Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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May 9, 2025
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Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Vasilios, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Turkcell's Conference Call and Live Webcast to present and discuss the Turkcell's First Quarter twenty twenty five Financial Results. All participants will be in a listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session.

Operator

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Ozlem Yarden, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance Director. Mrs. Yardem, you may now proceed.

Ozlem Yardim
Ozlem Yardim
Investor Relations & Corporate Finance Director at Turkcell

Thank you, Vasilios. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Turkcell's twenty twenty five First Quarter Earnings Call. Today, our CEO, Arita Hakoj and CFO, Kymir Kalion, will be delivering a brief presentation covering operational and financial results, which will be followed by a Q and A session. Before we begin, I would like to kindly remind you to review our Safe Harbor statements available at the end of our presentation.

Ozlem Yardim
Ozlem Yardim
Investor Relations & Corporate Finance Director at Turkcell

Now I'm handing the meeting over to Mr. Alita.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Thank you very much, Uslan. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for being with us today. Before I start my presentation, I would like to take a moment to celebrate a milestone that makes 2025 meaningful for us. This year marks the twenty fifth anniversary of Turkcell's IPO, where we proudly remain the first and only dual listed company. Looking back on these twenty five years, we are proud and grateful to have grown alongside with you, our valued shareholders, creating lasting value together.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Moving on to highlights of the first quarter. Our top line reached 48,000,000,000, delivering an outstanding double digit year on year growth of 12.7%. On the profitability side, we delivered an EBITDA of 21,000,000,000, up 19% year on year. This resulted in a robust margin of 43.7%, marking the highest first quarter margin in the last decade. Last but not least, we concluded the quarter with a solid net profit of 3,100,000,000.0, another compelling indicator of our strong financial performance.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

We gained 153,000 postpaid and 30,000 fiber customers in the first quarter, which is clear evidence of the success of our value focused strategy. This quarter, our strategic areas also delivered impressive results. Techwin segment revenues surged by 31%, while data center and cloud revenues grew by an outstanding 48%, reflecting the strong momentum in both areas. Next page, please. Now take a closer look at our operational performance.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

On the mobile side, our focus on value generation continued to deliver strong results. We added 153,000 postpaid subscribers quarter on quarter and 1,600,000 year on year. As a result, our postpaid share reached an all time high of 76%, up from 72% a year ago. Given the ongoing competitive landscape, our mobile churn rate remained low at 1.7%. We delivered double digit ARPU growth of 15.9% this quarter, driven by our rational pricing strategy, effective upselling and expanding postpaid base and a slowdown in CPI, all contributed to a widening gap between ARPU growth and inflation.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Next page, Now moving on to the fixed broadband segment. In the first quarter, we added 30,000 net fiber customers, expanding our end to end fiber reach. We now cover over 6,000,000 homes with fiber to the home technology, FTTH. Residential fiber ARPU grew by 17.7% year on year, supported by an increase in twelve month contract share to 86% and strong performance in upselling customers to higher speed packages. By quarter end, the share of Turkcell fiber customers on 100 MB plus packages rose 15 points, exceeding 46%.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

The slight rise in churn is mainly due to the transition to twelve month contracts. Thanks to our targeted initiatives, we successfully raised our take up ratio to 43%. Next please. A quick update on our strategic areas, starting with Digital Business Services. This quarter, Digital Business Services achieved a revenue of 4,000,000,000, driven by a 23% year on year increase in recurring service revenues.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Notably, our system integration project backlog reached 4,900,000,000.0, underscoring strong demand and continued customer confidence in our service offerings. Revenues in our high potential data center and cloud segment surged by 48 this quarter. We are affirming the strategic importance of this business in our portfolio. To meet growing demand, we plan to add two new modules, expanding our capacity by 8.4 megawatts by year end. The total data center investments now stand at EUR $528,000,000.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Next please. Now the Tech win segment, which plays a key role in our growth strategy. Paycell, our secure mobile payment platform, recorded an impressive 47.8% year on year growth, with pay later driving revenue, followed by post revenues. We focus on profitability and pay sales EBITDA rose to 24.2%. Finance sales revenue grew 8.2%, supported by loan portfolio expansion through dedicated campaigns and personalized pricing.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Net interest margin improved to 4.7% due to lower funding costs. Despite macro challenges, our cost of risk remained at 3.3%. As a final note, I would like to highlight that we firmly stand by our 2025 guidance while closely monitoring global and local economic dynamics. I will now hand over to our CFO, Mr. Kamil Kalion.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Thank you very much, Al Tawes. Let's take a deeper dive into our financial performance. Before we delve into the financial overview, I'd like to clarify our new segmentation structure, effective from this quarter onwards. We made two changes. After the successful sale of our Ukrainian assets, revenues from international subsidiaries now represent a smaller share in our group financials.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Therefore, we have reclassified the international segment under the other segment. Additionally, the consumer business of Turkcell Satish is now classified under Turkcell Turkey together with its enterprise sales. These changes reflect our internal management approach to reviewing the performance of Turkcell Satish as a whole. These adjustments have no impact on our operating profit, profit for the year or cash flow statements. Next slide, please.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Group revenues grew by 13%, adding 5,000,000,000 this quarter. Our main driver is TUXA Turkey, which contributed TRY 4,500,000,000.0. TUXA Turkey achieved 12% revenue growth. This is driven by postpaid subscriber growth, ARPU increase supported by rational pricing, effective upsell efforts and rising data center and cloud revenues. This performance stands as a testament to our sustained growth momentum.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

