Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S. (NYSE:TKC) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Unidentified Analyst: Yes, hi, thanks. This is [indiscernible] from HSBC. I just have a couple of questions. Firstly, on the results itself, just wondering if you could share the revenue and EBITDA net income numbers as well as the growth year-on-year for the fourth quarter. Because I think the results here are for full year and given that the previous quarter results and all are not reliable, so it will be helpful to cover the…

Kamil Kalyon: It’s for Q4 results.

Unidentified Analyst: Sorry?

Kamil Kalyon: Sorry, I couldn’t — just a second.

Unidentified Analyst: The numbers in the table are all for full year. It will be good to have at least some idea about the Q4 as well. So growth and…

Kamil Kalyon: We have only full year inflationary adjustment figures we have. We do not have for only for Q4 results are not available right now.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay, all right. Any idea by when we can get those numbers? Because you know, I’m just trying to understand the recent trends, because, when you do the inflation adjustment on historical basis, the trends kind of do not make any sense after that. So it will be good to have some sense about the recent trends. And then the second question is, is there any plan to distribute dividend for the year? And if so, by then we can know about that?

Ali Taha Koc: As you know, the dividend proposal is first made by the Board of Directors and then voted by the shareholders at the general assembly. No proposal has been made by the Board of Directors for this year yet. As you may recall from last year, our Board of Directors dividend proposal was announced together with the General Assembly announcement. So you should follow the General Assembly announcement. Therefore, I do not want to speculate on the potential proposal of the Board of Directors regarding the dividends.

Unidentified Analyst: Great. And then finally on the guidance for next year, the high single digit revenue growth target as well as the 42% margin you have talked about, given that you are assuming 37% inflation rate there, if the inflation rate is much higher than this, do you think these guidance will still hold or you would have to tweak them? Because what I’m not sure about is the underlying adjustments you have to make given the hyperinflationary accounting, what multipliers and index you use basically. So any idea there, any sensitivity is there would be helpful.

Kamil Kalyon: Normally, as I said, under the — we made this guidance for 2024 under the assumption that the year-end inflation rate will be 28%, 38%, and 37%, and the average rate will be around 50%. If the inflation keeps going on, for example, if this exists, our inflationary pricing mechanism will be in place. Therefore, we make some revise in the guidance side in the coming periods. But currently, we determine this guidance under the scope of our macroeconomic expectations.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay, so it is fair to assume that if inflation goes up, your real revenue growth will probably also improve somewhat?

Kamil Kalyon: Yes, you’re right. Absolutely.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Thank you.

Kamil Kalyon: Inflation pricing, it means. For your first question, my colleagues also informed me that, again, we do not have any work on the Q4 results for the inflationary side. We have full year.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. Okay. Thank you.

Kamil Kalyon: You’re welcome.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Nagy, Nora with Erste Group Bank AG. Please go ahead.

Nora Nagy: Hi, good evening. Thanks for the presentation. Just a follow-up question from my side, please. If inflation will be higher than you assume for 2024, isn’t it the case that the real growth will be lower than what you are now guiding for 2024?

Kamil Kalyon: I thought I explained in the previous one, if the inflation rate will be higher than we expect, it means that the inflationary environment is still keep going. It means that we will make — we will keep on going the inflationary pricing side. Therefore, we do not expect at this stage, for example, if this is the case, we do not expect a lower growth rate.

Nora Nagy: Yeah, but I would assume that that takes time for the output to catch up to inflation, so that the real growth would be negatively impacted if inflation will be higher than you assume?

Kamil Kalyon: But the momentum — we have a momentum about this issue, and still we have an inflation problem in Turkey. As you may assume, for example, our year-end, for example, inflation rate is 37%, but the average is 50%. It means that inflationary environment still keep going until the end of half one. Therefore, our inflationary adjustment or inflationary pricing mechanism or policy will continue with all the year, for example. Therefore, we do not expect, for example, [a lack] (ph) about this issue, because we get the momentum about this issue. We have started making sequential price adjustments starting from the half two of 2022.