Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri AS (TKC) 2023 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Costantino, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Turkcell's conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the Turkcell's full year 2023 financial results.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Ms. Ozlem Yardim, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance Director. Ms. Yardim, you may now proceed.

Thank you, Costantino. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Turkcell's 2023 full-year earnings call. Today, our CEO, Ali Taha Koç and CFO, Kamil Kalyon, will be delivering a brief presentation covering operational and financial results of 2023, which will be followed by a Q&A session.

Before we begin, I would like to kindly remind you to review our safe harbor statements available at the end of our presentation.

Now, I'm handing the meeting over to Mr. Ali Taha Koç.

Thank you, Ozlem. Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for joining us today. Despite of challenges of 2023 including various uncertainties and economic pressures, we remain committed to our goal of pioneering the digital transformation of Türkiye and generating value. By leveraging our technological capabilities and leading the telecommunication market, we achieved solid results across all fronts.

According to the IAS29 applications, we delivered double-digit real revenue growth of 15%, driven by dedicated price adjustments over the past two years, which has supported ARPU expansion as well. We also prioritized value-generating postpaid and fiber customers, expanding our subscriber base by 799,000 net additions. This topline growth led to significant operational leverage, evidenced by a remarkable 20% increase in EBITDA.

Our margin expanded by 1.8 percentage points to 41%, driven by reduced energy prices and lower interconnection expenses. Ultimately, our strong operational performance resulted in a remarkable net profit of TRY12.6 billion, marking an impressive 83% year-on-year rise.

Next slide, please. We successfully achieved our guidance in 2023. In a challenging year, we maintained our business strategy, prioritizing agility to effectively respond to evolving market conditions, particularly to address inflationary pressures. Consequently, including Ukraine's financials, we recorded 75% revenue growth, surpassing our guidance. This strong performance also enabled us to exceed our EBITDA expectations.

An accelerated topline performance resulted in a 21% CapEx-to-sales ratio at year-end. Additionally, investments to solar energy and Belarus have been postponed to following year.

Next slide, please. Let's take a closer look at our mobile operational performance. Thanks to the focus on postpaid segment, we added 1.6 million postpaid customers in 2023, of which 476,000 came in the last quarter. The prepaid segment shrank by 1.1 million subscribers annually, mainly due to the alternative data solutions.

In addition, the rising cost of new line activations and customers preferring postpaid lines to fixed tier offerings in an inflationary environment also negatively impacted the prepaid side in 2023. Please recall that we also disconnected inactive prepaid lines at year-end, which was the main reason for the quarterly acceleration in mobile churn. Compared to the previous year, our portfolio composition has become more variable.

We achieved a three-point increase in postpaid share in the mobile segment, exceeding 71% this year. By historical figures, blended mobile ARPU grew by 85% year-on-year. Thanks to the rational price adjustments, upsell efforts and a rising postpaid subscriber share in the portfolio. In line with inflationary pricing policy, we started the quarter with around a 20% adjustment in our mobile prices in October. We will continue this approach and therefore anticipate sustaining real ARPU growth in 2024.

Next slide, please. In the fixed broadband segment, we adopted a profitability-focused approach in DSL and cable while prioritizing penetration in the fiber segment. On the fiber front, we are pleased to have registered a further 43,000 net additions in this quarter and 169,000 for the full year of 2023, owing to an expanded footprint and a seamless pure fiber experience. Furthermore, we are pleased to see strong demand for our TV services. Despite higher price adjustments compared to the data-only packages, we provide this service to 66 out of every 100 households among our residential fiber customers.

ARPU continued to widen the spread with inflation, growing by 76% on a yearly basis in historical figures. This growth was driven mainly by two factors: a rise in 12-month contract tariffs, which enabled us to reflect price increases more rapidly and a rise in the share of higher speed tariffs from 18% to 30% compared to the previous year. As 86% of new residential fiber customers opted for 12-month contracts in the last quarter, we anticipate a higher share in the coming quarters.

Next slide, please. Let's discuss our strategic focus areas, beginning with digital services & solutions. Stand-alone revenue from digital services & solutions grew 19% year on year, driven primarily by 25% increase in digital OTT service revenues. The paid user base reached 5.6 million, mainly with TV and cloud services. Our digital business registered solid 23% year-on-year revenue growth.

Beside the performance in managed services, a 50% increase in cloud service revenues and a remarkable 61% real growth in data center revenues supported the growth. Amid increased demand in areas including data centers, cloud solutions, and data analytics projects, we secured 1,000 new contracts in the last quarter. Looking ahead to 2024, while TV+ and Lifebox will maintain their flagship position in digital services, we will prioritize ramping up the capacity of data centers and cloud services to meet their high demand in these areas.

Next slide, please. Our Techfin companies continued to deliver a strong performance, contributing to the company's topline growth in 2023. During 2023, Paycell expanded its product portfolio and strengthened its position within the Fintech verticals to better serve customer needs. Paycell offers services from stock exchange transaction to shopping limits through Financell and it is taking firm steps towards leading the Turkish Fintech ecosystem.

Paycell revenue rose 29% year on year, primarily fueled by the success of its direct carrier business Pay Later. The active user base of Pay Later reached 6 million, marking 19% annual growth, while its transaction volume surged 80% in the last quarter.

Meanwhile, Financell, our financing company, continued to lead the sector in small loans catering to the needs of Turkcell customers, also playing a significant role in improving the financial inclusion in Türkiye. Financell's revenue grew by 28%, thanks to the demand for smart devices and new areas we entered such as shopping loans, car loans and green loans. However, a significant rise in interest rates in the last quarter, leading to higher funding cost had an adverse impact on finance sales margin.

Next slide, please. Now, our performance in the international markets. The Ukrainian subsidiaries have been classified as discontinued operation as of the end of 2023 due to the announced sales process. Turkcell International revenues, which now accounts for 3% of Group revenues, decreased by 1.8% to TRY2.6 billion. BeST revenues rose 20% on a yearly basis in local currency terms, primarily driven by higher data and voice revenues.

The improvement in EBITDA margin was supported by lower interconnection cost and energy expenses as a percentage of revenue. The earnings of our Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus subsidiary increased 20% year on year, fueled by strong real ARPU growth. The introduction of 4.5G services in September 2023 resulted in a 45% increase in 4.5G data consumption on a quarterly basis.

Next slide, please. In our pursuit of building the Intelligent Edge, we will focus on three key initiatives in 2024. As Türkiye's largest data center operator, we prioritize keeping Türkiye's data within its borders to ensure data security and confidentiality of personal information. To date, we have invested EUR 330 million in our data centers, which currently boost a capacity of 33 megawatts in four new generation data centers. Due to high demand, we plan to add 9.1 megawatt of new capacity this year.

Secondly, Turkcell is leveraging its capabilities in artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance our business models. For instance, our stores and the Turkcell mobile application have implemented AI supported identity verification processes. Additionally, we have even integrated AI into our communication channels for an improved customer experience.

Last but not least, we remain committed to focusing on our state-of-the-art mobile and fiber infrastructure. Our objectives include increasing fiber to site investments and carrying out GPON modernization for improved efficiency. We have also signed a cooperation agreement with Lynk, a non-terrestrial network provider, to provide mobile services via satellite in rural areas where access to mobile networks is limited. We continue to take proactive steps to maintain our leadership position in the technologies of 5G and beyond.

Next slide, please. To conclude my presentation, I would like to end by sharing our guidance for 2024. Given the macroeconomic dynamics, projecting inflation, in particular, will be a challenging task. We aim to keep you updated about the guidance, whenever there is a change in our inflation assumption. For 2024, we expect high single-digit real revenue growth, EBITDA margin guidance of around 42%, and we expect a CapEx intensity of around 23%.

I will now leave the floor to our CFO, Mr. Kamil Kalyon.

Thank you very much Ali Taha bey. Now let's move on to our financial results. Before we proceed, I'd like to outline the impact of inflationary accounting on our key financial metrics. Group revenues ramped up by 76% in historical figures, while under inflationary accounting, the rise was 15%.

Over the past two years, inflation adjusted Turkcell Türkiye revenues have outpaced the growth of Turkcell Group revenues, driving the overall growth. An expanding subscriber base and robust ARPU growth as well as digital services were the main drivers of this growth. EBITDA increased by 83% on historical figures, while according to inflationary accounting, growth was 20%.

Apart from robust topline growth, lower energy prices, favorable interconnection expenses, and a decrease in the cost of goods sold as a percentage of revenues have been instrumental in driving real EBITDA expansion. Lastly, net income growth was 65% on historical figures, whereas by inflation adjusted figures, it rose 82%, thanks to a strong EBITDA performance.

