Earnings Call: Q3 2021

Oct 17, 2021

Good day, and welcome to the Vodafone Qatar Q3 2021 Results Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to hand the conference over to Mr. Bobby Sarkar. Please go ahead. Okay. Thank you, Emma. Hello, everyone. This is Bobby Sarkar, Head of Research at QNB Financial Services. I wanted to welcome everyone to Vodafone Qatar's Q3 2021 results conference call. On this call from Vodafone Qatar Management, we have Sheikh Hamad Abdoulalla Al Thani, who is Vodafone Qatar's CEO we have Masroor Anjum, who is the acting CFO and we have Diego Camberos, who is the Chief Operating Officer at Vodafone. So we will conduct this conference with 1st management reviewing the company's results, followed by a brief Q and A. I would like to turn the call over now to Pauline Saab, who is the Head of Investor Relations at Vodafone. Pauline, please go ahead. You, Bobby. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Vodafone Qatar QC 2021 Financial Results Call. Today's presentation is available on our website on vodafone.qa. Please note the usual disclaimer on Slide number 2. So to begin, I now hand over to Sheikh Hamad bin Abdallah Alsani, our Chief Executive Officer, to present the quarterly highlights. Thank you, Pauline, and thank you, Bobby, and thank you, QMB, for organizing this call. Hello, and welcome to all of you. First, I would like to state that we are very proud of the continuous improvement across all KPIs. This is an evidence that we are on the right track with the right strategy. Almost 3 years ago, we built our strategy and we put it into strict execution. We called it digital 2023, where it will act as our lighthouse to take us from being a mobile only operator, evolve into a telecom service provider and then later by 2023, the transform into a digital company, capitalizing on our IoT, big data artificial intelligence, complex solutions and FinTech. The strategy has 5 pillars with objectives each: simplify customer experience, grow, diversify and being responsible simplify to simplify the way we work to be data driven employment of big data and data analytics before taking any decision in the country in the company. Automation, to embrace automation and the latest automation tools and AI tools to enhance our operation internally, and many more. Customer experience to be a mobile first approach to use mobile first approach, digitize and enhance all of our channels, giving more focus to self-service and our target is to have 0 calls into our call centers, because nobody would like to call us, because everything is clear, everything is self-service. Growing our core, we mean that we would like to build a world class mobile network, accelerate fixed, pioneer IoT, and the diversify to diversify beyond core ICT managed solutions, digital services and any adjacent revenue opportunities. The last is being responsible, the employment of smart CapEx and cost optimization program that we have been running for the last 3 years. I'm very happy to say that with confidence that we are on track and for the next 25 months, we are going to experience the transformation of Vodafone Qatar into becoming a digital company, which we set as a target to ourselves. Next, I would like to ask you to move to the page titled Key Messages. I would like to start off by mentioning that our profitable growth continued for the 15th consecutive quarter on year to year basis. Our top line growth combined with the optimization initiatives has resulted into more than $200,000,000 of net profits for the 9 months, which represents approximately 85.1% growth year on year. The second point I would like to touch on today is that the world class infrastructure we have been building over the last years, we will be able to provide a seamless experience for our visitors and local communities during the FIFA 2022 World Cup event hosted by Qatar. In that regard, we are we have increased our number of radio access networks since 2017 by almost 43% and increasing and including an expansion of our 5 gs coverage in Doha to be approximately 85%. The 3rd point I would like to highlight is that our competitive strength is on solid track. We gain revenue market share of 1.1 percentage points based on a 12 month trailing basis as of Q2 2021. This performance is a result of well executed strategy and the consistent improvement of our quality of service and passionately focusing on the needs and demand of our customers. As part of this strategy, we are continually developing and introducing initiative innovative IoT and artificial intelligence based big data solutions to lead the digital transformation of the enterprises across the entire country, as seen in the next page. The last point I would like to touch on is that we are bringing these positive results despite the headwinds in the environment. The population has declined 3.2 year on year basis in the last in the 3rd quarter, although that we have seen a seasonal recovery of 5.2% versus previous quarter. Additionally, the ongoing chipset shortages crisis in the world creates a risk on both revenue and cost across many industries, including telecom operators. Fortunately, we have a comprehensive business continuity plan in place since the emergence of the shortage and we are building a mitigation plan to minimize those risks without any impact of our company performance. So all in all, again, it has been an excellent quarter and excellent 9 months. And now I'm going to hand over to Mr. Maslour to take you over the financials. Thank you. Thank you, Hammad. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's move to the next slide, financial performance highlights on Slide number 7. We continued our strong financial performance in 9 months period ended September 2021. We had a strong growth in our top line, primarily driven by postpaid, fixed and managed services revenues. Q3 service revenue is the highest quarterly service revenue for Vodafone Qatar. At the same time, we managed to keep our costs under control driven by cost optimization. This led us to report highest ever profitability metrics for the 9 months period ended September 2021. EBITDA growing nearly 22% to BRL720 1,000,000 with a margin of 41.3 percent and net profit reaching BRL200 1,000,000. As mentioned by Hamed earlier, population has declined, a 3.2% reduction is reported year on year. Regardless of this, our mobility subscribers grew 119,000 during this period. That's a growth of 7.1%. Moving on to Slide number 8. Our key financial performance metrics for the 9 months ended September 2021 in comparison to the similar period last year. Total revenue grew by 8.3%, led by strong service revenue growth of 8.7% or BRL 130,000,000 as a result of growth in our fixed, postpaid and managed services. Expenses are BRL 6,000,000 higher due to growth in direct cost corresponding to growth in revenues. It is notable that despite growth in costs due to network expansion and higher subscribers and revenues, expenses are well controlled and cost optimization helped us to keep the cost stable. Direct cost is higher by R15,000,000, but that is due to higher interconnect and roaming costs corresponding to higher customers and revenues, while OpEx is lower by R9 1,000,000. As a result of cost optimization, our OpEx intensity, which is OpEx as a percentage of our total revenue, has reduced from 29.3% to 26.5%, a reduction of 2.8 percentage points year on year. Higher service revenue and largely stable costs have contributed to the EBITDA growth of 21.8 percent year on year to $720,000,000 which is our highest ever EBITDA for a 9 months period. Higher depreciation partially diluted the EBITDA gains flowing through to net profit, but nonetheless, we still recorded a very healthy growth of more than 58% in our net profit to reach BRL200 1,000,000, our highest reported net profit. Moving to next slide, Slide number 9, and looking at the Q3 financial performance compared to the similar period last year. Q3 again has shown strong financial performance with continuing growth year on year. Total revenue grew 8%, driven by growth in service revenue of 10.4%, fixed and postpaid being the key drivers. Also, within the enterprise segment, as mentioned by Hamak, the company has extended beyond connectivity with a portfolio of managed services and smart ICT solutions such as Internet of Things, Big Data and Cloud that are adopted by some of the country's biggest entities. Visitor revenue has also increased year on year in this quarter due to easing of travel restrictions. Costs continue to be well controlled and slightly declines year on year despite growth in service revenue and higher 5 gs and fixed related operational costs. This is the benefit of our continued cost optimization. With the increased service revenue, our EBITDA grew by 23% to BRL47 1,000,000 with EBITDA margin reaching 42.7%. Net profit also grew by 45% or BRL 20,000,000 with higher depreciation charge absorbing some of the EBITDA flow through. Now taking a closer look at service revenue on Slide 10. Postpaid continuing its growth momentum, up almost 7% versus last year. This is mainly driven by higher subscribers. Our unlimited plans are selling well, helping to penetrate into high value segment, and the price increases that we did at the beginning of March for some selected consumer plans has also helped. The slight decline that you see quarter on quarter is due to seasonality. We offer our postpaid customers with the functionality of partial number, whereby they can retain phone number for a nominal fees when they travel on long holidays and reactivate on return. This helps us retain our customers while impacts revenues during travel season. The decline in prepaid is primarily due to lower ARPU. Encouragingly, prepaid revenue has been largely stable over the last few quarters. Q3 year on year reduction in prepaid revenue is lowest in the last 6 years despite and that is because of stability and prepaid market pricing and prepaid portfolio simplification despite lower population year on year. Overall, total service revenue increased 10.4% year on year with increasing contributions from fixed, managed services and IoT. Now taking a quick glimpse of ARPU on Slide number 11. Mobility ARPU is 2.5% or BRL2 higher year on year, resulting from increasing postpaid ARPU. On quarter on quarter basis, ARPU has declined by R2, and this is mainly because of seasonality that I just explained in the last slide. Now looking at EBITDA on Slide number 12. The first bar chart on the left side shows the steady growth in our absolute EBITDA over the last 5 years. Our EBITDA has almost doubled this year compared to FY 2017. This is the result of steady growth in our top line coupled with rationalization of our cost base. Line graph to the right shows EBITDA margin over the last few years with the gray trend line being the reported EBITDA margin and the red trend line showing EBITDA margin excluding equipment business. As explained in previous slides, higher service revenue and lower costs enabled us to reach reported EBITDA margin of 41.3 percent with 4.6 percentage point improvement year on year. A similar growth is reflected in our EBITDA margin, excluding equipment business, which is a true reflection of our core business at 43.4%, growing 