We have consistently delivered real ARPU growth for nine consecutive quarters. Our Techne segment generated six fifty seven million, primarily driven by Pesal's robust performance. Focused on profitability and dedicated cost controls, we lifted EBITDA margin by 2.3 points to 43.7%, reaffirming our leadership in the Turkish telecom market. The margin improved thanks to lower cost of goods sold, energy expenses, funding costs and interconnection expenses as a share of revenue. Next slide, please.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Now CapEx management. In the first quarter of twenty twenty five, our CapEx to sales ratio is at 20.2%. Our investments have largely been concentrated in strategic areas. By making these investments in advance, we pave a way to unlock value from our assets and shape Turkey's next digitalization story. About a quarter of the budget is allocated to data center investments.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

This keeps us on track to add two new modules to the Cholera and Ankara data centers by year end. We have also continued to strengthen our core telecommunication infrastructure, and nearly 60% of the CapEx budget goes to mobile and fiber infrastructure to maintain service quality. In renewable energy, we reached 28 MW of active solar energy capacity in Q1. We have 79 MW of total installed capacity, with the remaining to be activated once permissions are secured. Once we reach 70% of our 300 MW target, we will cover approximately 20% of our annual energy costs, a key step toward cost efficiency and sustainability.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

We are firmly on track executing effectively under our CapEx management strategy. Next slide, please. Highlights from our strong balance sheet. In the first quarter, our total cash position rose to 108,000,000,000 from 76,000,000,000. Our cash position sufficiently supports debt service for the upcoming three year period.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Following the successful January Euroboard issuance, our gross debt increased from billion to TRY151 billion. Keeping in mind that the five gs tender is approaching, we secured its financing in advance through these issues at advantageous rates. This was the timely move as global interest rates climbed shortly after the group worked due to macroeconomic tensions. By the end of Q1, the group's net debt was to billion with a 0.2x leverage ratio. The TRY3 billion wireless usage fee paid in first quarter and cash outflow due to ongoing investments slightly pushed leverage higher.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Considering the five gs tender outcome and capital expenditures throughout the year, we anticipate leverage staying below 1x this year, which we consider a healthy level. Finally, let's look at the management of the foreign currency risk. The majority of our cash remains in hard currencies. We hold 87% of cash in hard currency, naturally hedging 86% of hard currency debt. This quarter, we increased our local capital market issuances, a move that not only supported portfolio diversification but also enabled more effective financing cost management.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

At the end of Q1, we had US3.4 billion dollars equivalent FX debt and US3.5 billion dollars to US3.1 billion dollars FX denominated financial assets. In addition, we have a derivative portfolio of $388,000,000 We are in a short net FX position of $76,000,000 This quarter, we proactively managed our FX risk and balanced net financial income and expenses, maintaining our FX position within the plus and minus $200,000,000 range. This disciplined approach effectively limited the impact of currency movements on our balance sheet and strengthened our financial resilience. It brings our presentation to a close, and we are now ready to take your questions. Thank you.

Operator

The first question comes from the line of Sink Madhvendra with HSBC. Please go ahead.

Madhvendra Singh
Madhvendra Singh
Analyst at HSBC

Yes, hi. Thanks a lot for taking my question. My question the first question is on your revenue performance. In 12.7% for the group, I was wondering whether given the you have been increasing prices, I think, around 15% in in q one. So if you could discuss, you know, how the price increase actually is spread, and are you seeing any usage impact that, you know, your revenue growth in real terms is not more than 15%?

Madhvendra Singh
Madhvendra Singh
Analyst at HSBC

So if you could explain the gap between the price hikes you really do and the new growth. And also, your competitor also reported numbers and they actually had, I think, to 18% growth during the quarter. So was there any role of higher or intense competition in in in the market as well? So so that's the first question. And second question is on your any update on the five g process from your side?

Madhvendra Singh
Madhvendra Singh
Analyst at HSBC

Is there any visibility on the cost of ATC? Thank you.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Okay. Thank you very much for the question. For the first question, question, in the first quarter, as you said, we achieved a 13% deals revenue growth and a strong 12% growth in the same period last year. Therefore, when you look at our performance, looking at the past several years, except for few quarters, we have consistently delivered higher revenue growth, resulting in a larger revenue base. This success has come from the diverse and high quality services we offer our customers.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

We are doing our homework regarding the upsell successful. We are very successful about the upsell, ARPU upsell. And in addition, we have a strong still subscriber base is still continuing to grow. Therefore, all these things bringing the successful for the revenue performance from our perspective. And our goal is to share this value regularly with our investors in the coming future.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

And as you say, there might be in the mobile market, we observed that competition intensified starting in May 2024 and continued throughout the end of the year. We have not observed any normalization so far in 2025 either. But as we mentioned previously, we are not playing only for the subscriber base play. We do not want to confess from our revenue growth as ARPU increases and ARPU growth. Therefore, as the market leader, we are observing the developments in the market regarding this.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

We are, for example, how can I say, we are forcing or we are implementing our, for example, aggressive campaigns when we need it? We are not making it continuously within the year.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

And for the second question, let me tell you that there is no official timeline announced by the regulator yet regarding the commercial launch of five gs. However, recent statements suggest that the spectrum auction is expected to take place within this year. With five gs service anticipated to go live in 2026. While detailed information on spectrum pricing and licensing condition is still pending, we expect a balanced regulatory approach that supports both innovation as well as the sustainable investments. As Turkcell, we are committed to building our five gs infrastructure by leveraging local and national technologies wherever possible.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

We continue to support the development of domestic technology ecosystem through our ongoing R and D collaboration and partnerships. We are already providing live five gs coverage at Grand National Assembly of Turkey for major football stadiums in Istanbul Airport, delivering speeds exceeding one gigabit per second to our customers. This deployment showcase our readiness and as well as leadership in advanced connectivity and technology. Our robust 4.5 gs infrastructure along with our fiber backbone and virtualized core network position us well for efficient five gs rollout, so we are expecting the official time line from the government and regulatory bodies.

Madhvendra Singh
Madhvendra Singh
Analyst at HSBC

Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Bisrova Eugenia with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Evgeniya Bystrova
Vice President at Barclays Investment Bank

Hi, hello. Good evening. Thank you very much for the presentation and congrats on results. I have just one question. It seems that in the first quarter, you beat your guidance in terms of revenue growth also for EBITDA margin.

Evgeniya Bystrova
Vice President at Barclays Investment Bank

So I was just wondering how you're seeing the rest of the year play out? Do you plan to maybe update your guidance accordingly? And also, if you could please remind us what was the CPI assumption for your guidance for this year?

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Thank you. Thank you very much for the question. As you mentioned, we had a strong start to the year. Therefore, the first quarter's results are very consistent with our guidance side. But in order to say for it would be a little bit, how can I say, early to talk about any revise in the guidance side because there are a lot of significant macroeconomic conditions internally and domestically and internationally?

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Therefore, we are looking forward to these developments. Currently, we are sticking on our guidance. If there would be a need for the revise for the in the future, maybe we can make a revise. But currently, we are sticking on the guidance which we declared starting of this year. And in our CPI expectation in our guidance was for the year end side, we are we are we were estimating 30.5300.5% CPI rate.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

But for example, we revised our estimations to 35% nowadays for the CPI side.

Evgeniya Bystrova
Vice President at Barclays Investment Bank

That's year end or average?

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Year end.

Evgeniya Bystrova
Vice President at Barclays Investment Bank

Okay.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

And while we are on our budget side, the expectation of the Turkish Central Bank's expectation is around 24 to 27% CPI. By taking into consideration, we set our expectations as 30%. But currently, as per current development, we revised it to 35% CPI for year end.

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Mandachi Ece with Omloo Securities. Please go ahead.

