Welcome to Ooredoo's Q3 conference call, the last one before the World Cup. Hayya Hayya. My name is Andreas Goldau, and I'm in charge of investor relations. I'm joined today by Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, Managing Director and CEO of the Ooredoo Group. We are Abdulla Ahmad Al-Zaman, our Group CFO. For the Q&A session, we will be joined by Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulla Al Thani, Deputy Group CEO and CEO of Ooredoo Qatar, as well as by Eyas Naif Assaf, Deputy Group CFO. This presentation starts with the financial highlights, consolidated results presented by our Group CEO, Aziz, then the OpCo section will be covered by our Group CFO, Abdulla. To type your questions during the presentation in the Q&A area of this Zoom webinar. We will allow ample time for your questions and keep the presentation short.
The presentation will also be available on our website at ooredoo.com. With this, the recording and transcription of the session has started. By attending this meeting, you consent to be included in the recording. Please do also note the disclaimer on slide number two, and on this I hand over to Aziz.
Good morning, good afternoon, and I'm happy to be here with you for our Q3 results. We usually start the presentation by a quick deep dive in one of our key strategic pillar. Given that a few weeks back we did the Capital Markets update and spent a lot of time on our strategy, today we're going to skip this section. If you haven't had a chance of seeing the Capital Markets Day, I invite you to go to our website and see the recording of the Capital Markets Day. This will give you quite in-depth view of what is our strategy going forward and the areas of focus. This is a quick overview of the performance for the first nine months, and we're very pleased to announce that we're continuing on the very strong performance we started the year on.
Our revenue are up by 4% at close to QAR 17 billion for the first nine months. Our EBITDA margin is stable at 41%, yielding an EBITDA of close to QAR 7 billion for the first nine months. Our net profit is up by 33% at QAR 2.1 billion. In terms of the merger and integration of IOH, we'll dive a bit deeper on that slide at the end of the presentation. We revised our synergies to QAR 400 million–QAR 500 million of recurrent synergies for the year four due to the accelerated pace of the integration. Our financial achievements for the normalized first nine months on a pro forma basis. As mentioned earlier, our revenue are up by 4% year-on-year at QAR 16.9 billion.
Our EBITDA is flat at QAR 6.9 billion. Our EBITDA margin is sustained at 41%. Our CapEx intensity is down by two points at 9% versus last year. Our free cash flows are up by 3% at QAR 5.3 billion. Our net profit, as mentioned, is up by 33% on a normalized basis at QAR 2.1 billion. Our net debt to EBITDA is stable at 1.2x, and our customer base is stable at 55 million subscribers. These are reported numbers. I'm not going to spend much time as it's comparing last year when we still consolidated IOH. As you know, since the 8th of January, we merged with CK Hutchison operation to create Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison Group, and therefore, our accounting treatment has changed.
On a Q3 year-on-year comparison, you have a similar picture as for the first nine months. Revenue is up by 4% at QAR 5.8 billion. EBITDA is down by 7%. I will explain what are the drivers for that at QAR 2.3 billion. EBITDA margin, stable at 40%. CapEx intensity at 10%. Free cash flow, down by 9% at QAR 1.7 billion. Net profit, up by 19% at QAR 7.73 million. Net debt and customers, similar for us for the first nine months. Again, these are the reported numbers. I won't spend time given the difference in accounting treatment of IOH. On the revenue, what you've seen is that we've increased for the first nine months and quarter-on-quarter by 4%.
The core of the outperformance is driven by Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and the GCC countries in general. Qatar has grown by 11%, Oman by 20%, and Kuwait by 10%. This is extremely good performance. Maldives is up by 7%. What you notice is Algeria, Tunisia would be up year-on-year if it was to exclude the impact of FX. Iraq is down by 8%. This is due to a one-off we recorded last year. If we normalize it, Iraq has an actual revenue growth of 3% year-on-year for the first nine months. This is taking a total revenue growth for the first nine months to 4% or QAR 204 million for the period. In terms of pro forma EBITDA for the first nine months, it's a sort of reflection of the revenue.
