Cyfrowy Polsat SA

WSE:CPS

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the second quarter 2022 results call of Polsat Group. The results will be presented by Mr. Miroslaw Blaszczyk, CEO; Mr. Maciej Stec, Vice President, Responsibility for Strategy and the New Business; Kacha Ostap-Tomann, CFO; and Mr. Stanislaw Janowski, President of T Polsat. After the presentation, we will hold a Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Mr. Blaszczyk, the floor is yours.

[Miroslaw Blaszczyk, executive]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. As usual, our agenda has 4 points. I will open the presentation by discussing the key events of the second quarter. And Staszek and Maciej will talk about the operating results of our business segments, while Kacha will present our financial results for the quarter. After a short summary, we will proceed to the Q&A session.

Let's begin with the most important event. Quite a lot happened in the second quarter of 2022. First of all, we have finalized the acquisition of Port Praski, a unique real estate development project located in the strict center of Warsaw. We have also signed a joint venture agreement with experience into European real estate development company, HB Reavis and together, we want to construct office buildings in Port Praski. We are also working hard to implement our new strategy in the field of clean energy as fast as possible. To this end, we've acquired a wind farm project located in Czluchów in Northern Poland.

33 wind turbines will operate on it with total power of 72.6 megawatts. This new wind farm brings the scale of already initiated wind projects up to over 140 megawatts, more than half of our strategic target. What is more, Polsat Plus Group and ZE PAK have developed from scratch the Polish hydrogen-powered bus, the NesoBus. Our bus received European type approval and had its official market launch this quarter.

We have also begun the construction of a bus manufacturing plant in Swidnik. In our TMT business, we have extended our cooperation with Volleyball World for the next 10 years. Volleyball has always been an important part of our offer and our long-term social contribution. We have gained TV broadcasting rights to international men's and women's tournament, especially the World Championships.

Also, we are the only Polish operator offering Disney+ productions, which included content of the highest quality. Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, National Geographic and Star. Last but not least, the General Meeting of Cyfrowy Polsat decided to payout PLN 661 million in dividends, which means PLN 1.2 per share. Moving on, let's take a look at the operating results of our group. Staszek. Please go ahead.

[Stanislaw Janowski, executive]

Thank you, Mirek. I will discuss our performance in the Media segment, TV and online. First, the online. As you can see, thanks to the acquisition of Interia. We are a strong #3 player on the Polish online market, and we continue to grow steadily in the segment. In Q2, on average, 21 million real users visited our website and application each month, and we recorded a monthly average of over 2 billion page views. These are very good results, and we will work to build and strengthen our position on the market of the Internet portals both in terms of content and advertising.

I'm very pleased with a rate of growth of our online revenues, which continued to increase at a healthy double-digit rate since the acquisition of Interia 2 years ago. Just to remind you, our promise was to double EBITDA of Interia in few years from acquisition, and we are well on track to deliver it.

On the next 2 slides, we have the performance of our TV business. In Q2, our main channel, Polsat, shared a leading position with 7.7 of audience shares. As for our thematic channels, we recorded a viewership of 15.1%. As a result, the total audience share of Polsat Plus Group was 22.8%. And as you can see, was a little lower year-on-year, but in line with our long-term strategic target.

The key driver behind this change was the compulsory switch to the new digital terrestrial signal, DVB-T2. Many Polish households are not ready yet technologically to receive in the new standard, but commercial broadcasters were first to use the new standard, while the public broadcaster was allowed to continue using the old DVB-T standard until next year.

Despite slightly lower viewership figures in Q2 compared to a year ago, our position in the advertising market remains very strong. The broad market declined by 3.3% year-on-year, while we maintained stable advertising revenues. As a result of our strong operating performance in Q2, our share in the TV ad market grew to 28.6%.

Turning to our performance in the first half of 2022. Our main channel was a clear leader in the commercial group with an audience share of 8%, while our portfolio of thematic channels gained a total of 15%. Consequently, our TV channels had 23% of audience shares. Again, in line with our strategic goal.