Next slide, please. In 2023, EBITDA surged 20% to TRY44 billion, thanks to a strong topline performance. Accordingly, the EBITDA margin expanded 1.8 percentage points year on year, despite an increase in personnel expenses resulting from two wage rises throughout the year. This was more than offset by declines in the cost of goods sold, energy costs, and interconnection expenses. The reduction in energy prices during the second and third quarters of 2023 support the margin. Additionally, the continued decline in MTR positively impacted our profitability, a trend expected to persist in 2024.

Next slide, please. Now let's dive into the net income performance. Thanks to a robust operational performance, EBITDA has contributed TRY7.3 billion to net income. The other operating income and expense item includes the first installment of the earthquake donation payments made in October as well as a provision amount for the second installment of the donation, which was already paid in January.

The balance sheet change due to inflation adjustments in 2023 had a more adverse effect compared to 2022, with the monetary gain loss item being the most significant pressure point for net income, amounting TRY4 billion. Our Ukraine operation, classified under discontinued operations due to the ongoing sales process, had a positive impact of TRY1.1 billion on net income throughout the year 2023.

Next slide, please. Let's take a closer look at our CapEx management. In historical figures, the CapEx-to-sales ratio for 2023 was 20.6% with accelerated revenue. This year, we maintained an equal focus on mobile and fixed investments. As our CEO stated, in alignment with our goals, our investments in 2024 will primarily target three areas.

One, we will increase the fiber to towers, extending them to 41% of towers in Türkiye. This empower us to advance our core capability in offering best-in-class 4.5G services and further strengthen our position in 5G and future technologies.

Second, we will continue our investments in solar renewable energy to generate electricity from sustainable resources and secure cost advantage for the coming years. Lastly, responding to heightened demand, we will expand our data center capacity by constructing two new modules in Corlu and Ankara, increasing capacity by 28%. As a result, for 2024, we anticipate greater CapEx intensity.

Next slide, please. Now, let's turn our attention to the balance sheet. In 2023, our cash position increased by TRY7.2 billion, majorly supported by FX movements and organic cash generation. Our gross debt was at TRY84 billion, and we ended the year with a net debt position of TRY24 billion. Thanks to strong cash generation, our net leverage decreased to 0.5 times.

In addition to the strong cash position, we have committed lines of around USD120 million equivalents for the upcoming periods. The majority of our cash remains denominated in hard currencies. Excluding FX swaps, 53% of our cash is in US dollars and 20% in euros.

Next slide, please. Lastly, let's look into the management of the foreign currency risk for 2023. At the end of 2023, our balance sheet had around USD2 billion equivalent in FX financial liabilities. In addition to the USD1.5 billion equivalent FX denominated financial assets, we have a USD0.6 billion effective hedging portfolio, the vast majority of which consists of future forward and NDFs. We ended up with a long FX position of USD22 million, which is within our neutral FX position definition.

This concludes our presentation, and we can now open the line for questions. Thank you.

Cesar Tiron, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

I have three questions, if that's okay. If I look at the new accounting standard, including inflationary accounting, and if I look at your guidance, there's a slowdown from what I think you delivered in 2023, which I think was 14% or 15%, and your guidance of high single digit. Can you please explain why, excluding inflation, you think the revenue growth will slow down? That's the first one.

The second question, I see an increase, again, in the guidance of CapEx intensity to sell. Can you please explain it? Is that mainly driven by the weakening of the currency? And then the third question, if you can please update us on Ukraine and the sell process and this litigation, which you've disclosed, I think one or two weeks ago? Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Cesar, for the question. Actually, as of Q4 this year, in accordance with the standard published by the Capital Market Board [which said] its newly implemented for capital Market board legislation in Türkiye Inflation accounting standard. It's very new for us. And before getting started, I would like to lay some groundwork and highlight a few points regarding the standard of its effects on our financials. Maybe it would be helpful for your side.

As you may already know, financial performance figures for current year are adjusted for inflation on a monthly basis, with an index, which is specific to the related month. Additionally, the prior year figures are adjusted with the current year's index to reflect the change in purchasing power in order to make the figures comparable.

Due to the contracted nature of core type of business, the inflationary environment initially affected our top line adversely in 2024 -- 2022. But in fiscal year 2023, with the help of sequential price adjustments, we have implemented in ours the prior quarters. We returned to a real growth, in fact achieving a real growth of around 15% increase in our revenue side.