What we see is Oman, Kuwait are outperforming as well as Maldives. Algeria is the same as delivering a strong EBITDA. The exception is Qatar, which is down by QAR 39 million or a total of 4% versus last year. This is mainly driven through the World Cup preparation, which is a significant event of scale in Qatar and driving some slight additional cost. Myanmar is down by 40%, by 31% or QAR 40 million. This is mainly due to currency. Iraq, what we have is a drop of QAR 76 million. Costs have been increasing in Iraq, especially due to the energy cost and inflation in the countries. Others, you have a quite a big jump in others.
This is mainly due to a one-off provision for bonuses of this year, which is a two-year bonus program for the transformation which have yielded these extraordinary results. Reported net profit is significantly up. On a normalized basis, we're up by 33% from QAR 1.58 billion to QAR 2.1 billion. We'll explain the basis of the normalization in the next slide. If you recall, last year we took an impairment of close to $750 million or QAR 2.3 billion for our Myanmar operation. We also had an additional one billion FX impact due to currency devaluations. We also had a one billion extraordinary gain in terms of the tower sales in Indonesia.
This is the basis of the normalization from -QAR 760 million loss in 2021 to QAR 1.5 billion net profit. This year, the only two adjustments we have is QAR 300 million, close to QAR 300 million FX impact and a one-off QAR 200 million extraordinary gain to the sale of data centers in Indonesia. Reported Q3 net profits, similar picture, they're up by 19% year-on-year on a normalized basis. The only adjustment in Q3 we have versus last year is FX impact. This year is close to QAR 200 million. Last year was close to QAR 453 million. Our CapEx is a continuation of the picture we had for the last two quarters. We see Palestine and Algeria with significant spend. Palestine is due to delayed CapEx last year due to customs issue.
Algeria, network enhancement, and also delays of imports into the country, which can be complicated. All the other countries, we have a reduction of CapEx, especially what you'll note is Oman, Kuwait, and Iraq. Oman and Kuwait was last year significantly impacted due to the 5G rollout, and Iraq was the 4G rollout. These rollouts are now completed, therefore, there's a reduction in CapEx. Overall, we have a 14% reduction year-on-year versus this period last year in terms of CapEx. Pro forma free cash flow is a reflection of the growth on the top line as well as the strong discipline on CapEx. This is yielding for the first nine months of this year, 9% reduction in CapEx versus last year. What you will note, there is a one-off exceptional in Qatar. Again, this is driven by the World Cup.
Others, it's again group cost, especially due to human resources, which is a provisioning for the bonus of the strong performance Braveheart, which I mentioned in the previous slides. Our customer base is at 55 million subscribers. What you will notice is a drop of five million subscribers in Myanmar. This is due to the SIM tax which was introduced, which is impacting our subscriber base in Myanmar. Mostly these are dormant SIMs or low dual SIMers which are coming off due to the high cost of the tax. If we consolidated Indonesia's numbers, we would be at 155 million subscribers as a total base.
As you remember, from an accounting perspective, we don't consolidate IOH, but from an operational perspective, we still leverage all the synergies, especially on the customer side, and the procurement side of the yields of IOH. In terms of guidance, we maintain our guidance for the year, and we're expecting to finish on the higher end of our guidance in terms of revenue. As of today, as noted, we're at +4%, EBITDA is -1%, and CapEx is -14%. In terms of CapEx, there's usually a catch-up in the last quarter, but we believe to be on the lower end of the CapEx bracket. As mentioned earlier in the presentation, I invite you to see the full disclosure of Indosat's results. Indosat's performance is extremely strong.
They're ahead of their network integration, which is at 50% as of today, and revised their target of total recurrent network synergies to $300 million–$400 million per year in year four. They've also outperformed in terms of revenue. Revenue is up 3% quarter-on-quarter, and EBITDA is up by 5%. Their total subscriber base has gone up by 2.4 million subscribers quarter-on-quarter to close to 99 million subscribers. We're extremely happy with the performance and the benefits that the merger is yielding in Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison. Our debt profile has not changed. It's 88% in fixed rate. We have a very strong parent cash position.
