Orange Polska SA

WSE:OPL

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Unknown Executive]

Hello. Please confirm, operator. Michael, can you please confirm we are on the line... we are live?

[Operator]

Yes, you are live now, sir. Please go ahead with your presentation.

[Unknown Executive]

So let me ask Liudmila to start again the presentation.

[Liudmila Climoc, executive]

Okay. Yes.

[Unknown Executive]

Apologies for this technical problem.

[Liudmila Climoc, executive]

Yes, apologies and sometimes happening. So coming back for our first quarter results presentation and a good start of the year. I was commenting on the environment that we are pretty happy that it is improving, and we see that inflation is coming down a lot, which is helping us on our cost part. Commercial performance was very solid, particularly on quarterly [ com ] services. We see good consumer demand for both services and handsets. And we are pleased to see that our 5G services and benefits of 5G encourage customers to replace their phones and consume more data. ARPU continues to grow in all key services. On other hand, we see slower business activity in public sector, which is affecting development of our ICT businesses.Our financial results were good, even if the headline revenue figure is down year-over-year. And the key for us is that revenues from core telecom services performed very well, growing by more than 4%. Our core business is crucial to our profit generation. So that's why it's our key focus. EBITDA increased by strong number of almost 5% as we benefited from lower energy costs and our efficiency initiatives. In line with our priorities, we are investing in the quality of our network. Rollout of 5G on the C-band spectrum progress us as planned. We already see customers using more data in the areas where network on C-band is becoming available. Fiber rollout with EU subsidies, thanks to dedicated programs, is now in the execution phase. We will build a network covering 155,000 households in Poland in 125 different municipalities. And this network will be built by mid-2026. New fiber footprint will be an opportunity for us to upsell our services in retail and in wholesale. And also, we will operate on other networks which will be built in support of this program. So the entire new fishing pool will be additional 1 million households. And by improving digital infrastructure of the country, this investment is also fighting a digital device contributing to fulfilling our ESG agenda target.I would propose to zoom on highlights of our commercial activity on the next slide. So commercial performance in Q1 reflected solid customer demand, our focus on value and intensive market competition. In convergence, we are pleased with 5% year-over-year growth of our customer base. It confirms that customers appreciate the quality of our multi-service offer in demanding environment. We are happy that good volume growth in convergence is combined with solid ARPU increase, which was growing 4.6% year-over-year in third quarter. It was also supported by good demand for TV content and higher fiber speed options, which are already contributing 1/3 of our fiber customer base. Growth in convergence is supported obviously by fiber uptake. Customer base here increased 14% year-over-year. And fiber is clearly our key driver for 4% growth in ARPU, if we are talking about fixed broadband only.Our mobile customer base continues to grow, growing between 2% and 3%. This quarter, it was close to 3%, which is very solid, taking into account market saturation. Mobile ARPU growth slowed down versus dynamic in 2023 in last year due to 2 main reasons for this quarter. firstly, a high comparable base in B2B. I remind you that we increased prices in B2B mobile on the customer base in last quarter of 2022, so in 2023 [Technical Difficulty] also visible in ARPU. These solid results illustrate that we find the right balance between volume and value in our commercial activity despite sometimes aggressive offers of our competitors, and it is supported by a strong perception of quality of our services and brands combined this adoption of more local marketing strategies.I thank you for now, and I hand over the floor to Jacek.

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Thank you, Liudmila. Good morning, everyone.Let's start the financial review on Slide 7 with the highlights of our performance this quarter. Our financial results in Q1 were solid with strong growth of the EBITDA and cash generation. The headline revenue figure reflected a cyclically weaker ICT revenues and low energy sales. However, we are pleased with the strong growth of revenues from the core telecom services. Good performance of the core business and lower indirect costs drove an almost 5% year-over-year growth of the EBITDA after lease, making a very solid start to 2024.The net income reached almost PLN 230 million in Q1. This is a solid result when compared to the quarterly average of last year, just over PLN 200 million and the year-on-year evolution in Q1 is made versus a high comparable base of the first quarter of 2023 when we recorded very high gains from sale of real estate as 2/3 of the full year total of this category were reported in Q1. Finally, cash generation benefited from a higher EBITDA and from lower payments for the CapEx versus the ones that we have reported in first quarter of '23.Let's now review our results in Q1 in more detail, starting with the top line. So total revenues for Q1 decreased 1.8% year-on-year and driven down by lower sales of IT/IS and of energy trade. The most important takeaway, however, from Q1 revenues is that revenues from core telecom services are solid and grew by over 4% year-over-year. This growth rate even improved slightly versus the one that we registered in Q4. Core telecom revenues are benefiting from a simultaneous expansion of the customer bases with yearly growth of 3% in mobile, 5% in convergence and 14% in fiber. And also, they are supported by a simultaneous increase of the main ARPU indicators with 1.7% growth in mobile, 4% growth in broadband, and 4.6% increase in convergence. Revenues from the core telecom services are key for margin creation. And so we're happy with the continued solid growth.Then, as you can see, Q1 revenues from IT/IS services have decreased year-over-year. The IT/IS revenues undergo a cyclical slowdown resulting from the broad [Technical Difficulty] market downturn and from lower demand from the public sector in a post-election period. IT/IS is an important value driver for us, and we are confident in its potential in the future. We anticipate a gradual rebound in this activity starting from the second semester. IT/IS is also a great asset in the long term, increasing our competitive position on the business market.Finally, other revenues were pulled down by lower MTR rates and by a drop in energy resale. The latter decreased as a result of 2 factors. Firstly, a very high comparable base of Q1 2023 when they were much higher than in the remaining quarters. And then secondly, by lower prices, driven by the energy market and by changes in regulations.To sum up, Q1 shows the solid growth of the core telecom services, giving us the confidence for the value creation in 2024, while the IT/IS slowdown should ease in the second semester.Let's now look at our profitability on Slide 9. Our EBITDA in Q1 increased by a strong 4.9% year-over-year. It benefited both from the growth of the direct margin and from lower indirect costs. The direct margin increased year-over-year, even is slightly slower than in the past. The main drivers of this are, firstly, continued solid growth of margin stemming from the core telecom services; and secondly, a cyclically lower margin from IT/IS revenues and from the energy trade, reflecting the revenue performance as discussed a minute ago. Given the strong performance of the core telco business and the seasonality of the IT/IS downturn, we're confident that the overall direct margin dynamics will improve in the subsequent years.Our indirect costs decreased year-over-year, marking an improvement to their dynamics. This was due to 2 main reasons. Firstly, our energy costs were PLN 17 million below last year due to lower prices. Secondly, we report a higher net other operating income, mainly due to efficiency gains made in some key projects. We are happy with the EBITDA result for Q1. This result gives us the full confidence in our ability to deliver the 2024 objective as well as in our ability to deliver the long-term goal of the.Grow strategy that ends this year.Let's now review cash flow and balance sheet on Slide 10. Our organic cash flow has substantially increased versus Q1 of last year. It came from 2 elements. First of all, from the higher EBITDA, which is the main building block for cash generation over the long term; secondly, from lower cash CapEx. This reflected lower payments for prior year CapEx than we had in Q1 of 2023. Our balance sheet remains very sound with financial leverage at 1.1x EBITDA and the effective cost of the existing financing of just over 3%. As we speak, we are refinancing an important part of our debt, which is due in May. Following this refinancing, we expect the effective interest rates just above 4% as the new debt will reflect current market terms for financing.This is all for me for today for the presentation. Thank you for your attention, and I hand the floor back to Liudmila.

[Liudmila Climoc, executive]

Okay. Thank you. So let me briefly summarize and present you our focus for next month. So we started the year well, and we are satisfied with our commercial and financial performance in first quarter, and we do confirm our full year objectives. And our forward focus in looking on this year, basically reflects our objectives from our.Growth strategy. And our first priority and first focus will be commercial activity, which is a key fuel for our profit generation. And if you are in Poland, you have probably seen that we are more active in the media and communication with our new brand campaign. So quite promising and outstanding, and we aim to leverage on it and to continue our local approach in marketing to address diverse competitive landscape.The second priority is our network. The rollout of 5G and building fiber with EU recoveries subsidies, which I have mentioned in the beginning, timing here is very demanding. And both the commercial efforts and the network investments should translate into a superior experience for our customers and building the foundation for our future growth beyond 2024.That's all from us. And now we are ready to take your questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will be now moving to Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] We have a first question coming from the line of Dominik Niszcz.

[Dominik Niszcz, analyst]

This is Dominik Niszcz from Trigon. I just have a question about your cooperation with the JV. And the second part of this question would be whether it is already reflected this quarter in your other operating income cost line, which grew strongly. The question is because I saw in your P&L that your sales to JV went up by PLN 60 million year-on-year and your purchases from JV only by PLN 10 million. So I'm thinking whether you make more money on cooperation with JV? And if it's sustainable and whether it was this thing that impacted your other operating income that inflated your EBITDA?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

So first of all, our relationship with the JV is obviously happening on numerous layers of activity, some of which is very visible to you like this other operating income part or other operating expense part of it, which is less visible for you. For example, regarding the costs that we have in labor costs, in network costs and other external purchase, which relates to these kind of activities or connectivity that we buy from the JV because we are obviously not only an important supplier, but also an important client of the JV. If you ask me about the net impact, yes, net impact is positive, in cooperation. It's not positive every quarter. It's positive this quarter when we sum up all the flows of what we buy from the JV and what we sell to the JV.Then when you ask me about this other operating income, obviously, this line by nature, includes many items. And it is not one single item that is making the total. It includes risk provisions, whether we increase them or we decrease them. It includes gains from sale of copper that we extract from the ground as the copper-based network is less utilized over time. And so we scale it back and sell the commodity, we include here income from commercial projects. This includes services for the Orange Group. It also includes services for the FiberCo, and this is, it's back office, it's IT functions. It's the rollout agreement for building the FiberCo's network. This is the important one. And we include here the income from these various activities. We are achieving efficiency gains in realization of some of these initiatives and FiberCo project is not excluded here. By nature, this line contains incomes that are not our core business in terms of telecom services activity. That's why we don't report them in revenues. I wouldn't say it's made of one-offs, but it's not fully recurrent. So if you ask me about some guidance, don't fully extrapolate anything because this is not a fully recurrent line, but it's not only made of one-offs either. I think if we are making some efficiency gains on project realization, it is not only for the one quarter, but there will be some additional impacts that we may expect as a result of those efficiency gains going forward, but they are not purely recurrent. I know it doesn't make your life easier in terms of extrapolating this, but this is the nature of this activity.

[Dominik Niszcz, analyst]

Okay. So I guess it's more this year than in 1Q '23, and part of this will continue. But you don't want to quantify how much...

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

It's not something that we either want or that is very easy to be quantified right now. When you ask me about the duration, so obviously, some services that we are rendering either to Orange Group or to the FiberCo are there to be rendered for a very long time, like back-office functions, IT functions. We're not speaking about Orange Group, this is the accounting shared service center and some other service centers. Regarding the big project of network rollout for the FiberCo, this is a project that will last or planned to last until the end of 2025.

[Operator]

Our next question is coming from the line of Nora Nagy from Erste Group.

[Nora Nagy, analyst]

2 questions from my side, please. Firstly, could you please explain the year-over-year drop of commercial expenses this quarter? And secondly, do you still expect further tranches to be added to the broadband network rollout or the EU fund is fully exploited for now for this purpose?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Sorry, can you just repeat your second question?

[Nora Nagy, analyst]

Yes. This is related to the national recovery fund and your broadband network rollout. So now you've announced some new premises. And do you still expect further to be added in the upcoming quarters or this fund is already exploited?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

I think starting perhaps with the KPO...

[Liudmila Climoc, executive]

...which is a national recovery plan...

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Ye, which is a national recovery fund. most of the deadlines are where they are. We've signed the contracts that we applied for, we won, and we wish to sign based on the profitability criteria that we have. And so right now, I wouldn't expect any meaningful add-ons in terms of new contracts, but rather, we focus on the execution of this on making sure that we are on time on making sure that we are at budget, and we are able to deliver this network. On the other hand, when we're thinking about the national recovery funds, it's not only our part that matters. What really matters for us is equally that what others will build overall within the next 2.5 years, 3 years, we should expect the fiber footprint that is available for our retail activity to increase by 1 million households. And this is the nice addressable market that we need to benefit from by selling more retail services.Regarding commercial costs, yes, they have decreased this quarter, and it's mainly due to lower cost of ICT equipment. You will have seen that ICT revenues have decreased well so have purchases of ICT equipment that we quite often resell. And so this is the reason why commercial expenses have gone down. It basically explains the entire difference.

[Liudmila Climoc, executive]

Maybe just to add on EU funds on overall perspective for Poland, just to remind that in current perspective, there are about EUR 135 billion funds, which are dedicated to Poland through 2 programs, national recovery and there is a [ Cohesion ] Policy Program. And more than 20% of these funds are dedicated to digital transformation. So fiber deployment and what we are beefing from, it's just a part of it. So it will be much more funds dedicated on more than digital public administration, digitalization and innovation for enterprises and of course, broadband connectivity where we are directly taken apart. And obviously, what we foresee for future that we are going to benefit as well indirectly from these funds because they will be available for digitalization almost for every sector, manufacturing, energy, transport, public administration and will stimulate in definitely public and private investment in this area and among all our key customers. So with our position and our range of competencies, we believe that we are quite well positioned to benefit from it in future in connectivity and especially in ICT.

[Operator]

Our next question is coming from the line of Piotr Raciborski from Wood & Co.

[Piotr Raciborski, analyst]

I have like 3 questions. Firstly, could you please remind me what part of energy costs for 2024 was hedged? And a quick follow-up question. If energy prices remain at the current level for 2025, what could be the change in the nominal energy costs?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

And the third question? No, 2?

[Piotr Raciborski, analyst]

Okay. And third question, when it comes to the other cost savings apart from energy, could you please elaborate on the main areas where they were generated in the first quarter that caused this nominal drop in direct costs year-on-year?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

So starting with the energy prices, if they were to remain at flat 2025 to 2024, then we would be aiming at flattish energy costs more likely. You have 2 main factors that we will still need to see how they balance each other out, but they both regard consumption. Consumption of electricity is pushed up by deployment of fiber because this is a new system that we are deploying on the network. So obviously, it requires more energy to run this additional system on the network. On the other hand, we have a number of energy saving initiatives in the network and also outside the network that continue to bring benefits year after year. This is also supported by the transition away from copper-based network that consumes more energy and towards fiber network, which is more passive with less active elements. And so it consumes less energy. It is also supported the downward energy trend with disposal of real estate. So I would say the ambition if the prices where it remains like the ambition, it would be to try and keep energy costs flat, definitely not going down, but flat or to limit the growth that is going to be driven by deployment of 5G.Then when it comes to energy hedging, I think this was close to 3/4 around 70% of energy, which was hedged for this year this way or another, and we are not able to hedge 100% for 2 reasons. We buy some energy indirectly. So you can imagine a shop, which is in the shopping mall, and we do not source this energy by ourselves, but we get this reinvoiced by the landlords. And then the second part has got to do with the volatility of our PPAs, both virtual and physical. They do require a certain buffer of energy that is unhedged. So this is for the energy in 2024.Then on the cost savings, we mentioned energy costs. Obviously, we have long-running program that affects a lot of cost categories. As you know, we are executing another round of social plan. So this impacts the number of employees that we have downwards. We continue with automation. We have a project to transform our network processes. And this is including dispatching the way that we work with technical partners. And all of this is contributing to decrease the pressure that we have from last year's inflation. We obviously have lower amount of real estate as we continue to sell real estate. So this is decreasing the base of some of the taxes. This is decreasing the base of the cost of maintaining an energy for those buildings. And last but not least, we spoke already about this before, but we have an increase in net other operating income that is driven by better efficiency of some of the projects that we have in this area, and we spoke about it during the earlier questions, this also influenced the indirect cost base that you have in Q1. And as I mentioned, it's not entirely recurring activity, but it's also not a pure one-off that is only going to affect this quarter.

[Operator]

Next question is coming from the line of Marcin Nowak from IPOPEMA.

[Marcin Nowak, analyst]

Well, 3 questions from me. First, regarding competition, if I got this correctly, you mentioned increased competition during this call. And we also heard similar comments from your competitor. Can you please provide more color about what you are seeing in terms of commercial trends on both mobile and fixed markets?The second question would be about inflationary clauses whether do you plan to proceed with inflationary hikes on part of your contractor this year, similar to the last year? And if not, why not?And the third question would be about the comment from the most recent interview from CFO regarding the potential larger M&A about exactly what scale was potentially considered to be profitable in terms of larger M&A?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

A very quick one on the M&A. We're not in a process of planning any large M&A. It was just by pure logic that we are not closed to anything that is larger than the things that were happening. But there is nothing on the agenda that I would be inclined to be speaking about, and there's nothing that you should be aware of. We're not in any large M&A process.Regarding inflationary clauses, this is something on which we can decide up to midyear. So we will definitely take the decision by then. As you remember, last year, we have decided not to apply this inflation process to contracts that were within the loyalty duration. We only apply them to the very, very limited amount of customers. And so while this is and continues to be a very important insurance policy against high inflation that would be recurrent with us, you should not treat it as an important mechanism to influence the revenues or EBITDA this year because it still concerns even potentially a very small number of customers, and we are seeing inflation going significantly down. I would not say this is a major factor that you should be concentrating on when trying to estimate our results for the year.