4.4 percentage points year on year. These are our highest EBITDA margin levels. Now looking at CapEx on Slide number 13. CapEx is BRL 87,000,000 in this quarter, and that takes us to the year to date CapEx of BRL 226,000,000 for this year. As usual, this is primarily focused on investment for capacity expansion and coverage footprint enhancement, investment to enhance digital capabilities and products and lastly, investments to maintain the network. Moving to net profit margins on Slide number 14. Again, the bar chart on the left side shows the growth trend of our net profit. We turned net profit positive in FY 2018, and since then, our profit has increased at a CAGR of 39 percent to reach BRL 200,000,000 during the 9 months period ended September 2021. And these results are reflected in our net profit margin trend shown in the line graph, which has more than doubled since 2018 to 11.5 percent in 2021. Moving to the next slide. We have, for the first time, included return on capital employed in Slide number 15. The increase in net profit, as explained in previous slide, has resulted in significant improvement in our return on capital employed over the last 4 years. If you analyze this carefully, our invested capital largely remains the same over these years. While we have been really efficient in allocating capital into areas where we generate value, and this is done in the most efficient manner to monetize the new as well as existing assets. We have been successful in cautiously allocating CapEx into growth areas at right times, bringing the best in technology for both consumer and enterprise segments, while continuously controlling our expenses. This has helped us double return on capital employed since 2018 to 5.6%. Moving to Slide number 16, income statement. I think we have already covered the major year on year movements. Both consumer and enterprise and other revenue increased year on year. The higher depreciation and amortization charge is a result of the elevated CapEx incurred during the last four quarters, the investments in fixed, 5 gs and growth in sites and also accelerated depreciation of some of our old assets. These assets were identified as part of our review and re estimation of useful lives of certain categories of assets. Lower finance costs of BRL8 1,000,000,000 is due to lower interest rates compared to FY 'twenty and lower outstanding loans. Reduction in other financing cost is resulting from one off cash benefit of a litigation settlement and also extinguishment of a previously recognized liability relating to this. The accelerated depreciation after offsetting the litigation settlement benefit had a net negative impact of nearly BRL 10,000,000 to the net profits reported for the 9 months period. Now that concludes my review. The UU's balance sheet subscribers and net debt are included in the appendix, which are self explanatory. And now back to you, Pauline. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Vasur. We will move now to the Q and A session. Operator, can you please explain to the participants how to ask questions? Certainly. Thank you. Our first question comes from Zayad Ittani from Arkam Capital. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you for the presentation and congratulations on the strong results. Just two questions from our end. First, if you look at the total service revenues, it has been growing quite strongly lately. And we're just wondering if you can possibly give us the split remaining other than mobile, that being fixed and ICT. So if we are to take out the EUR 552,000,000 in service revenues and take out the prepaid and post paid mobile revenues, we end up with EUR 138,000,000. Is it possible for you to quantify from that EUR 138,000,000 how much is related to fixed broadband and B2B ICT? That's the first question. The second question is on the accelerated depreciation charges. You mentioned EUR 10,000,000 impact for the past 9 months. How much is this expected to last, the accelerated depreciation pressure? Thank you. So answer your first question, other than prepaid and postpaid revenue, there are 3 or 4 line items included in the total service revenue other than fixed as well, which includes visitor roaming as well. For competitive reasons, we have not been separately disclosing the fixed revenue. And for this quarter as well, we would not like to comment on that specifically. Coming to your question number 2 regarding accelerated depreciation. As I explained, we as part of a normal business practice, we continue to review the useful lives of our assets. And as per IFRS, whenever change in the estimate is required, we do that. Whatever was required based on our review has been reflected in the financial statements, as you see. If anything comes up in future, which we don't know as of today, we will definitely let you know, guys. Okay. Thank you. And when it comes to the 5 gs CapEx plans, where are we in the cycle? I know you mentioned in the beginning of the presentation that 5 gs population coverage in Doha is more than 85%. Where does that put you in terms of the CapEx intensity? And how much are you targeting for next year? As we continue to expand our network footprint, 5 gs as well as 4 gs and fixed as well, we explained in the last quarter as well, we expect our CapEx intensity to be around high teens this year as well as next year. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from Nikhil Suttain from Commercial Bank. Please go ahead. Yes. Thank you, sir. It was a wonderful presentation. Actually, my questions have been answered in terms of the first question, which you mentioned about the fixed and the broadband. Secondly, on the CapEx plan, can you just quantify what could be the likely growth which we could be seeing in FY 2022 given that World Cup is going to be coming up along with other LOT and your 5 gs plans so that you're able to get an idea? Thank you. Specifically talking about what's the CapEx plans for the last 3, 4 years, we have been cautiously planning for that, keeping in mind the World Cup happening in 2022. Regarding expected CapEx intensity for the next year, I think I've already explained that. We expect that to be in higher teens next year as well, which is definitely higher than the industry benchmarks. Okay. Thanks, Sisra. Thank you. Thank you. We now have a follow-up question from Zaid Aitani from Akram Capital. Yes. Thank you. So just looking at the cost structure, can you explain a bit in detail how you managed to decrease substantially the network rental and other OpEx related costs in Q3, specifically, they're down 17% sequentially and 16% year on year despite the growth that you're seeing on 5 gs, which all of the other operators actually had quite an increase in the costs over there and you're growing the top line as well. So we'd appreciate some color on that. Thank you. Okay. Specifically commenting on network rental and other operational costs. So the reduction is driven by 2 things. 1, we did in sourcing this year. And as a result of that, we are saving some costs in this line. But the negative impact of that is reflected in employee salaries and benefits. And that is roughly 40% of the cost reduction that you see in network rentals and other operational expenses. Secondly, we have been talking about our cost optimization program, which is a broad program, includes a number of initiatives that we have taken over the last 3 years to reduce our cost base. Those initiatives definitely include renegotiation of costs, identifying costs which we can avoid and eliminating waste. So that is helping us in reducing these costs year on year basis. Okay. And when it comes to the employment in sourcing benefit, this is mainly happening in Q3 and not before, right? There was a phasing of in sourcing. The major benefit definitely that you see is happening in Q3, but we got this in the 1st 2 quarters of this year as well. It appears we have no pardon me, we do have a question now from Zohab Parvez from Al Rayyan Investment. Thank you, gentlemen, for the presentation. I've got a couple of questions. Firstly, on the depreciation, now that the depreciation has increased from like $74,000,000 on a quarter basis in the Q1 to about $98,000,000 Is $98,000,000 the new can we assume the $98,000,000 is the new level that depreciation is going to be? Or is it going to be higher, lower once the accelerated depreciation reduces finishes? That's the first question. The second question is on other finance cost. So in other finance cost, we can see that your lease liability expenses are reducing. I think it halved in the first half. We don't have the 3rd quarter numbers. So could you give us some insight on what is leading to this expense reduction on that front? Plus, what would be the impact of this litigation settlement? What is the quantum in Numerix? That will be great. Thank you. So high depreciation, as I explained in my presentation, is primarily driven by elevated CapEx levels in Q4 of last year as well as the 1st 3 quarters of this year as well. Plus, as I explained, we had charged accelerated depreciation in this year on some of our old assets. And as a result of that, I can say that current levels of depreciation are higher than the normal levels that you would see. Coming back to your question regarding the other financing costs. So that is the benefit of a litigation settlement, cash benefit, that is 1 off, plus previously recognized liability relating to the same litigation that we had reversed. So this benefit is reflected in Q2 as well as partly in Q3. I cannot give you specific numbers about the benefit of the litigation, but just to answer based on your interest, our underlying impact on net profit of these two adjustments, which are one off in nature, is roughly $10,000,000 negative on the net profit of the company. Okay. And I've got one other question on the receivables. So if you see that last year also, the 1st 3 quarters, we saw a built up in receivables and there was a pay down in the 4th quarter. We can see something of the similar happening this year also. There's a buildup of receivables in the 1st 3 quarters of this year. Can we expect the same thing happening, pay down in the Q4? Or this is more of a regular business now? Yes. The increase in receivables is mainly driven by increase in our bill revenue. That is the primary reason. As we grow our revenues, our receivables grow, and you will you see the increase in trade and other receivables. And you should expect to continue this increase. We will expect this to go increase further in the following quarters. Sounds good. Thank you. Thank you. As we have no further questions at this time, I'd like to turn the conference back to speakers today for any additional or closing remarks. Hi, operator. This is Bobby Sarkar again. If we have no further questions, I guess we can end the call for today. I want to thank Vodafone Qatar Management for taking the time to talk to investors, and we will pick it up next quarter. Thank you. Thank you, Bobby. Thank you, operator, and thank you for all joining today's call. Please feel free to contact the Investor Relations if you have any additional information or visit the IR Vodafone Qatar website. Thank you. Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect.