Telecom Argentina SA (TEO) 2021 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good morning. On behalf of Telecom Argentina, I would like to thank everybody for participating on this conference call.

The participants of today's conference call are Roberto Nobile, Chief Executive Officer; Gabriel Blasi, Chief Financial Officer; Fernando Balmaceda, Director of Investor Relations; and myself, Solange Barthe Dennin, Manager of Investor Relations.

The purpose of this call is to share with you the results of our first quarter ending March 31 of 2021. If you have not received our press release or presentation, you can call our Investor Relations office to request the documents or download them for -- on the Investor Relations section of our website located at www.telecom.com.ar.

This conference call and presentation is being broadcasted and can also viewed today to our investor website at institutional.telecom.com.ar. If you like to go over some safe harbor information and other details of the call, we would like to clarify that during the conference call and Q&A session, we could mention certain forward-looking statements about Telecom's future performance, plans, strategies and objectives. Such statements are subject to uncertainties that could cause Telecom's actual results and operations to differ materially. Such uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the effect of ongoing industry and economic regulation, possible changes in the demand for Telecom's products and services, the effect of potential caches in general market and for economic conditions, in legislation and the impact of the outbreak of COVID on the global economy and specifically on the economies of countries in which we operate as well as in our operations and financial performance.

Our press release dated May 10, 2021, a copy of which was included in the Form 6-K as sent to the SEC, describes certain factors that may affect any forward-looking statements that could be mentioned during this call. The company has reflected effects of the inflation adjustment adopted by Resolution 777/2018 of the Comisión Nacional de Valores, which established that the expression will be applied to the annual financial statements for intermediate and special periods ended as of and including December 31, 2018.

Accordingly, the reported figures corresponding to the first quarter '20 included the effects of the adoption of inflationary accounting in accordance with IAS 29. In this presentation, we will also include figures in historical values, which are easier to understand. Our press release is complemented by our earnings presentations. The audience should read the disclaimer contained in Slide 1 and 2 of the presentation. The agenda for today's conference call includes our business and financial highlights, and we will end the call with a Q&A session.

Now let me pass the call to Gabriel, our CFO, who will start with the presentation.

Thank you, Solange. Good morning, and welcome to everyone. Okay, let's move to Slide 3 that summarize our main highlights as of first quarter 2021.

Our business has proven to be very resilient during the challenging scenario. We have been able to achieve a 36.4 percentage EBITDA margin, mainly due to our sustainable reduction of OpEx and the recovery of our prices, which have increased 20% on average during the first quarter 2021. Our prior price increase was done back a year ago in March 2020. OpEx before G&A has been reduced substantially by almost 10% in real terms. Our collections and bad debt has improved. Collections from digital channels have increased around 70% of total collections from the 50% observed at the beginning of last year.

During the first quarter '21, nonperforming debt increase -- decreases was 3.6% to 1.3% of total revenues. On April 30, 2021, the Chamber Second of the Federal Court of Appeals on administrative litigation matters resolved to grant the appeal filed by the company and revoke the decision of the original instance ordering the suspension of the effects of Section 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of the 3690-20 and of ENACOM resolutions #1466-2020, 1467-2020 and 204-21, under known applicability to the company. The company has been able to generate an important amount of cash and equivalents, which have totaled more than $400 million as of today. The above, in addition to our diversified sources of financing, will allow us to increase our fair CapEx forecast for year 2021 from $500 million to $600 million from which a range of $350 million to $380 million are maintenance CapEx.

Slide 4 shows the company figures for the first quarter 2021. In the first 3 months of the year, Telecom's revenues totaled $897 million. Revenues measured in constant pesos decreased 7.8% year-to-year. EBITDA totaled $327 million. Our EBITDA margin was $36.4 million. Telecom's mobile subscribers in Argentina amounted 18.8 million, reducing in 43,000 total clients when compared to the first quarter 2020, mainly on our prepaid segment. On the other hand, we added 130,000 postpaid mobile clients.

Broadband and pay TV clients have also experienced an increase totaling around 4.2 million and 3.5 million when comparing first Q 2021 with first Q 2020. Fixed voice subscribers without considering IP Telephony lines, amounting 2.8 million during the first Q 2021. Thanks to our successful commercial strategy focused on the building and upselling of our products, we currently have 1.8 million convergent unique customers, with 46% of our broadband customers having a mobile bundle.