As you can see, we're fully funded to meet all our maturities up to 2025, and only 12% of our debt is on a floating basis. Most of our debt is in the form of bonds, and we have around QAR 2.5 billion-QAR 2.6 billion of debt in the forms of loans.
Our rating remains stable at A2 or A-, depending on the rating agency.
Thank you, Aziz. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Abdulla Al Zaman, Group CFO. I will be reviewing OpCo performance under OG. Starting with the home country of Qatar, revenue year-over-year has growth by 6%, reaching QAR 5.7, and this is driven by mobile, fixed and wholesale, and also mobile money. EBITDA has slightly decreased due to higher costs led by the hosting of World Cup in Qatar. Quarter-over-quarter, we're also monitoring a growth in revenue. As I said earlier, a drop in the gross margin and a lower EBITDA margin. My second OpCo or our second OpCo is Kuwait. Year-over-year, Kuwait growth is 12%. Very strong performance, and this has been driven by mobile and fixed and wholesale revenue.
The EBITDA also year-on-year growth is 13%, and this has been reflected also to the quarter versus quarter, which is we can notice is a 12% growth quarter versus quarter in term of revenue. EBITDA margin at 30% and EBITDA at constant level of QAR 18 billion. Algeria, our third OpCo's revenue has declined 3%, and this is on Qatari riyal, but in local currency, EBITDA increased by 4% and 10% year-on-year growth in the 9 months, driven by higher mobile revenue data. Just for your information, the depreciation on the currency in Algeria is approximately 6%. We can see quarter versus quarter a 4% increase in local currency and improvement also on the EBITDA margin to 40% and EBITDA level to QAR 9 billion.
Customer number in Algeria has increased to 13 million, which is 2% year-on-year growth driven by mobile postpaid and prepaid. Fourth OpCo is Tunisia. Revenue in QAR has dropped to 8% and EBITDA also to 3% year-on-year. Again, as in the Algeria story, local currency revenue and EBITDA increased by 2% and 8% year-on-year respectively in nine months in 2022, driven by higher mobile revenue data both in consumer and B2B. Ooredoo Tunisia, considered number one mobile market share position, has maintained its position. Customer number is stable at 7.2 million. Successful launch of DO 2.0 digital offer, a new hero product in OTT. Iraq.
Local currency revenue down year-on-year by 1% in 9 months in 2022, and there was one-off related deferred revenue in 2021 accounting. Normalizing the impact in Q3 revenue would be up by 3% year-on-year. Local currency EBITDA impacted by 7% lower revenue due to higher energy and leased line costs. Despite the fact of all the challenges, still we consider Q3 of 2022 is a very good quarter in terms of performance. Customer number increased by 13% year-on-year, reaching 17.1 million. We have very strong 4G coverage, 100% of our sites. Today also, we are focusing on launching 4G technology in all major cities of Iraq. Our next OpCo is Oman.
Oman has showing also a stronger performance year-on-year with 8% growth in terms of revenue, driven by fixed and wholesale and equipment revenue. EBITDA also showing year-on-year growth of 9%. This is also reflected in a quarterly growth, quarter-over-quarter by 20%. EBITDA margin stood at 52% and OMR 35 million at the EBITDA level. Customer number increased year-on-year by 4%, reaching 2.9 million. We have done a very good job on the iPhone 14 launch sales. Our next OpCo is Myanmar. Revenue year-on-year was flat in nine months in 2022, and local currency revenue was up by 19%, driven by mobile revenue, data and voice.
Currency depreciated at 17% and local currency EBITDA increased by 51% due to higher revenue and strict cost control. Customer number declined by 7.6 million, drop of 43%, mainly due to higher SIM tax.
We are also in the process of selling Myanmar operations. Maldives' performance year-on-year has shown a very strong performance of 9% in terms of revenue, and this is driven by mobile, fixed, and wholesale, and also in EBITDA, the year-on-year growth of 15%. This is what's reflected on their quarter-over-quarter growth of 7% and EBITDA margin of 53% and growth also on EBITDA by QAR 249 billion. Last is Palestine. A strong year-on-year growth of 3% in terms of revenue and EBITDA is 6% also year-on-year growth with a customer number increased to 1.4 million, 3% driven by prepaid and postpaid mobile. This is including my OpCo parts and back to Andreas. Thank you.
