Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS

IST:TCELL.E

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q4

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Costantinos, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Turkcell's conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the Turkcell Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Financial Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] And the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Ali Serdar Yagci, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance Director. Mr. Yagci, you may now proceed.

[Ali Yagci, executive]

Thank you, Constantinos. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Turkcell's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 Results Call. Today's speakers are our CEO, Mr. Murat Erkan; and our CFO, Mr. Osman Yilmaz. We have a brief presentation, and after which, we will be taking your questions. Before we start, I would like to kindly remind you to review the last page of this presentation for our safe harbor statement.

Now I'm handing over to Mr. Erkan.

[Murat Erkan, executive]

Thank you, Serdar. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Turkcell's Fourth Quarter and 2021 Results Call, and thank you for joining us. 2021 was still a challenging yet prosperous year for us. The year had started with the COVID-related lockdowns and uncertainty for individuals and businesses. But with the second half, the world emerged from the worst and our daily lives began to normalize.

2 years into the pandemic, even though we talked about normalization, we have been witnessing massive change in our lives, which underline the importance of connectivity and bring forward digitalization in everyday life. As the leader of a digital ecosystem that addresses every need of people and the businesses, we continue to connect, entertain and digitize our customers. Accordingly, with our wide range of solutions and services, we achieved a top line growth of 23.4% for the full year, delivering real growth. All segments contributed to this growth.

In Turkcell Turkey and International, the growth was achieved through gross subscriber base and price increases, whereas techfin segment continued to benefit from accelerating shift to digital payments and Pay Later solutions. Other segments grew on a back of equipment, energy and call center businesses. Our EBITDA grew by 22.4% year-on-year, reaching TRY 15 billion in addition to the strong operational performance, our prudent risk management approach in a highly volatile environment enabled us to print a TRY 5 billion net income, up 19% year-over-year.

We recorded outstanding total subscriber net add of 2.7 million, setting the record of past 14 years. This extended subscriber base is going to be an important asset to monetize in 2022. Having reported ARPU growth of above 13% in mobile, at around 11% in residential fiber, we also delivered strong performance in strategic focus areas as each grew by around 30% year-on-year. Lastly, as you may recall, we initially had a target of adding 500,000 new home passes for fiber, and we further increased it to 600,000 after Q2. I'm glad that we exceeded it by adding 653,000 new home passes in line with our ambition to capitalize on surging demand for fiber.

Overall, the trend is consistent with our plan, and we are reaping the benefits of our well-executed strategy.

Next page. Having accelerated in the last quarter, we delivered our best quarter revenue growth for the year with almost 30%. Consequently, the top line exited TRY 10 billion. Turkcell Turkey's growth was mainly driven by price increases as evidenced by accelerated ARPU growth, reaching 18% in mobile and 13% in residential fiber, as well as net adds made through the year.

International segment further assisted the acceleration in the top line growth due to the FX impact in addition to the organic performance. Our techfin subsidiaries also registered a remarkable performance in Q4, monetizing the strong trend. Driven by exceptional revenue performance as well as the disciplined cost control, our EBITDA reached TRY 4.2 billion, up 30% year-on-year. Despite the high volatile in local market mainly stemming from currency depreciation, we managed to register a bottom line of TRY 1.4 billion. Our mobile subscriber base continued to grow in favor of postpaid with 330,000 additions. Fiber and IPTV business gained momentum with quarterly record net adds of above 70,000 each. We made 127,000 net additions in the quarter despite disconnecting inactive prepaid lines.

Moving to next slide. Now coming to the guidance. 2021 was definitely not an easy year, particularly given the inflationary pressure and the FX volatility. However, we continue to stick with our business model and responded to changing conditions in a timely manner, revising our guidance upward twice. As mentioned in the beginning, the year has started with significant uncertainties surrounding the pandemic, and therefore, we had a rather cautious approach in February.

Increasing vaccination rates and easing of restrictions resulted in higher mobility in the summer period, whereby we increased our guidance upwards in August. Yet with the Q3 results, as we had better visibility for the year-end and inflation continued to ramp up, we revisited our targets. Our diversified revenue base as well as disciplined OpEx and CapEx management helped us beat the revised guidance for the full year.

