Orange Polska SA

WSE:OPL

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and I would like to welcome you to Orange Polska Q1 2022 Conference Call on the 26th of April 2022. [Operator Instructions] The format of the meeting today will be a presentation by the Orange Polska management team, followed by a question and answer session.

So without further ado, I would now like to pass the line to Leszek. Please go ahead, sir.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Orange Polska results conference, summarizing first quarter of 2022. Speakers for today are CEO of Orange Polska, Orange Ducarroz (sic) [ Julien Ducarroz ]; and CFO of Orange Polska, Jacek Kunicki.

Let me hand the floor to Julien to begin the presentation.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome everyone on our conference summarizing first quarter of 2022. I will go through -- and Jacek through the financial review, and at the end, I will answer your questions.

So let me start with Slide 5 with our key message for Q1. So first let me emphasizing that the world around us changed dramatically at the end of February. We undertook immediate action to use our resources to carry support for Ukraine and the influx -- inflow of refugees. I will talk more about it in a moment.

Our commercial results in Q1 were quite solid, a bit contrasted with the slow start in the quarter and an acceleration toward the end of the quarter. ARPO continued to grow in all key services. Our financial results were in line with our plan. We achieved good underlying performance due to core revenue growth and cost saving, this has allowed us to mitigate a much higher energy bill, which we were flagging to you in February.

I have a pleasure to say that few days ago we opened our 5G Lab. As you know, 5G technology will be the key catalyst to new business opportunities, mainly on B2B which is important pillar of our -- the growth strategy. In the lab, we will develop 5G use cases in an open model with partners and startup, and we will demonstrate their benefits to our customer and encourage them to adopt it. The lab will also stimulate our innovative mindset and contribute to our cultural transformation. In this context, we are obviously looking forward to distribution of dedicated 5G spectrum, which is necessary to unlock this potential.

Let's look at the next slide. As soon as the war in Ukraine started, we rushed with support action on different front. In such circumstances, connectivity is crucial. Since the first day of the war, Orange team have been working on all border crossing points, handing out free prepaid starter and helping in registration, which is obligatory in Poland. Until now we have activated around 400,000 starters. You can see big jump in our reported prepaid base because of it.

The big influx of refugee resulted in huge increase in traffic. For example, in the first day of March, data transfer between Poland and Ukraine increased over 200 times. This resulted in overloading of the site at the border, and we had to boost network capacity by launching additional mobile base station and enhancing some of the existing one.

In such a moment, it's all about people. We offered some of our property to host refugee. The biggest one is our training center just outside Warsaw where we currently host around 350 people, mostly children with their mother. This action are coordinated with the local authorities.

Apart from this big effort, obviously coordinated by company management, there has been and still are plenty of grassroots initiatives spontaneously organized by our employee. I'm proud as a CEO of this company to be part of it, and to be able to support the Orange team that dedicate their time and energy to provide humanitarian aid.

Going to the next slide. Our financial results in Q1 were in line with our plan. They reflected the guidance that we presented to you in February. We maintain all our goals for this year. Revenue grew by 0.4%, but excluding regulatory impact, this was a strong 4.5% growth driven by core telco services, ICT and energy resale business.

Growing retail revenue fueled almost 2% EBITDAaL growth, and helped to offset the impact of surging energy prices on our cost. We also generated additional cost saving. Economic CapEx was much lower than last year, largely due to timing of project. We have not yet started renewal of our radio access network due to the delay of 5G auction.

Let's look at our commercial activities on Slide 6. Our commercial results in Q1 were satisfactory, especially in fiber and mobile, taking into account challenging environment. The strongest demand in Q1 was for fiber and mobile in standalone offer. As the next step, we will focus on upselling convergence packages to this customer.

Fiber, in particular, continued to sell very well. Retail customer reached symbolic 1 million in the first day of April. Our fiber reach is now almost 6.2 million household, and is growing mainly through the fiber JV.

Mobile customer base is supported by all mass market brands and B2B. Our main brand is naturally positioned as a premium offer. But we are also mindful of the more price conscious customer segment. We address this with our Flex, Nju Mobile and prepay offering.

I would like to underline especially good result of Flex offer this quarter. Because it is fully digital and very flexible, easy to onboard, it is an attractive proposal for migrants from Ukraine. ARPO continue to grow in all key services, which is obviously very important in the context of inflationary challenges.

Let's have a closer look at this topic on the next slide. We have been the leader in the more-for-more strategy in Poland. Please note that we made the first price increase as far back as 2018 for B2B customer. Since then, we expanded this strategy to all other key services. This is a key factor behind turnaround of our result and trend in ARPO.

On this slide, we wanted to give you the 2 direction by which we address the inflation. Firstly, to remind that price increase are only for new acquired and retained customer. So by nature, it takes 2 to 3 years for them to roll into entire customer base. The pie chart on the slide illustrate this process. The blue part represent customer that were already rollout on new tariffs. The orange part is our further monetization potential. You will notice that it's around 2/3 that are on the latest one, and the rest is subject to more-for-more strategy.

Secondly, value strategy is on top of our agenda in the current environment, and we have a number of option to pursue it further. Apart from potential further more-for-more price adjustment, we are reviewing certain fee that customers are paying us and also terms and condition of customer contract. For obvious reason, we cannot be more specific. Naturally, we have to take into consideration the competitive and regulatory landscape, but we will continue to look for new levers to implement our value strategy.

Let's zoom on ICT on the next slide. Q1 was another strong quarter for our ICT business. Revenue growth exceeded 20% and this was purely organic growth. It was driven by 2 key business factors fueling our software and application domain.

Firstly, our software subsidiary continue to benefit from a high demand for their services. Combined revenue growth of BlueSoft and Craftware amounted to 40%.

Secondly, cloud adoption contract resulting mainly from transformation of company approach to data analytic and modern communication solution. These contracts are mainly based on Microsoft portfolio. We are pleased that portfolio of our ICT customer is getting more diversified.

On the other hand, deadlock related to new EU Fund is affecting volume of business with the public sector. We are looking forward to unlock this growth potential in the near future.

On the slide, we provide a few example of digital transformation project from different industry realized by our group. Digitalization of business is the #1 trend among corporate from many industry. It brings tremendous benefits, reduce costs, provide for new sales channel, enable for data analytics, just to mention few of this one.

Now it is the level of digitalization that largely determine competitiveness and not low labor cost. Thanks to our very strong foothold in connectivity due to our massive investments in fiber and competency in the ICT area, build organically and through acquisition, we are uniquely positioned in Poland to take advantage of that trend.

This is all for me. I hand the floor to Jacek.

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Thank you, Julien. Good morning, everyone. Let's start the financial review on Slide 12 where we'll present the highlights of our performance in Q1.

Our financial results in Q1 were strong with growth achieved in revenues, EBITDA, net income and cash generation. We are diligently executing the .Grow strategy, and we are achieving a solid underlying development of our business.

It is driven by the expanding top line from core telecom services and also from the ICT. Their growth had offset the adverse impact of the regulated cuts of the mobile termination rates. As a result, we're happy with the total revenue dynamics, having in mind much faster growth of the high margin for telco services.

The growth of our core business translated, thanks to high operating leverage into a very solid underlying performance of the EBITDA. It grew by 1.8% year-on-year despite an unprecedented increase of the energy costs. I'm pleased that the EBITDA growth consistently translates into a higher net income. This is important. It is a key driver for us to increase the return on our capital employed.

We report PLN 125 million of net income in Q1, which is a marked increase year-over-year. Economic CapEx was much lower year-over-year. We benefit from the FiberCo JV, executing the fiber rollouts, and we allocated more CapEx to mobile this year. However, these are mostly planned for H2, for the second semester, as we are adapting to the ever delayed 5G spectrum auction. Finally, the organic cash flow was 17% up year-over-year due to higher EBITDA and less cash CapEx.

Let's review our results in Q1 in more detail, starting with the top line on Slide 13. We are satisfied with the revenue performance in Q1. While the overall dynamic was influenced by the regulated cuts of the mobile termination rate, our underlying growth was very positive. Excluding the regulatory impact, the revenue dynamics will have come at a strong 4.5%. The key drivers of this strong performance are consistent with prior quarters, and they are based on sustainable demand for our services.

Firstly, core telecom services continued their high pace of growth, benefiting from simultaneous expansion of their customer bases and ARPOs, as well as roaming recovery. As roaming started to recover in the second quarter of the previous year, its impact on the year-on-year trends will obviously diminish going forward due to higher comparable base.

Secondly, strong ICT performance that was already covered by Julien. And finally, the increase of other revenues was boosted by our energy resale business, reflecting higher output prices for our customers.

The expansion of our core business was the key driver for the operating profitability. Let's look at this now on Slide 14. Our EBITDA in Q1 increased by almost 2% year-over-year. This was the result of a very strong underlying growth, reduced by an unprecedented rise of energy costs. It's clear that a part of the minus PLN 67 million impact of the energy costs increase, the underlying performance was very strong.

Firstly, we grew our direct margin, converting the strong core subscription revenues into profits. Secondly, we continued to generate cost savings in indirect expenses other than energy, decreasing our labor costs, advertising and promotion activity, as well as general expenses.

The cost of energy nearly doubled year-over-year, driven by steep price increases, mainly of electricity, which grew by 150% year-over-year when you take a look at the variable electricity price, and this was coupled with rising costs of fuel and gas.

Throughout Q1, we've worked on minimizing the future impact of energy prices, especially electricity, through traditional hedging, and through buying certain volumes of electricity from renewable sources. While we continue to forecast elevated prices of energy for the future, we now expect less pressure coming from this domain in the consecutive quarters versus what we have experienced in Q1.

Over to cashflow on Slide 15. We generated PLN 230 million of organic cash flow in Q1. It was 17% more than last year. If we look at the year-on-year evolution, there are 3 elements to this good result.

Firstly, higher EBITDA translated into more than PLN 35 million, higher cash from operating activities before working capital. Secondly, around PLN 120 million lower net cash CapEx, including the sale of assets to our FiberCo. This concerned some fiber assets that we started to build at OPL before we had establish that JV. These positives were partly offset by the anticipated lower year-on-year working capital release, as it already is on a very lean level.

Good cash generation further reduced our net debt in Q1. Our balance sheet is solid with financial leverage at 1.3x EBITDA. At the same time, we are mindful of the upcoming cash outflows, cash outlays for the renewal of the existing 2.1 gigahertz spectrum, which we expect already in Q2, as well as for the dividends to be paid in July. We're also looking forward to the start of the 5G spectrum auction for the C band, which has still not been announced.

This is all from me. And I hand the floor back to Julien for the conclusion. Thank you.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

Let me briefly summarize our presentation. Our results in Q1 were very solid, taking into account unfavorable macroenvironment, which we successfully mitigated. Next months, we will continue to focus on our commercial growth and inflation mitigation measure, this will include continuation of value strategy, acceleration of green agenda and further transformation action.

Regarding PPA, we have already signed a new contract for sourcing of energy from windfarms. However, as the contract is conditional, we are not yet in a position to provide details. If successful, it will cover significant portion of our needs in Q4 2022 and in 2023.

Circular economy is an important part of our environmental strategy. To boost our efforts in this area, we have launched a new so-called [ rep program ], placing resale, recycling and repair and refurbishing of devices in our mainstream marketing activity. We are on track to reach our full financial goals, but we are obviously mindful of macro challenges. This is all from us. We are now ready to take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have a first question from [ Mr. Morris Patrick ].

[Unknown Analyst]

So, a couple of questions from me on the energy side, if that's okay. Looking at your ESG slide at the back of the deck, it shows how you've reduced your energy consumption by 2% in 2020 and 1% in 2021. You talk about, in that slide, fiber replacing copper and mobile network sharing as drivers of energy efficiency. Many telcos talk about reducing energy consumption through 5G and fiber replacing copper, but actually the energy consumption goes up, yours was actually falling. So if you could provide some more color in terms of how much saving you get from -- energy consumption saving you get from those initiative launches, that would be very helpful.

And just to kind of comeback separately on a couple of specific points in the release. On this slide where you talk about the energy costs, I think it's Slide 14, it shows -- I think, it's a PLN 67 million impact from surging energy costs? I think you talked about PLN 150 million in the prepared remarks. If you could maybe provide some more color on that, that would be helpful.

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Thank you for your questions. So I'll start with the second one. In fact, the impact of energy cost increase on the EBITDA is minus PLN 67 million, which is -- it means that they have almost doubled year-over-year -- energy costs. And what I was referring to is, this is driven by 150% increase of the unit price of those elements of the electricity purchase which are variable. There is a fixed part of electricity purchase, which is distribution fee and some taxes, and there is a variable part which is buying the base energy. And this is the one which has grown by 150% when you take a look at the year-over-year perspective, but this is the unitary price. When you take into account our impact, our hedging policy, the green sourcing which we already have in place, as well as the fixed elements of the energy costs, the net impact was minus PLN 67 million or close to 100%. I think it's 90% year-over-year.

Coming to your -- coming back to your first question on the ESG. You would appreciate that the drop of the electricity -- well, drop of the energy consumption, on the one hand, it's not huge, so it's 1% or 2% yearly that we have been achieving. And you will appreciate that most of the efforts that we can do on the cost side, this has got to do with sourcing and pricing.

Every new system that you add, every new technology layer that you add, it puts on additional pressure on electricity and energy consumption. So I would say that minus 1% or minus 2%, while this is not very impactful, it is a huge effort, and it reflects a very, very good energy efficiency.

If we were to measure, for example, the network efficiency as in the consumption of energy per 1 kilobyte or 1 gigabyte of data transmission capacity and throughput, we are really in the best quartiles of the energy efficiency. And this has offset the underlying pressure coming from additional systems.

But when you're thinking about the way forward, both in terms of financials and also in terms of the CO2 emissions, the big lever, this is the way that we will source energy, and this is where we are focusing on. And this is where, as Julien was mentioned, we have signed a PPA agreement for a windfarm which would cover a large proportion of our energy consumption for Q4 and also for the entire 2022, it's still -- 2023 to have a conditioned precedence. So we will be more open to talk about it once it's final. But this just shows you the ways and the means that we are using to limit both the costs and CO2 emissions.

[Unknown Analyst]

If I could just follow up very quickly. I think also in the prepared remarks you talked about how you expected the impact of the rising energy costs to become lower in the future quarters. Was that because you have greater net savings elsewhere or was it because you see the -- was there other reasons? What was the driver of reduced headwinds, I guess, in the maybe quarter?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Well, it's pricing. When we take a look at the average price that we have paid in Q1, it is higher than what we have already contracted for Q2. And as you may imagine, there is a lot that we have already contracted for Q2. And then, if we compare it to the expected costs of Q4, which would be also covered by this PPA that I was mentioning, then also, we do expect the average cost for Q4 to be lower than what we have experienced in Q1. So it's got to do with the sourcing of energy, with the effectiveness of the hedging, and also with the pricing, which was basically the highest for the first quarter.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Mr. Marcin Nowak from IPOPEMA Securities.

[Marcin Nowak, analyst]

A few questions from me. Starting with TowerCo project, because you haven't provided any update about the analysis of the project. Could you present more color and current status? And also, your parent company has not included Poland on the shortlist of countries to start carveout of passive infrastructure to the total project.

Second question would be about mobile offers. Could you comment on competitors' recent special offers in postpaid and their pricing? Whether do you consider it as a potential threat or value model?

And the third question would be about mobile CapEx. How much Orange plans to spend on mobile digital development CapEx in 2020, and also in relation to last year.

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

I guess, I will start with the TowerCo, and here we haven't reported any progress because not that much has happened since we were communicating for the full year results in February. And I think that the macroenvironment is -- well, it's not helping, if you take a look at both the geopolitical situation and the uncertainty regarding the inflation and interest rates. So that's something which is -- well, not pushing to accelerate the base.

The project is ongoing, so we will be happy to report up to you once we have made any meaningful progress on this part. I think it's worth noting that the other element that I have been mentioning in February, so the tax environment, is still not fully clear, and it's likely to be tweaked further in -- throughout this year. And the 5G environment, including the C band auction, the cybersecurity laws, that hasn't progressed either since that time. So we will basically inform you once we do have something to report.

Regarding the second question for the parent company, well, I need to refer you to the parent company, but there was a question asked and explained during the Orange results conference this morning. So you might be in a best position just to hear that directly from the transcript or the recording without my any additional comment. I think the answer was very clear.

Maybe on the mobile CapEx, so we have guided for the full CapEx, which is between PLN 107 billion to PLN 109 billion. This year, we haven't been more specific regarding the mobile part. I think we did mention when announcing the Orange's growth strategy, the average amount that we will spend on the mobile -- but this is for the rollout of 5G and for the swap of the radio access sharing network.

Now for the specifics of this year, I think we need to adapt to the changing environment, and a lot will depend on how soon will the auction be started, because to an extent, this will, maybe not determine, but to help us to make a decision when exactly to start spending this and at which pace. So we need to be patient with this. And we are patiently awaiting the start of the auction before we engage too much CapEx into the rollout of 5G.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

Yes. And on your question related to mobile offer. So I would say, first of all, you have seen -- and I'm quite satisfied with our mobile result in terms of net adds. So I have not noticed something fundamentally change on offer. There is tactical offer. Yes, maybe some portability, aggressive offer on the market, but we have not noticed on our side any real change of trend. I think I could comment that we see as well due to the change of the players on the market that there is more competition on convergence in urban, because there is more players. There is not necessarily a huge change of offer level, but there is more players in urban, where there is a saturation and overbuild. But besides that, I think commercially, we are satisfied with our results given, I will say, the economical context which -- it doesn't push, I would say, people necessarily to rush to buy new services. So in this context, I'm quite satisfied.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Mr. Dominik Niszcz from Trigon.

[Dominik Niszcz, analyst]

Dominik Niszcz from Trigon. A short question on your acquisitions in the first quarter. You acquired 2 small operators. So the question is how many clients do they have? You wrote that coverage is like 40,000 homes passed, which seems to be a good price you paid. But wondering how it affected your organic -- your statistics on KPIs in terms of clients and whether you plan to buy more operators like this or just it was one off?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

So in fact, it's a purchase of 2 operators because the third small entity was owned by one of them or who is cooperating with one of them for the provision of the television signals, so it's 2 small operators. We do not disclose separately the number of customers that we have from them, but they were not included in the numbers that you see for quarter 1. We've decided to consolidate these 2 acquisitions in a simplified way for Q1, because those acquisitions were made really towards the quarter end, and hence they are not included in the KPIs for Q1.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

And just on the strategy. So I do confirm that then it was -- it's part of our .Grow strategy on the axis of the leadership in infrastructure. So our big move is obviously the JV FiberCo. But we did say, and now we execute this strategy that we believe there is an interest for us to go after some consolidation of this open market -- this market that they have a lot of small player, and we do see potential to consolidate and strengthen our infrastructure portfolio.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

We have 2 text questions that came online. Let me read first a question that came from Rohit Modi from Citi.

There has been small decline in broadband's market share in the past few quarters. Please could you give more color if market share is going to cable players or this could also be related to third-party fiber take-up at FiberCo?

Secondly, please could you share what percentage of ex-DSL customers moved to your fiber products and what percentage goes to competition?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Okay. I don't believe that this has got anything to do with the third-party take up of the FiberCo. So it's basically got to do with evolution between, on one hand declining fixed broadband customer bases in ADSL and in VDSL and in a very good take-up of the customer base for fiber. So it's a combination -- kind of combination of that. The number that you're referring to is basically 0.1 percentage points of the broadband market share, so I would say it's within a statistical error.

And then regarding the DSL move to fiber or the migration to fiber, we don't really report it because it's really -- it depends area-by-area, region-by-region, when do you have -- where do we build fiber. The DSL is not evenly overbuilt by fiber, and in those areas that we do cover with fiber, we do see a nice, good, inspiring migration of DSL customers to fiber, because, obviously, this is a superior technology and a nice way to offer a conversion package.

And then you have other areas of DSL, which are not overbuilt by fiber. Some of those are in competitive areas, some of those are in quite remote areas where overbuilding is difficult to be justified by economic benefits. And obviously, the trends here would be very different with DSL customers migrating out of Orange or -- and this is predominantly, I would say, to the mobile offerings -- mobile broadband offerings rather than cable operators in those remote areas.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

Okay. Let me read the second question that came from Piotr Raciborski from Wood.

What is your view on the price evolution in Polish mobile and fixed line market? Iliad has just announced in France that it will not increase prices for the next 5 years despite the inflationary environment. Do you think it might make the same decision in Poland?

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

Well, it will be hard for me to comment what Iliad will do. But just as well to reframe the difference of the ARPO or pricing level between Poland and France, which we are on a similar, I would say, infrastructure -- not penetration, but when it's available, we have the same services. And you are looking probably at a 3x ratio when we are talking about ARPO in France and in Poland. So I think the French is a bit different than Poland. As well as the inflation level is not exactly the same between the 2 countries. So, besides that I cannot comment what they plan to do.

We have our own strategy that we commented today, and I express again that we have set in our .Grow plan that we will continue and pursue our more-for-more strategy, and we are as well looking, I would say, more in the short term, whether there is other things we can do in order to tackle the inflation, which is a concern that we need to address. We have been able to mitigate in Q1, and we are convinced that we will do for the rest of the year as well.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

And the second part of question from Piotr is, what are your estimates on negative impact of energy price hikes on our EBITDA in full year 2022?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

I do believe that we've commented that a bit first of all when we were discussing the full year results. But also I think that Q1 is an indication, so minus PLN 67 million, this is the impact that we've observed in Q1. As we've commented, I do expect that the impact on the consecutive quarters will be smaller. I would say, visibly smaller. But it does give you the range that it is quite significantly affecting our performance. And in fact, the underlying performance that we needed, and we did generate in Q1 to report this result, it's much above the 1.8% EBITDA growth that we have reported as the final figure.

So it will be meaningful, it will be impactful, not as impactful as in Q1, but we will see it. And every single quarter, we need to initiate actions, and we need to take measures and make an effort to offset this energy price increase, and to ensure that we are able to convert the growth of the core telecom services and ICT into the growth of EBITDA and then the net income and then the return on capital employed, because this is what we have clearly stated in the Orange .Grow strategy, and this is what we have a real intent to do.

[Leszek Iwaszko, executive]

As it appears, we have no further questions, so I would like to thank everyone for listening to us today. If there are any follow-up questions, please do not hesitate to reach us. Otherwise, thank you very much again, and goodbye.

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Thank you very much.

[Julien Ducarroz, executive]

Thank you.

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

See you in July.

[Operator]

Thank you very much. This concludes today's call. We'll now be closing all the lines. Thank you. Have a great day. Good bye.