Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Maria, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Turkcell conference to present and discuss the Q2 2020 Financial Results. All participants will be in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question- and- answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing *0 on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Korhan Bilek, Treasury and Capital Markets Director. Please, Mr. Bilek, you may now proceed.
Thank you, Maria. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Turkcell Q2 2020 Results Call. Today's speakers are our CEO, Mr. Murat Erkan, and our CFO, Mr. Osman Yılmaz. We will have a brief presentation. Afterwards, we will be taking your questions. Before we start, I would like to kindly remind you to review the last page of this presentation for our safe harbor statement. Now, I hand over to Mr. Erkan.
Good afternoon and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Turkcell Q2 2020 R esult Call. It was a challenging quarter during which we all felt the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. I will shortly talk about its impact on our business. Before I do that, I would like to start by mentioning the highlights of the quarter. We recorded solid performance with our strong business model and prudent financial management discipline. On a consolidated basis, we delivered 11.8% revenue growth this quarter. Despite limited mobility during the quarter, we gained 181,000 customers, 144,000 of which were postpaid. Mobile ARPU growth of 14% exceeded the inflation. Our strategy of prioritizing our digital channels has helped us during the period. 11% of our mobile customer sales were through our website and our application.
Paycell's outstanding performance once again proved that we are on the right track with our investment in payment systems. Overall, we generated TRY 1.3 billion free cash flow during the quarter, strengthening our balance sheet. We improved the leverage ratio by 0.4 points year-on-year, reaching 0.8x at the end of the Q2 . Moving to the next slide. As was the case with all operators, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a sharp drop in roaming revenues. For us, it fell by 2.6 points, down to 0.9% of Turkcell Turkey revenues. We expect this factor to continue impacting us in the Q3 . Mobility was constrained, still the drop in gross mobile subscriber acquisition was at an acceptable level. Customers have continued to choose our service offering and quality, thanks to our widespread and convenient channels, including digital.
On the topic of digital, we encourage our subscribers to use our online platforms for telco services, top-up, and technological product purchases. Accordingly, our digital channels revenue share rose to 11%, up from 4% a year ago. Going forward, we are motivated to take this to a higher level. As our customers are spending more time at home, we observe an increased time spent on our digital services. This is particularly visible in our TV product with the OTT service reaching 70 minutes a day per user.
In addition, we observe an increase in transaction volume on Paycell with digital payments rising by 84% to TRY 215 million during the quarter. All in all, this quarter has also been instrumental in driving certain structural changes in our cost base. We expect certain OpEx saving action will be there to stay in upcoming periods. Next slide. As of June, normalization has begun in Turkey. Precautions for the pandemic are maintained. At the same time, steps towards normal life are being taken. Travel bans are removed. Flights are partially resumed. Many workplaces are now open. Despite normalization action, many of the trends that emerged in the COVID era are set to remain. Remote working, remote education, and remote healthcare services will continue to be key trends of the post-pandemic era.
More individuals and corporates will demand to be digital in their lives and during their operation. At Turkcell, we are ready to benefit from these trends with our proven solution. Our fixed wireless access product, Superbox, is even more popular thanks to strong demand for fast and quality connection at home. We expect to serve both customers and corporates with our unique digital service portfolio. The digitalization of business has created further demand and new opportunities for our data center business, cloud and security services, and overall business solutions.
In Techfin, our digital and cashless payment solution are prime for new era, as evidenced by the over 80% growth in online payment transaction. We can proudly state that all of our strategy focus areas have proven our readiness for the more extensive digital world expected in the post-COVID era. We owe our advantageous position to our strategic foresight, the ability to accurately identify industry and customer needs, and our timely actions. Moving to the next slide, please. Some further details on our financial performance. We recorded a TRY 6.9 billion top line in the Q2 . Despite the challenging condition of the pandemic, we were able to generate 4% quarterly growth.
