Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Maria, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Turkcell's conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the Turkcell Investor and Analyst conference call. 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 star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ali Serdar Yağcı, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance Director. Mr. Yağcı, you may now proceed.
Thank you, Maria. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Turkcell's Investor and Analyst Update Call. Today, initially, our CEO, Mr. Murat Erkan, will be providing a short two-slide update, mainly covering our businesses in Ukraine and current status there. We will then have a Q&A session with the participation of our Group CFO, Mr. Osman Yilmaz, as well. Before we kick off, I would like to remind you that we postponed the Capital Markets Day event planned for April, as we disclosed last week. The current macroeconomic and political environment, as deteriorated by the war in Ukraine, unfortunately brings significant uncertainty for the future. Given the impracticability of making certain macro assumptions and our exposure in Ukraine, we no longer believe it is feasible to make a three-year business plan under these circumstances.
Therefore, we decided to postpone the event and remain focused on looking after our plans for this year. Now I hand over to Mr. Erkan for his update.
Thank you, Serdar, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My first words go out for those who are affected by the dramatic situation in Ukraine. We deeply sympathize with the Ukrainian nation. Our thoughts are with them and our team on the ground. We do hope that ongoing negotiation between two nations can bring peace to the region. Before summarizing the current status on our exposure in Ukraine, I would like to begin with some key highlights of 2021, and contribution of our Ukrainian operation into that. In the end, we are going to have a Q&A session with our CFO, Osman. As you may recall, in 2021, we delivered a strong performance thanks to our well-executed diversified business model and achieved a top-line growth of 23.4%.
Our top line growth was mainly driven by a large subscriber base, thanks to 2.7 million net adds and improved ARPU performance in Turkey. The top line was also supported by our international operation, mainly thanks to the robust performance of Ukraine operation in 2021. The international segment accounted for 10% of group revenues, of which around 8% belongs to Ukrainian operation, including lifecell, UkrTOWER, and Global Bilgi. Moving to next slide, let me provide some more detail about our business in Ukraine. Ukraine is home of three subsidiaries of Turkcell. Firstly, lifecell, a mobile telecom service provider, as we all know. The second is UkrTOWER, which provides towers predominantly for lifecell. Lastly, Global Bilgi Ukraine, which is our call center business in Ukraine.
Among those, lifecell is the largest operation which generated 8% of group revenue and around 10% of EBIT, EBITDA in 2021. The military operation targeted some major cities of Ukraine. Since the second week of the invasion, there have been negotiations for ceasefire and permanent peace, yet more than three million people fled the country, immigrating to the neighboring countries. Despite the extreme conditions, we continue to provide our service across the country. As of today, we have not reported any damage or outage in our core network. We had already moved some of our core network to western Ukraine and also established backups outside Ukraine to ensure business continuity. For the radio network, around 10% of our base stations are temporarily down on average on a daily basis due to the energy cutoffs.
However, as national roaming has started among three operators in Ukraine, operations continue mostly uninterrupted. Our operational side, as it is a fully prepaid market, we do not have any major collection risk. Refills are innovatively affected. Despite a steep increase in the first week of the invasion, almost half of the stores are open on average, yet it is changed on a daily basis. None of our employees lost their life or were injured so far, and majority of them moved to safer locations. On financial side, the banking system, collection, and payment continue to operate within the country, and we have no loss in basic ICT system such as billing and CRM.
We have sufficient liquidity to sustain our operation, and local banks are able to refinance maturing loans with no additional funding. Our debt is fully local, fully in local currency with around 1.5-year average time to maturity as of year-end. Our cash is almost fully placed in the creditor banks. Even though we have not seen a major interruption in our services so far, the outcome and the impact of the situation cannot be fully foreseen as of now. We shall note that any significant impact on the lifecell financials could pose a risk for our 2022 guidance. We are closely following the situation and expect to provide a clearer picture with our Q1 result. This concludes my presentation, and we're ready to take your questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question is from Kennedy-Good Jonathan with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I see you note that the cash position in Ukraine is conducive to sustain the operations at the moment. If that were to change, and say you moved into a negative free cash flow position, presumably with many people leaving the country, would Turkcell support the operation through cash injections into that market? Secondly, can you give us a sense of the, you know, what the actual exchange rate is like in Ukraine? Is it close to what we see on, you know, screens on Bloomberg, or is there a dislocation at which you can exchange local currency for dollars?