Next slide. In the mobile market, Turkcell remained the driver of price rationalization amongst the competition. Having made several price increases along the year, we observed competitor follow-up, whereby the market enjoyed rationalization [ of overall. ] This was evident in the mobile number portability market, which registered an all-time low volume since 2009. Indeed, we expect rationalization to continue in 2022 as inflationary pressure keeps threatening to margins. Offering the best value for price, our mobile subscriber base grew more than our expectation, registering a strong net add of 1.7 million postpaid and 503,000 prepaid lines. This outstanding result was supported by an exceptional active summer season and that sourced demand in favor of prepaid segment.

In a clearly increasing trend, our mobile blended ARPU rose 18% as of Q4. Growth was mainly driven by a higher postpaid subscriber base, rising data usage, upsell to higher tariffs and several price adjustments throughout the year. This growth has benefited in particularly from our up-sell focus, where we employed analytical tools to upgrade customers to higher tariffs and sell add-on packages. As such, in the fourth quarter, the incremental that an up-sell postpaid customer pays is 4x that of last year. Driving the data usage, smartphone penetration reached 18%, up 5% year-on-year.

Next slide. The post-pandemic period has clearly shown us that the need for higher connection speed and capacity in fixed broadband market prevails. Increased time spent at home and connectivity requirements of businesses facilitated a good momentum for our fiber business. Indeed, 223,000 net addition to our fiber subscriber base reflects the continued demand on seamless connections. DSL and cable demand has also recovered, adding 34,000 net subscribers. Focus on higher speed package, both in fiber and the DSL base supported ARPU growth of 13% year-on-year.

As we continue to meet the quality needs of our customers, the churn level for the full year decreased to 1.6%, marking the lowest figure for the past decade. Particularly, 1.1% fiber churn indicates a much better position indicating our superior service quality.

Fiber broadband penetration in Turkey below OECD average. And the vast majority of the technology is still running on copper lines. Without a nationwide fiber rollout, seamless transition to the next-generation telephone technologies will be an issue. This offers us a great opportunity to capitalize on and we are keeping up with our fiber expansion plans. Exceeding our target, we have reached 653,000 new homes, adding 5 new cities, and we have 44% take-up rate in fiber, well ahead of the competition.

Next slide. As we close another year with the COVID-19 pandemic still on our minds and in our lives, we remain to be recognized as the best mobile operator by our customers. We were once again named as the fastest mobile operator by a leading global network testing firms, thanks to our large spectrum and well-invested infrastructure. We have fine-tuned our interaction with our customers, leveraging AI and creating a customer-centric approach.

Segment-specific apps allow us to address people's needs by tailoring our services. Accordingly, visit to these app increased 70% year-on-year. Focusing on phygital experience more, our omnichannel approach is offering a seamless shopping experience that enables our customers to reach Turkcell anytime and anywhere they need.

With all of the above, consumers have continued to recommend Turkcell over the competition this quarter, even widening the large gap to the second best.

Next slide. Now it is time for our strategic focus areas. Let's start with the digital services and solutions. The stand-alone revenues from digital services rose 31% year-on-year to TRY 1.7 billion. The stand-alone paid user base reached 4 million, up 1 million from last year.

Increasing fiber rollout has also boosted our TV businesses. The IPTV segment closed the year with 1.1 million subscribers, growing 24% year-on-year. TV+ is the only player that steadily grabbed market share in a pay TV market since the first quarter of 2017. OTT TV also saw 40% year-on-year growth, mainly driven by TV+ subscribers. We had a year of high acquisition and low churn levels, thanks to the best content and big strategy we put forward.

BiP gained a very strong momentum this year, exceeding 9 million (sic) [ 90 million ] downloads. Active users almost tripled year-on-year, with 1/4 of them being international. We are now focusing on global cooperation to increase BiP's international footprint. Lifebox, our cloud-sourced platform, grew by 45%, reaching 1.3 million paid subscribers. We also launched lifebox business to enhance data management of enterprises and provide 3,000 premium license to local businesses.

This year, we also introduced business version of our digital services so as to facilitate digital transformation of the enterprises.

Moving to the next slide. And next comes our digital business services. We continue to pioneer digital transformational businesses in Turkey. This strategy has yielded TRY 2.3 billion in revenues, up 29% year-on-year. Of these revenues, 65% are recurring service revenues, which we particularly focus on. I am proud to share that according to IDC, we became the market leader in domestic IT services, 2 years ahead of the plan. We aim to further increase our competency and strengthen our position as a trusted digital transformation partner of businesses.

In 2021, we supported our customers on their digitalization with contract totaling TRY 1.7 billion, tripling year-on-year. As a result, the backlog from system integration projects increased to TRY 1.4 billion, which is going to contribute to the top line in the upcoming quarters.