Our EBITDA reached TRY 2.8 billion on a 10.6% increase, and EBIT reached TRY 1.4 billion with 19.8% margin. Coupled with lower S&M costs and OpEx, our lower finance costs on a year-on-year basis lifted our net income to TRY 852 million. Our Q2 net income is up 83% versus last year. In the first half, our net profit rose 88% when we exclude the Fintur transaction gain recorded last year. These results were in line with our guidance announced earlier this year. Next slide.
Let's take a look at our operational performance. Our total subscriber base expanded by 181,000 this quarter. With this, we already realized 80% of our 1 million target for the year. In mobile, we gained a net 144,000 postpaid subscribers, reflecting our focus on this segment. The postpaid share in total mobile subscribers was at 63%. The monthly mobile churn rate was down to 1.9% from 2% last year at the previous quarter. We believe a 2% monthly churn rate is a healthy level. Blended mobile ARPU rose to TRY 46.4 on a 14% increase, thanks to rising data and digital service usage and upsell to the higher tariffs.
In fixed broadband, we gained a net 36,000 fiber subscribers, 7,000 ADSL subscribers, and 25,000 IPTV subscription. Residential fiber ARPU growth was 9.1% on a year-on-year basis. Next slide. Let's look at the performance of our fixed wireless access product, Superbox. Accelerated demand for Superbox continued this quarter, given its convenience. With 91,000 net adds this quarter, Superbox subscribers almost quadrupled from a year ago. We are pleased to have marked a 500,000 milestone in July.
In July, we launched a new version called Superbox Plug and Play with an easy setup feature, further contributing to its convenience. Next slide. We continued effort to reinforce our bond with our customers. During this period, our primary focus has been on meeting their communication and technological needs with our digital services, communication solution, and our strong network. We prioritize the segments that will require our service the most, namely healthcare workers, youngsters, and elderly, offering them generous data.
We also provided additional benefits from our rich portfolio of digital services, including zero-rated video calls on BiP, live concerts on fizy, and additional data quota on TV+ for remote education. All these were possible through the combination of a strong network, ability to provide value-added services, and existing convenient online platforms. These were instrumental in consumer recommending Turkcell over the competition, even more so in challenging times.
Moving to the next slide. Over the past few years, one of our priorities has been to increase the revenue share of our online channels. As disclosed on the Capital Markets Day in November 2019, our target was to reach 12% by 2022. As at the end of the Q2, the level has reached 11% given the demand during the outbreak. Our customer used this channel to make top-ups on their prepaid lines and to buy additional packages, digital service subscription, handsets, and wearable technology. In the Q2 , our website had 38 million monthly visits on average, and application had 23 million active users.
Our ability to provide tailored offers through our digital channel, flash sales campaign, and win-win brand cooperation have also been instrumental in this performance. Overall, the rising popularity and revenue share of digital channels bring us flexibility and speed in reaching customers at lower costs. Moving to the next slide. As to our performance in strategic focus areas, digital services standalone revenue growth was 23% year-on-year this quarter.
We launched the beta version of our own video conferencing platform called BiP Conference. We are confident that we will bring it up to speed with its competitor within a short timeframe. The YaaniMail solution for corporates and our digital identity management application developed with blockchain technology were the other highlights of the quarter. As part of our standalone strategy of digital services, we have completed the establishment of individual companies for Lifebox, fizy, and TV+. Lifebox, named under Billo brand, and BiP are now available in the Caribbean market through Digicel. Our digital business solution registered 15% yearly revenue growth. Our TRY 1.4 billion backup of contract value is promising for the road ahead.
Also, three additional hospitals were introduced, with a fourth one scheduled to open in the upcoming period. COVID-19 has brought about a possible pipeline of remote working and education services. What's more, we contribute to the risk reduction with our smart solution. These include thermal camera system, air quality, social distance measurement, in-store customer count, cybersecurity services. In Techfin, Paycell has accelerated its penetration with the rising use of contactless and online payment solutions.
App users have more than doubled from the same period of last year, and there were 70% more transactions on Paycell Cards. Online payment transactions have also increased by 84%. This quarter, we also launched 24/7 money transfer to IBAN on a Paycell application. Moving to the next slide. Now, an update on data usage and 4.5G subscription trends. Average mobile data usage rose 7% in a year to 11.7 GB per user. This is the highest growth level since the Q4 of 2012. The rise in data consumption was due mainly to higher content consumption, to growing share of 4.5G users, and Superbox subscribers.
Out of 31.6 million customers signed up for 4.5G services, 21 million have 4.5G-compatible smartphones, still indicating room for growth. In the Q2 , we achieved 79% smartphone penetration, with 9% being 4.5G compatible. There were 2 million net addition of 4.5G-compatible smartphones on a yearly basis. Next slide. Let's look at our performance in the international market, which generates 8% of group revenue. Our international operation grew by 17.5% year-on-year. This was mainly on rising data usage and the positive impact of currency movement in these countries. In local currency terms, the top-line growth rate of our Ukrainian subsidiary was 7.7%. Lifecell Ukraine recorded its first month of operation net income in June.
Our aim is to continue the trend going forward. Belarus revenue declined 3.3%, due mainly to lower handset sales given limited mobility. Meanwhile, mobile ARPU grew 10.4% year-on-year in local currency terms, with higher data consumption and the demand for digital services. Our subsidiary in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus recorded 3.5% revenue growth, mainly reflecting the hit on tourism and education sectors. Next slide.
I would like to say a few words about another promising investment area, Turkey's automobile project. As we announced a while ago, we are one of the founding partners of automobile company, holding a 19% share. The company was established to develop and produce a range of battery electric cars in Turkey. This company will be the first non-traditional manufacturer in Europe to produce native battery electric SUV. The start of production is scheduled for the last quarter of 2022.
This quarter is July. The company marked a milestone with the groundbreaking ceremony for the environmental-friendly factory. The plan is to complete its construction within 18 months. The factory will have an annual capacity of 175,000 vehicles. The company will own its intellectual property for its authentic vehicle platform, enabling flexibility, creativity, and independence. This initiative is expected to grasp new growth opportunities as being one of the first movers in the electric cars, and by providing new value-added services around the cars as a smart device within a mobility ecosystem.
The project is supported with comprehensive incentives and tax breaks, Our capital commitment as Turkcell is capped at EUR 95 million. Considering the benchmark in the field, we believe that this investment has the potential to be value accretive for Turkcell Group in the medium term, as e-mobility and sustainable energy continue to be the rising trends. Next slide. We are happy to note that the Q2 results confirm our full-year expectations, which were announced on 20th of April. We have been among the few companies to provide visibility to the market during such uncertain times. Sorry.
This confirmation proves how well we were able to analyze the situation and control its effects. As such, we reiterate our full-year guidance of 10%-12% revenue growth, a 40%-42% EBITDA margin, a 19%-21% EBIT margin, and a 17%-19% operational CapEx over sales ratio. Although negative pressure is expected to prevail in the Q3 , given the higher share of roaming and the impact of delayed corporate projects, we see upside risk to these guidance levels. We aim to achieve the high end of the top line and profitability guidance range for 2020. I will now give the floor to our CFO, Osman.
Thank you, Murat. Let's take a closer look into the financials. In the Q2 , group revenues rose by 11.8% year-over-year, corresponding to an incremental TRY 733 million. Of this increase, TRY 740 million derives from Turkcell Turkey. This was possible with the rising share of post-paid subscribers, upsell efforts, and strong data demand despite a sharp decline in roaming revenues and a slowdown in top-up revenues. Looking at the first half, top-line growth was 14.5%. The slowdown in our consumer finance business, exit from the sports business a year ago had a 3.3% negative impact on our top-line growth. Next slide.
In the Q2 , group EBITDA rose by 10.6% year-over-year to TRY 2.8 billion. During this period, the use of digital channels and remote working practices have led to savings in OpEx contributing to our profitability. Meanwhile, the higher share of relatively lower margin segments, such as smart devices and corporate projects, has resulted in a margin decline by 0.4% to 40.8% year- on- year. Turkcell Turkey's EBITDA rose by 15.8% year- on- year to around TRY 2.5 billion. It has continued to improve its profitability margin with a 0.5 percentage point rise year- on- year to 41%. In the first half, EBITDA rose by 16.5% year- on- year to TRY 5.6 billion. EBIT rose by 15.6% year- on- year to TRY 2.8 billion with a margin of 20.7%. Next slide.
Now, more detail on our free cash flow generation capacity. As discussed, our operations generated TRY 5.6 billion of EBITDA in the first half, up 17% from the previous year. Thanks to a strong collection performance and smart CapEx management, we recorded a TRY 1.6 billion free cash flow in the first half. Of this amount, TRY 0.6 billion is related to deleveraging of our consumer finance business, with the remaining TRY 1 billion being related to telco operations. The major items of TRY 1.6 billion free cash flow include acquisition of intangible assets, property, plant and equipment of TRY 2.8 billion, change in operating assets and liabilities of negative TRY 366 million, payment of lease liabilities of TRY 705 million, and income tax paid of TRY 235 million.
Continued improvement of free cash flow over the past four years confirms our dedication to generate strong cash flow since the completion of our LTE investments. Our aim is to sustain this trend in the upcoming periods. Next slide. Now let's take a closer look at our Techfin company's performance, and first with Financell. In Q2, Financell contraction has continued with revenues declining by 44% year-over-year. This is mainly due to declining loan portfolio with regulatory decisions taken a while ago, as well as COVID-19 pandemic limitations. Financell's loan portfolio fell by 44% year-over-year to TRY 1.8 billion in Q2 2020. Its EBITDA declined by 38.6% to TRY 76.9 million, indicating a margin of 58.3%.
Yearly margin improvement of five percentage points is due mainly to a lower cost of funding, shrinking portfolio, and the rising share of equity in total funding. Cost of risk rose to 3.4%, still below the market average for general purpose loans, while loan insurance penetration was at 93%. A potential further decline in this business due to COVID-19 could be positive from a working capital perspective. Next slide. It's been another busy quarter for Paycell. Cashless payment methods have become more popular than ever, with more people willing to experience these alternatives.
Three-month active Paycell users reached 4.7 million, with a total transaction volume of 2.1 billion TRY for the quarter. We observed a solid rise in direct carrier billing and bill payment, despite the limited working hours of our physical channels impacting the latter. Record high mobile payment volumes are recorded in both April and May. DCB volume increased by 84% to 215 million TRY year-on-year, corresponding to 26% quarterly growth. Third-party bill payments almost doubled.
Transaction volume on the Paycell Card was 72 million TRY, marking a 70% yearly and 37% quarterly increase. Paycell has also continued to expand its reach and service portfolio. It is now expected at more than 10,000 merchant points. In Q2, Paycell generated 63 million TRY of revenues, 64% of which are non-group. Its 43% EBITDA margin was impacted by higher S&M expenditure, reflecting its non-group growth strategy.
In July, Paycell Card users, who are also Turkcell postpaid subscribers, have been introduced what we call instant limit. As such, they are now able to assign their mobile payment limits to their Paycell Cards, allowing them to spend at any merchant where card payments are accepted. We are also in the process of launching the Paycell Android POS devices, an ecosystem enabling a convenient and safe alternative payment platform for the merchants. Paycell Android POS will support both card payments, PAYE Kart, as well as the QR code payments, and will offer merchants the Paycell Android market for their inventory tracking and campaign management. We will share more about Paycell POS device in the coming periods. Next slide. Now a few words on our balance sheet and leverage.
As at the end of the quarter, our gross debt position increased slightly to TRY 19.8 billion from TRY 19.5 billion, due to a nominal TRY 737 million negative impact of currency movements despite debt repayments. In Q2, the U.S. dollar appreciated by 5% and the euro by 7%. As we do not net off our derivative receivables from debt, our reported debt in TRY terms rises as FX appreciates. As of Q2, net debt was TRY 8.8 billion, with a 0.8x leverage ratio, down from 0.9 in the previous quarter. Excluding our Techfin business, this was at 0.7 times, the lowest in the sector. In Q2, we saw a nominal TRY 1.4 billion decrease in net debt on the back of strong cash flow generation despite currency depreciation with a net impact of TRY 717 million.
On average, every 10% depreciation of Turkish lira causes 0.1% increase on our leverage. Next slide. This is our last slide, and it is about our FX management. Our strong balance sheet remains to be a key investment highlight, with around $1.6 billion equivalent cash in hand and a long FX position of $50 million. This asset has proved to be particularly important in a challenging environment such as the one we experienced this quarter. We continue to hold the bulk of our cash in hard currency as a natural hedging tool. With hedging instruments in place, the share of FX debt had declined from 79% to 42% as of the end of Q2. Financial derivative instruments that we are engaged in include cross-currency swaps and participating cross-currency swap, which protects us against both currency and interest rate fluctuations.
In line with IFRS, the hedge accounting practice protects us at volatile times while reflecting mark-to-market valuation of these instruments. Furthermore, we closely monitor the market to ensure the effectiveness of participating cross-currency swaps, revising their protection levels if need be. For example, we have restructured one quarter of our existing participating cross-currency swap portfolio during Q2. We registered a slight positive net FX gain in the quarter, excluding swap interest, supporting our strong bottom line of TRY 852 million. This concludes our presentation. We are now ready to take your questions. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press *1 on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press *2 . Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press *1 at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from the line of Ondrej Cabejsek with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions, and congratulations on the results. I had three questions, please. On your Net Promoter Score, you're highlighting that in the Q2 , you widened the gap between yourself and your competitors. Can you just explain a bit what contributed to this? Second question is around the sustainability of some of these selling and marketing cost declines. With a lot of digitization going on, as you're highlighting, what do you think is sustainable of the cost that you've seen decrease? What sort of levels do you think are sustainable long-term relative to sales? Third question, regarding the Superbox progress.
You've added something like 90,000 subscribers this quarter, compared to something like 70 in the Q1 . Is this more or less in line with what you were expecting? Because your competitor reported record numbers of fixed broadband net additions. I was wondering how you're looking at this, if perhaps you might be rethinking your approach to the provision of fixed broadband services as opposed to services based on mobile, and whether you're currently maybe pushing more for some sort of regulatory changes around fiber provision. Thank you.
Ondrej, thank you very much for the question. Let me start with the Net Promoter Score. This is mainly when the time is challenging, customer looking for quality in terms of network quality, infrastructure quality, and service richness. During this COVID-19 period, customers confirmed that our quality, infrastructure quality, as well as the service quality, and high customer experience management quality as well. I think this is main driver, especially coverage, services, digital services. For the second question, sales and marketing. First of all, in the sales side, I think this is sustainable, but we shouldn't forget that our sales costs little bit more to digital as we expected. During the COVID-19 period, we see that it become more faster than they expected. For the marketing side, due to COVID-19, we either postpone or cancel part of marketing expense.
This will bounce back to normal trend when the things getting normal. For the marketing side, I think we will get back to the similar level that we're spending before. We're hoping that the COVID-19 will go away. For the Superbox side, it is 91,000 net add, but we also add 36,000 fiber subscriber as well. For the broadband demand is there, and Superbox success shows that customer need higher speed at their home. They are ready to pay almost more than double, actually, close to triple ARPU level to our Superbox product to get proper services. This shows fiber is very important in Turkey, and customer needs quality service at their home.
