Earnings Call: Q3 2021

Jan 29, 2021

Earnings release

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Airtel Africa Conference Call for its Results for the nine months, thirty one December twenty twenty. The presenters for this call are Raghunath Mundhava, CEO of Airtel Africa and J. D. Paul, CFO. Participants will initially be in listen only mode during a brief introduction by the CEO, after which the call will be opened up to questions. Please also note that this event is being recorded. Without further ado, I'd like now to hand over to Raghunath Mandava, Chief Executive Officer of Airtel Africa, who will lead today's call. Over to you, sir. Welcome, everybody. Thank you for joining us on today's call. As you would have heard, Raghu Raghunath Mandava, the CEO of Airtel Africa, and I'm joined on the line by CFO, Jaydeep Paul and deputy CFO and head of investor relations, Pierre Falchom. We will be answering any questions you may have. But first, I would like to give a overview of the quarter that passed by. We're all going through this deadly pandemic to various extent across our various geographies. Governments in Africa and the countries that we operate have managed them very well within their limited resources. Over the last many months, the number of cases have been coming down. However, there seems to be a fatigue amongst people on the safety measures, and the safety measures are not being adhered to as well as it was done in the earlier period. And just as we thought of cases were coming down, we are now seeing a small jump in a few countries, perhaps a new variant of mutant that is spreading across some of the African nations. We have discussed in the past that we will see less people open being around, and this means there will be a greater voice usage. We will we will see natural supply chains disrupted and rural markets will be affected. We also spoke of a shift in data usage and the increased use of money. All this while the economies are generally moving to a lower levels of GDP and people are having lesser and lesser disposable incomes. We have worked to support our customers by improving our voice capacity, greater rural site rollout, managing data capacities, ensuring better and assured availability of both recharges and mobile money, both in urban and in deep rural. We have continued our investments during this period, added, and have added almost 2,500 sites over last year, twelve months, taking the total to about 24,700 sites. In order to help remove balance depletion shock for our customers, we have reduced our pay rates in a few countries to far lower levels than before, thereby encouraging more customers to start using data without any fear of balance depletion shock. The good work put in by our teams has helped us to achieve commensurate results. Take you through each of these. I will first touch upon the highlights before going into the details. The last quarter witnessed good growth with our revenue at $1.00 $34,000,000,000 1 point 3 4 billion dollars year on year constant growth of almost 22.8%, which would continue improvement in our operating efficiency led to an even stronger growth of 28.3% EBITDA margin to $485,000,000 Please note reported revenue this quarter included a one time exceptional benefit of 20,000,000, which we have excluded from all our analysis of underlying trends and revenue for the business. As discussed many times before, our data and mobile money need to be our growth drivers, together contributing now about 40% of our revenues in the quarter. And these have been growing very, very handsomely and continue to drive our revenues. Continue our focus continue focus on increasing customer penetration. We have added two and a half million customers this quarter, 11% growth year on year. This has been partly hindered by the halting of new customer onboarding in Nigeria from mid December, in line with the customer registration guidelines. However, due to increased calling, especially due to restrictions on movement and end of your festive season, we have seen a 17.1% increase in minutes per customer. Now customers are caught two hundred and forty one minutes a month, up from two zero six minutes a year ago. This has helped us drive a voice ARPU increase by 4%, taking the overall voice revenue to a 16.9% growth. This reinforces our that due to the low unique customer penetration and the low usage of minutes per customer per month, there is still a long runway for voice revenue voice revenues to grow in Africa. The overall smart, especially high end phone shipments into our countries have been affected by the indifferent economic situation and the disruption of supply chains. However, as we have corrected the data rack rate rack rates to avoid balance shocks, we have seen a consistent growth customer growth at 23.5%. However, because of a lot more lower end customers and a fewer higher end, we've been our ARPU growth per customer on data has only grown up by one and a half percent, slightly new data revenues to 27. There has been a further acceleration of mobile money with q three revenue growth at 41% year on year. This comes on the back of a 62% transaction value growth and was driven by customer base growth of 29% and an ARPU growth of almost 10% in Mobile Money. Nigeria continues to grow revenues well at 24.1% year on year for the quarter. East Africa has an acceleration of growth over the last few quarters and has grown at 26% in quarter three. With the new four gs networks