Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Vodafone Qatar's Financial Leadership. I'm Pauline Abi Saab from the Investor Relations team. On this session, we have Sheikh Hamad Abdulla Jassim Al-Thani , our Chief Executive Officer, and Masroor Anjum, our Chief Financial Officer. The call will start with a presentation from our CEO on the commercial and operational highlights, followed by an update on the financial performance at the year-end on 31 December 2024 by our CFO. As usual, the presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. We'll be taking your questions by raising hands virtually. Today's presentation is available on this webinar and on Vodafone Qatar's website under the Investor Relations section. Please note that this session is recorded, and also note that the disclaimer on slide number two. To begin, I now hand over to Sheikh Hamad.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm delighted to share that we have continued our growth for the seventh consecutive year, a milestone that we are very proud of, especially given the challenges facing the telecommunication industry worldwide. This achievement reflects the strength and the strategy that we followed to deliver such a value to our customers, shareholders, and stakeholders. Over the past year, we have successfully increased our revenue by 2.5% and net profit by more than 11%, a testament to the hard work and commitment of our team. In light of this performance, our Board of Directors is pleased to recommend a dividend of 11%, subject to the approval in the upcoming AGA.
While our CFO will take you through the detailed financials in the next section, I would like to focus more on the bigger picture and the strategic direction we are heading to. In recent years, we have worked tirelessly to bridge the gaps, strengthen our infrastructure, and enhance our customer experience. While we have made significant progress in delivering our previous strategy, we believe that there is a greater opportunity ahead. That is why, in 2024, we've been working on a new strategy built mainly around three key pillars: efficient and reliable telecommunication services, expansion into ICT, Leading in XTech . Efficient and reliable telecommunication services—this remains the foundation, ensuring we continue to deliver cost-effective, high-quality, and innovative services with a strong market. Expansion into the ICT, while this has been a challenging area with a success rate below 10% for us, we have learned from our experience.
We have started to build our alliances program capabilities and foundation to strengthen our position to be able to capture big opportunities that we see in the market. Leading in XTech, in this, I mean, how can we partner with different industries and help them to digitally transform where we can bring our experience, capabilities, and bring value together? Such an example is FinTech, where we have already started our journey leading with iPay. We started about three years ago. We have already got many licenses, such as WPS. We got the authority to transfer money directly without going to a bank or an exchange house. In addition to other licenses, we believe that is going to help us to speed up and digitally transform mainly the retail and helping the country to go through their journey to a cashless society.
With this strategy, we aim not to only solidify our position as a leading telecommunication provider, but also to expand into new high-growth areas, delivering sustainable value to our customers and investors. There is one point that I would like to highlight because I believe it's going to be key for next year. If you go to slide number six, there are key telecommunication projects that basically we are mandated to do, such as the transformation moving from FDD to TDD. This is a requirement from the regulator, and we believe it's going to bring more efficiency to our utilization of the spectrum and minimize interference with our neighboring countries. The other thing which we believe is very important and it has to be carefully managed is the sunset of the 3G.
We know when it wasn't managed as expected, such as in the U.S. about three to four years ago, where they sunset the 3G and most of the roaming voice is actually happening on 3G. We noticed that this is a risk, and that's why we started already working aggressively with our roaming partners to try to sign up quality agreements and doing the testing, hopefully by this deadline. Otherwise, it might be challenging for our inbound or even outbound customers. So that's why it's key two key projects for us. Of course, the standalone 5G delayed should have been delivered by us last year, but we decided to delay it due to certain evaluations of some of the projects.
There are so many other projects, interesting ones, but some of them maybe we don't have time to discuss it into this half an hour session, and some of them are for a couple of reasons, but I believe that during the next investor calls, we can share a lot of projects because they will be launched at that time and giving you a better forecast on our product roadmap going forward. With that said, I would like to hand over to our CFO to go over the financials.