Before elaborating further on the subject for the 2024 guidance, please be reminded our guidance captures the expected impacts of the IAS29 application as well as our operational expectations for the 2024. It's a very technical issue, especially making an assumption in the inflationary accounting perspective is a little bit high. Capital Market Boards of Türkiye also insist us to make a declaration about the inflation adjusted figures. Therefore, we would like to be in the safe side in the first quarter at this stage about the guidance side, especially from the growth side, but we expect a high digit, single digit. It seems high single-digit revenue growth for 2024, but our aim most probably would be taking this amount to double digits in 2024.

In the CapEx side, as part of our CapEx planning, this year, we will continue to focus more on our core businesses. Accordingly, we will follow our demand-driven CapEx approach. We are expanding the white space capacity of data centers by adding new modules to meet increasing demand because there is a big demand in the data center services in Türkiye. Therefore, we would like keeping -- keep going to make investments in the data center side. This is the first issue, which the intensity is high in 2024.

Additionally, we have renewable energy investment plans, as you know, on the energy side to meet our own electricity demand. In 2023, we initiated investments in solar power plant installations to achieve a capacity of 300 megawatts within three years period. The first phase in 2023, we achieved 54-megawatt capacity, and we aim to cover 65% of our self-usage from our own premises. Therefore, we keep going on making investment in this solar issue in 2024. This is -- this may be the second reason for the CapEx intensity side.

All in all, mobile and fixed CapEx will take more than half of the CapEx budget in this year also with the remaining share to be taken mainly by data center and renewable energy investments can be the summary of the CapEx intensity side.

With respect to the question [related to] Ukraine, as per our company's Board of Directors decision dated December 20, 2023, a share transfer agreement was signed on December 29, 2023, for the transfer of all shares, along with the rights and debts of our company's subsidiaries operating in Ukraine to NJJ Capital, subject to certain conditions determined under relevant agreement. As completion of the transaction depends on fulfillment of certain closing actions, permissions granted by authorities and conditions precedent, including removal of temporary injunction over the shares.

Meanwhile, our company has been informed through its Ukrainian subsidiary that they have received an official ruling from an Ukrainian court on March 5, 2024, imposing temporary injunction by way of applying seizure over the 19.8% of the shares and related corporate rights of Lifestyle LLC and 100% of the shares and related corporate rights of UkrTower and Playcell LC. Within the criminal proceedings related to suspicions involving Fridman.

We would like to emphasize that, we believe that the aforementioned person has no direct or indirect control or influence over Turkcell and our Ukrainian subsidiaries. Additionally, it is worth to emphasize that this decision to apply temporary injunction has no -- any significant impact on the daily operations of these Ukrainian subsidiaries. Our Ukrainian subsidiaries already filed for an appeal in order to remove relevant temporary injunction and dismiss of the ruling to the related court submitted on March 7, 2024.

With an aim to cancel the seizures, our subsidiaries vigorously contest this decision. Our Ukrainian subsidiaries continuously work on completion of conditions precedent, including this temporary injunction being lifted over Ukrainian subsidiaries' shares for the closing regarding the sale of Ukrainian assets to NJJ Capital. The enterprise value to be taken into account at the closing date for the respective sales transaction is determined as $525 million. And the final sale consideration will be subject to adjustments to be made, including cash and debt adjustments after the closing.

(inaudible) that was very clear.

Mandaci Ece, with Unlu Securities.

Congratulations on the strong results. I have a couple of questions. One is about your EBITDA guidance for 2024. It looks like you're expecting a double -- maybe some double-digit growth in your EBITDA in real terms. What's the main reason for that? I understand that you're going to make price adjustments and there will be real revenue growth, but could there be any possibilities in cost savings maybe? Can you provide more details about that?

And secondly, I'm seeing that you have recorded deferred tax income, you also had last year. Is this due to the revaluation of some assets, and will this be continuing in 2024 as well?

And thirdly, I see that you expensed some donation expense in the fourth quarter, but cash flow-wise, this payment will be done in the first quarter. Is that right? Thank you.

Yes, Ece. Starting from the third question. Yes, the donation is paid on January 2024, the second installment, regarding the donation payment. And our EBITDA margin forecast for 2024, as you know, it's very highly -- it would be a tough environment in 2024 also for Türkiye. Our full-year EBITDA margin was around 41% in 2023, which is 1.8 pp above of last year. However, this year, we expect a flattish margin at around 42% because inflationary cost pressures will continue, and the cost of energy prices will be one of the most important factors that will affect our EBITDA margin.