rollout, Trichophone Africa has emerged into growth mode in a big way with the revenue growth of 15%. As mentioned here, the good revenue growth led to increased flow through to help EBITDA margins in Q3 up to 46.9%, a jump of two hundred percent two hundred basis points over last year. ForEx foreign exchange situation had an adverse impact of $41,000,000 on constant currency revenue and $21,000,000 on underlying EBITDA for the quarter, largely driven by devaluation of Nigerian naira, Zambian Kwacha and Kenyan shilling, offset by an appreciation of the Central African franc. Briefly in terms of balance sheet and cash flow, at the December, our leverage ratio was 2.1 times the net debt at 3,500,000,000.0. And in q three, created a free cash flow of 146,000,000, 30 two million less than q three last year, largely due to spending of about $38,000,000 more on CapEx and an increase of 22,000,000 in cash tax as a result of higher operating profit. There are a few strategic and operational announcements I should mention. We were issued with the new operating license in Uganda in December, which takes effect from the new licensing regime from 07/01/2020. And just yes, we have also announced a ten year extension of our license with 918 hundred spectrum payments done in Nigeria. We have acquired additional spectrum rights during the quarter in a few of our opcos. We have an appointment of Kelly Bear Rosemarin on twenty seventh October as a non executive director replacing Arthur Lang, who stepped down at the same time. News and registration rules came into effect in Nigeria and mid December, which I touched upon earlier. We are working closely with the government to ensure that all our subscribers provide their valid national identity numbers to update their SIM registration records. New customer ex acquisitions are currently bought until significant this is made on this. The deadline of for registrations has moved reflecting some of the logistics logistical challenges involved and is currently ninth February twenty twenty one. We have already made significant progress capturing national identity numbers and building our database in collaboration with the National Identity Management Commission. So far out of Airtel Nigeria's forty four point four million customers, we have collected national identification numbers for 21,000,000. That's 47% of our base. To finish the registration process, we must verify this national identification number we have with the national identity management's database. This requires improved connectivity with the NIMC database, which is currently being developed for all Nigerian mobile operators. We have also opened enrollment centers in collaboration with National Identity Commission to help consumers obtain a national identification numbers where they do not have one. We will continue to work closely with the government to ensure full compliance. And while we anticipated this will affect customer growth in Nigeria, Q Four Twenty One, however, the operation overall potential impact remains uncertain. As communicated in the past, we continue to look at at asset modernization and investment opportunities for the group. We're actually pursuing we are actively pursuing a sale of the remaining owned towers sites sitting across a few of our operating countries. And we continue to look at other strategic opportunities, including and among others, the possibility of attracting minority investments into our Airtel Money business. Finally, in terms of outlook, while the COVID-nineteen pandemic has had a more limited impact on our most recent quarter, we remain vigilant about recent around new strains of the virus and any further actions that may be required by governments in order to minimize the contagion in our countries of operation. Fundamentally, the operation opportunities for sustainable profitable growth from our integrated markets for mobile voice, data and mobile money services remain hugely attractive. And we are confident of continuing to deliver on our growth strategy. And with that, I would now like to open the line for questions for joined as mentioned before by J. Deep and Pierre. Operator, I now hand over to you to please open and manage the Q and A. Thank you very much. You. first question is from Jonathan Kennedy Good of JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions and congrats on the numbers. Just a couple of follow ups on Nigeria. Can you give us some color on how the impact of the SIM card sales ban is impacting the base at the moment? What kind of we've had six weeks since this was implemented. So just trying to understand whether there is a bleed from the existing subscriber base? And then also, with regard to the next deadline, if you don't register all of the SIM cards, are you is there a clarity on whether you have to block those SIM cards that aren't registered? And is there any financial penalty for doing so? Thank you. So let me first address this. So what happens when we stop? And this is not the first time we are seeing what we are seeing in Nigeria. A Year And A Half back, we went through this in Uganda where we had blocked gross new customer additions for one year and were to reverify the base. We have done reverification of base in multiple other countries before. Whenever we stop new acquisitions, the thing that happens is gross adds become zero. How will the churn in prepaid is quite high at four and a half odd percent? That comes down dramatically, and we are seeing that happening. The