Moving to Slide 5. It shows our price adjustments in January 2021. In mobile, prices of the plans with 1 gigabyte of data have increased by 5% while those with more than 1 gigabyte have increased by 20%. In broadband, the prices of the services were split up or equal to 5 megabytes per second, mainly fiber to light have increased 10%. Prices of servicing with speed light higher than 25 megabyte per second increased by 20%. All prices of pay TV services, including premium services such as HBO and Fox, have increased 20%. The price of the football pack has increased 25%. Prices of fixed voice basic services were increased by 5% and Argentina Digital Services by 20%.

Slide 6 shows the evolution of our products. More in segment, postpaid subscribers have increased 1.7%, while prepaid subs have decreased 1.6%, increasing our postpaid market share. Fibertel, our customers' base increased to 0.1% year-over-year, mainly growing the HFC and FTTH segments. Pay TV ARPU, pay TV accesses have grown 8.8% year-over-year, most delivered on our Flow platform. Fixed voice ARPU, the reduction of accesses has continued, mainly in traditional fixed copper lines, while Fibertel IP accesses have increased by more than 250,000 lines.

Slide 7 shows the evolution of our service revenues. Service revenues totaled almost ARS 85 billion, decreasing 9.2% in BL terms versus first quarter 2020. In a period when inflation reached 42.6% year-over-year. Our revenue breakdown as of March 2021 shows an increase in mobile revenues and equipment sales and a lower share of broadband and pay TV revenues. The breakdown is as follows: Mobile revenues 37%, broadband revenues 21%; PayTV revenues 20%, fixed telephony and data revenues 14%; equipment sales revenues 7%.

Our (inaudible) trends in mobile and broadband are explained on Slide 8. We have been able to keep almost constant of our customer base while growing the usage of our products. Postpaid mobile and broadband are the 2 main pillars of our performance. As of March of 2021, postpaid subscribers amounting to 42% of our total customer base. The chart in the upper left shows the competitive landscape, wireless per month. Personal is in blue color. Positive numbers show incoming clients and negative numbers of clients lost again the competition. As mentioned, we have obtained a positive net flow of postpaid clients, which have been mainly supported by our convergent offers to cable TV and Internet subscribers that were not mobile clients of the company before.

Mobile Internet usage has continued, reaching an average of more than 3.9 gigabytes per user per month in 2020. In addition, there has been an important increase in broadband speeds, 61% of our total subs have a speeds between 50 and 1,000 megabytes per second comparing with 52 during first quarter of 2020.

Slide 9 is a summary of our operations in Paraguay. Nucleo generated $51 million and $23 million in revenues and EBITDA, respectively, during the first quarter of 2021. The revenue breakdown was as follows: gross in services 44%, voice almost 16%, data almost 7%, broadband 13%; TV services 8%; and other services with approximately 14%. As of March 31, 2021, mobile customers totaled 2.2 million. Clients of Billetera Personal, a mobile financial service that our subsidiary provides, reached more than 250,000. Fixed Internet services subscribers amounted to 155,000.

In the pay TV segment, Flow customers totaled 26,000 and in personal HD 60,000. The fixed network deployment in the main cities of Paraguay has been increasing rapidly, reaching 456,000 homes passed. Additionally, Nucleo's Internet subscribers totaled 155,000, increasing almost 2.5x versus first quarter 2020.

I will now pass the call to Fernando who will go over our financial performance.

Thank you so much, Gabriel. Slide 10 shows that during the first quarter of 2021, consolidated revenues on nominal terms grew by 30%, reaching almost So ARS 79.1 billion. When analyzing such figure adjusted by inflation, revenues amounted to almost ARS 82.5 billion, showing a decrease of 7.8% in real terms.

Salaries revenues showed a 28% nominal increase in a context where prices were frozen for the most part of 2020. EBITDA increased by 37% year-over-year in nominal terms, thus generating an EBITDA margin of 37.8%. EBITDA margin in real terms was 36.4%. The company performed well in terms of cost controls. Operating costs before D&A decreased by 10% in real terms, vis-a-vis the first quarter of 2020. As mentioned, the company has achieved an aggressive cost reduction.