As you know, in 2023, the energy costs are subsidized by the government side, therefore, it affected -- it really affected our EBITDA by high margins in 2023. But however, our strong real topline growth supported by our sequential price adjustments. Therefore, as you know, we are all continuously promising our investors to make the inflationary pricing. We continued it in 2023 and most probably in 2024, this inflationary sequential price adjustments will continue, and we would aim the flattish same EBITDA margins in 2024.

The first question is about EBITDA guidance.

Deferred tax income, is that continuing in 2024 as well? And the reason for that, if you can explain?

Normally, after the inflationary adjustment side, we will not make any revaluation for the fixed asset side in the local side. Therefore, it would not -- there would not be any -- most probably would be a revaluation after the inflation accounting side. Therefore, we have some tax effects in 2023 coming from the donation side. In 2024, we do not expect any donation-related deferred tax or revaluation basis effect in 2024 in the deferred tax side.

Just to follow up on your EBITDA margin guidance, do you consider any more increase in minimum wage in the second half or increase in personnel expenses in the second half of the year?

No, our macro model does not include a second increase in the minimum wage income. We will see after the -- we will wait till elections, and after the election, we will be closely following the policies of the economical side. But our assumption does not bring a second minimum wage increase in July, and nominal EBITDA growth in 2024 will be around 10%, Ece.

Thank you very much.

Demirtas, Cemal, Ata Invest.

Congratulations for good results. My first question is about discontinued operations. You shared some historical figures, including Ukraine. Could you tell us the bottom-line net income number for full year 2023, including Ukraine in 2023? That's my question. I can see the -- I can calculate the revenue and EBITDA, but I cannot calculate the historical number for discontinued sites at the net income level. That's my first question. And maybe if you give more digits about the revenue growth. In historical figure, saw that we can compare, I think it will be helpful.

And the other question is about your guidance. I understand that for the -- when you make the calculation based on the IFRS-29 figures, you're saying that you will have, let's say 8%, 9% real growth. plus inflation, 37% year over year. I think that's the assumption we are making, if I didn't understand it wrong. So that's my second question.

And the third question, how do you see the Ukraine operations to end up. You put it in discontinued, but it was a profitable one, maybe going forward, it will change. But can you give us some timeline?

And the last is not a question, but just criticism I'm making to all blue-chip companies in Türkiye. To be honest, I would expect higher disclosure transparency related to the inflation accounting, because it's really hard to understand, and most of the companies put several numbers as you did. But I know some good examples like [ERISA], they made whole -- the comparison, which was very much helpful. Just a quick -- it's a criticism because I -- Turkcell is one of our topic and it has always shown it has a very good standard, but in my humble opinion, that's the basic thing that I didn't like with any company in Türkiye, most of the blue chip companies, they give limited figures. But for the transparency, I would expect much, much higher.

Cemal, starting from your first question, this Group operations amount is TRY1.9 billion in the net income side. Regarding the revenue growth in real terms, our revenue grew by 15% to TRY107 billion in 2023. Due to contracted nature of our business, the lagging impact of our sequential price adjustments became more visible, starting from half of 2022, and it continued in 2023. Therefore, the price adjustments are the main motive regarding the revenue growth in the historical figures.

Regarding your third question, our year-end inflation expectation is around 37%, and the average rate, our expectation is around 52% for the 2024. Normally, it's really hard to -- how can I say this, it's really hard to finalize the inflationary accounting principles or calculation in such a big company in a short term, it's very hard for us. Therefore, we would like to be in a safe mode in this, regarding the -- especially real growth issue, your expectation is a little bit correct. Yeah, we say that it's the high single digit. But as I said before, our aim would be arriving or reaching the double-digit growth in 2024.

Regarding your criticism, I would like to make some information about this issue, especially Capital Market Board. Last week, we had a telephone conversation, verbal conversation with Capital Market Board, and they are very keen or they have very strict applications or prohibitions not to declare, the amounts or the, for example, figures before the inflation adjustment. Therefore, we prepared our presentation regarding the -- by taking into this account. Therefore, if you need further information about any kind of figures regarding before inflation or after inflation, our team will be very happy -- present to help you.

Regarding the Ukraine question, would you like to say anything, Ali Taha?