churn of existing base has come down a lot. Customers are very, very keen to hold their numbers and churns have come down. Second question that happens is who is having a NIN number and who are the people who do not have a NIN number? Broadly, if you see, the 50% of our customers, the top 50% give more than 95 revenue. It's a very high skewed revenue versus customer base mix. If you see that, the higher end of our customers normally have a higher probability of having an NIN number, while the lower end may not have. So even if we start collating and the small minority get cut off at any point of time, and that happens in any of our countries, including Tanzania, which is going through now, we do not see a dramatic revenue impact. We will work with the government to comply with the law. We will be a % compliant. If at any point, whether we will complete by February 9, we will never complete %. And that's for sure. Even if we extend by one more year, we will never do hundred. There will always be a tail that will be in the game and a problem. But whenever we will if we do not complete and if there are logistical differences, we will appeal to the authorities for perhaps extending. Otherwise, we will follow the oh, if we have to cut them off. But strictly compliant, I do not think we will do anything to attract any penalties. Thank you. Right. Thanks. So so just a a follow-up. So going into the fourth quarter, we can assume that revenue growth in Nigeria is still positive, if I read your remarks correctly? I can't forecast it, but past with many other countries, we have been able to hold the growths. Thank you. I don't know how Nigeria will plan out, but in the past, we've had this experience. Thank you very much. The next question is from John Kim of UBS. Please go ahead. Hi, everybody. Just to follow on the Nigeria theme, did want to ask some detailed questions there. My understanding is that you didn't work you weren't required to register the presence of a national ID under the old KYC. So if February 9 rolls around, do you know who to disconnect, or or is it not not really true beyond the $21,000,000 that you've registered? And you kind of touched on this exposure into the service revenue. I just wanted to verify those stats again. What I heard was 50% of the base generates over 90% of the service revenue, if I heard you correctly. Last question, CapEx. How constrained were you in the quarter? And can you give us some sense of plans for q four? Thank you. Okay. So first, let me I show this. We have collected till now, and we have from February 9, '20 '1 million NIN numbers against our customer IDs because we took these numbers from the customer. As I told you before, we have to still verify it with the customer base, the national NIMC base have. So we will do this. And I'm sure we will continue to collect during this period. We are also working towards helping, and the government is doing all to get more and more customers want to register. Sometimes I read as just, you know, step back and I always tell this. As much as we are desperate to keep our customers, our customers are also very keen to keep our mobile networks. If one of our mobile networks gets cut off for some reason, we will go and make sure it comes up. So there are a lot of our customers who are trying to go and ensure they're also compliant. And people are very responsible in this, and I have full confidence in they coming up to ensure this compliance. We will do all we can in the right processes. A typical fifty ninety in a typical mix of a, b, c, Pareto equation c, and it works quite similar across many countries. As of now, I cannot say which customer has it, what revenue they have, but we we have a long way to go to February 9. And normally, a lot of this pickup can happen between now and February 9. The next question that you asked me was on CapEx. Sorry. Go for it. On CapEx, our intention, in spite of COVID for the whole of the first nine months of this year, is to continue to spend our CapEx. Plan was about $6.50 to $700,000,000 of CapEx to be spent. We are working towards it. However, we did face a lot of logistical problems. Some of our staff would not travel into the markets for rolling out new sites during the lockdown period. Some of the gone into a lot more logjam and logistical and difficulties. Supply chains have got impacted. So we may be marginally lower by about 25 odd million. We are looking at the range of about 625,000,000 for the quarter for the year, sorry. Beg your pardon. K. Last question on Nigeria. PSB, any progress there? We are still waiting. As I've told given our application, we have made our payments, and we are waiting for the response from the government. As of now, no, no response or nothing to report. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next question is from Delia Ibrahimovah of Citi. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. Hi. Thanks very much for the presentation. I had one follow-up question on NIM registration, please. You mentioned that there are logistical issues there. And I just wanted to check if you all maybe you could give us a bit more details. Out of 21,000,000 customers that have been how many of those have been verified? And maybe you could give a bit color how big the backlog is. So I I understand that it take it takes a bit of time to actually verify against the database. And, also, what is the backlog of those who have registered to actually put the details through NMC as well? So that's question number one. And number two is on fiber investments. Maybe you could give a bit more insight what type of fiber are you planning to roll out? Is it where the focus is? Is it fiber to the base stations, or is it fiber to the home or a mix of different yeah. If you give some insight what what exactly you what they aim there, and maybe it's is it the project that you could potentially monetize or bring strategic investor as just as you plan for mobile money? Thank you. Excellent. Firstly, on NIN, we have collected the 21,000,000 NINs, but we have not been the logistical difficulty has been the connectivity difficulties we've had within NINC and across all operators in Asia. It. So as of now, we are waiting for that connectivity to stabilize before we can do any verification. So the verification part is still pending, as I mentioned. The second thing coming on fiber investments. We have invested 10 more thousand kilometers of fiber. I say fiber, we look at both build, co build with someone else, dark fiber IRUs, and very high capacity IRUs. We have almost now 50,000 kilometers of this fiber. Where are we investing this fiber? There are multiple places. The fiber that I'm talking about, the 10,000, is not the home connectivity fiber. We are only working on the wireless home broadband consciously at this time. What we are doing is doing intra Africa is a huge continent. Some of the countries and towns are very far off. After load four g on a town, which is a little distance, you need to build at least fiber into that town. So there's a lot of intercity fiber and also fiber connecting to the base stations inside cities wherever high capacity is required. So most of our fiber is going into areas. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. And sorry. If I may follow-up on the NIN registration verification, please. Does that do I understand that correctly that the backlog is pretty significant? And do you and is it something you could comment whether you get sense that the deadline could be rolled? I mean, is it there is there a risk that the country will or the the population would not have any service if you were to disconnect most of the subscribers just because verification takes time and putting registration the the registration data through? That would be presumptuous on my part to guess that. But I'm sure once the connectivity establishes, we should be able to most of them. If we are unable to sorry, verify most of them. And if we there is any difficulty on verification, I'm sure we will consult and discuss with the authorities and do what is needed. All of us are keen that we have to be compliant with the law. We have to take care of our customers. So I'm sure the right solution will come out. Thank you. Alright. Thanks. Thanks very much. Thank you. Our next question is from Sunil Rajkopal Please go ahead. Hi. Can you comment a bit about the market developments in Tanzania and Kenya? I mean, what competitive environment are you seeing? And are you able to garner more market share given that your offerings are much more cheaper versus the competition? And secondly, can you also comment about the regulatory developments ongoing in Kenya with anything with regarding to pertaining Safaricom's dumbness? Okay. Firstly, the second question, there is no change or any new information on that. Coming to the first question on Kenya and Tanzania. So let me put this down. Out of our 14 countries, if you see the top countries, Nigeria, DRC, Tanzania, and Kenya, the largest population countries, are countries we have a relatively lower share than many other countries in in our portfolio. These are countries where we are both investing aggressively on the network, also competing very hard on the ground in terms of this. We needless to say, we are gaining a reasonable amount of good revenue growth. Overall, East Africa has grown by 26, and these countries are also doing a reasonably good job. I would not go into country wise numbers at this stage, please. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from Faisal Azme of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Thanks for the opportunity to just a question on CapEx, if this wasn't asked before. Just how do you think about CapEx levels now? Are you kind of satisfied with the levels that you've achieved so far? Do we expect any upside risk from here, particularly into next year? Any color on that would be quite helpful. And in terms of cost of finance, how is the refinancing process going in terms of what we should expect for the coming year? That would be quite helpful. Thank you. Jaydeep, will you please take these questions? Thank you. Yeah. Sure, Rahul. Thanks. With reference to the first second question on the refinancing part, as you have seen from our financial that we have quite a strong financial position with the free cash flow increased almost 20%, EBITDA margin continue to improve, the leverage has come down. With all these key indicators and with $800,000,000 of committed undrawn facilities, we are pretty confident that we'll we'll be able to meet all our financials. However, we also are looking at different options to to see that how the debt financing will happen when it is fall May 21. And we will sorry. This May 21. And we in appropriate time, we'll come back to the market with the with the relevant disclosure when we finalize that option. But as of now, we are comfortable in terms of our overall financial situation facilities which we