage closer to the edge. As part of our broader AI transformation, we are building an intelligent, self-optimizing network to enhance customer experience.
By leveraging AI-driven insights, we can now predict and resolve network issues before they impact our customers, enabling a more proactive approach to service quality and churn management. At the same time, AI-powered systems are dynamically optimizing network performance in real time. Ultimately, this is laying the foundation for a future-ready, self-learning network, one that continuously adapts to customer needs and evolving demand patterns. Next is our AI-driven cybersecurity initiative. We have transformed our security operation center through AI-driven automation and agentic intelligence. This has enabled faster threat detection and automated response with 90% reduction in false alerts, malicious activities, maintaining a strong security posture with no major incidents in the last two quarters. We have also taken a significant step forward in how we manage energy across our network by leveraging AI-powered resource optimization.
By intelligently analyzing demand patterns and site conditions, we are optimizing battery utilization and aggregator operation to ensure energy is used only where and when it is needed. Before moving on to the next slide, I would like to invite Al-Amin, our head of network services, to briefly take us through the possibilities of newly acquired 700 MHz spectrum and our plans surrounding it.
Good morning. Hello, everyone. This is Al-Amin from technology team of Grameenphone. I think you heard from our CEO about our technology plan. Today, we'll start with one big good news. You are aware that we have acquired 700 MHz spectrum, which is we sometimes called it golden spectrum. This is the spectrum that is known for its strong indoor coverage strength. We have been successful to acquire around 10 MHz spectrum of that layer, and we are planning to deploy it from June onwards. Before that, actually, we all know that what problem really we were planning to solve with the spectrum layer. You know we have some long pending indoor coverage problem, especially if you look at the city areas, there are dense pockets that our signals are not able to reach.
There are rural areas where you will find problems that people are not getting the required data coverage. Also the voice quality and smoothness of internet was an issue. We are really planning to solve all these issues through the 700 MHz deployment. We believe that there'll be huge number of new customers that can migrate to 4G because this spectrum can reach up to 4 km . New 4G customer will be able to join Grameenphone's network. People who are in deep indoor, they will get a better quality network, and overall, the consistency of the network will improve significantly. Now, just to share one news is that from June onwards, we'll start rolling out this spectrum in all these areas, and we'll try to see that what more value we can bring to the company.
Also, I think from a country perspective, we see a huge opportunity because there will be a lot of customers who are out of data coverage will now come to the coverage area, and we can enable a lot of new services to them to bring and improve their life and also improve the economy of the country. This is a very powerful tool that we got as a company, and we are really planning to execute it in the best possible way. I hope that in coming quarters, we'll be able to show you some fantastic results that can come out of this deployment. Be with us. This spectrum is future ready, so we will be able to ready ourselves for the 5G launch and also the new services related to AI and others. Be with us. Let's hope for the best for the deployment.
We focus on sustainability. Let's focus on how we shape the future with our sustainable vision. In this segment, we'll talk about how we are shaping the future with our sustainable vision, as I just mentioned. I would like to start by highlighting that we have voluntarily adopted IFRS S1 and S2 for our sustainability and climate reporting, publishing a comprehensive sustainability report that includes Scope 3 emissions with the same discipline and rigor we apply to our financial disclosures. We are the first in the industry to take this step, reinforcing our commitment to transparency, accountability, and global best practices. To support our long-term decarbonization goal, we have consistently engaged over the past two years with policymakers and industry stakeholders to advocate for a framework that enables corporate power purchase agreements.
We are now moving into the next phase, working with stakeholders on practical steps for renewable energy integration in parallel with our long-term renewable plan, such as PPAs. We have advanced our near-term decarbonization efforts by procuring 190,000 MW of energy attribute certificates, reducing over 111,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide on a market-based basis. We continue to advance digital inclusion and online safety through our partnerships with UNICEF, reaching over 7.5 million people to date with a target of 10 million by 2030. Through our GP Academy program, we are investing on future skills through AI and emerging technologies, preparing the next generation for a digital-first world. I would like to now start with our financial performance for Q1 2026. Let's have a look at our financial performance now.