This year, we introduced our fourth new generation data center and further cemented our leadership in this business. Data center investment continued to pay off as evidenced by the strong demand in cloud businesses, which rose 79% year-on-year. Throughout the year, we launched new products and services in cybersecurity, IoT and cloud verticals serving a wide range of industrial like health, retail and manufacturing.

Next slide. Lastly, our techfin focus. Our techfin business had a strong quarter with the contribution of both Paycell and Financell with revenue up 27% year-on-year. As Turkey's leading payment platform, Paycell was the main driver of this growth, increasing its revenue 64% year-on-year. We pursue a new growth strategy in order to capture a strong share from the shift to digital on both consumer and merchant fronts. Paycell reached 6.6 million 3-month active user at the year-end, addressing changing payment habits. With a focus on being the preferred partner of merchant, we increased our reach to 17,000 points.

With around 70% of the revenue share, Pay Later is the leading product at Paycell. Users of this product and total volume almost doubled in 2021, and this strong trend is expected to continue, given the surging demand for digital and contactless shopping and payment alternatives. Favorable demographics with a young relatively unbanked and ready to digitize market offers unique opportunity supporting the trend.

Growing 32% year-on-year in the quarter, Financell continued to finance technological needs of various segments, including individuals, SMEs and corporate. We issued nearly 2 million loans with a total value of TRY 4.1 billion in 2021. Yet the potential is much higher as currently we have 12 million credit limit assigned customers.

Next slide. Let me go over our digital channel strategy. We doubled down on digitalization in order to expedite our customer access to our products and services while also increasing our operational efficiency. At the year-end, 22% of Turkcell Turkey customers [ equipment ] sales were generated through digital channels. Worth to note, 1/3 of prepaid revenues are from digital channels where the top-up volumes was 2.5x of the previous year. We had 23 million active digital operator user as of the year end, suggesting a valuable traffic to benefit from. The conversion rate of our digital customers grew by 40% in a year. Responding to the surging online shopping demand, Turkcell's technology marketplace, Pasaj, completed its first steps, closing its first year with 128 million visitors.

Next slide. Now let's take a look at our performance in the international markets. Turkcell International segment grew by 72% year-on-year in the fourth quarter, mainly on rising voice and data demand, plus the positive impact of currency movements. Full year growth was still strong at 48%. Excluding the currency impact, the segment has grown 20% organically in a year.

Lifecell Ukraine continue to lead our international segment with its outstanding performance. The subscriber base grew 14%. ARPU increased 15% year-on-year with the price adjustment and increase in data usage. The top line growth reached 24% in local currency terms and EBITDA margin hit 56% level, placing Lifecell ahead of the competition.

Next slide. Now an update on our e-mobility initiative, electrical vehicle project TOGG. The production facility is almost 80% completed, and the first vehicle is planned to roll out in Q4 this year. We are proud and excited about TOGG's progress as not much left for the launch. On the other hand, TOGG made its world debut at CES 2022, the world's largest consumer electronic show held in Las Vegas, and named among the top 20 brands in the event. E-mobility ecosystem offers several projects such as integration of smart living solution and planned mobility services and creation of a smart charging method. For instance, we are working on an in-vehicle passenger analytic system such as face detection, recognition and emotion analytics. Besides, we are also working on digital wallet infrastructure, where an e-money based payment system, card storage and virtual POS system could be used in various areas ecosystem.

While still conceptual today, we also envisage integration of our entertainment services into electrical vehicles. These solutions are expected to leverage Turkcell's position in the e-mobility services.

Next slide. I would like to touch upon our action on ECG (sic) [ ESG ] front in 2021. We continue taking significant steps towards our sustainability targets, aiming to become carbon neutral by 2050. We acquired a wind power plant with an 18-megawatt capacity meeting power needs of 3,000 base stations. Furthermore, we installed solar panels at our data centers, becoming a clean energy generator as well as consumer. As a socially responsible company, we focus on inclusive social responsibility projects for all, regardless of their age or gender. We are also focused on flexible working opportunities and project aiming to increase the number of women in the Turkcell Group workforce. On the governance side, as a value-oriented company, we, considering human factors and ethical values, will launch our sustainable governance principles, which include human rights and environmental policies.

As a dual-listed company, we take advantage of the cross listing with regards to our internal corporate governance mechanism. Comprehensive compliance program covering areas like anti-bribery or economic sanction are being implemented and report to our Board. Our Board itself also embraces a self-assessment methodology with an objective of continuous improvement of corporate governance process.

Next slide. Now here comes to our full year guidance for 2022. It is obvious that 2022 would be another challenging year given the macro volatility we have been facing locally and globally. Inflation remains at the top of the list to tackle this year.

Our business plan is constructed on the expectation that inflation would moderate through the end of the year. However, we are also cautious on -- given the rapidly changing nature of domestic market. We may therefore need to revise our guidance along the way in light of the macroeconomic progress. Expecting another year with at least 1 million subscriber net adds and with increased focus on pricing, we target a top line growth of around 30%. We aim to generate around TRY 19 billion EBITDA, maintaining our effective cost management approach. With our disciplined CapEx approach, we would rather focus on fiber rollout and expect a CapEx intensity of 20% to 21% over sales.

And next slide. Last but not least, I would like to inform you that we will be hosting a Capital Markets Day in Istanbul on April 20 -- sorry, 12. At the event, we will provide an update on the group strategy, along with our 3-year outlook. I hope to meet you all on that day. Now I will hand over to Osman, our CFO, for the financials.

[Osman Yilmaz, executive]

Thank you very much, Murat. We have left behind an unprecedented year of extreme volatility, particularly in the last quarter. The steep slide in lira's value was followed by a historic rebound as new financial arrangements were unveiled late December. As Turkcell Group, we generated TRY 10 billion top line on 30% growth year-on-year, thanks to our diversified business model, which not only protects us from market volatility but also differentiates us from the competition. Our EBITDA increased by 30% year-on-year to TRY 4.2 billion, resulting in a 41.3% margin.

Our diversified hedging portfolio restrained finance costs to some extent despite the substantial currency depreciation. All in all, we recorded net income of TRY 1.4 billion, thanks to strong operational performance besides the well-managed FX exposure. The bottom line was also supported by deferred tax income as we revalued our properties and assets using domestic PPI, as allowed by the relevant tax law. For the full year, we exceeded TRY 5 billion net income. Lastly, despite having an FX-heavy CapEx profile through focused CapEx spending and front-loaded investments, we concluded the year with an operational CapEx to sales ratio of 21.2%, in line with our guidance. We are pleased with our solid performance in Q4 and for the full year, which exceeded our expectations.

Next slide. Now some details on revenue development. In the fourth quarter, group revenues rose 29% year-on-year, pointing to an incremental rise of TRY 2.3 billion. Of this increase, TRY 1.6 billion comes from Turkcell Turkey, which saw 27% revenue growth. This was possible due to up-sell efforts, acceleration of ARPU growth as a result of price adjustments throughout the year and an expanding subscriber base. Comprising 13% of the Q4 top line, Turkcell International revenues contributed TRY 0.5 billion, mainly on the back of sustained strong results from Ukraine operations and the positive impact of currency movements. In Other segment, the global supply chain disruption impacted equipment sales in the last quarter, although this was compensated for by energy business revenues, which almost tripled on rising consumption and energy prices.

For the full year, group revenues rose 23% year-on-year. Looking at the details, 65% of this growth stems from Turkcell Turkey, contributing TRY 4.4 billion. International subsidiaries contributed incremental TRY 1.2 billion. Our techfin segment made TRY 231 million incremental contribution. This was due to the robust growth dynamics of the Pay Later business. Financell also restarted to generate incremental revenue this year as the contraction in its loan portfolio has ended. Other segment contributed TRY 1 billion, where equipment sales were the main drivers.

Next slide. In the fourth quarter, group EBITDA rose 30% year-on-year to TRY 4.2 billion, driven by a strong top line performance. Increasing 79% year-on-year, Turkcell International also made a strong EBITDA contribution. The 41.3% EBITDA margin was in line with last year. Higher S&M expenses were compensated for by lower equipment sales, an item that normally has a margin-dilutive impact.

For the full year, EBITDA increased by 22% to TRY 15 billion with a margin of 41.8%. Compared to the [ data ] of last year, the EBITDA margin saw a slight contraction in 2021 due to higher equipment sales, particularly in the first 3 quarters and higher OpEx with the increased sales and marketing expenses.

Next slide. Now some highlights from our balance sheet and leverage. As at the end of the year, our gross debt position increased to TRY 36.8 billion from TRY 24.8 billion. Currency depreciation led to around TRY 10 billion increase in total debt.

The consolidated cash position stands at TRY 18.7 million, corresponding to TRY 3.6 billion (sic) [ TRY 6.3 billion ] nominal increase on a quarterly basis. Of this increase, TRY 4.9 billion comes from FX movements and TRY 1.5 billion from organic cash generation. Given the rapid currency depreciation, we concluded the year with a 1.1x net leverage ratio. Excluding the fintech business, this was at 1x. Our net leverage ratio is still far below our long-term target of 1.5x. On average, each 10% depreciation in lira results in a 0.1x increase in our net leverage.

We are comfortable in terms of liquidity with a cash position of around USD 1.4 billion equivalent, mainly in hard currencies, covering our debt service until 2025. We also have committed lines of around USD 506 million in total to be utilized over the next 2 years.

Next slide. Now I'll go into the management of foreign currency risk. We keep the bulk of our cash in FX and also employ hedging instruments as part of our prudent financial risk management approach. At the end of Q4, we had around $2 billion equivalent of FX debt on our balance sheet. In addition to the $1.1 billion equivalent FX-denominated cash, we have $800 million effective hedging portfolio. Effectiveness of the hedging portfolio decreased as the protection level surpassed with significant currency depreciation, yet the portfolio has become less sensitive to FX movements, thanks to the proxy hedge transaction executed.

Overall, we ended up with a short FX position of USD 190 million. This is, however, still within our neutral FX range of plus/minus $200 million. We aim to remain within this range going forward. Our FX position takes into account ineffective part of our hedges. As mentioned, further ineffectiveness is avoided by implementing proxy hedges. We closely monitor the market and proactively use hedging instruments when needed.

Currently, we prefer utilizing the spot market and using short-term instruments like NDFs and futures. We could execute long-term transactions like cross currency swaps or restructure the existing ones when the swap curve and costs become more favorable. On the CapEx side, we will maintain our demand-driven approach. Since we have already heavily invested in our mobile network, we plan to focus on fixed network. This has resulted in a shift in CapEx allocation. Accordingly, this year, we will see a more balanced mobile and fixed interest infrastructure investments of around 45% each. The FX portion of the fixed network investment is relatively lower compared to the mobile network. Accordingly, we expect the FX share in our operational CapEx to decrease from 75% to around 65%.

In the meantime, our advanced payments and arrangements that we have enabled us to fix rates with vendors will support CapEx-related cash flow against any rises in FX levels for this year.

Next slide. Now let's take a closer look at our fintech company's performance. And first, Financell. In Q4, Financell's revenues were up 32% on a higher average interest rate on the portfolio versus last year and also a rise in insurance business revenues. Note that 81% of the loans granted by Financell over the last past year is covered by an insurance product.

EBITDA grew 34% to TRY 129 million, indicating a margin of 68%. Yearly margin improvement of 1.4 percentage points is due mainly to the sale of doubtful receivables. This also enabled us to keep the cost of risk at a very healthy level of 0.4%, which is a record low for the company.

The bottom line rose by 79% to TRY 110 million, driven mainly by a strong operational performance and lower FX loss after hedging.

Next slide. Lastly, I would like to conclude my part with the remarkable performance of Paycell in 2021. Paycell has been pursuing an exciting and clear vision of digitizing the payment habits of customers and pandemic has accelerated this implementation. The rapid growth of the digital payment ecosystem and surge in e-commerce has triggered a hype in alternative payments as well. Paycell's super app developed with this vision exceeded 14 million downloads. Reaching 6.6 million customers and available at over 17,000 merchants, Paycell's annual revenue growth was a robust 65%. This year, mobile payment solution Pay Later remained the key driver of the growth where it nearly doubled its users to 4.1 million. We expect Pay Later to sustain its momentum with the new key account arrangements. Paycell Card, a secure prepaid card accepted anywhere, is yet another well-performing vertical. Total card transaction volume rose to sevenfold in Q4 year-on-year. Annual transaction volume of POS solutions surged to TRY 1.6 billion (sic) [ TRY 1.1 billion ], mostly driven by virtual POS transactions in its first year of initiation. This concludes my presentation. We can now open the line for your questions. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

The first question is from the line of Kim, Ivan with Xtellus Capital.

[Ivan Kim, analyst]

Two questions from my side, please. Firstly, on free cash flow. So your 2021 growth looks quite impressive. And yet the company managed to generate only a little over TRY 1 billion in free cash flow, which is 3% margin to revenue. What is the path toward structurally increasing that? And do you expect a significant jump in free cash flow in '22?

That's the first question. The second question on CapEx. It is interesting to see that your capital intensity expectations do not change despite such a steep drop in lira. So I was just wondering, I do think that your mobile network is quite well-invested. But are you at all concerned that slower network rollout in physical terms would allow competition to catch up with you, especially as some of your competitors keep CapEx pretty high this year?

[Murat Erkan, executive]

Regarding free cash flow, our CFO, Osman will answer the question, and then I can go through the capital side as well, CapEx side.

[Osman Yilmaz, executive]

Actually well, actually 2021 was an exceptional year for free cash flow generation, given the fact that we front-loaded our mobile investments and at the same time, we intensively shifted our focus for penetrating our fixed broadband home passes. And throughout the year, we have invested in more than 650,000 home passes, which is record high in the company's history. And these two factors, coupled with an unprecedented lira depreciation. So all in all, our free cash flow generation capacity has declined in the second half.

And also, 2021 was another record year for customer acquisition. We have added more than 2.5 million customers throughout the year, which increased our subscriber acquisition costs, 90% of which is capitalized under IFRS 15, which also increased our overall CapEx figure. Going forward, in 2022, our CapEx need, especially for the mobile part will definitely be lower. And thanks to the front-loaded investment that we made, especially in the first half of 2021, we'll have more comfortable year in terms of mobile network investments. But on the other hand, we will continue to focus on increasing our footprint in fiber business. We are targeting another 1 million home passes investment this year.

But fixed business is relatively more dependent on FX moves. On one hand, we have 70% of FX share in mobile network investments, but fixed is 50% FX intensive business. So we'll have relatively more comfortable position in free cash flow generation in 2022. Also there, we will see incremental contribution from 2.5 million subscribers that we gained throughout last year. And we are expecting a higher free cash flow yield in 2022 despite a more challenging macroeconomic environment and uncertain environment outlook for the lira.

[Murat Erkan, executive]

Maybe I can add on the CapEx side. Since Osman already mentioned the CapEx side -- this is, as Osman mentioned, I would like to highlight that FX intensity in fixed investment is lower than compared to mobile. So for the 2022, the fixed investment would be higher than the mobile side. Overall, we will be more focused on the CapEx management. We have a dedicated company-wide CapEx planning project, which is driven by analytical models. The data collected from different functions and the company enable us to allocate the right budget to the right project and to the right location.

So we align our capabilities, and we strongly believe that we can manage the CapEx as we promised on the guidance level.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Kennedy-Good, Jonathan with JPMorgan.

[Jonathan Kennedy-Good, analyst]

Just two for me, please. Can you give us some sense of what the price increases that you put through on mobile are like on a mixed or blended basis so far and whether you can increase pricing as you need to, given the very high inflationary environment? Just trying to understand whether we could see price increases come through back end of the year as well.

And then I noticed you spoke about reevaluating -- revaluing your property, plant and equipment, which led to a deferred tax credit. I was just wondering if that ultimately will lead to lower cash taxes in future and whether you will continue to revalue these buildings in the quarters ahead.

[Murat Erkan, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Jonathan. First of all, as the leading telecom operator, our aim, and we managed so far through high inflationary environment, is to adjust our price in a timely manner. So this also gives our competitors an opportunity to adjust their prices and leads to more rational market. Accordingly, we have already started to adjust our prices in December. In addition to previous price adjustment that we had made in 2021, we saw these price adjustments were followed by the competition in a short period of time.

Therefore, I can confidently say that we do have able to reflect higher inflation to our prices. However, please also bear in mind that 90% of our postpaid subscribers are contracted. Therefore, price adjustment will have a gradual impact on the ARPU level. But when the inflation starts going down, we will continue to increase our ARPU level. So in a midterm level, we will be even with the inflation with the ARPU level as well. So the good thing is, we already add 2.7 million subscribers last year. So we will benefit this subscriber as an incremental growth opportunity in 2022. So inflationary pricing is our strategy. We would like to stick to that one. We increased our price last August. We also increased our price in December -- so we are increasing our price this month as well.

So I think we will keep, hopefully, inflation will start going down mid -- from May, June time frame. And then we're going to continue to keep this level in the right time, in the right way as well.

For the second question, I think Osman, our CFO, can take care of it. So Osman?

[Osman Yilmaz, executive]

Actually, companies like Turkcell were in a disadvantageous position as we invest -- we do our CapEx investments in hard currency, but our earnings in lira and the sharp depreciation in lira created mismatches on our balance sheet. The new tax amendment allowed us to bring our assets, our capital expenditures, to -- this amendment let us bring those investments to their fair value. And so far, we have revalued a significant part of our fixed assets benefiting from this amendment. Going forward, we can again revalue our assets if the inflation continues to inch higher. The amendment allows companies to revalue their assets based on PPI. So if the inflation accelerates further, we might consider further readjustments in the second half of the year maybe.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is a follow-up question from the line of Kennedy-Good, Jonathan with JPMorgan.

[Jonathan Kennedy-Good, analyst]

Just one final question for me. On the electric vehicle, if I recall correctly, you've got a 19% stake there. Are there certain commitments to capitalize that business going forward? Or how does the capital requirements or the EV business affect Turkcell?

[Murat Erkan, executive]

Thank you. First of all, it is 23%. Our share in the company, electrical vehicle company. And our commitment, as far as I remember, like EUR 100 million -- and it's not immediate capital. It's based on the years.

[Osman Yilmaz, executive]

Almost 1/3 is already paid as capital in the company. And we will make additional capital increases this year and next year.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Demirak, Kayahan with AK Investment.

[Kayahan Demirak, analyst]

I have a few of them. First of all, could you maybe give us a direction for the nonoperational CapEx? I mean in terms of [ assets sales ] or [indiscernible] as you see that the next year?

I also -- just to confirm that you said in the presentation that you'd like to maintain the current level of short FX position. And also in terms of the growth, where do you see the [ demand for ] international growth? [ I'm just asking to separate them. ]

Also, the margins are I think quite strong, given the strong OpEx base, inflationary environment and also rising energy costs. So how do you plan to mitigate those impacts in terms of profitability?

And finally, I mean, high inflation, very high in Turkey persists. Would you be considering changing your length of your subscription terms from 12, 14 months to maybe some shorter terms or maybe you add up some more dynamic pricing when it comes to your [indiscernible] spending?

[Murat Erkan, executive]

Thank you very much. Let's go one by one. First of all, regarding nonoperational part of our CapEx. It's mainly includes capitalized expenses as a part of IFRS 15 and 16 implementation. As IFRS 15, we capitalized our subscriber acquisition cost. A significant portion of our subscriber acquisition cost is related to revenue generation. And as you remember, during 2021, we add significant amount of customer, 2.7 million. Obviously, we hope to see another 2.7 million, but our target is around 1 million subscribers, which means our nonoperational CapEx will decrease. And in terms of the percentage versus revenue, it is around 5%.

It's going to be lower during 2022. Maintaining current FX position. The second question, I mean, maybe Osman can comment on that, but it is really difficult to forecast as of today. But Osman?

[Osman Yilmaz, executive]

Yes. As I tried to highlight during the presentation, we have seen some surge in our open FX position in Q4. Before Q4, we had slightly FX long position. But as of Q4, we have a slight FX short position. And it was totally a result of our -- result of ineffectiveness of our hedging portfolio. We reflect the ineffective part of our portfolio into our FX position, that is why it went into a negative territory. And going forward, I can comfortably say that further ineffectiveness is mostly avoided by executing proxy hedges to long-term cross currency swap transactions. And we have mitigated further ineffectiveness by executing this transaction. It was very important.

It is very difficult to manage FX nowadays because cost of hedging has significantly increased. Hedging 5-year liability costs about 30%, including the credit costs. So we'd rather use a relatively short-term product like NDFs, futures. And we try to accumulate spot FX as markets -- depending on market conditions, because there is not much liquidity going in the market. And going forward, we -- our aim is to maintain our FX position to keep it between plus/minus USD 200 million. That's a neutral zone for us. And we won't let our FX position widen above USD 200 million in terms of FX short position. And in the worst case, where currency depreciates further like 10%, 20%, we are -- we will not see any increasing FX position due to ineffectiveness of the hedging portfolio.

[Murat Erkan, executive]

Okay. Regarding international guidance, obviously, our international front, we target to maintain our strong organic growth performance by focusing on growing data and digital services. As you can -- as you know, our biggest portion of international business, coming from Ukraine. And for the existing tension between Ukraine and Russia, it is very difficult to make any comment at this stage.

But we have quite strong base in Ukraine because of the last year. We invested well, and we already get paid and return from the Ukraine side in terms of local currency, in terms of number of subscribers -- obviously, in terms of our currency as well. So potential is there. We hope -- we closely monitor the situation, the tension. We hope to see diplomatic solution over there. So for our international -- as an under normal condition, it's quite strong. But between the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, we're closely following that situation as well.