Yeah, welcome to the slide part and the Q&A session. I'm delighted to have you on the call again. Just as a reminder, if you want to ask a question, please do type your question in the Q&A section of this webinar, or you could just raise your hand and we can open up your microphone. Before we take the first questions, I would like to thank everyone who voted for Ooredoo at the recent MEIRA Investor Relations Awards. We won the award for Best IR in Qatar, and we really do appreciate your support and feedback. We also have an overview of the events coming up. We have a couple of conferences lined up in Dubai mainly starting actually tomorrow already with the Bank of America Merrill Lynch conference, and then we have some more conferences with Arqaam and EFG lined up next year.
Okay, I ask you to start typing your questions in the webinar section, please. I see we have some live questions as well. We're going to start with Nishit from SICO. Nishit, I'm opening up your microphone now.
Yes. Thank you, Andreas and the entire management team for this opportunity. I have two questions. First on the impact of one-off bonus provision and the World Cup cost in non-Qatari operations. Can you quantify how much was the impact during the quarter? This one-off cost for the World Cup, is it mainly to do with increase in staff costs and marketing promotions or anything else? If you can just be more in detail on those costs impacting the EBITDA. That's my first question. Second, on the Myanmar expected sale, what would be the impact if the sale is executed at $162 million on the financials? Thank you.
Thank you very much. Aziz, do you want to take the first question on the impact of the World Cup? Is it a marketing cost? Is it staff cost?
The impact of the bonuses and additional costs, this is reflected in the EBITDA bridge we showed earlier today. It's embedded in it. It's not the only item in there. The other item is the major item. In terms of the World Cup cost, it's more than just marketing and staff. As you can expect for a venue of this size, such an exceptional venue, there is special preparation, there is marketing, there is special sponsorship, but there's also some short-term implementations we have to do to host all the media, to host all the different activities which we will be supporting as a network, which has a one-off temporary cost.
That covers the Qatari part. There was a question about the impact of the Myanmar sales.
The impact of the Myanmar sale will depend on closing. It's quite fluid because the operation continues till we haven't closed; we can't exactly quantify the accounting impact of the sale. The only thing we know is that we've secured a transaction and enterprise value of $576 million and a total consideration of $162 million.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thanks, Nishit. We're going to take a question from Omar Maher. Omar, your microphone is open now.
Hello? Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
All right. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation, Aziz, Abdulla, Andreas, and everyone else. I guess since my first question was asked by Nishit already, I'm going to move to the second one, which is on Ooredoo. Just wanted to understand where the growth is coming from. Is it primarily more business on Ooredoo's side, or is it more growth coming from the national roaming deal with Vodafone? I guess you know, because of the impact on the margin as well. Just to get more clarity and understand what's going on there.
If you could shed some light on what's happening in the market, essentially, because it's I guess it's been almost what probably seven, eight months since the launch of the third player, and it seems so far that the impact has been a bit muted. Could you just confirm whether this assessment is correct or not? Then my second question is on the tower carve-out exercise. I just want to know, like, how far into the process you are right now. Thank you.
Aziz again?
I'll take Oman very quickly, and if anyone wants to in Oman, we've seen growth both on prepaid and postpaid and B2B, excluding wholesale. Wholesale has been an element of the outperformance, but it's not the only element there. We've actually grown, if I'm not mistaken, on all segments of the business. We won't comment on our competitors' performance. We're happy with the mitigation plan that we have put in place in order to prepare for the arrival of a third entrant. I think it's bearing its fruit. When it comes to the tower, when it comes to the towers process, look, we had an update at Capital Markets Day, which was three weeks ago. We're still going through the current process.
Once we will have any material disclosure, we'll come back to the investors and update them as is duly required.
