Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Grameenphone's earnings disclosure for the second quarter of 2021. My name is Naureen. I'm the Head of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us today. Our presentation, financial statements, additional documents are available for download on our Investor Relations website. You can also start posting your questions in the comment box. We will address them at the end of our presentation. In case you're unable to post your questions, please reach out to me through an e-mail or text. We will now start our presentation. I would now like to welcome our CEO, Mr. Yasir Azman.

Thank you, Naureen. And good morning, everyone. My name is Yasir Azman, CEO of Grameenphone. I thank you all for joining us this morning. Let me start with some of the industry facts this time. As reported by our regulator, till May 2021, the telecommunications industry overall has gained more than 5 million subscribers, which is almost a 3% increase from the exit 2020. In the same period, mobile data users have increased by over 5 million also, a 5% increase from end of 2020. And 61% of total mobile subscribers in Bangladesh are using now mobile data services as of May 2021. These are reported by our regulator. If we talk about the highlights of the quarter 2. Quarter 2 2021 marks Grameenphone's return to top line growth amid the COVID-19 pandemic situation. From the last year, our total revenue grew by 8.1%. Having achieved the 80 million subscriber milestone in quarter 1 this year, we ended the first half of the year with 82 million subscribers, which is more than 10% growth year-over-year. And in addition to total subscribers, we also have significant growth in 4G users, which is 56.5% from last year. However, the challenges have become even more daunting over the past few weeks, as the country is facing its deadliest wave of COVID-19 till date. I'll come back on this later on. This top line growth of 8.1% is driven by the enhanced customer experience and digitalization we have driven during this period. We began 2021 with a stronger start compared to 2020, as we were able to deal with and manage most of the challenges from COVID-19 situation and business environment during [indiscernible]. In the first quarter, we achieved a few milestones such as extensive expansion of 4G rollout, what we did across the…

Thank you, Azman. And good morning to everybody. Let me start with the main KPIs. Amidst the continued lockdown situation starting from April, Grameenphone managed to deliver a strong organic financial performance in Q2 with a positive growth momentum in top line along with a healthy profitability. The overall economy is largely impacted, as Azman said, by a new wave of COVID-19, with average daily new cases reaching to a level of more than 11,000 by the end of June. Despite the volatility of the situation, Grameenphone remained active in the market with strong subscriber acquisition, investment momentum and customer-focused market activities. In summary, Grameenphone had 8.5% year-on-year growth in subs and traffic revenue in Q2 '21 after a minus 2.2% in Q1 '21 and minus 2.8% in Q4 '20 on a daily basis. In terms of EBITDA, we continued to maintain a healthy margin of 62%. With the continued investment efforts backed by the newly acquired spectrum at the end of last quarter, GP's CapEx-to-sales ratio for the quarter stood at 11.3%, which was 9.6% in the previous quarter on a rolling 4 quarters average basis. Earnings per share stood at BDT 6.3 with a 17.1% year-on-year growth in Q2. The year-on-year growth in EPS is mainly contributed by the mentioned top line growth as well as lower finance costs. Turning to our subscriber numbers. Grameenphone continued its subscriber acquisition drive in the market, resulting into 1.3 million net adds in Q2, including 2 million new data users. Our sub base at the end of the quarter stood at 82 million, reflecting a 10.1% growth from last year and 1.6% from previous quarter. According to BTRC published information, as of May '21, GP's subscription market share increased therefore to 46.5% from last quarter, which was 46.4% in Q1. The…

Thank you, Jens. As you see, we are continuing with the stronger momentum we gained in the beginning of this year with return to top line growth as a combination of enhanced customer experience, digitalization and our agility to respond to the changing customer demand. We are also managing our operational challenges with all our capabilities in place and playing to our strength in the market execution. As the volatilities related to COVID-19 intensify, we will continue operating under our business continuity plan. We will continue collaborative efforts with our regulators and different government and private entities in our dedication to support our communities in the recovery from this pandemic. I'll stop here. Thank you, Naureen and all connected.

Thank you, Azman bhai. Up until now, we have not received any questions, so maybe we may wait for a few more minutes and see if anybody has any questions. If anybody has any problem logging in or typing on the comment box, you can e-mail me. Or you can text me on WhatsApp or SMS, whatever works for you.

I think we can start. I see some questions starting to come in. The first one, from [ Consilium ], "What is the impact of bundled offering on the blended pricing for data quarter in this -- data during this quarter?" Jens?

Yes. I think, as you're aware, bundles like in other markets are picking up. Bundles here means voice and data bundles. So on the pricing side, it's difficult to say, [ as it's a ] bundled product, to extract this. Overall we see continued price pressure, of course, in the market like we have seen in the previous quarters, but if you see, the uptake on data was tremendous on it with a strong growth on the usage, 38%, average megabyte per user, ending up with roughly 3.6 gigabyte per user, which was 2.6 gigabyte in the quarter a year ago.

Azman bhai, maybe you can take the second question. What led to substantial uptick in data consumption during quarter 2?

This is actually directly related towards our data user growth, which we have driven over the period and heavily supported by new spectrum and site rollout. At the same time, a strong market execution, the window of opportunity we got with a lesser impact of COVID during this period in Q2.

Just a reminder to everyone who has logged in, if you cannot post questions, you can also text me on WhatsApp or send me an email if needed. Azman bhai, I have one -- I'm sorry, Jens, I have one for you, "Current update on TowerCo and what will be the impact on financial statements?"

Yes, I think as mentioned before by Azman, we have onboarded a second TowerCo now. And we have so far in Q1, Q2, 765 had been rolled out by the new TowerCos altogether that we have.

Jens, I have one more for you, "On the price per gigabyte basis, can you help us understand the scenario better?"

Yes, I think I answered this before. That's on a price per gigabyte, it would be only possible on a stand-alone basis for the data only. In the bundled scenario, it's difficult to differentiate between it. It's -- therefore, it can repeat on the price pressure that we see in the market. It's a very competitive market that's continuing. But you see it's basically offset with a very high growth rates on the usage.

Jens, continuing with another one. "Since the voice ARPU is stabilizing while the data revenue is moving up sharply in terms of contribution, should one safely assume stronger revenue growth in coming quarters?"

I think that's the million-dollar question. I think in general, you would be correct if we would not be in this uncertainty that we see with the COVID right now. There will be with the strict lockdown that has been implemented from 1st of July. With the strict lockdown means also supported by the military army deployed to keep people safe in their homes. This will have a certain business impact as well.

I would just like to give a reminder that in Bangladesh, we are restricted from giving out forward-looking statements as well. Jens, I have a question for you, "What percentage of total revenue came from digital channels, such as bKash, MyGP app in the last quarter?"

I think this is a very competitive question that we have, which we would not like to disclose. Hope for your understanding there in terms of revenue breakdown. But I might answer you different. If we come, what is important for us is actually the digital reload share that we have as part of going into a more digital world. And I think this, as we have said, has moved up by nearly 15% year-on-year, now totaling to 26.8% of which we have digital reload in terms of -- from digital and alternative channels.

Azman bhai, I have a question for you. "Can you please elaborate on the operational restrictions that the lockdown forces upon us? What kind of impact are we indicating here?"

You see that telecommunications services has been declared as an emergency or essential service in the country. So as far as our network operation is concerned, maintenance, optimization rollout, we have not seen as such, any obstacles or restriction at this point of time. Ideally there should not be any restrictions because that has been declared an essential service. However, we see that obstacle and restriction in terms of our distribution activities. Many of the shops are not even allowed. So even though if sometimes we are allowed to go for distribution, we are not able. There are other means of looking into it, how do you basically use your part of marketing activities and data analytics to understand and provide possibilities for our customers to retail by connecting with our retailers as it is mostly electronic retail system into the market. I think as far as the impact concern of VSD while COVID restrictions get stricter, we see a drop in recharges. We've seen a drop in users initially, and then restart. Naureen?

Thank you, Azman bhai. We do not have any follow up -- I do see another question. "Were there any new promotional offers that were introduced during the quarter that drove strong 4G conversions along with strong data usage?"

I can just give you a few thoughts here that this promotional offers depends, it's like many angles. It's not only as such, the new pricing or reducing prices also bringing in new price points, by understanding our customer needs and the changing behavior we see in this pandemic. This is one. The other thing is obviously how granular you are to understand the customer movement and your -- before into the new areas where we are rolling out our new sites, spectrum and 4G. So altogether, in a combination of our enhanced customer experience, digitalization and our ability and agility to basically respond to the customer need actually drove a strong 4G conversions, while customers see the value out of those activities and efforts. Naureen?

We're waiting for some more questions.

I can take the last one, given the more electronic recharges we were in the lockdown, whether it has impacted VSD. No, electronic digital recharges are more [indiscernible].

Azman bhai, I have one more for you. "Unlike previous lockdown when we witnessed lots of SIMs getting inactive, is there a change in customer usage that we are witnessing during the lockdowns in 2021?"

This, we observe every time when there's new restrictions come into picture. It's like that in the prepaid market where lot's of [indiscernible] are stopping their small businesses and also in the big enterprises. We see initial drop in terms of customer usage, and then we see it starts coming back again especially in the site.

I have one more, Jens. "What is driving the increase in sales and marketing expenses?"

This is mostly revenue. We have a strong revenue increase. You see out of this, of course, this is due to the commissions that we have as the biggest driver in sales and marketing. Of course, also as we getting back using now the spectrum deployment for extra activities that we have in the market to drive this.

Okay. We will wait 2 more minutes for any further questions. Azman bhai, I have one last question for you. "Is there further headroom available in terms of subscriber addition before we have to go back to regulator for approval?"

Yes. Subscriber addition before we go to regulatory approval, we don't see that we are operationally restricted in terms of having subscriber growth in the country, and we see that more and more subscribers are preferring them on a [indiscernible] customer experience and digitalization we are doing and bringing value to the customers.

Okay. I don't see any new questions. So thank you, everyone. Thank you for participating. Have a good day. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to get in touch with me over e-mail or phone. We can also take a few meetings next week. Thank you, and advanced [indiscernible] to everyone.