have. On CapEx, your first question, this year CapEx, as Raghu mentioned in the earlier question that we will be looking at between $6.25, 6 30 million, which is slightly lower than what we expected for the full year as mentioned in the previous quarters. And that's purely because of some of the lockdown problem which we encountered in the supply chain area, especially on the custom clearance, you know, the ports are not as efficient as earlier. So that's where we are facing little difficulty and that's what it it looks like that it will be around 06:25, six thirty million dollar for the full year. For next year, I think the appropriate time we'll be able to give this guidance is next when we go for the full year. By that time, we'll finalize next year plan. But broadly, we don't expect any significant high CapEx as compared to the last year what we have given as a guidance, which is $6.50 to $700,000,000. We don't expect it to go beyond that, but it will remain within that. And our our focus on investment continues as in the past. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from Ola Oluwa of Boubadi of IRM Pension Managers. Please go ahead. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. I just have one question. Are you looking to reduce your finance cost anytime soon? Are you comfortable with with your with the with the levels current levels and, you know, are there plans to improve this? I think the key concern is an overarching question is how should we be looking to in your ROE, especially when we compare you to, you know, some of your peers. Thank you. Pierre, would you like to step in? Sure. Sorry. You were breaking up a little bit, but it's with the the the finance finance cost. So we're comfortable with our finance of our effective cost of debt, which at the moment is around 4.8%. Keep in mind that one of our strategic intent that we have always mentioned is to try to localize more of that debt into our opcos in local currency to have a a better natural hedge against foreign currency movement. So maybe in the long term, you should see a slightly uptick in that in that cost of debt. But that would be counterbalanced by a lower foreign currency exposure and adding less foreign currency liabilities. So that's the strategic intent, and overall, the two should should balance it out. That's on on on finance cost. On I didn't understand the second part of the question because your line was breaking up. Yeah. Just but I think the thanks for the answer to the first question. The second part was really just are you looking are you are you happy with your return on equity at the moment? And, you know, are there ways how you can improve that both from a cost and revenue point of view? Did you wanna talk about the return on equity? Yeah. Absolutely. So so it's it's a very difficult question to answer because we we can never be happy with the with the return on equity. Our ambition and aspiration will be always to improve it, and that's what we'll be aiming at. But but current return on equity is not not bad, but that doesn't mean that we will not be aspiring for higher return on equity. Coming into it, what will we do? We will continue to grow our revenues, our EBITDA margins, better EBITDA flow throughs, keep our overall cost down, and hold all other costs down in order to improve our results. And I think you've been seeing that trend happening over the last couple of years, and I we do hope to sustain it. Thank you. K. Thank you. Thank you. Next And just to add just to add sorry. Just to add to that question, if you see the last five quarter trend, the return on equity is moving. In fact, I see that 8.1% has moved up to 11% today. So, obviously, return on equity post tax is improving every quarter, and that's and that's something which which is, I think, is the aspiration that it it we keep on improving on that. Thank you. Thank you, sir. The next question is from Tarjudin Ibrahim of Chapel Hill of Denham. Please go ahead. Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for hosting this call. And I have like one or two questions. The first is around the CapEx guidance that you gave, which is about $645,000,000 I hope I'm right. Can you give us a bit of a sense around the split on a region basis like Nigeria, East Africa and Francophone, where would be your major focus in terms of CapEx? That's the first one. The second is on Nigeria. You said about 21,000,000 NINs have been connected, you know, for now, but there's a bit of a challenge around verification. Are you willing to shed a bit more light around, you know, that verification? Where is the delay coming from? Is it from the part of the NIMC? And, you know, what is management doing to address this for you to get, you know, successful as soon as possible? I I I would like you to respond to those two for now. JD, will you take the first one? Sorry. I the line was breaking. I could not hear the first one. No. only the second question was on the first question was on the CapEx. How much are we spending and how what is the region wise split? I would say the ratio will be about forty forty twenty broadly. So 40 Nigeria, 40 percent, 30 five 40 percent in East Africa, and 20% in Francophone Africa. Currently, that is the split. However, keep in mind that last year, it was different. Last year, Francophone Africa had a larger share, and Nigeria, of course, continued to grow. So there is a balancing, and rebalancing always happens based on the need and the market potential. Ibrahim, let me come to give you the flavor. The way we have always looked at our CapEx is we've not done all countries equal allocation or a logical or a standard mathematical formula allocation to every country. The scene is when we started this whole journey of our modernization of our networks, we started spending first in Nigeria and East African countries where we had the rest of our cost structure right. Then we moved a little later into Frankos as we started building fiber and backhaul to even now, we are challenged in some of their Saharan countries where Deep Saharan deserts are fiber connectivity is weak and backhauls are low. So it is we have a dynamically changing we look at it as an overall portfolio and move it. So the it is between countries will keep dramatically changing depending on the requirement. We don't look at it very much that every country has to get a certain allocation. As far as the NIM collection, I think it's a joint connectivity between the operators and NIMMC. And together, we are working towards resolving it very quickly. Thank you. Okay. If I may just ask a final question, it is around the temporary suspension of the sale of new SIM cards in Nigeria. And I know that must have resulted to some sort of loss of revenue for all the operators in the markets. But I sense that, you know, you are making a lot of progress and that is commendable on your data revenue and, you know, particularly considering your strong four g connectivity. So would you say that, you know, data could, you know, support your revenue in place of the the suspension of of new SIM cards being sold? And if data cannot completely fill that gap, would you be able to disclose to us some certain percentage data can fill in that regard? I think it is crucial. Thank you. Thank you. So if you have seen our results for quarter three results, voice also has grown very handsomely in Nigeria. So we've seen growth across all the both legs of voice and data have grown very handsomely. So we will continue to see this. I will not be able to add much color on what will compensate for what in new customers. Obviously, as the new customer acquisition has come down, so has our churn. I will leave it here and unable to answer any more color on that, please. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Jonathan Kennedy, Goode. Please go ahead. Yes. I'd just like to follow-up on some of your comments regarding potential asset sales on the tower side. Could you give us color as to how many towers potentially sold and where they would be focused? I presume still Tanzania. And then finally, on tax, how should we expect the effective tax rate to evolve over the next, say, two to three years? Jai, will you take these questions, please? Thank you. Yes. Yes. Yes. So so on your first question on tower cell, as as you know that we have five of course roughly about roughly nearing 4,000 towers. Tanzania being the largest, and then we have four other countries, which is Gabon, Chad, Madagascar, and and Malawi. So we are in in discussion with various tower posts in these five countries, and we have I would say that in appropriate time, we'll we'll come back with the final, you know, numbers. But the the currently, the decision and the negotiations are going on. That's number one. Number two, on tax, I would say that, you know, the if you see our effective tax rate for forty nine months, it was 42.8%. And, actually, if you'll if you look at the full year projected, will be about 43%. And this so next year also, there can be a very similar range of of ETR because as as you know that I I've explained this in the past that the way that our basic corporate tax rate is actually 33%. But because of the profit mix between various countries and some of the countries are at a at a at a taxable profit level are actually a loss making, more the mix changes and the and it's because of that, the effective tax rate is much higher than 33, 30 four percent. But the way currently it is it is positioned, I don't expect it's significantly over and above forty forty two, 40 three percent. It will be in the same same range for at least next, I would say, eighteen to twenty four months. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is also a follow-up from John Kim. Please go ahead. Yes. Thanks the opportunity for the follow-up. I I just wanna make sure we're very clear on the the national ID process. You need to verify your subscribers, then the national ID database needs to verify those same subscribers. And then and only then they don't get cut off around February 9. Is that right? Okay. So we don't we collect the national ID number for every customer. And then once we have got the 21,000,000, we will go and match it against the national I NIMC database. And after that, if that matches, then we will not be cutting them off. You're right. And that's your that's your call and your system? Or is that the government's? No. No. We will have to knock off the customers, and we will follow the government guidelines on this. Okay. Okay. And are you able to register national ID similar to MDN? Sorry? At your service centers, are you able or do are there personnel to to get register people for national IDs? So if I walk into a major air till Africa air till Nigeria service center, can I get a national ID there if I have the documentation? We have started collaborating with some agencies and in quite a few locations started collecting, providing helping them get that identity numbers. K. Great. Thank you. Thank you. The next question is from Alastair Jones of New Street Research. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi, thanks for the call. Just a quick question on just firstly dividends in Nigeria. I mean any sort of visibility on the ability to repatriate any cash out of Nigeria? I don't know if you've had any developments there, but anything you can comment would be great. The other thing I saw, which is pretty encouraging, I know the francophone assets have been struggling in the past. And I think last quarter, had about 6% growth. This quarter, you had 15% growth, which is a pretty stellar turnaround. So just trying to get a bit of clarity as to what you think has worked well there, what sort of what's changed that's allowed this growth to go to accelerate and can it be sustained? Thank you. Let me address the second question, and then I'll request J. D. To do the first one. So what has happened in Francophone Africa? Firstly, as I told you, we have delayed our investments in four g longer later than we have done in other places. Once four g networks have started being built, our activity on data growth has started improving in each of these countries. So data has been a big driver for this increased growth. Along with our standard growth, voice has grown everywhere. Data has started growing further, and our distribution and rural reach has helped us both even grow on mobile. But data has been a big driver and a strong brand preference for our customers to come on to this for and it's a very big jump. It was quite a we we were able to understand why it's happening, and we have consistently seen this growth. I recollect about a year back, we were at negative growth on this minus two, then we moved from minus four to minus two to plus two to 8% and now 15. So I'm very confident we will we are doing a good job there. Our teams are doing a great job there. Jideep Pandya, repatriation and engineering. Yes. So not not much to talk about the situation remain more or less same like last quarter. As mentioned earlier that till about March, we had no issue of upstreaming cash from Nigeria. Since March, the liquidity has tightened as a result of impact on low oil price. And it's too early to say how long this liquidity tightening will last, but our past experience suggests that these are temporary for a few quarters. However, we're pretty hopeful that with the crude price stabilizing at around $50 and the the forex reserve in country forex reserve is also improving, We expect the foreign currency availability stabilizing in the coming quarters. Beyond this, I don't have any further update at this moment. That's, yes, that's helpful. And then just if I can just take on another final question from me. Just in terms of Nigeria, your OpEx operating costs or inflation on your OpEx seems to have accelerated. I think you mentioned in the quarter, there seems to be a bit of a ramp up in terms of four gs rollout or site rollout. We have seen sort of a steady increase in inflation in Nigeria. Are you starting aside from the obvious rollout that you're undertaking, have you seen any signs of inflationary pressure on your cost base coming through? Does that worry you at all? Yes. A little bit there because a little part about 9% of our picks, 89% are dollar denominated because there are certain OpEx which are dollar denominated. So whenever there is a devaluation happens, obvious pressure. Inflation and devaluation both have have a impact, but good part is we have been able to bring down Nigeria forex exposure in OpEx significantly from somewhere around nineteen twenty two years to three years back to now less than 10%. It is around eight, nine, you know. And we're we're continuously working on that, so that if we can further bring it down, the exposure will further go down. But, yes, currently, we have a little bit issue where the OpEx goes up because of the devaluation and inflation. Wherever it is, specifically, it is a dollar peg contract. I just want to add one point. Even if you see the EBITDA margins of Nigeria not going up over the last quarter, you have to still understand that we have firstly, we are investing very heavily in Nigeria. We are continuing to do rapid investments in our network rollouts. And you should also realize that the EBITDA flow through is still well above 50% for incremental revenues. That's why there's a very marginal drop, which I would not worry too much about. Great. Thanks, guys. Helpful. Thank you. The next question is from Natalia Zabrudina of Emerging Markets Investment Managers. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Hi. One question to the management. Well, I just wanted to find out what are your plans about Aertel Zambia listing? Because it seems to be like, since the Airtel was listed as a group, the local Zambia listing became absolutely liquid. So there's any point to keep it listed or you plan to delist it? As for the government Sorry, ma'am. Like JD, it's about I tell Zambia, are we planning to keep it listed? So we are supposed to list 20%. We have about 3.2% listed. The market is not able to absorb much more, so we have put it in a escrow account with the stock market. So as and when people there is a more great between the capital markets, there will be these shares will go in for placement. But otherwise, we will continue to adhere to the norms that have been set by the government. Thank you. So you just say just your your your plan to keep the listing