Ece Mandaci Baysal
Director at ÜNLÜ & Co

Hi. Thank you very much for the presentation. Could you provide some more insight on your subscriber numbers? I understand that there was some more competition, and you focused mainly on increasing your prepaid sorry, postpaid subscribers on the mobile side. Will this strategy continue during the year?

Ece Mandaci Baysal
Director at ÜNLÜ & Co

And can we see better quarterly subscriber additions going forward on a combined basis? And secondly, we also start to see a big jump in your fiber numbers, the lines you are leasing from other operator. So what could be the potential growth in that area, which also can contribute to your own fiber customer or subscriber base? Thank you.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Thank you very much for all questions. In this quarter, our postpaid net additions decreased compared to Q1 twenty twenty four, totaling 153,000. The main reason for this decline appears to be the decrease in net port, mainly due to ongoing aggressive campaigns by competitors. On the prepaid segment, we registered a net loss due to reduced usage of from the tourists, the widespread adoption of electronic SIM e SIM technology and the growing competitiveness of discounted postpaid offers. Although minimum wage increased into Q1 twenty twenty five, the absence of a minimum wage hike in second half of twenty twenty four, combined with ongoing economic challenges also put pressure on prepaid subscribers' consumption power.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

However, the net subscriber loss was lower compared to same quarter last year, supported by a decline in interest line closures. Our fixed subscriber base reached 3,300,000 as of Q1 twenty twenty five, with 25,000 net additions in the quarter. As a result, our dedicated investments, we recorded a net 30,000 Turkcell fiber subscriber additions. However, we experienced some customer loss on the resale segment due to price adjustments in line with our focus on profitability. In addition, the increase in our churn driven by factors such as a rise in contract expiration following our policy shift from twenty four months to twelve months commitments also negatively impacted our fixed subscribers net addition, In line with our ARPU subscribers' balanced growth strategy, we didn't make some of the customer retention campaigns in Q1 twenty twenty five that we had made in Q1 twenty twenty four.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

For the competitors' fiber optic cables, actually, we need to make it clear that this is not an infrastructure sharing. Infrastructure sharing first in agreements where the owner of the telecom network facilities allows another operator to access and use those facilities based on a commercial agreement between both parties. We haven't signed such agreement with a competitor. This is a purely reselling operation, similar to what we do with the DSL and Turkcell cable. We continue our focus and investment in fiber, our Turkcell fiber.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

However, in areas where we don't have our own fiber infrastructure, we plan to sell competitors' fiber instead of competitors'

Ece Mandaci Baysal
Director at ÜNLÜ & Co

Thank you very much. Could you also please comment on the potential growth in your subscriber base in the quarters ahead? If you can provide some more detail on that going forward.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

We are aligned with our planning and then we are expecting better performances in the following quarters. Especially, we already had a huge investment on the fiber domain, extending our agreement with the Botash. As you may know that there was a tender about it. And then our backbone is well established with the Botash. And then starting from fifteen years back, we had this agreement with Bottas.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Eighty one different cities, can reach with the Bottas, our natural gas companies' pipes. So next to date, those pipes, we have our own fiber infrastructure, and it consists of our main backbone. So with this infrastructure that we extend this deal for next fifteen years, we are going to invest more and more in the fiber domain, and we believe in the fiber connectivity, especially for five gs and better service to our customers.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Hello?

Operator

The next question is a follow-up question from the line of Sink Matsvendra with HSBC. Please go ahead.

Madhvendra Singh
Madhvendra Singh
Analyst at HSBC

Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question again. This question is on your data center CapEx plan. So looking at the general expectations, is it fair to assume you plan to spend around 6 to 7,000,000,000 liras on data center this year?

Madhvendra Singh
Madhvendra Singh
Analyst at HSBC

And then the follow-up question to that would be whether you, you know, what is your overall data center ambition and whether this CapEx amount is you know, how significant is in achieving the overall objectives there? Because in dollar terms, it doesn't look like it's a huge amount. Yeah. To

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

ensure that Turkey's data remains within the Turkey's borders, we continue to lead the data center market. And we are committed to increasing our investment in both data centers as well as the cloud services. The data center market is currently very dynamic. We anticipate that hyperscaler cloud providers will invest in Turkey and which will significantly expand the market. Additionally, we expect even faster growth driven by the AI transformation, which will provide an additional boost to already existing growth.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