As I mentioned earlier, the weak economic environment and ongoing macro pressures over the past several quarters have continued to weigh on consumer disposable income, which got worsened due to the geopolitical tension, and as a result, we saw the ARPU soften again this quarter. Total revenue saw a year-on-year decline of 2% in line with the forward guidance provided. That said, we have a focus on driving a shift to our data and combo product adoption, while also rolling out more affordable bundle options to reflect tighter consumer wallet. that has helped us particularly offset the pressure on revenue. Moving on to EBITDA, we saw a decline by 1.5% year-on-year this quarter. This decline is however lower than the revenue decline, which shows our prioritization on efficiency and the cost discipline embedded across the organization.
On the bottom line, net profit after tax increased by 4.4%, demonstrating the resilience of our operating model. This improvement was supported by tighter cost controls and optimization across key expense lines and lower depreciation and amortization expenses. Finally, operating cash flow stood at BDT 18.1 billion, reflecting our ability to generate solid cash even in a challenging environment. This positions us well to continue investing in our strategic priorities while maintaining financial stability. To summarize, while the external environment remains challenging, our focus on disciplined execution, cost efficiency, and targeted investment continues to support resilient performance. We remain confident in our ability to navigate the current landscape and deliver sustainable value going forward. Now, let me invite our Chief Financial Officer, Otto Risbakk, to take you through the financials of Q1 2026 in more detail.
Thank you, Azman, and welcome again to all investors and analysts on the call. Great to see again so many people following us. Before I dive into the financial results, let me first share a little reflection on where we stand today. We're obviously in an unprecedented environment of uncertainty with global risk coming at us from the Middle East and also from macro challenges locally. On top of that, we have a very interesting trend in our mobile industry, which is fundamentally very positive, with very low smartphone penetration and also still quite low phone penetration at all, giving a lot of opportunities if you look on further, longer horizon. I think when we look at our result, we need to have both the long glasses and the short glasses to understand the trends.
Diving into the first slide, here you can see on the top left side our subscriber development. In this turbulent environment, we are seeing a clear structural path of recovery. It's early days, obviously. It's the first quarter. We see that we are back on Q-on-Q growth on subscribers, both for total subscribers and also more importantly on data subscribers. If I look at the numbers, we're at 84.2 million subscribers at the end of Q1, which is up 0.3 million on the quarter. On the data side, we see an even better development, with subscribers reaching almost 50 million at the end of the quarter, up 1.7%. This growth is healthy growth led by fundamentals. I'm happy to see that this growth is quality led by underlying additions driven by fundamentals rather than market spending.
You will see later in the presentation that we are containing our cost, that we continue to contain our cost. Now let me go over to the data story, and you can see on the right-hand side of the graph a continuous growth of usage. This time, this quarter, the usage is growing 5.4%, and it has been growing steadily since Q3 last year, and it's also higher, 5% higher than we had the same quarter last year. I would add that I'm still not happy with this growth. We had in the last year double-digit growth of data usage, 10%, and in the previous years, we've been also higher than that. I think as the macro normalizes, we will see that this growth will continue to rise, and I would like to see we getting over double digit during this year.
Let me give a little bit of background on the data growth. We are seeing that the customers are responding positively to our More for More strategy, where we offer bigger packages with longer durations that allow users to stay on the net and use digital tools and platforms more regularly, thereby increasing the quality of their lives. We think that this trend will continue. At the same time, we've also adjusted our portfolio a little bit, focusing a little bit more also on the entry side of our customer base to ensure that also at the bottom of the funnel, we get new customers in who are getting used to using more data.
In total, I see that today we are about at 8 GB per month in terms of volume per subscriber, and that is far below our neighboring countries, Malaysia and Thailand. They are around 40 GB and 50 GB per user. I see still tremendous potential for growth over time. Like I said, it will come gradually, but we hope that this growth will come back to double-digit during this year. Let me finish this slide with the ARPU slide, and here you can see the ARPU pressure, which we have been seeing this year, which is purely voice led. You can see that on the right side of the graph where the volume, the minute volume, has been declining 10.2% this quarter. I would say that this is not only the structural decline that I have explained every quarter in the past.
I do also think that we did not really perform as well as we should in this quarter. We have, again, adjusted our portfolio, and we do see positive results on that side now, starting in the beginning of the second quarter. However, there is a structural decline in voice which will continue, which will be more than offset by the growth we are seeing on data. Part of that also is our combo strategy to offer combo products, which will cater both voice and data for customers. They can buy everything in one product, offering more convenience. We're very early stage compared to other markets on combos. It's still in the teens, so 15%, 16% as we speak, and we expect this segment to grow significantly going forward. Now let me take you over to the revenue slide.