Okay. Thank you very much, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm delighted to welcome you all to our analyst call today and share the remarkable achievements of Vodafone Qatar successfully. As we delve into the financial review for the year 2024, let's start by highlighting some key aspects on slide number nine. The momentum we experienced throughout the year extended seamlessly into Q4, resulting in a 2.5% year-on-year increase in total turnover. This growth is driven by positive contributions across all business segments, including prepaid, postpaid, managed services, and fixed. Our sustained emphasis on cost optimization has been instrumental in driving our overall success. The strategic focus has empowered us to consistently invest in network expansion and achieve revenue growth while concurrently enhancing operational efficiency. We are pleased to report a sustained reduction in underlying OpEx intensity reaching 23.4% for the financial year 2024.
This relentless pursuit of efficiency has translated into robust profitability outcomes. Our EBITDA stands at an impressive QAR 1.36 billion, showcasing a growth of 6.1% year-on-year, while net profit has registered another double-digit growth of 11.2%. Alongside increased profitability, the company has maintained robust cash flow generation, resulting in 2.4% growth in underlying operating cash flows and a 22.6% reduction in our net debt for income. Moving on to slide number 10, let's look into the financial performance for the year 2024 in comparison to the last year. Total revenue has increased by QAR 79 million, reflecting a robust year-on-year growth of 2.5%. This growth was predominantly driven by service revenue growth of 2.5%, with all business segments contributing positively. The key drivers of service revenue growth will be discussed in detail in slide number 12.
Coming to expenses, we effectively maintained stable expenses year-on-year, highlighting the success of our cost optimization strategy. This year's performance also benefited from a few one-off gains, and we will explain those in detail in the next slide. Despite continuous network expansion, as explained by Hamad, and organic growth in expenses due to inflation, management continues to focus on identifying opportunities to reduce underlying costs through a company-wide cost optimization program. As a result, we achieved a decline in our OPEX intensity by 0.3 percentage points year-on-year. Higher service revenue and optimized costs resulted in a substantial year-on-year improvement in EBITDA of 6.1%. This translated into a double-digit growth in net profit, surpassing QAR 600 million for the first time ever. Moving to the next slide.
As mentioned earlier, this year's financial performance has been impacted by a few one-offs, and in order to better understand the underlying profitability, we have highlighted those one-offs on slide number 11. First, we had QAR 18 million credit to the P&L, resulting from a change in our estimate of average life of customers used to amortize customer acquisition costs under the requirements of IFRS 15. This revised estimate has been applied prospectively in accordance with the requirements of IFRS 8. This is a one-off cost adjustment with no cash impact. Second, there was a one-off reversal in our operating expenses amounting to QAR 13 million . Thirdly, accelerated depreciation of QAR 19 million was recognized on assets which required adjustment to their useful life due to regulatory changes and technological upgrades, primarily the FDD to TDD migration mandated by CRA.
Finally, a gain of QAR 7 million was recognized in other income, resulting from the revised estimate from the provision of asset retirement obligation. If we normalize the impact of these adjustments, underlying net profit for the year 2024 will be QAR 585 million. Now, going deeper into service revenue on slide number 12, please. All our service revenue segments have exhibited positive year-on-year growth. As previously mentioned, in the postpaid segment, our efforts this year have been centered on upgrading our customer base and minimizing discounted offerings to existing customers. This strategic approach has yielded a notable 3.2% year-on-year improvement in postpaid ARPU during Q4 and a stronger margin. However, this effort has led to consolidation and post-to-pre movement, resulting in a largely stable postpaid base year-on-year.
As mentioned by Hamad earlier, in Q3 2024, we have launched our new postpaid portfolio, the Unlimited Plus and Postpaid Plus plans, where we have significantly enriched our offerings. In addition to enhanced core telecom benefits, customers are offered additional functionalities. They can also enjoy a variety of new lifestyle perks never seen before in Qatar market. Moreover, all new postpaid plans now include unlimited local calls. The early reception to these plans has been positive. In the enterprise segment, we continue to encounter a highly competitive pricing environment, as mentioned in Q3. While we recognize the potential for enhanced market discipline, we adopt a selective approach in responding to competition offers, ensuring we maintain our overall competitiveness in the market.