As for our position on the advertising market in the first half of the year, as you can see, we have maintained a stable stream of advertising revenues on a declining market. As a result, our share in the TV advertising and sponsorship market grew to the level of 28.5%. To sum up my part of the presentation, I'm very pleased with the operating performance of our group in the Media segment despite the headwind from the refarming of the digital terrestrial broadcasting signal.

I'm also very happy with the why Interia is progressing. That would be all from me. Thank you very much for your attention, and I shall pass the floor to Maciej.

[Maciej Stec, executive]

Hello, everybody, and welcome. I will show you how Polsat Plus Group performed in the B2C and B2B services segment. Despite all the new things that we have been going on in our group, we remain focused on our multiplay strategy. Thanks to the consistent execution of our strategy, which have increased our multiplay customer base by 45,000 over the past year. And today, almost 2.5 million customers use our multiplay offer.

The number of RGUs have increased to almost 7.4 million services. One of our key KPIs is the level of churn, as you know. We continue to record historically low levels in this respect, only 6.8% in the second quarter of 2022. This demonstrates that we have a loyal and satisfied customer base, something that is particularly important today in terms of economic uncertainty and extremely high inflation.

We steadily increased the number of contract services sold to B2C customers. As you can see on this slide, the number of contract RGUs that we provide increased by 161,000 year-on-year to almost 13.4 million services. Mobile telephony remains the main driver behind this growth and is the result of successfully upselling and cross-selling services to an individual client and also ensuring a high level of customer satisfaction.

The positive effect of the acquisition of Premium Mobile is still visible this quarter. The most important issue for us and the key point of our multiplay strategy is to build customer value. On this slide, you will see that in Q2, we were able to achieve further growth of our ARPU. We increased the level of ARPU by PLN 2.4 or 3.5% year-on-year to PLN 70.2. This is the direct effect of the execution of our strategy centered around building customer value.

The popularization and increasing uptake of 5G tariffs among our customers is also a factor that positively contributes to ARPU growth. Let me just remind you that we continue to be the only operator in Poland to offer real 5G based on dedicated frequencies with maximum speed up to 600 megabits per second.

Already, 19 million people in Poland live within the footprint of our 5G network. The increasing ratio of RGU saturation per customer reflects the successful upselling of products and services to our customers within the framework of our multiplay strategy.

As you can see on the slide, in Q2 of 2022, each of our customers had on average 2.23 services from our portfolio. I'm extremely happy with the operating performance in the prepaid segment in Q2 2022. As you can see on the slide, the scale of our prepaid base and ARPU generated on the services are in a growing trend.

At the end of second quarter of this year, we provided nearly 2.8 million prepaid services. The scale of our prepaid segment RGU base remains under the positive effect of the support that we provided to Ukranian refugees in the form of 3 starter packs. The effects of our value-oriented strategy are easier to notice in the prepaid segment because it reacts to offer changes almost immediately.

ARPU in the prepaid segment increased by 8.7% to PLN 17.4 in the second quarter. The main drivers behind this trend are changes that we have made in our mobile and TV offering. Please remember that last year, we repositioned upwards our online streaming service in terms of pricing and changed the model to fully subscription-based.

Also, we observed that our customers of prepaid mobile services tends to prefer more and more packaged solutions over pay-as-you-go. As for the subsegment of B2B, it's clear from this slide that this is a very stable part of our business. We have a high stable base of about 69,000 B2B customers, and we have a stable stream of revenue from it based on the ARPU of about PLN 1,400.

Let me briefly summarize the results of B2C and B2B services segment before I move on to discussing our performance in our new branch of business, clean energy. Invariably, we focus on and implement with success our multiplay value-oriented strategy, which is reflected in our operating results. We have almost 2.5 million loyal multiplay customers. We provide almost 13.4 million of contract services. ARPU exceeded PLN 70 in the B2C subsegment and grew to PLN 17.4 in the prepaid segment. Most of all, we have a consistently low level of churn, which I'm very proud of, only 6.8%.

Okay. Let's move on the third pillar of our business, which we have introduced into our strategy last December, Clean Energy. As a quick reminder, in the Clean Energy segment, we have set 2 strategy goals. The first is that together with ZE PAK we want to become the leading producer of clean, green energy. This slide shows a quick overview of our specific targets within this goal. 100 megawatts from biomass. We have already achieved this target. 600 megawatts of solar power. Our 70-megawatt solar power plant in Brudzew is fully operational, and we are working on new solar projects as we speak. 250 megawatts on onshore wind power despite the fact that regulations hindering the development of wind farms in Poland are still in place.

We are quickly moving forward to acquisitions and development of several onshore wind farms. 2 installations of thermal waste treatment. We are looking at 2, 3 potential locations, and we will strongly support ZE PAK and Orsted in their attempts to procure licenses for the construction of offshore wind farms in the Baltic Sea. And finally, we are actively analyzing and following the development related to small modular reactors.

Our second strategy goal is that together with ZE PAK we want to become the leading producer of green hydrogen in Poland. I think making rapid progress to achieve this goal is vitally important today from the perspective of energy security.

Within this goal, we want to create a full and complete value chain based on green hydrogen, consisting of the production of green hydrogen, its storage, transportation and distribution. And finally, the supply of end-user products powered by green hydrogen. So in order to do this, first, we need clean energy sources to produce the green hydrogen.

Our aim is to build electrolysis plants of 100 megawatts in total with the capacity to produce 40 tons of green hydrogen per day. Once the hydrogen is produced, it needs to be stored and transported, and we are already testing the first hydrogen trailer capable of carrying more than 1,000 kilograms of hydrogen.

As for distribution, we uphold our declaration that we want to construct 30 refueling stations country-wide. We are waiting for a building for our Warsaw station, and we are applying for funding from the national fund and environmental protection and water management for the construction of another 5, 6 stations.

In terms of end user devices, we have designed and built a Polish hydrogen powered bus, which is already being tested in several cities in Poland and we are working on the construction of a manufacturing plant. And as you know very well, our company league already has 100 hydrogen-powered cars, which are being used by our employees.

On this slide, I wanted to show you the dynamic progress we are making in the implementation of our strategy in the area of clean energy. I'm really proud of it. So this is a very nice slide. First of all, I wanted to share some operational details on our photovoltaic farm in Brudzew, the largest solar power plant in Poland. Only in the first half of this year, this plant produced 43-gigawatt hours of clean energy exceeding our expectations. Actually, this energy had a positive effect on our business this quarter, as I'm sure Kacha will tell you in a few minutes.

We are strongly focused on the development of onshore wind farms. And like I said before, despite unfavorable regulations, we have doubled the scale of initiated investment in this area. We have acquired an onshore wind project in Czluchów which is located in the northern part of Poland, where wind conditions are very good.

This is going to be a huge farm, 33 turbines with total power of 72.6 megawatts. At present, we are constructing wind farms that we have a total capacity of over 140 megawatts. This is more than half of our strategy goal in this area, and I'm very happy with the pace at which these projects are progressing.

We are also very proud of our hydrogen powered bus, the NesoBus. In Polish, Neso stands for the first letters in the phrase. I don't emit exhaust fumes, I purify air. The Neso received an EU type approval and was already tested on the streets of several large cities; Gdansk, Gdynia, Wroclaw and Konin. We got a lot of very encouraging positive feedback from authorities in those cities saying that this is a very promising high-quality ecological means of transportation based on the Polish product.