Before I comment on the revenue graph, let me give you some reflection on the macro picture that we are operating, and you see that on the graph on the left side. The red line you see here is the annual inflation that we have been seeing over the last years, and here it's since 2021. As you can see, the last year it has been around 9%, 10%. At the same time, the yellow line, you can see the GDP growth, which used to be quite healthy, around 6%, 7%, which has now declined to 3%.
As having 85 million customers, or more than half of the country as our customers, we can see that the customers feel the pressure from the high inflation and the low growth, and that is resulting in more restriction on their wallets, and we see that they're more careful with their spending. You can see that on the revenue slide. We have traditionally, in Grameenphone, always had good growth in the high single digits, but this quarter we are still down 2%. That is more or less in line with what we announced during the trading update that I did in March. As I said in the previous slide, the main driver for decline is this time weaker voice revenue, which has not been fully compensated by data growth.
I would say even though I'm never happy as a CFO, I'm never happy with -2%, in this macro situation with a very challenged macro and the risk from the Middle East, and now with the Middle East coming into the country, -2%, I have to say it's a solid performance, and I'm very pleased to see how the whole organization is responding to this challenge. I would love to say that we will soon be out of this picture, but I think everybody understands that we don't have much predictability on how this will develop going forward. However, what we see, and I think that is the same as most markets, telecom is very resilient. -2% is a good performance in this kind of market.
I cannot predict how the third quarter will develop, but probably on the top line you will see something similar to that. We are very encouraged, like I said in the previous graph, to see the growth of the data, which we hope will continue, and we will hopefully also contain the decline of voice, and hence we will be moving towards growth again. I would like to add that the BDT 38 billion revenue this quarter has not been driven by spending. We continue to contain market spending, and we are not going to invest in growth at the expense of returns. Finally, taking a look at the whole market, you will see that if you take all the competitors together, there has been no growth on revenue in the last two years, and I think also this year is going to be challenging.
For me, it is clear that the whole sector needs to be able to raise prices closer to the inflation, to the red line that you see on this graph, in order to protect revenue and also to protect the ability to continue in assets and low-band and future development in the sector. Now let's go through the cost side and the EBITDA and the EBIT. Before I go into the numbers, let me again reflect a little bit on the macro picture under which we are operating. You see on this slide, on the left side, on the right, the red line is the inflation, and the blue line is the development of our costs. You can see that in 2021, 2022, and 2023, costs were rising in a growing market.
Since then, we have been working relentlessly on cost, in particular in 2024 and 2025, and now also coming into 2026. You can see that in an environment with 9%-10% inflation, we have moved our cost inflation, our own cost base, down towards zero. Actually this quarter, for the first time, we have reduced the cost with 2.7% year-on-year. I'm quite proud of that development, but this doesn't come alone. We've had the whole organization is engaged on a broad basis, not only to reduce cost, but to create structural lasting efficiency. We have a lot of structural programs that we run, and the results we see this quarter comes from these programs that have been running year after year.
We also have, obviously, in this macro, more short-term actions and tactical dispositions, and we work with our vendors to contain the cost. I'm not sure I will be able to deliver negative cost growth every quarter, but I am sure that we will keep this number very, very low. Going over to the EBITDA, the development you see in the EBITDA with revenue coming down 2%, we have partly offset that decline so that EBITDA is now declining with only 1.5% to BDT 22 billion. That is a strong margin of almost 58%. If you look back at quarters, you can see we are consistently driving margins in the 58%-60% range.
If I go down, I also added the EBIT this quarter, and here you can also see an interesting development that we are actually positive on the EBIT side, going up 1.5% to about BDT 13 billion this quarter. Here you can see how disciplined we are on the CapEx side. We have invested less in the last year, and that obviously we see now on the depreciation. Although you have to see always the EBIT over a longer period, not only one quarter, you can see the trend that we are improving on the EBIT. Finally on the bottom right side, the ROCE, and that's a ratio that I'm very passionate about because it is so important that we're not only focusing on margin, but also that we are investing wisely.
The ROCE ratio is capturing that, and that is really a driving force for us when we decide how to invest. We always look for creating advantages for our customers, better user experience for the customers or efficiency. Applying those criteria on any investment that we do, we are focusing on keeping investments low and maximizing the return on those investments. You can see here we have a ROCE of about 27%. That is far above, about 10%-12% above the current cost of capital in Bangladesh, and it's a good margin. It's increasing slightly. Again, you need to see this ratio over time. That is something that we will have very strong focus on also going forward. Now over to the net profit.