Slide 11 shows the company's EBITDA and the impact of the different components of revenues and costs. Operating costs were 10% lower in real terms. The company performed an efficient cost management process as almost overall cost lines experienced a decrease in real terms, with the exception of handset costs, mainly due to the increase in prices and higher sales and in interconnection and transmission costs, which increased mainly through the impact of FX.

The higher EBITDA margin is mainly explained by a 67.7% decrease in bad debt being a direct consequence of the several actions that management has taken during 2020. A percentage of bad debt related to total sales is very low, 1.3% and our collection periods are performing normally. Most of our clients are paying on a digital basis, around 70% in the first quarter of 2021, vis-a-vis 56% in first quarter 2020, thus strongly improving our average collection period.

Let's move to Slide 12, where we can see that the company's operating income totaled almost ARS 5.4 billion. EBIT was decreased -- has decreased 35% in real terms. The EBIT decrease in constant measuring unit is explained by the increase in D&A and disposal and impairment of fixed assets, which increased almost 6% in real terms year-over-year due to the higher CapEx deployed and the effect of the inflation of over such assets. Mainly due to said increase in D&A in real terms, operating margins reached 7% of consolidated revenues while historical figures, the same margin has increased to 24% from 22% in the first quarter 2020.

Net income in the first quarter 2021 increased more than ARS 9.0 billion as the drop in operating income mentioned above was more than offset by the accounting profits from FX differences. The exchange delay avoided the impact of losses in results due to the revaluation of the debt in dollars, as it happened in the first quarter 2020, where inflation was 7.8% versus a 7.6% devaluation, where in the first quarter 2021, inflation was 13%, and the devaluation was 9.3%.

Slide 13 shows a summary of the company's CapEx during the first quarter of this year which amounted to more than ARS 14 million or an equivalent of $154 million at the official FX rate. This amount is 14% higher when compared to the same amount of last year's period. Our consolidated amount of CapEx amount to almost 17% of our total revenues. Our CapEx program will continue evolving according to Argentina's condition -- economic condition, network performance and customers' requirements.

Technical CapEx were mainly composed of installation and customer premise equipment, or CPE. The balance was allocated in network and technology and to our international operations in Paraguay and Uruguay. In the first quarter of 2021, 43 new mobile sites were deployed and more than 410 existing sites were upgrades. The capacity of our HFS ads network continues increasing, mainly through segmentation and division of areas. 970 blocks were provided with FTTH, fixed access technology.

In February 2021, we have begun with the deployment of 5G mobile sites in Argentina, which allow us -- allows connection speeds of up to 10 gigabytes per second, having a response 10x higher than the 4G networks. This new technology allows the client to connect multiple devices at the same time.

Slide 14 describes our cash flow generation during the first quarter of 2021 when compared with the same period of 2020. During the first quarter of 2021, the operating free cash flow amounted to approximately USD 143 million equivalent. Despite having a relatively stable EBITDA in constant U.S. orders and an increase in CapEx, the company was able to generate an additional $65 million in free cash flow when compared to the same period of last year. The variation in working capital mainly explains this additional positive flow. There was a decrease in bad debt due to the actions taken by the company at the end of 2020, effects of which impact in the first 2021 results. Currently, our collections are at normal levels, having possibly influenced by extraordinary collections in our B2B business.

Slide 15 shows our key figures for the last 12 months as for the first quarter 2021 in constant measuring unit. Company's revenues amount to more than of ARS 333 billion, while EBITDA amounted to almost ARS 115 billion. EBITDA margin was 34.4%. Our gross debt amounted to ARS 222 million as of March 31, 2021, decreasing 1.3% from December 2020. The company has been able to generate an important amount of cash and equivalents, having a net debt of ARS 185 billion. Our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio is at 1.61x.

Slide 16 shows the breakdown of our financial debt. Total outstanding debt as of March 2021 amounted to more than $2.4 billion. Our debt profile and capital structure has improved significantly after the financial process that we have done during 2020. Our dollar-denominated maturities for 2021 amount to approximately $140 million, while the rest is composed of peso-denominated debt.

For 2022 and 2023, our debt maturities remain within the range of $500 million and then reduce considerably until the maturity of our 2026 notes. We expect to cancel our June '21 bond maturity with cash. We have full access to the future FX rate. And we will proceed according to our Banco Central Argentina regulations.