Thank you for this, Aziz. Just, I mean, just to understand, is this sort of like, you know, just roughly speaking, is it like an end 2023 time timetable sort of? Or is it more like, you know, first half of 2023?
You're saying, in terms of towers?
Yes, for the carve-out exercise.
We're looking to come out with a decision by the end of 2022, early 2023, probably depending on the transaction, if it's a carve-out, a spin-off, if retained. They're quite different, as we explained during Capital Markets Day, approaches we're looking at. Depending on the regulatory environment, we're looking probably at closing towards the end of 2023 at the earliest. At least the decision on the transaction communication on what would be the framework of a transaction, at end or early next year.
That's very clear. Thank you very much.
Okay. We're going to take the next question from Ziad Itani. I'm opening up your microphone.
Hello?
Yeah, we can hear you.
Yes. Hi. Thank you for the presentation. Just a couple of questions from our end. First, are there any updates on the Number Range case in Kuwait, which was for close to half a billion QAR? The second question is, on Qatar specifically, EBITDA is down 4% year-on-year on exceptional World Cup related costs. If you look at note 27 in the financials on page 25, it seems there is a substantial pickup in profit before tax, up 40% year-on-year to around QAR 617 million. What's the reason behind that? Were there any one-offs, reversals or, what's driving this growth specifically? Thank you.
Okay. I'm going to answer the Kuwaiti question. There's no new development with regards to the number case. With regards to the net profit question, I'm going to hand over to Eyas, our Deputy CFO.
Thanks. This is Eyas. I also just to clarify that the note you are referring is not Ooredoo Qatar only, it's including also Ooredoo Group. Therefore, it's not apples-to-apples comparison. This is divisional information. It's not matching with the presentation for Ooredoo Qatar. What we present, what Aziz and Abdulla presented is Ooredoo Qatar performance alone. This disclosure, including Ooredoo Group, therefore, is not apples-to-apples comparison. I hope I answered your questions here.
Perfect, t hank you very much. Just one more question, specifically on royalties. The decrease in royalties, is it mainly due to the Qatari entity? Because, I mean, Oman has been outperforming. There's a very strong turnaround in Kuwait as well, but royalties are down 37% year-on-year.
Royalties.
We're going to check on that question and get back to you.
It's coming from Oman.
Okay. Yes?
Yeah. There was a reversal from Oman, provision of QAR billions. No. That was not for the royalty. I think it was about the regulatory tax. You're talking about from 17%, it dropped to 10%, if I'm not mistaken. This is what you are referring to.
It's related to.
We can check on that answer, and we come offline to you. I know that there is a drop on one of the regulatory tax where we had a higher provision earlier, but it was revised, the percentage. Maybe this is what was revised this month or during this quarter. It shows you the difference maybe. I can come with explanation on this.
Okay. Thank you very much.
We're going to check on that. I'm going to open up the line for Ritesh Kumar Singh from HSBC. Ritesh Kumar Singh, your question, please.
Yes. Hi, thanks for taking my question. My first question is on Iraq. If you could talk about that one-off item you had during the previous period last year. Just wondering, you know, why the drop so significant in Iraq. Then secondly, also looking at the contribution from Indonesia, given that there hasn't been much, let's say, one-off activities during this quarter, then should we use this as the base run rate going forward for contributions from Indonesia?
Abdulla Al Zaman. Yes. Well, if you refer to the one-off of Iraq, it was a deferred revenue. As per the advice from the external auditor, we have to do that reversals during the last year quarter. This year, it shows an impact on us. If you compare apples to apples, there was or there is a growth of approximately 3%. The way we have done it last year, it's the best treatment. We really have revised some deferred revenue. This year we did not have to do it because we've been comply with IFRS standard in terms of deferred revenue. Second question about Indonesia, I did not hear that well.
The outlook for Indonesia, if you can continue the growth there?
Yeah. We're very positive on the outlook of Indonesia. As we said during the presentation, the integration is actually, especially on the network side, ahead of schedule. We've gained also in terms of subscriber base. The performance is very strong. We're confident for the near future, but we also advise you to go and look at the results of Indonesia. There is a reporting and quite an extensive Q&A where they answer these questions in more detail.