In an environment that I have described, in a very challenging macro environment, I'm very pleased and proud to again present a solid result, net profit result, this time BDT 6.6 billion, almost 18% margin. Again, this does not come without huge effort in this environment of declining revenue. You can see on the graph on the right, I like that graph, what is driving net profit. You can see we actually lost almost BDT 800 million from lower revenue, but we have more than compensated that through the cost. I described the operational cost that they've declined 2.7% this quarter, down more than BDT 400 million. On top of that, I also described that our depreciation, sorry, is down as we are investing more wisely and carefully during this downturn.
We also have some assets coming out of their cycle and not having more depreciation. Again, the long-term focus on CapEx and the cost containment is helping the result. Finally, due to our very, very strong balance sheet, we have minimal financing cost, and this time we also had a little positive effect on that. All in all, this is driving net profit up BDT 0.3 billion and more than 4% increase. This is a structural strength that we have with the low debt and the strong operating leverage that we have. When the growth is coming back, I'm very confident that we will be able to maintain the margin even in these difficult times, and we will be able to grow again once the growth is coming back to the country. Now over to cash flow and the balance sheet.
If I start on the left side of the slide with the CapEx, you can see that this quarter we are again increasing compared to the last quarter last year, BDT 3.6 billion invested this quarter. Typically, we always invest more in the first half of the year compared to the second half. You will see this also this quarter. Actually, next quarter, we're going to invest even more than in the first quarter. I'm very excited. We are starting the rollout of our low-band 700 MHz spectrum. After we bought the spectrum last year, we can finally get started. So I'm very excited about that. If you go to the middle slide, you can see our operational cash flow at BDT 18 billion this quarter, up 5% compared to last year. Again, this is a combination of our cost control and CapEx phasing.
We are carefully managing our cash flow so that we can protect our balance sheet. That brings me over to the right side of the slide. Again, you can see, I think one of the industry-leading balance sheets, mostly around zero, this time +BDT 10 billion cash in the bank. This gives us a unique possibility to think long term. We can also finance all the CapEx and a very investor-friendly dividend policy through our operational cash flow. I'm also happy to confirm that our board has approved the dividend at the AGM that took place a few days ago, allowing us to pay an attractive dividend of BDT 10.5 per share for the quarter and BDT 21.5 for the full year.
This means that we will distribute BDT 14 billion to our shareholders now, and if you add what we distributed last year, in total, we will have distributed more than BDT 29 billion to our shareholders. That shows our commitment to our dividend policy of always paying attractive dividends. Combined with our strong balance sheet, we are able to maintain this policy year after year after year. We have now paid attractive dividends since 2010, and we go into 2026 despite all the risk with a very strong balance sheet and business that is operationally very strong, continue to generate cash flow, and we will also focus on continuing to pay dividends going forward. How much in this environment is difficult to say.
Let me conclude with these words before I give the word back to Azman, that we will continue in this environment to be very focused on protecting cash flow and margins while also investing in low band to create new growth. I'm looking with enthusiasm into the longer term, and I am prepared and embraced to really fight through this difficult period. With that, over to you, Azman.
Let's take a look at our key takeaways out of Q1 2026 as we wrap up the quarter. Let me leave you with a few of those takeaways. First, we continue to invest with a long-term lens across network, IT, spectrum, and AI-led program, alongside broader transformation and automation initiatives. These investments are for building a more efficient, scalable, and digital-first operating model that can support future growth while maintaining cost discipline. Second, we remain mindful of the evolving external environment. Recent geopolitical developments, particularly around the Iran conflict, are introducing additional uncertainty, especially from an energy supply and pricing perspective. While the impact has been contained so far, supported by government measures, there are limits to this, and we could see upward pressure on energy cost going forward. We also recognize potential risk around power availability and diesel supply, which could impact operations at the same site level.
If these contingencies materialize, we might see an impact on cost and revenue. Finally, we see strong opportunity in the country's digital future. With the newly formed government placing increased focus on digitalization initiatives, we are well-positioned to be a key partner in this journey. A thriving and sustainable telecom sector is a prerequisite for successful national digitalization, and we will continue to play an active role in enabling that outcome through active engagement in policy, advocacy, and ecosystem development. Thank you once again for joining the call.
Thank you, Azman Bhai and Otto, for the wonderful walkthrough. That brings us to the end of today's presentation.