Notwithstanding the challenges faced, we are pleased to report that postpaid revenue grew by 1% year-on-year, exceeding that by 2022 World Cup year, and this is largely attributed to the success of being able to improve ARPU. On the other hand, prepaid revenue experienced a strong recovery this year, recording a year-on-year growth of 1.8% following a 12.8% decline last year. This growth was primarily driven by a 3.6% year-on-year increase in ARPU during Q4, supported by a stable pricing environment in the prepaid segment. Lastly, managed services, wholesale, and fixed revenues are the primary service revenue growth drivers, registering an increase of 5% year-on-year. Wholesale business, including inbound roaming visitor revenue, recorded impressive growth, reflecting an increase in the number of visitors, and also our commitment to expand our fiber network is paying off.
We are adding new customers nationwide, which has led to a steady increase in our fixed broadband revenue, both on consumer and enterprise side. Overall, total service revenue increased 2.5% year-on-year. Turning our attention to slide number 13, let's review the efficiency and profitability margin trends. In this slide, I will focus on the underlying trend represented by solid lines, while the reported numbers are depicted by dotted lines. Our commitment to enhance operational efficiency continues to deliver positive results. As illustrated in the first graph, OPEX intensity has further declined by 0.3 percentage points year-on-year, reaching 23.4%. Moving to the center graph, the growth in service revenue, combined with our focus on cost optimization, has driven margin expansion. We achieved a reported EBITDA margin of 42.8%. Adjusting for the one-offs discussed earlier, the EBITDA margin stands at 41.8%, reflecting a 0.5 percentage points improvement year-on-year.
Notably, EBITDA margin excluding equipment business and one-offs, which accurately reflects our core business performance, reached 45.8%, marking an increase of 0.7 percentage points compared to last year. The final graph highlights our exceptional performance in net profit margin, which increased by another 1 percentage point year-on-year to reach 18.4% on an underlying basis. Turning our attention to slide number 14 now, and let's take a look at the CapEx and return on capital employed. Our CapEx for the year stands at QAR 441 million, reflecting an intensity of 13.8%, in line with our guidance. We have taken a very disciplined approach to capital allocation, carefully selecting projects that meet our stringent investment criteria for targeted ROI. Our relentless pursuit of growth and profitability has paid off, as demonstrated by the substantial improvement in our return on capital employed.
Compared to FY 2023, our return on capital employed has increased by another 1.1 percentage points to 11.7% for the year ended 31st December 2024, and this translates to a remarkable growth in returns over the past few years. Now, coming to cash flow and net debt on slide number 15, as discussed in previous quarters, working capital management continues to be a major area of focus, and this is mainly because of higher interest rates in the market. Operating free cash flow increased by 2.4% on an underlying basis after adjusting for one-off impacts. Last year's cash flow includes a collection of QAR 106 million related to World Cup and associated projects, while this year's cash flow reflects an early payment of QAR 42 million to a vendor in exchange for a cash discount, exceeding our cost of debt, as well as deferred payments for exchange.
Coming to net debt, our net debt has reduced year-on-year by 22.6% despite increasing dividend payout, and our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio has improved from 0.23 times to 0.17 times, well below the financing covenants of 2.5 times of EBITDA. Turning to statutory income statement on slide number 16 now. We have already covered the major year-on-year movements. Both consumer and enterprise and other revenues have increased year-on-year. Decrease in financing and borrowing costs reflects the impact of optimized cash flow, declining borrowing rates, and one-off benefits that we talked about earlier. And lastly, EPS for the year stands at 14.2 dirhams, and that's an improvement of 11.2% versus last year. Now, let's look at the five-year strategic view of our key financial performance indicators on slide number 17. Our top-line growth momentum continues despite market slowdown and price erosion we talked about earlier.
Over the last five years, our top-line has registered a very impressive figure of 8.8% in service revenue and 9.7% in total revenue. Importantly, while expenses have increased, they have consistently remained lower than the growth in our top-line. This strategic balance has resulted in substantial profitability growth. EBITDA has seen an impressive figure of 14%, and net profit has soared with an extraordinary figure of 34%. These results underscore our strategic focus on sustainable growth, operational efficiency, and prudent financial management. As we continue to navigate challenges and capitalize on opportunities, we remain committed to delivering value to our shareholders.
Now, moving to the next slide and comparing our financial performance for the full year of FY 2024 compared to the guidance that we gave on slide number 18, I'm pleased to report that we are within the guidance range provided at the start of the year for all the key financial performance indicators. Lastly, concerning the guidance for FY 2025, although still too early, we anticipate a sustained top-line growth supported by ARPU recovery in the mobility segment and ongoing expansion in the fixed and managed services segment. On EBITDA, we expect EBITDA margin to remain stable around 42%, and for CapEx intensity, we expect it to remain within the range of 13%-14.5%. Our CapEx investments will focus on the migration from FDD to TDD, deployment of new mobility sites, expansion of fixed network, and IT modernization in the future.
As these are still early days in the new year, we will come up with a more firm guidance as we move along the year. That's all from my side. As usual, the balance sheet, detailed income statement, subscribers, and ARPU details are available in the appendix. Thank you, and now back to Pauline.
Thank you, Mr. Anjum. Now we can start the Q&A session. I would like to ask you to raise your hands virtually to open the microphone for you, please. Take the first question from Zohaib and then we. Go ahead, we'll open the microphone. Go ahead, please, unmute your microphone. Zohaib , are you hearing us? Can you please unmute your microphone?
Hello.
We will move now to the question from Ziad Itani. Ziad, please open the microphone.
Hi, yes, Pauline, can you hear me? Hello? Can you hear me, Pauline? Can you hear me?
Ziad, sorry, but we are not hearing you. Can you please try one more time? Otherwise, we'll go to the chat.
Can you hear me now?
Yes, Ziad, we can hear you now. Sorry for the delay. Please proceed.
Great, thank you, Pauline. So just a couple of questions from our end. Any specific reason why you're not providing the EPS growth guidance expectations for this year? I recall last year you had it in there. And the second question is, can you share with us what your plans are on data centers specifically, and how do you see AI impacting your business?
Yeah, yes, we prefer not to give the guidance on EPS so early in the year. Hopefully, by the end of Q1, we'll be in a much better position to give any guidance on EPS.
When it comes regarding the question regarding the data centers, we're actively exploring the opportunities in the country, and we believe we have some opportunities that we are working on. Definitely, it's an opportunity where we can see it's an opportunity for growth. But it is in our radar, but we cannot disclose anything at this time from a project perspective as nothing has been done.
All right, that's very clear, thank you. And is there any specific negotiations ongoing with Ooredoo specifically on the passive telecom infrastructure, especially after they signed a deal with the Zain Group to form a JV and to co-manage the power infrastructure across their footprint?
This discussion, we have been discussing with them, especially that we share about 10%-15% of our infrastructure both ways based on a swap. For example, we give a site. They give us a site from that perspective.
We have approximately shared 10, if I'm not mistaken, 10%-15% of the sites. There have been discussions that when this company is formed, we would like to find a way to frame up how to put those already shared sites into the pool. But because every one of us, as operators, we have been deploying our own passive infrastructure for the last, let's say, 15 years, so we don't see much of a synergy to expand into the pool, especially that our design, we use a different way of how we, our approach in designing the network was different. So not every site that the pool has will be beneficial to us. And as you can see in the second page of the key highlights, we have already invested heavily, and we have approximately 2,000, almost 2,700 sites.
And to be honest, we are not expecting to grow much in the next few years, except when it comes to in-building and perhaps site-specific special areas. Yes, there are discussions on how to legalize - not legalize, how can I say it - how to handle the already shared sites and passive infrastructure that we already have, but they are very small, I think 10%-15%.
Perfect, that's very clear. Just finally on growth expectations, where do you think we're going to see the highest growth from which segment specifically? Is it managed services still, and what are you seeing in terms of population recovery in Qatar?
The growth will come from two aspects. To be honest, as I mentioned earlier about the last two years, I believe we are - that the two operators in the country are very generous when it comes to the allowances that we are giving.
Sometimes we believe it's very close to the cost. If we benchmark those allowances versus regional and even international, we are very, very comfortable. To be honest, we believe that we should do, we hope that we have a less aggressive, let's say, or more price stability when it comes to mid and high value, which should deliver value to the industry, exactly as what has been happening and recovering from the recovery that we have seen in prepaid. If such a thing happens in the high-value segments, it definitely is going to be well, especially that sometimes we found out that they are significantly discounted. Enterprises also is a big opportunity for us. We are still under-indexed . However, also we are hoping that there should be a more rational pricing in the market as it's also aggressive.
This is when it comes to pricing, and we think that it's a very good opportunity, especially if there is a recovery as what we have done as an industry in the prepaid. When it comes to managed service, I believe it's a great opportunity. I'm not saying pure managed services. I mean an adjacent managed services to the telecom where it uses the telecom as the infrastructure, and there are more added value services, more value-added managed services. I believe this is good lever to high growth, especially that there is a new appetite now in the market, especially that is mandated by authorities to have, for example, a certain, it's only one example, a certain setup of CCTV in the country. And we believe operators will be a key, let's say, players into this where we can basically do an installation of managed services to retailers, shops, etc.
So this is one example. Also, we see that there are certain growth when it comes to the oil and gas. We are also supporting this. As you know, that everyone's anticipated that carbon reduction of natural gas is going to grow significantly in two years' time, and there are so many projects working in parallel. We hope that we are already evaluating how we can participate in this as a telecom and as a managed service provider. The other thing is we see a bigger calendar being built for Qatar when it comes to sport tournaments, when it comes to events. Also, I believe this will help operators. We'll have an opportunity for us, such as to build digital platforms, to build smart solutions that will be addressing such events in the next, let's say, 24-36 months. I hope this answers your question.
Yes, that's clear. Thank you.
Thank you, Ziad. Zohaib, as we missed your first question, we'll reopen the microphone for you. Hello, Zohaib. Can you hear us? Can you please ask your question?
Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Please proceed. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation and congratulations on a good set of results. Actually, Ziad asked my question about how you see the environment going forward. So I don't think I have another question, but thank you so much for opening this again. Thank you.
Let me add something to the same question. I spoke about the managed services and the potential of market recovery when it comes to pricing. But to be very clear, we as Vodafone, yes, our market share has growth even from a mobility perspective.
However, we are still under-indexed when it comes to fixed services and when it comes to high-value customer segments. And this is a great opportunity for us. Why it wasn't that it wasn't as addressable in the last two years? Because we were bridging the gap when it comes to coverage, when it comes to customer experience. We believe we have already reached the situation where we will be able to provide them a high-quality, reliable network. And we already started seeing during the last quarter that there is a lot of movement, especially from the high-value segment. And I believe this will also contribute to our growth in the next month or so.
We have another question from Nishit. Nishit, we'll open the microphone for you. Please unmute yourself. Hello. Hello, Nishit. We can hear you. Please proceed.
Can you hear me now? Sorry, I'm not.
Yes, we can hear you. Please proceed.