When they couldn't get it, they go for more expensive but higher quality services, I would say. For the fiber footprint, I can little bit elaborate on this side. We continue investing in fiber infrastructure using existing permits, we also starting to get new permits from the fiber deployment and still limited in scale. This shows that when we get this right-of-way license or investment permits, we can go further fixed line investment. In order to accelerate fiber rollout, our goal is to make fiber investment jointly. This view was also supported by our president in his speeches. Otherwise, there could be a significant waste of resource in the country. We expect development on the infrastructure sharing in upcoming period as well.
That's very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Ece Mandacı with ÜNLÜ Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the presentation, congratulations on the strong results. I have a few questions as well. Firstly, could you please elaborate on the ARPU growth trends for the Q2 for the postpaid and prepaid segments? Could you also remind us if Superbox ARPU was included under the postpaid segment too? Because given the around 20% price increase year to date in the Superbox packages, I was expecting myself a higher postpaid ARPU growth for the Q2 . How we should see for the Q3 , the growth trend on that front. My second question is on your commitments regarding this automotive project. I think if I did not hear wrong, you will commit in total EUR 95 million for the project, and how much of it will be in 2020 and 2021? Thank you very much.
First of all, thank you very much for the question. The first part, Superbox ARPU, it is included postpaid segment. If we look at like for like ARPU, it's around 13.5% level. Even though Superbox ARPU included, it has limited impact on the ARPU growth of the postpaid. The second thing about the first question, in the postpaid ARPU, there is also roaming ARPU as well. Mainly our postpaid customer utilize traffic abroad services as well. Unfortunately, during COVID, we cannot get this revenue from our postpaid subscribers. Even though Superbox contribute on the one side, but roaming side get another minus for us. We managed to keep over the inflation, which is very important on our side.
For the commitment for the automatic project, I believe, let me check the numbers. As our commitment is EUR 95 million, as far as I remember, first EUR 19 million has been released. The rest will be released until end of 2020.
22.
22, sorry. 22.
For 2020, how much we should receive?
19 million so far.
So far?
Yes.
Partly for the second half, we should expect?
The rest will continue until the end of 2023.
You highlighted the missing roaming revenues, unfortunately, for the postpaid segment. That will be the case for the Q3 as well, right? For the Q3 as well, even though there was an additional price increase in the Q3 for Superbox, you are saying it had a limited effect also probably in the Q3 .
Exactly. Obviously, we shouldn't forget that inflation is going down quarter-over-quarter in Turkey. We are trying to be in line with the inflation, and the expectation is around maybe single digit maximum 11% inflation rate. We are still over and above the inflation, but we would like to keep similar levels, plus and minus on the inflation growth as well. On the other hand, with growing number of subscriber, this is also helping our revenue growth on top of revenue.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Regarding roaming comment, it is valid for Q3, I would say, because we will see roaming impact on Q3 because Q3 is one of the biggest quarter in terms of roaming revenue, but we'll manage.
Okay. Thank you very much.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone. The next question is from the line of Ivan Kim with Xtellus Capital . Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon. Two questions please. I firstly just wanted to talk about this latter comment that you made that inflation is going down. On top of that, with the roaming falling out, what sort of mobile ARPU growth you think you can show in the second half of the year? It doesn't look like it will be easy to even mention high single digits inflation from what I can see. Any comments on that would be highly appreciated. Secondly, I just wanted to ask about the working capital dynamics in the second half. First half obviously was quite strong.
Only part of that is driven by the consumer finance company. There was some trade pay that was released too. What do you expect for the second half or full year, whichever is easier for you to talk about? Thank you.
Is management ready to answer?