Let me give the word to Mr. Osman to answer both questions.
Thank you.
Our CFO, by the way.
Thank you very much, Murat. Jonathan, thank you for your questions. For your first question on cash position, fortunately, we entered this unfortunate situation with ample amount of cash. We have about $45 million equivalent cash on balance sheet. Part of it is in hard currency. In addition to that, we still generate cash flow from our operations. About 20%-30% of daily revenues have fallen compared to the pre-conflict period. This shows that there still is an activity going in the market, and people need connectivity. Given that only about 10% of our sites are dysfunctional, we expect, unless the situations get worse, to generate similar amounts of cash in coming periods.
There are huge uncertainties. There are two important things which might impact our cash position negatively. First is debt service. We have about $100 million equivalent debt all in local currency in Ukraine. We had extended the maturity of these loans to beyond one year before this situation. Normally, you know, in Ukraine, local currency loans are typically one for one to three months maturity, but we have extended to one year to three years maturity. For sake of safety, we hold cash in the banks that we have loan obligations to. We don't have credit risk in any banks in Ukraine. The banks that we are doing business in Ukraine are international, mostly international banks.
We don't have local bank risk in Ukraine. Second risk is capital expenditure because it is FX related risk. As you may guess, we are not doing any CapEx at the moment. We have not been processing FX payments to outside the country. It is prohibited, by the way, by the central banks. So far, we have managed cash situation successfully. We don't expect a negative free cash flow generation. Given that we have about $80 million net debt position in Ukraine, we are not expecting any cash injection in the short term. It is early to call for the worst.
We don't base our scenarios for the worst case at the moment. Our baseline scenario requires no additional cash injection from Turkey at the moment. The second question is about actual exchange rates. On Bloomberg screens, you see dollar hryvnia parity at about 30. There is no transaction in the market. Official market central bank has suspended FX operations since the conflict started. From the banks and from our colleagues in Ukraine, we hear that in gray market, in OTC market
Grivna, dollar grivna is trading around 34-36, depending on the day, which implies about 15% depreciation from the last prints that we see on Bloomberg. We are discussing which exchange rate to use with our auditors when disclosing our Q1 financials. Our preference is to be more prudent and use depreciated exchange rate. To be able to use this currency, it must be tradable. There must be a reference in the market. We are still discussing with auditors to use. We have about 20 days to finalize Q1 financials. We will see how it happens, and we will disclose which exchange rate we used in financials in Q1 financials.
We will give all the transparency and clarity on this issue.
Thank you. That's very clear. Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Demirak Kayahan with AK Investment. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for the presentation and opportunity to ask questions. For your current guidance, where did you see the, and what was the expected contribution from Ukraine in terms of EBITDA and the CapEx? Also, is there any significant damage to your infrastructure currently in Ukraine that might, I mean, require higher capital expenditures maybe when things get settled down? Thank you.
First of all, let me take the guidance part. I can firmly state that we are progressing in line with our plans as part of our local operations. Turkcell Turkey's result for the first two months of the year were in line with our guidance. Obviously, as we discuss in Ukraine operation, it constitutes around 8% of our revenue and 10% of our EBITDA. The development in Ukraine will be critical for our 2022 guidance. We may consider providing a guidance excluding international operation, depending on the developments in the upcoming weeks. We seriously considering how to divert the guidance. To be able to have a guidance in Ukraine is difficult, to be honest.
For the second question, I think maybe Osman can take the second question.
Actually, as I tried to disclose in the first question, we have about 10% of our total infrastructure inoperable at the moment, but it is not 100% due to damage. It is mostly due to electricity shortages and infrastructure deficiencies in the country. In the current situation, we are not expecting additional CapEx due to this, these functionalities. But we will see after this dust settles what is required. Our original CapEx plan, we had an aggressive CapEx plan to meet our increased demand in the country, but we will have a modest CapEx plan going forward, even after the dust settles and things go back to normal.
To add on this one, since national roaming is on board in Ukraine, we may need to wait for this, you know, the war goes away and then see what is left over. As of today, our infrastructure is quite, you know, quite well-conditioned.
Understand. Thank you. About the guidance, you're saying that if the things gets a bit more uncertain, you will provide a guidance maybe without the international operation. That-
Exactly.