Yeah. Indosat will do that. There are Q3 call on Saturday, and the replay is live on the website there as well for more details.
What I also mean to ask was, the net income which is reported by Indosat, and the one which is included in your, you know, income statement. Is there any further adjustment than just taking 33% of share in Indosat? Or like is there any other, eliminations or anything we need to take, you know, think about?
No. The adjustment one is the reflection of the ownership. The second one of course is Indosat reports in the local currency and there is a foreign exchange adjustments.
Okay.
These are the two main adjustments excluding one-off transactions. We report them exceptionally when they do happen, and we also make them very clear in our adjustment bridges when we take even in our presentation in terms of normalized versus performance.
Sounds good. Thank you very much.
For Indosat, you all know that they announced in the call that they improved their synergy target and they're now aiming for at least $400 million at the end of year four. That's the indication that they are even ahead of schedule with integration process. All right, we get a question here from Doha. I'm going to open the microphone for Akbar Khan. Akbar, please.
Hi, Andreas. I didn't actually have my hand up, but since you've asked me.
Oh, sorry.
Thank you for the opportunity. I just wanted to understand from your perspective, given the incremental capacity that's been built up to prepare for the demand that will be expected between now and the end of the year, does that mean you're going to have a lot of redundant capacity in Qatar 2023 onwards? Or how should we look at that? Can you dial that back down again or once it's there, it's there?
I think that's a very good question for the CEO of Ooredoo Qatar, Sheikh Mohammed.
Yeah, thanks. Yes, we build the capacity and we overbuild that for the World Cup. However, we have our own plans and then that goes in line with the capacity that we built for from a retail perspective. As you know, we are a partner in TASMU with the government and a lot of use cases and B2B and IoT that use that capacity. As well as from B2C perspective, we are looking into a very smart and creative product and service that really can fulfill this capacity being built. That really taken into account for our, you know, future plans and being baked in for the 2023 AOP.
Thank you. Just to try and get clarity on that point, obviously the new capacity that you've added will mean that your depreciation, your fixed assets will go up in Qatar. Depreciation will go up. I guess the concern is that there will be a drop in revenues, and yet the depreciation has gone up. I guess that will take a while for the two to even out. Do I understand that correctly?
If I understand the question correctly.
We can't hear you.
Can you repeat once more?
Can you speak a bit louder?
Sorry about that. Is this?
It's better, yeah.
I hope I'm audible. I hope I'm audible now. I was just trying to understand your fixed assets, obviously going to have increased, which means the depreciation will have increased, but you will have a drop of revenues in Qatar. Presumably it'll take several months or quarters for the revenue to come back to where it will hopefully be in Q4.
There's a couple of things in terms of the capacity, as Sheikh Mohammed said. We've tried to manage as efficiently as possible. Of course, there's a bit of a surge because of the World Cup, but the surges in terms of capacity are actually very well geographically defined. Fan zones, transit routes, and stadiums. The plan is that this capacity will be redistributed in areas where we need an upgrade of capacity, more rural areas in the country, instead of acquiring additional capacity. In terms of revenue drop, I don't understand the link to revenue drop. I do understand that increasing your asset base will lead to further depreciation, but I don't understand why is there a revenue drop.
Simply because the population will presumably be lower next year, and we won't have the same number of visitors coming to the country.
Well, the World Cup. We're differentiating the one-off World Cup event in terms of population versus the sustained population of the country. We do actually think that the population should be quite resilient, especially as you've seen, 2023 is also quite a heavy calendar for the country in terms of events and preparation. There is the Formula One Grand Prix. There will also be the Asian football club. In terms of the general economy perspective, as much as World Cup is going behind, the country is also focusing on expanding its LNG capacity, and that's a significant CapEx exercise for the country, which will drive population growth as well, or sustain high- value population growth.
Thank you so much for all the answers.
Welcome.