Regarding margins, maybe Osman can add a comment on this side. But it is -- I mean these are fact, the energy prices and inflationary pressures and wages. We would like to reflect this prices -- reflect this to our service prices. And so far, we manage this, but I don't know, Osman can add additional comment.

[Osman Yilmaz, executive]

Actually, maybe we can answer both questions about margins and about contract terms together. As you know, our business -- as the nature of our business, we do contracts with our customers. And in mobile, it is typically 12 month. And in fixed segment, it is 24 months. Unfortunately, it's not much possible to reduce contract terms from 24 to 12 in fixed because customer acquisition costs is very high in fixed segment. We invest a lot to acquire a customer, which this includes modem cost, installment costs, sales commissions, et cetera.

So if you do 12-month contracts and the customer churns, it becomes very costly for us. So we continue to implement 24 months. But for retention tariffs, we have shortened contract terms from 24 to 12. Not for the acquisition. But for retention, we have already shortened contract periods. And this mainly aims to mitigate inflationary pressures.

By the way, energy price and inflationary prices, that's not just the concern of 2022. We have been -- we have strongly been focusing on these two factors since last year and our efforts towards generating more power from renewable resources. We acquired a wind plant, which generates about 5% of our total energy need. In addition to that, we have increased our focus on increasing efficiency of our energy consumption, not only in our network, but also in our data centers and headquarters.

So far, we have achieved about 7% savings on our energy consumption, and we will continue to do more efficiency works in this year. Wages are also another inflationary pressure on us because globally, there is a positive real wage phenomenon. Every technology company faces this threat. But we see this as long-term investments. We will continue to invest in our people. And that's the key factor that differentiates us from the sector and from other telecom operators because we are not a regular telco company.

We have different verticals, including digital services, fintech, we focus on e-mobility, enterprise business. So our main capital in this business is human capital so we don't see it as an expense. We see it as an investment and sacrificing from other capital investments. We will never give up on investing on our people. In the first half, we will see these headwinds from energy prices and real wage growth since our contract repricing still take effect in time -- over time, about 6 to 12 months. But in the second half of the year, as the repricing takes into effect, we will see better margins going forward. And if this inflation starts in second half and extends towards 2023, we will -- we can see even higher margins that we achieved last year.

[Kayahan Demirak, analyst]

And as a final question, I mean, I know you're going to have a Capital Markets Day very shortly. But for the -- in terms of lower CapEx intensity in the medium term, maybe in the next couple of years, do you see this 20% to 21% as of sales level sustainable? I mean excluding TOGG, 5G and other stuff. Maybe you can just comment on that?

[Osman Yilmaz, executive]

Yes. To be honest that, we don't want to keep that level, but this is a kind of temporary situation due to the FX increase at the end of the last -- last quarter or last year quarters. So probably, we're going to have 20% to 21% level this year, and then we'll see a slight decrease coming years as well. We don't want to continue with this level anyway.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

The next question is from the line of Annenkov Evgeny with Bank of America.

[Evgeny Annenkov, analyst]

I have just one question. Sorry, it's again about 2023 and midterm outlook. Your peer has mentioned recently that given contract maturity mix and timing of price increases, they can actually see revenue growth accelerating in 2023 versus 2022. Do you think that conceptually, it would be possible for you to achieve over 30% growth next year?

[Murat Erkan, executive]

First of all, we are in a leading position on this aspect. We started to increase our prices earlier than our peer group. So we don't expect that further catch-up. We would like to see this catch-up in the second half this -- half of this year.

[Osman Yilmaz, executive]

Actually, this is the reason why our guidance differentiates from our competitors. Our guidance is like -- in terms of revenue growth, our guidance is 6 percentage points higher than competition. And that's mainly as a result of our robust subscriber growth and timely price adjustments later next -- last year.

[Evgeny Annenkov, analyst]

So for now you are saying that you might pass your growth peak already reach here -- reached already this year?

[Murat Erkan, executive]

Yes. At the second half of this year.

[Osman Yilmaz, executive]

Second half, we can see acceleration due to repricing.

[Murat Erkan, executive]

By the way, our acceleration already started in Q4 last year, so which -- because we took action on August, starting from August. So that's why our confidence is in the second half of 2022 will be higher. But obviously, our expectation for the inflation will start decreasing in the second half of the year as well.

[Operator]

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

[Murat Erkan, executive]

First of all, thank you very much for joining us today. And I hope to meet you at -- all at our Capital Market Day event in Istanbul on 12th of April and have a good day for everyone. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

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