In regards to global perspective, the current installed capacity, 55 gigawatt is expected quadruple to two twenty gigawatts by 02/1930. So there's a huge ambition plans all around the world about the data centers. There is no market study done by an independent research company for data center businesses in Turkey. But according to the latest International Data Corporation's forecast for 2024, the cloud businesses, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, software as a service In Turkey, we a total market size of around $700,000,000 not Turkish dollars, dollars 1 point 7 billion, which is expected to continue growing. Large corporate companies in the finance, especially healthcare and as well as the banking sectors are significant potential customers for our DC business as well as the cloud services due to the Turkish regulations that require that data to be stored within the country and within the boundaries of the country.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

On the other hand, Turkey is a fast growing startup ecosystem, as you may know, that attracts investments, particularly showing significant development in the gaming and fintech sectors. Also it's going to require huge data center business. Therefore, our country is very attractive, especially for hyperscalers. And we are planning to make this the regional center for the data, and we are going to make Turkcell and Turkey as a regional data center hub all around this region.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

And in first quarter, it seems the data center investment seems a little bit high. Yes, you are right. 24% of CapEx has seen as spot for the data center side. But for year end estimation, it will be reduced to 13%, and we still spent significant amount of money for the, how can I say, renovation and modernization of fiber and the mobile infrastructure?

Operator

The next question comes from the line of Demirtas Cemal with AtaInvest. Please go ahead.

Cemal Demirtas
Head of Research at Ata Invest

Thank you for the presentation. My question is about the income statement, the effective tax side. Do you see an increase in deferred tax expense? Is it specific to this quarter? Or are we going to see the trend for the rest of the year?

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Jamal, thank you very much for the question. Yes. After the you know, there are different applications, especially coming from the inflationary accounting. The inflationary accounting in the local side is a little bit different, and the inflationary accounting principles in the IFRS side is a little bit different. There are some differences.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

And these differences affecting our deferred tax liability or deferred tax revenue significantly. This quarter, we are seeing a high deferred tax expense in our financial income statement. We will be looking for the next quarters. I am not expecting such an important or significant tax effect in the coming periods, but it depends on the difference. Unfortunately, we cannot also foresee the effect of these differences between two principles.

Cemal Demirtas
Head of Research at Ata Invest

Thank you. And one other question is about the TOG sites, which is reported under equity method. We see a loss in this quarter and last year also there was a loss. In case of any capital increase, will you just be in that case, in case of any capital increase needed in TAG project?

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Thank you, Jamal. Let me answer this question. Well, the financing of this investment is planned to be made by equity, borrowings by the company, a very significant incentive package and cash flows of the company, shareholders' commitment is restricted with EUR 500,000,000 capital, which corresponded to EUR 115,000,000 for Turkcell as the main share one of the shareholders. As of the end of twenty twenty four, we made all capital contributions of EUR114.5 million. If needed, we can evaluate a capital increase with our Board of Directors, taking into account the prevailing conditions.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Every industry goes through business cycles and the automobile sector has been in a down cycle for some time, mainly due to the impact of macroeconomic conditions on consumers' consumption of power. Tog being a young company founded in 2018 may also require some time before it can deliver sustainable net profits. We see our investment in torque not just as investment in automotive but as a broader move in an e mobility ecosystem. Cars are becoming smarter. A new mobility ecosystem is emerging around vehicles, all the connectivity is there, in car infotainment is there, have evolved significantly and connectivity has become one of the key topic in automotive industry with the smart cars and autonomous driving, especially within the rise of autonomous and semi autonomous vehicles.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Therefore, this investment presents several opportunities for Turkcell, including the integration of smart living solutions into the e mobility or mobility ecosystem and offering end to end mobility services. In this context, I can say that we have integrated Paycell's, for example, innovative payment solutions to talk and our digital music platform Fizzy, our TV plus app. So you can watch TV in any talk right now. Given the industry trends and the alignment with Turkcell's capabilities, we believe that this EV initiative has a potential to create value for our group, for Turkey, for all of us, both through performance of the TOG itself and synergies we can unlock together.

Cemal Demirtas
Head of Research at Ata Invest

Thank you. And one last question about the latest volatility in the currencies by closing of the quarter. We see your position, net FX position, but could you tell us more about how you manage the volatilities, if any, going forward? How resilient you are? And in terms of profitability and the growth prospects for Turkcell, where are we at this moment?

Cemal Demirtas
Head of Research at Ata Invest

Because we are growing maybe better than our expectations, but I remember, Jan, when you first came to Turkcell, you were just even thinking about doubling the company at some point. I just want to ask your opinion right now. I don't need, like, concrete answer, but in terms of where we are heading about Turkcell, where we are now? Thank you.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Thank you very much, Cemal. As you know, we have a very strong balance sheet, and we are doing our homework regarding balance sheet management very well and properly. We are trying to keep our discipline, especially not for example, we are not only focusing the revenue growth, but as you know, we are doing this cost optimization and cost management issue very well. And due to this fact, we have a very good EBITDA margins when compared with the competitors. Therefore, we are not only focusing on the growth side.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

And below EBITDA level, we have a very strong balance sheet, as you know, and we are doing our homework very successfully. We have only FX short position in 76,000,000, as you mentioned, in Q1. This is very important from our perspective, and we are using the limited hedging portfolios or hedging instruments very properly right now. Therefore, we do not see high or significant FX losses, for example, due to our strong position, and we will be keeping it until the end of twenty twenty five. As you know, we have a very successful reissuance of Eurobonds, and I can easily say that it's a very successful reissuance because if we do not do if we did not realize this reissuance in the January side, for example, we our interest rates are around seven point forty five and seven point sixty five for the seven year maturity for the Eurobond side.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

For example, if we did not we did not this issuance, for example, at that date, today, we will be talking very, very high interest rates. This is the signal of balance sheet success of the balance sheet management of the company. Therefore, we are ready for the volatility of the FX side because we have a very strong FX position right now. Yes. We have FX denominated debts in our balance sheet, but we are hedging some in our balance sheet, and

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

we are

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

keeping around 80% of our cash in the FX denominated side. Therefore, these deviations would not affect us very significantly. We will be, for example, we are very successful in the EBITDA level, and we are also successful in the net income level. Most probably in 2025, we will be keeping this performance until the end of the year. We will wait and see the five gs tender is very important from our perspective.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

But we have enough money, enough cash in our hand, and we will wait and see the developments both in the macroeconomic environment and the Turkish economic environment in the how can I say, developments on our sector? And besides the but we are just securing and we

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

are just improving our infrastructure of both fiber and the mobile. Besides that, as a strategic move, we are just investing heavily on the data center business. As you may know, the data center business globally is going to be coming like trillion dollar businesses in the near future. And especially with the cloud businesses, are expecting that this we are currently laying the groundwork of this future of Turkcell. So we believe in the data center business, we believe in the cloud business.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

So we are expecting that with all this infrastructure, they're going to expect higher growth rates, and they're going to have a bigger growth in the near future.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Thank you very much, Timur.

Operator

Ladies

Operator

and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Turkcell management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Ali Taha Koç
Ali Taha Koç
CEO at Turkcell

Thank you very much. See you next quarter. Bye.

Ozlem Yardim
Ozlem Yardim
Investor Relations & Corporate Finance Director at Turkcell

Thanks for joining us.

Kamil Kalyon
Kamil Kalyon
Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell

Have a good weekend. Thank you very much.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a pleasant evening.

Analysts
    • Ozlem Yardim
      Investor Relations & Corporate Finance Director at Turkcell
    • Ali Taha Koç
      CEO at Turkcell
    • Kamil Kalyon
      Chief Financial Officer at Turkcell
    • Madhvendra Singh
      Analyst at HSBC
    • Evgeniya Bystrova
      Vice President at Barclays Investment Bank
    • Ece Mandaci Baysal
      Director at ÜNLÜ & Co
    • Cemal Demirtas
      Head of Research at Ata Invest
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Key Takeaways

  • Turkcell delivered a 12.7% YoY revenue increase to TRY 48 billion, a 19% YoY rise in EBITDA to TRY 21 billion (43.7% margin, highest Q1 in a decade) and a solid net profit of TRY 3.1 billion.
  • The company added 153,000 postpaid and 30,000 fiber customers in Q1, driving postpaid share to 76%, mobile ARPU up 15.9% and residential fiber ARPU up 17.7% with 46% of customers on 100 Mbps+ plans.
  • Strategic segments showed strong momentum: Techwin revenues rose 31%, data center & cloud revenues surged 48%, Digital Business Services revenues grew 23% with a TRY 4.9 billion system integration backlog, and Paycell volumes jumped 47.8% YoY.
  • CapEx stood at a 20.2% of sales ratio, with ~25% allocated to data center expansions (adding 8.4 MW by year-end), ~60% to mobile and fiber infrastructure, and continued investment in 300 MW solar capacity.
  • The balance sheet remains robust with cash rising to TRY 108 billion, net debt/EBITDA at 0.2x, and 87% of cash in hard currency naturally hedging 86% of FX debt, keeping net FX exposure within ±$200 million.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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