Yes. So I have a couple of questions. First, on the one-offs. Were these one-offs accounted mainly in the fourth quarter? Because this was the year-on-year waterfall chart. So the network, rental, and all looked particularly low in fourth quarter. So I'm assuming these one-offs affected the fourth quarter, the depreciation, and the operating side one-offs. So that's the first question. Second, on the general population side and the growth in subscribers in Qatar, it's been challenging since post-World Cup. So how do you see it this year? Are you more optimistic on the growth and the number of subscribers? Are more people expected to come with the LNG project gaining traction? So anything on that side if you can share on your outlook, that would be helpful.
In terms of overall competition in the market, are you reacting to the competitor being aggressive, or you are more aggressive in pricing to gain market share? How is it? How do we look at it? Any more color on that would be helpful. Thank you.
Regarding one-offs, the majority of the impact actually did happen in Q4, but some of the impacts also happened earlier in the year. So overall, based for Q4 only, the impact on EBITDA is QAR 16.7 million, while the impact on net profit is QAR 9.2 million for them.
When it comes to population, yes, you are right. Based on the project that we have seen, we believe that the population will continue to grow, especially during this year and the year after. After the World Cup, a lot of projects have been put on hold until the World Cup completed.
After that, it took six, seven months to resume growth. We believe that from what we see, a lot of projects being awarded, the blueprint is being prepared now. I think, yes, the population will continue to grow. I think there is a focus from the government to focus on white-collar labor or low-skilled labor, which will definitely bring higher value. Their usage will be much higher compared to the type of segments that we had during the period before the World Cup, which is mostly labor. This will definitely impact us positively. We see some more regulations or discussions around how to open the country, how to improve the free zones that we are having in the country.
The economy is very promising, and we believe we can see good improvements starting from this year and much, much more in 2026. This is when it comes to the population. The simple question, yes, we see population to grow, and we believe it's continuing to grow. Not only by the number, but demographically, we think we will have more white-collar labor and more skilled labor compared to the current labor we had pre-World Cup, which is a good thing for us. In addition to this, we see a lot of visitors coming. I believe this year, if I'm not mistaken, it was a record, 2024 was a record time from visitors visiting the country. Also, this will definitely contribute to our inbound roaming and also services that can be provided to such visitors and supporting F&B, restaurants, hotels to provide such a service to them.
So this is also another thing. When it comes to competition and strategy to grow market share, of course, we don't want to play the price game. Nobody's winning yet. We will have to take our fair market share. And today, we believe there is still a little bit. But we're prepared to maintain the price, maintain the right level of pricing. We already managed to bring our costs down. As you can see, we are almost the lowest when it comes to OPEX intensity. CAPEX intensity is much lower. And we believe that the right competition is to compete in customer experience and compete in value-added services to compete on how reliable the service is. So this is our approach. Of course, we have other tactics that will show you appreciatively. But definitely, the guideline, we shouldn't go after prices.
I believe I hear the recent research that has been done that the telecom industry worldwide during the last three or five years has declined by 11%, so we have improved as Vodafone Qatar, but definitely the entire industry is declining. So we need to work together to ensure that it's sustainable, not for profits on market falling. No, it's because we need to have this critical infrastructure sustainable and can improve and be ready for other future technologies and being able to support companies, individuals in the AI era, and without having the right market, definitely this will be challenging.
Okay, so your guidance talks about a bit of improvement in margins at EBITDA level. Is that coming from better revenue mix, or do you see there's more headroom for cost efficiencies?
So as we have been highlighting in almost all the course, yes, cost optimization initiative, we continue to focus on that. Plus, as we get more into the high-value segment, we get a better margin customers and a better margin customers inference. So it's a combination of both, EBITDA %.
Okay. Thank you.
Participants, I would like to ask you, please, to raise your hand if you would like to ask questions. So if there are no further questions, I would like to thank you all for joining today's stream. We'll keep you updated on all our upcoming investors. Please feel free to contact us if you need any further information or visit our investor relations section on Vodafone Qatar website.