So, we are expecting the legal procedures to continue and I cannot -- we cannot give a deadline, but we will expect this is going to be over in this year. But again, it is just a jurisdiction system. So, we don't know how long this going to take, but we are doing our best to make it as quick as possible.

Thank you. But regarding my first question, I understand that the historical figures, including Ukraine, you mentioned around TRY1.9 billion, right?

Yes.

But -- and I look at your financial statements and it's the number we see for the inflation accounting standards. But I see TRY1.97 billion, the net income related to the Ukraine. But I am asking the historical figures, which might be lower than this number, because these numbers are all carried to the year-end. So in order to -- and my reasoning is, to compare with our full-year numbers, nothing more than that. So, it should be lower than TRY1.9 billion. So I just wanted to reiterate my question. Thank you.

Cemal, maybe we can provide the detailed information about this calculation after the call to you.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. It was very helpful. And congratulations for the --

Because our figures are after inflation adjustment side and discontinued operations, one figure we edit; the historical values, we will be giving it after the call.

Okay, thank you. Thank you very much.

[Bystrova, Evgeniya], Barclays

I have just one quick question. Do you have any plans for the upcoming 2025 Eurobond maturity, and could you maybe share those with us? Thank you.

Yes, we have some plans because I think 2025 and 2026 would be a lot of -- there will be a lot of movements in this year. For example, we are expecting this 5G issue and as we have some -- the maturity of our Eurobonds are expiring.

Therefore this -- as I mentioned, we have around USD1.7 billion equivalent cash in our hands and we have USD120 million committed lines. This is very sufficient for us, for example, for the two years, maintaining our debt service for three years period.

But this year, most probably, we are thinking to make some -- regarding the adequate case for this -- in order to recover this issue, we are diligently exploring a range of competitive and rational alternatives for the reissuance of 2025 loan this year. This might be sukuk or also again a conventional Eurobond side.

Sorry, could you please repeat what is the size of the committed lines?

The committed line is USD120 million.

Okay, thank you.

Campos, Gustavo, Jefferies.

Congratulations on the results. Just wanted to -- if you could provide some color on the -- your working capital flows as of this fourth quarter of 2023 unadjusted to from like the inflation, that would be very helpful. Thank you.

Yes. Thanks very much for the question. We expect our loan portfolio to increase around TRY8 billion as of 2024 year-end. Accordingly, we might continue to see some pressure on the working capital side. Yet we have the flexibility to adjust our management in other working capital items, therefore, our maximizing or minimizing to using the working capital process is still ongoing. We take the relevant precautions about this issue.

Okay, sounds good. Thank you.

Singh, Maddy, HSBC.

This is Maddy Singh 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 see how was --

(technical difficulty) is for Q4 results, Maddy.

Sorry?

Sorry, I couldn't -- just a second.

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 margin as well.

We have put here only -- we have only full year inflationary adjustment figures we have. We do not have for -- only for Q4, the results are not done -- available right now.

Okay. All right. So any idea by when we can get those numbers? Because 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 when we can know about that?

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 dividend.

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% margin there -- sorry, 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 sensitivities there would be helpful?

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 -- 3vera7%. And the age rate would be around 50%. If the inflation keeps going on, for example, if this exists, our inflation-to-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.

Okay. So, it is fair to assume that if inflation goes up, your real revenue growth will probably also improve somewhat.

Yes, you're right. Absolutely.

Yes. Okay, got it.

So, (technical difficulty) inflationary pricing, it means. For your third 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.

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Nagy, Nora, Erste Group Bank AG.

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 then the real growth will be lower than what you are now guiding for, for 2024?

I thought I explained the -- 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 lower growth rates.

No, but I would assume that, that takes time for the ARPU to catch up to inflation, so that the real growth would be negatively impacted if inflation will be higher than you assumed?

But the momentum -- we have a momentum about this issue, and still we have an inflation problem in Türkiye. As you may assume that, 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 adjustments or inflationary pricing mechanism or policy will continue with all the year, for example. Therefore, we do not expect, for example, a lag about this issue, because we keep the momentum about this issue. We have started making sequential price adjustments starting from the Half two of 2022.

Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Turkcell management for any closing comments. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the call, and thank you very much for the questions. So, hopefully, we're going to have a better and a greater year in 2024. And I hope to see you and talk to you in the next quarterly update.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling. Have a pleasant evening.