That's the plan. That's it.
Okay, as a final confirmation, as I understand, there is also a lot of uncertainty, but you think that at the short term, decline in the revenues and EBITDA will be compensated by a decline in CapEx, and so that there won't be any significant cash needs for the operation, at least at the current picture.
This is right. Probably we will see some decrease on the top line level due to the international revenue side and a bit on the EBITDA side as well. Because Ukraine, as I mentioned, it is 8% of the top line, 10% of the EBITDA. Depending on the impact on Ukraine, we'll see some impact on this side. That's why we're gonna revisit our guidance based on without international market.
Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is from the line of Ece Mandaci with ÜNLÜ Securities. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you very much for the presentation. I have two questions. If there would be the need of any impairments in your P&L, would we see that effect as of first half with audited financials or earlier in the Q1 financials, regarding this Ukraine operation and the depreciation of the local currency? Secondly, could there be any change in the dividend policy in 2022, given this recent political conflict? Could you just please provide more insight on that? Thank you very much.
Let me start with this impairment part. Maybe Osman can add additional things. As of today, current circumstances, there is no requirement for such an action, to be honest. We don't have any damage or outage in our core network, so vast majority of our radio network is up and running, and just 10% down. So I don't see any reason to do immediate impairment actions as of today. Maybe Osman can add any additional things. On the dividend policy, we don't have any plan to change our dividend policy. It's gonna be probably, you know, on track with the plan as well for the dividend side.
Maybe a few things to add. We don't have reasons for an impairment. To be able to impair in Ukraine, either we need to see a significant depreciation in Ukrainian hryvnia, which is not the case at the moment, or we have to see a significant loss of business in the country. Also, that's not the case. We only lost about 20%-30% of our daily revenues in the country. There is still activity. We don't see significant damage loss in our fixed assets in the country so far. Q1 would be very early and overprudent to impair our assets in Ukraine. We are continuously closely following the situations.
There are still eight days until the end of Q1 and 15 days beyond that to finalize the financials. If we see a material change in the direction of the war in Ukraine, we will take the required actions. Even though we don't impair in Ukraine or nor in Belarus in Q1, we still have to be very cautious in terms of net income, cash flow situation of the company, profitability of group, not impairing in Q1 does not mean that we'll not impair in the coming quarters. We will have to be more prudent going forward.
Are you done with your question, Ms. Mandaci?
Yes, thank you very much.
Thank you. As a final reminder, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. We have a follow-up question from Mr. Kayahan Demirak with AK Investment. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you. Again, I mean, this is not related to Ukraine, but about the recent developments, so you probably know that I can ask. My question is that you were advocating for infrastructure sharing for a very long time. Now the Turkey Wealth Fund, also the controlling shareholder of Turkcell, is about to acquire Türk Telekom. As I understand from the public statement that the extension of the Türk Telekom contract term is on the cards. Where do you stand in terms of this infrastructure sharing in the current picture? I mean, do you see that happening in the short run? Thank you.
Thank you very much. To be honest, it's fair to state that as the investment arm of the state, Turkey Wealth Fund is a value creation oriented entity, seeking for return on its investment portfolio. I believe that this acquisition might be a catalyst for the infrastructure sharing, which has the potential to create additional value to the overall industry. We find the current market structure in the fixed segment, quite inefficient. The absence of widely accepted infrastructure sharing initiative limits the return on fiber investment and the speed of infrastructure deployment. We believe that Turkey Wealth Fund may play a key role here by accelerating the process, and we will definitely support such an approach.
Okay. Thank you. I understand from your perspective, the Türk Telekom can have a fixed-line licenses for a longer period of time, but this will not prevent to have a common infrastructure.
It might help for the common infrastructure sharing as well, because if the structure is changed, it would definitely put into the picture this common infrastructure sharing perspective. Without this, I don't think it's anything's possible. I do believe that common infrastructure sharing is number one priority should the Turkey Wealth Fund mind.
Okay. Thank you very much for sharing your perspective. Thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Turkcell management for any closing comments. Thank you.
I would like to thank all of you joining this conference call. I, as I mentioned at the beginning, I hope things gets better and peace will win the situation. All our hearts are with Ukraine and our colleagues over there. Thank you very much for joining.
Thank you. We hope to see you in our Q1 results.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good afternoon.