as it is. Right? And it's only listed three and a half percent. But the requirement should be, like, around 25%. Right? Yes. So we have attempted see, we we we very we are very open to listening in countries. But the question is we have to do it carefully and slowly so as there is commensurate liquidity in the market to absorb these large market caps. So I I think Zambia, we have currently listed. We get demanded, we will put. The balance of 25% minus the 3.2 has been kept in a escrow account. Thank you. But what's the rationale just to keep it listed? Can I just find out that? I beg your Yeah. I I can I can come in, Rahul? So so the requirement is as per the telecom license. And as and this is a requirement of the license condition, and that's what and whenever we we tried in the past various roadshows and all our effort, and we involved the stock exchange and the regulator in those so that we are absolutely transparent on our effort. We made several report in the past, and we continue to make this effort so that we are we are fully compliant. But just as Raghu mentioned, that we kept this balance of the shares in escrow account so that whenever there there is any off take of that, we'll be let those shares to the investors. But this is a compliance requirement, and we will continue to comply with that. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a bit last reminder. If you wish to ask a question, please press star and then one. Next question is from Mayuran Rajaratnam of Mitva. Please go ahead. Hi. Thanks for the presentation, Mr. Laganath, and also the opportunity to ask questions. I've got a couple. I mean, the first one is you said you are aggressively rolling out your network in the various geographies. And and you talked about your fiber earlier. I just want to confirm, it's it's 50,000 kilometers in total. But if you had to loosely break it down between Nigeria, Francophone, and East Africa, what sort of ratios will it be? I've got a couple of more additional questions. You can you can ask the second question. Just give me a minute. I'll just collating that information for you. But you can go ahead with the second question. Sure. Thank you. The second one is in Nigeria. You know, the rollout for mobile money requires agents on the ground. Do you have a number of that you can disclose to us the number of registered mobile money agents on the ground in Nigeria that you have? That's my second question. And in the third question, also in Nigeria, I noticed that your growth is accelerating in Q3, if I read the numbers correctly, year on year comparison. But the growth is coming relatively more. I mean, you can't really complain. I mean, they're all very good growth rate between voice and data. But the the the are you seeing any difference in the customer behavior while voice is growing more than data, literally speaking from the past? Is it just a COVID related thing or just some insights if you have any? I mean, it's quite a difficult question. I appreciate that. Thanks. Thanks much. It's it's a very little convoluted to answer this. There are a few things that we have to note. The firstly, as we are building rural networks and growing networks, there are a lot more people in the rural and deep rural markets who are benefiting from these networks. You know, when I first joined telecom eighteen years back, someone told me, you you urban guys, you think you are the guys key customers of mobile networks, but actually, it's the rural people who desperately need it. Because the alternative for them is to travel longer distance. We could still go to a house or someone friend's house in a city much easier. But the people there require it. What have we done? Along with growing the networks, we've also one is COVID surely would have helped us, but we've also improved our distribution into rural networks and markets much better and making it both network and recharges and customer acquisition available in rural. Our distribution comes sales coordinatedly driving. This has helped us grow our assumption. Also, people have started for MOUs per minute. We have grown 17% customers per customer usage with a 4% ARPU. That means we've taken a 12% price drop on minutes also. So my voice is growing. And I've always said voice will grow in Africa. The v plus d plus m. I call it voice plus data plus money. All three will grow because the unique customer penetration is still sub 50% of voice on two g. As regards the money agents, we do not have an end service bank license as yet in Nigeria. However, we have an access bank tie up with which we do, but we have agencies that run that access bank. But on payment service bank, we do not have a license yet, and we will talk about agents and other information at that point. I'll hand over to Jaydeep if he can wants to add some color on that. Yeah. So the breakup of 50 as follows. Nigeria, roughly about 15,000 kilometer. East Africa, all countries put together 25,000 kilometer. And Franco Francophone Africa, about 10,000 kilometer. So that's the breakup. Excellent. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you very much. So we have no further questions in the queue. Do you have any closing comments? I would like to thank you all for joining this call and look forward to speaking to you again at the time of our full year results in early May. Thank you very much and good day. And keep stay safe. Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this conference. You now disconnect your lines.