Thank you very much for the question. Yeah. I don't see any further questions at the moment. Again, if you want to ask questions about Ooredoo, you can raise your hand. Or you can type a question in the Q&A section here. I've got a comment about the hunting rifle behind me. I can assure you, I don't have any plans of using that. Feel free to ask your questions.
It's actually a prop. It was. I think it's an old trophy for a camel race which was sponsored by Ooredoo, I think.
One second. Yeah, there's a. Is there a follow-up question from you?
Yes. Can you hear me?
Yes. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Just, you know, again, I have asked this question before, but, you know, things do change over time. Just wondering if the management sees any opportunities for in-market consolidation in the respective markets they are still operating in. Like, I'm not talking about Indonesia here. I'm talking about Algeria, Iraq, Tunisia, you know, any other markets where they can see scope for in-market consolidation, and how realistic do you expect that to happen?
Look, it's a question we keep asking ourselves, recurrently, if there are any opportunities in, especially in-market consolidation. As we've expressed before, we believe this is where at the highest, pardon my English, but the highest bang for your buck in terms of return on investment. Major in-market consolidation like has been done in Indonesia, we don't see anything on the horizon as of today. We're trying to be extremely disciplined with the portfolio rationalization we've been doing over the past 18 months. It's not to dissipate it, squanderly in a squanderly manner. Again, we're trying to be extremely disciplined. That being said, we're looking at some very small in-market, additional, I don't know if you want to call it, consolidation, but, acquisitions in market. For instance, a bit of fiber capacity, in certain markets.
Some small, actually businesses that we believe within the markets we operate actually provide quite a high rate of return and sustain also the core operation.
Another question on Qatari market. I remember Ooredoo did undertake some price increases this year as well, and you know whether the competition followed that. Are you aware of that? If the competition did not follow it, how does it change your strategy around competition going forward in the home market?
The question is, did the competition in Qatar follow our price increase at the beginning of the year? If it didn't, are we intent to reverse that price increase or to keep it sustained as it is?
Implement in the competitor side, what we have done that's based on that strategy is to look into these beginning of the year. We're still, you know, benefiting with the value that's given for our customers and I think that's, you know, the decision has been taken and we are moving forward how to bring more value and how to give value for the money that being given by the customer. That's something we thought of it, and it was a thoughtful process for that.
you know, have you seen any market share losses because of competition not following the price increases?
Well, you have seen now, honestly from Q3 reports or let's see, numbers in the total revenue, we are taking a growth of 56%. However, let's focus on the service revenue. We're taking a quite good share of the growth, around 68%. We're still keeping our positions as a leadership on the market from service revenue perspective at 75%. That's really led by our core business and specifically in the business side of, or let's say, ICT services. As well as we are really growing from OTT and mobile.
Good. Thank you very much.
Nicky, it's a typed question with regards to the World Cup, given the multiple one-off costs for the event. Is the net earnings from this event for Ooredoo quantified as one-off revenue from World Cup? Would Ooredoo be sharing some revenue and EBITDA guidance for this event?
I don't think we want to do that apart from the fact that we are very bullish about the event. I think in the last call as well, it's quite difficult to quantify this at the moment. Honestly, we are, as you know, expecting influx of people around 1.5 million. That's really coming with its own, let's say, number that might be visible to us in due course. However, I would say that we are quite also competitive enough by offering eSIM, which recently launched, and that has 2,022 megabytes as well as 2,022 SMS as well as minutes.
Thank you very much. I don't see any further question at this stage. We have one item pending. The question from Ziad Itani with regards to the royalties. We will actually write a comment on that in the transcript of this call, so that will be available in a few days, then everyone can see if you want to clarify if the impact was in the Qatar or Oman and to find out the details there. Yeah, just checking if there's anything coming in with Q&A. No, I don't see any more. I don't see any more raised hands. I would just like to thank you all for your participation again. Our next call will be with the full year results taking place in middle of February next year.
You have the schedule of conferences coming up in the deck. If you have any follow-up questions, do let us know. Any other closing remarks from our side? No. Okay, thanks for the interest and, yeah, hope to see you at the next event or maybe at the World Cup in Qatar.
Thank you very much. Thank you.