[Liudmila Climoc, executive]

And to follow on your third question regarding the environment, what we can see is that dynamic has not been changed since last year. So this is what we are witnessing already for several quarters. So from one side, we see much more, I would say, rational market in mobile, while in convergence, competition has increased versus like previous years period, but it is not something new. Market is open on fixed. A lot of players are providing available infrastructure. And [indiscernible] we see the telco players move into convergence. And here offers are becoming more aggressive, but it is not something new. So for us, key is to strike a right balance between volume and value because from one side, we are pursuing our value strategy, and we are determined to continue, and you might notice that we have done several actions to hike prices in postpaid and prepaid and also in Flex recently. Flex is not reflected in Q1 results, but it will be impacting costs further. And at the same time, we recognize that promotions are there aggressive, and we need to make sure that we are remaining attractive for customers, and we are further pursuing our strategy to lead in convergence on fiber and as well to support our mobile performance with including campaign, which I have mentioned and fighting on a regional level. So with really local and tailored offers depending on competitive environment on regionally.

[Operator]

It appears we have no further questions either via the phone or on the web platform. So I think we will just close the call. Thank you very much for your attention. Actually, we have a last minute question from Dawid Gorzynski from PKOBP.

[Dawid Gorzynski, analyst]

I have 2 questions actually, first, about some outlook on ARPUs in convergence, actually, if 4.6% growth in the first quarter is a good run rate for the full year or maybe you see full year figures slightly lower or higher if you could elaborate on that?And the second one on the guidance for CapEx. We have a range [ 1.71 ]to 1.9. And maybe you could give some color on which end of that range is more likely this year?

[Jacek Kunicki, executive]

Okay. So maybe starting with the CapEx. Normally, when we give a range of 1.7, 1.9, we aim at the middle, so 1.8. That's the standard procedure. We reserve the right to spend a little bit less or to spend a little bit more. And it comes down to 2 factors. First of all, please do remember that our CapEx includes not only the spending as we do, but also the proceeds from real estate disposal. So it's also market driven. It's not only something that is entirely in our hands. But here, we can see after Q1 that this is going quite nicely as we have cash proceeds from sale of assets of PLN 83 million already in Q1 of 2024. So this is good, and it's supporting what we are planning to do.And then the second part is depending on how different projects are going physically whether we are able to do some project faster or whether we experience a slowdown, we may spend a little bit more or a little bit less. This includes 5G rollout. It includes some of the IT projects where we can be surprised throughout the project or the pace of execution. But broadly, we would aim in the middle of this CapEx range.Then regarding the ARPU of convergence, we're happy with the Q1 results. It's again a very good result, both for convergence and for the ARPU 4.6% is really a good indicator. Now obviously, with every quarter, the comparable base becomes tougher because we have been growing this ARPU for quite a long time and quite dynamically. I will not give you a specific guidance for that because as Liudmila mentioned, we are aiming to strive and to strike the right balance in all the 3 main lines of the business that we have in core telecom services, in convergence, in mobile, we aim to strike the right balance between acquiring new customers and between growing the ARPU. And this is where we get both the size, but also the sustainability of the growth of revenues and margins stemming from the core business is to make sure that we are at an ARPU that is growing, but at prices that are competitive and with a customer base that is increasing because this guarantees the possibility to achieve higher incomes from this activity in the future. So we will not look just at the ARPU. We will look at the way that we can achieve the maximum revenues and margins from this category over the long term.

[Operator]

Thank you. It appears really that this time, we have no further questions. So again, thank you very much for your attention. Please let us know if you have any follow-ups or would like to meet us on one-on-one, we are, as always, eager and open to in the market. So thank you very much, and have a good day, and goodbye.