So that makes me really happy. Given the success of the Neso bus, we decided to go forward with the construction of a bus manufacturing plant. To this end, we concluded an agreement with Mostostal Pulawy who will begin the construction of this factory in September of this year in Swidnik. The factory is expected to be ready in the mid of next year, and we'll have the capacity to produce over 100 hydrogen-powered buses per year.

We are also very excited because our first 2.5 megawatt electrolyzers is ready for shipment in Belgium and we expect it to arrive in Konin at the beginning of September. This means that soon, we will be able to start producing green hydrogen by ourselves. What's more, we have already received a special hydrogen trailer with the capacity to carry more than 1,000 kilograms of hydrogen. This is a very important step because it helps us link the different elements of the hydrogen value chain. And I hope that it will help us launch the various elements of this change simultaneously in the third and fourth quarter of this year.

I would also like to say that our hydrogen project is one of the biggest in Europe in terms of scope and complexity. The old saying goes that the picture is worth 100 words. So on the next few slides, I wanted to show you how we execute our Strategy 2023+ in the clean energy and green hydrogen segment using images.

So in the upper left corner, you can see the foundations for a wind turbine in Miloslaw and in the upper right corner is the second biomass energy block located in Konin, very nice block. This energy block has been reconstructed from a lignite installation. And today, it operates as a cogeneration unit, which means that it produces both electricity and heat.

The biomass unit is also significantly more efficient with more than 60% efficiency compared to approximately 35% before. Another important advantage of biomass is that this is a stable source of energy. The lower left picture shows a hydrogen compressor and our 2.5 megawatt mobile electrolyzer, while on the lower right picture, you can see the hydrogen trailer with more than 1,000 kilogram capacity that I have already told you about.

On this slide, you can see the platform plans and prototype of our hydrogen bus to the real thing. We are very proud of this project. The NesoBus was created by a team of experts from ZE PAK and Polsat Plus Group and exterior and interior design was prepared by Italian component, Torino design. We built this phenomenal bus from the scratch in only 1.5 years.

The NesoBus had its official debut in May of this year when we presented it for the first time to the public. Like I said, it has an EU type approval, and it has been tested over the several past months in various cities across Poland and we've got excellent reviews, particularly expressed by common people, real users, just passengers.

Let me sum up quickly our activities in the area of clean energy production. We consistently and rapidly execute our Strategy 2023+ in this business segment. Our solar power plant in Brudzew has exceptional operating results. We are rapidly developing onshore wind projects with total capacity of 140 megawatts.

In the area of green hydrogen, we already have all elements necessary to start building the complete value chain of an economy based on green hydrogen. I think the pace of execution of our strategy is very impressive. Please remember that we announced the new strategy in December last year, barely 9 months ago and look at how far we've come since then.

Okay. I could go on and on but let me stop here, and pass the floor to Kacha for the presentation of our financial results. Thank you.

[Katarzyna Ostap-Tomann, executive]

Thank you, Maciej. Good afternoon, everyone. Let's see how our operating results are reflected in our financials. I'm happy to say that after a slightly weaker Q1, we noticeably improved our financial performance. We recorded very high growth dynamics of revenue, which is the effect of our strategy of building customer value and growing RPU, as Maciej underlined many times as well as excellent sales of smartphones excluding the impact of regulatory MTR/FTR accounts. Revenue increased by almost 6% to over PLN 3.2 billion.

In Q2, adjusted EBITDA decreased by 5.9% to PLN 893 million. As you can see, we were able to limit the negative impact of several external factors, both by improving revenue generation and by adjusting the cost side. In particular, the green annuity produced for our needs by the Brudzew solar power plant, 43 gigawatt hours in the first half of 2022 helped mitigate partly the negative impact of persisting exorbitant prices of electricity.

Despite fast-growing local interest rates, we continue to generate strong, healthy cash flows. In Q2, LTM free cash flow amounted to PLN 1.34 billion. Even though it is 7% lower year-on-year, I still find it very strong in certain unstable macroeconomic situation and given the scale and tempo of power investments in the green energy segment.

Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio increased to 1.39x in the second quarter, also on the back of our investments in the clean energy and green hydrogen production as well as the settlement of some anticipated one-off payments. Let's take a closer look at change drivers of revenue and EBITDA.

In terms of revenue, all our business segments contributed positively to growth in Q2. In the B2C and B2B segment, revenue growth continues to be subdued by interconnect rate cuts, but this impact should be less pronounced in the coming quarters.

Our Media segment revenue grew through strong performance the online business as well as growing wholesale of our content to other parties. You will also notice that following the acquisition of Port Praski in April, we have carved out a new segment in our reporting, the Real Estate segment.

We generated a healthy top line, mainly on the sale and trend of real estate. Nevertheless, we continue to note inflationary pressure on OpEx, which translates into a lower EBITDA despite growing revenue. The biggest pressure on the bottom line came from our Media segment and resulted from our decision to maintain a high level of quality and attractiveness of our content despite a weaker than initially anticipated TV advertising market. We also see strong negative pressure for energy prices. But this exposure has already been partly mitigated by our own production of green solar energy in Brudzew.

Turning to cash flow. I'm very pleased with the level of generated free cash flow this quarter, especially since we are experiencing macroeconomic headwinds, in particular, inflationary pressure on OpEx and growing interest cost. Notably, free cash flow in Q2 2022 was much higher than in Q2 2021, contrary to what might have been expected.

Please also note that we are 12 months after the disposal of our active and passive infrastructure to [ Cellnex ]. Our core assumption and promise given to you a year ago was that we will convert into a CapEx-light TMT company, and thus, the divestment will not impact our capacity of generating a strong recurring cash flow.

I believe the results we continue to report confirm that the commitment was delivered. On this slide, I will analyze in greater detail our full cash flow in the first half of the year. Firstly, I would like to flag that the CapEx to revenue ratio that you see in the third column of this graph includes some capital expenditures related to real estate business and some hydrogen-related purchases.

After the sale of our infrastructure, I guided for a ratio of circa 7% to 7.5%. And in fact, that is the case for our TMT business. The ratio of 9.4% that you see on this slide is a blended ratio for the whole new group. In the first half of the year, we have finalized a series of acquisitions for a total of almost PLN 730 million.

The most important was, of course, Port Praski. But we also acquired 2 minor TMT enterprises through Netia and the remaining stake in [indiscernible] responsible for the indication services in our growth. In connection with the pending finalization of the acquisition of green energy assets, we have already acquired a stake and increased the share capital in the company, [indiscernible], an entity responsible for energy production from biomass.

Granted loans amounted to PLN 426 million in the first half of the year, net of loans repaid. As you know, the planned acquisition of the 67% stake in PAK-PCE is still pending. Nevertheless, we support the new investment in renewable energy sources concentrated in PAK-PCE by granted loans and guarantees, and this is our way of accelerating the execution of our strategy in the Clean Energy segment.

Onetime factor that had a significant impact on our cash flow this quarter was the settlement of the tax on the gain related to the disposal of our mobile infrastructure. The tax amounted to PLN 868 million. We repaid debts both under our SFA and the debt of newly acquired companies in the amount of PLN 638 million. And finally, our own share buyback program consumed PLN 340 million.

As a result of the outflows that I have just discussed, cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period reached the level of just above PLN 1 billion. This drop in cash carries over to leverage. As you can see on this slide, our net leverage increased to the lever of 1.39x net debt-to-EBITDA. I expect this level to increase noticeably in coming quarters on the back of our investments related to clean energy as well as finding positive EBITDA post.

Debt service costs have further increased since our last meeting. Based on our last readings of local interest rates, our average weighted cost of debt is 8.9%. Please remember that although this factor remains outside of our control, circa 30% of our interest rate exposure is favorably hedged. The good news is that local interest rate seems to have stabilized recently.

The debt structure and maturity profile of our debt remains unchanged. This brings me to the end of my part. I think that in terms of financials, this was a very good quarter. We boosted our revenue and stabilized our EBITDA through partial mitigation of the negative impact of several external factors.

Strong recurring cash flows allow us to continue building our business, both in the old TMT lag and the new clean energy lag. And I believe that today's investments in clean energy and green hydrogen will shape the future of Polsat Plus Group. Thank you very much, Mirek, over to you.

[Miroslaw Blaszczyk, executive]

Thank you, Kacha, Staszek and Maciej. Let me quickly summarize the operating and financial performance of our group this quarter. We continue to implement our multiplay strategy as these positive effects are clearly visible in our results. We have record low levels of churn, only 6.8% and our ARPU remains in a growing trend, PLN 70.2. As a result, we experienced stable and recurring growth in retail revenue.

We executed our Strategy 2023+ in the areas of clean energy and green hydrogen very dynamically. We have contracted over 140 megawatts of onshore wind power, and we are building a hydrogen bus factory. At the same time, we are actively promoting our NesoBus in various Polish cities.

Following the acquisition of Port Praski, we have entered into a cooperation with HB Reavis, a real estate developer, engage in the construction of the highest office buildings in Europe. Our sound financial results enable us to pay out PLN 661 million to our shareholders in dividends, PLN 1.2 per share, the same as last year.

Our Strategy 2023+ answer the challenges of a dynamically changing economic environment and our customers' needs and also support the stable and planned development of our business.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's presentation, and we can move onto Q&A session. Thank you very much for your attention.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Nora Nagy from Erste.

The first question comes us. On a quarterly basis, energy prices were under control in the second quarter 2022. When shall we expect a bigger positive impact of the natural hedge of clean energy investments?

[Katarzyna Ostap-Tomann, executive]

Well, at the moment, in the second quarter, we rely on the Brudzew solar power plant for the hedging of our energy costs. Please remember that photovoltaic farm is a seasonal source of energy. So it depends on the level of sunshine. This will be also offsetting the risk and cost in Q3. But in Q4, I wouldn't expect much of the positive impact of this plant. The rest is depending on the moment when we actually finalize the transaction of acquisition of the rest of these green assets from ZE PAK because then we will be offsetting more. However, it also depends on the pace with which we will be installing the wind farms. So with the time, with the progress of our investments, you can expect bigger positive impact. It will be the first quarter, the second quarter following quarters of 2023.

[Operator]

The second question is, are there any plans to speed up the strategy investments in order to secure EBITDA development going forward?

[Katarzyna Ostap-Tomann, executive]

Actually, at the moment, we are investing as fast as we can. It's not depending only on our effectiveness. It's also depending on regulatory bodies on the effectiveness of our contractors. So this is something that sometimes is just outside of our reach. We are progressing as fast as we can.

[Operator]

And the third question, could you please explain how the sale and rent of properties related to Port Praski impact the P&L of Polsat Plus Group?

[Katarzyna Ostap-Tomann, executive]

Well, in the revenues, we have revenues from sale of the apartments and firm lease of the commercial space. It's included in other revenue at the moment because it's not so significant in comparison to the rest of the revenues of the group. So in order not to blur the data, we put it in our -- in other revenues, which time I would say rather midterm when we start bigger or finalized bigger development project in Port Praski, you'll see it in the separate line and it will be more material. At the moment, the scale of this business remains negligible.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] I do not see there are any other questions coming. So I pass the floor to Mr. President.

[Miroslaw Blaszczyk, executive]

Okay. Thank you for your participation in today's presentation, and I hope that we have presented you with a full picture of our operational and financial results of our group. I would like to wish you a peaceful holiday time and see and hear you during the next presentation of our results for the third quarter of this year. Thank you very much, and have a nice day.

[Katarzyna Ostap-Tomann, executive]

Thank you.

[Stanislaw Janowski, executive]

Thank you.