Sorry about that. Let me start with the inflation question. As you know, inflationary pricing is a key pillar of our business model. Yet our price action is reflected in pricing with a lag due to contracted nature of our business. Accordingly, our ARPU growth was much higher than the inflation rate in the last three, four quarters. It's reasonable to see some normalization in ARPU growth with the declining inflation over the last year. I would reasonably expect our pricing to converge to a reasonable range around inflation levels in the upcoming quarters. I expect higher single-digit, maybe double-digit levels. For the Q2 , we expect to stabilize around this level for the rest of the year. I think the question was working capital. We expect similar levels that we are seeing in the first half.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Ibrahim Bedawiya with Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks very much for the opportunity. I have a question, just follow up on your comment on fiber investments and the right-of-way license that you said. Could you maybe give a bit more detail first on what the implications would be on your investment, sorry, on your investment intensity, especially if you were to get a bit more permits going into 2021? Then, just maybe you give a bit more color as to which agency issues this license, and how long do you expect this license to be available for? Some color on who it is, how it works, yeah, what changed. Thanks.
First of all, last couple of years, we couldn't get, I couldn't say license, kind of permit. When you try to deploy fiber in Turkey, you need to get permit from Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure and the municipality that is the area that you would like to roll out. So far we couldn't get, last couple of years, we couldn't get permit from Directorate of Communications for rolling out fiber. Recently we get some of the permits so that we can deploy more fiber for our infrastructure. As everybody knows, fiber is very important for fixed line as well as the 5G that is in front of us. Deploying fiber is very important. For 2021, we would like to see, we would like to invest in fiber, but we would like to invest in jointly. Investing in infrastructure is not good for the economy of country.
If we jointly invest in fiber in infrastructure in Turkey, then we can compete on the services level. Everybody knows that if three party deploy fiber into the same place, then it's not a very efficient way to deploy fiber. We would like to push joint investment. I see that in the government authority level, there is an ambition to do in a joint way as well. This is good news for us.
Thank you.
As a final reminder, to register for a question, please *1 on your telephone. We have a follow-up question from the line of Ondrej Cabejsek with UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, thank you. Two follow-ups from me, please. One regarding the fiber. You mentioned that there is now more political will for some of the sharing or joint venture projects. Can you just give us a bit more color as to what scenarios are in play, i.e., now that, for example, both you and Türk Telekom have a common shareholder, is there a possibility that the entire networks sort of merge somehow over the medium term, for example? You mentioned joint ventures in terms of investing, should we expect only that, or is there potential for something more sort of market wide to happen? That's my first follow-up.
The second follow-up, just on the inflationary pricing. Do I read, or do we read your answer to the previous question in the way that you feel more comfortable about raising prices currently? At the Q1 results, you were sort of hesitant to comment on inflationary pricing during the pandemic. Is that situation better now? Thank you.
Thank you very much. First of all, for the first question, my comment is more, I don't believe that we have common shareholders because shareholder structure is a little bit different. On this side, I would like to mention that looking at telco asset portfolio of Türkiye Wealth Fund, we believe that a fair and convenient environment for infrastructure sharing is also possible. Türkiye Wealth Fund has cable infrastructure, will probably share in Turkcell and has limited share in Türk Telekom. In this perspective, it is wise to have common infrastructure for the country. This is good for the country for the future as well.
We can expand our fiber infrastructure and reach equally to all over the countries. Coming up 5G in front of us, high speed internet need at home, these are driving force for the common fiber investment. As I mentioned, Turkey needs more fiber. The Superbox penetration shows the demand. Demand is there. Customer is ready to pay higher for the better services. For the inflation, the track record of Turkcell shows what we are going to do for next coming quarter. We always say that we're going to follow inflationary pricing. We would like to continue on this side. As we said before, it was difficult to increase the price during pandemic area. We do see that there are more comfortable times to increase pricing. We will do our best to meet our inflationary pricing approach.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Also, by the way, just to remind that we have already started increase our acquisition price, and we hope our competition will like to follow us.
Okay. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will turn the conference over to Turkcell management for any closing comments. Thank you.
I would like to thank all the participants and have a good evening and good afternoon.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling and have a pleasant evening.