Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Grameenphone's earnings disclosure for the fourth quarter of 2023. My name is Aleef Pasha, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations. And with me today are our CEO, Mr. Yasir Azman; and our CFO, Mr. Otto Risbakk. Please note that the presentation we are sharing today, along with additional documents, are on our Investor Relations website. You can start posting questions, and we shall address them at the end of the presentation. In case you are unable to post your questions due to technical reasons, please send me an e-mail or a text. I will now welcome our CEO, Mr. Yasir Azman, to start our presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Aleef Pasha, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our quarter 4 2023 earnings call. I'm Yasir Azman, Chief Executive Officer of Grameenphone. As per our regulator's report till December 2023, the telecommunications industry has reached to 190.8 million subscribers, increasing by 1.7 million subscribers from September 2023. And during the same period, mobile data users decreased by 1.3 million, reaching to 118.5 million in December 2023. Moving on to the sum of our key highlights for the quarter. Keeping customer centricity and personalization at the core, we have strategically deployed spectrum and constantly enhanced our network capabilities. In this quarter, we have prioritized the needs for our customers to provide a seamless user experience to continue to be the most reliable connectivity partner in the country. And this has led to 10% year-on-year increase in our 4G data users number in Grameenphone network. Our streamlined, simplified and innovative product offerings have provided better value for our customers, driving better utilization and convenience for our customers. We are now able to elevate value on a continual basis, owing to which we have registered 20% growth in data. We continue our efforts to deliver the digital vision and advancing our customer service and entertainment arena by enhancing capabilities of our digital assets and expanding the OTT partner portfolio. 2023, obviously, has been a year of macroeconomic adversities impacting the entire nation with challenges in many dimension. Despite multiple challenges, both in local market and for global economy, Grameenphone delivered on top line and EBITDA, demonstrating our unwavering commitment to delivering value to our shareholders, stakeholders and customers. Touching up on some of the key macroeconomic updates. Inflation has remained over 9% as prices of goods and services stayed high, restraining the purchasing power of our…

Thank you, Azman, and good morning to everyone. As Azman said, I joined Grameenphone just a few weeks ago. So this is my first earnings call. It's great to me to hear on Zoom, and I hope to meet many of you personally during the year. So before I go into the details, let me first start with a little bit highlight of the fourth quarter. So I'm happy to see that the market in general, despite the macro challenges, the telco market has been relatively resilient as we see in most markets globally. And we have performed well on that market, achieving a 6.9% year-on-year growth in S&T revenue. On the cost side, there has been a pressure on cost, not only here in Bangladesh but also globally, in particular on the energy side. And I'm also pleased with our response to the cost pressure. We have a very disciplined approach to cost. And we have, as always, efficiency programs that we're running. And we have been able to offset that pressure, leading to an EBITDA margin -- solid EBITDA margin of 61.3%. On the investment side, our strong balance sheet and cash position allows us to have a very long-term view, and we are continuing our work efforts to modernize the network and build digital platforms independently of the macro situation. And in the fourth quarter, the CapEx to sales ratio, and here, it is the last 4 quarters, represented 30% of revenue. So that's a very stable ratio. With regard to the earnings, we report solid earnings per share with BDT 4.35, reflecting the strong top line growth and the cost discipline. So let's go to the next slide. So on the subscriber side, I'm happy to see that we continue to do well, attracting subscribers to…

Thank you, Otto. And financial summary has already been done so well by our CFO, Otto Risbakk. Still, I'll highlight a few more things once again to reinforce that quarter 4 of 2023 registered continued growth momentum in both revenue and EBITDA while still navigating external challenges and strengthening our core services. We also talked about network expansion, our efforts in network expansion and investment, transforming the user experience and strengthening our position as the #1 network in the country. We are building new data centers, and one we have already just this quarter, we have launched, taking our technological excellence near to the customers to continue to be the most reliable connectivity partner in Bangladesh. To drive the growth momentum, we continue to focus on meeting our customers' unique needs through digital-centric innovation and advanced technological capabilities. Our deliberate and focused efforts towards nurturing diversity in our workplace and promoting inclusivity, that greatly contributed to creating a more dynamic work environment. As of the fourth quarter of 2023, the percentage of women in the total workforce reached to 19.8%, and that's in the increasing trend. Last but not least, a very important one, the privacy. It is one of the biggest concern in the age of machines and rapidly growing era of [ sophisticated ] technology. At Grameenphone, we exercised the best practices as such, strengthened across access control implementation and enhanced network security to protect the privacy of our customers, employees and other related, anyone to Grameenphone network. With that, I'll hand over to Aleef for our Q&A session. Have a good day, everyone. Thank you once again.

Thank you, Azman bhai. We have a couple of questions that have come in separately to me. So I will address them right now. So Otto, the first one is for you. Why is quarter-on-quarter GP not performing well in total revenue or DSTR in Q4?

Yes. Thank you for that question. It's good to see that somebody has high ambitions for us. But actually, we did perform quite well, I think. So in the fourth quarter, we continue our solid performance with -- it was the 11th consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth, and we reached a growth of 6.9%. So I'm actually pretty happy with the growth in particular considering the inflation and the macro situation, and there was elections also coming up. So all in all, I'm happy actually with the performance of revenue. And like I said, I think we have a good momentum.

Thank you, Otto. One more for you. It's in terms of data revenue. So the question is that data revenue composition in Q4 has fallen. What's your view on that?

Yes. That's a good question. So first of all, we have had tremendous growth of data revenue, and we see a lot of engagement [ added ] to the platforms. So I think if you look also in other markets, you have some seasonal impacts and some peaks every night then. We see underlying growth is coming. So I expect actually the data usage to show growth in 2024.

Thank you. Azman bhai, we have one for you. This is in terms of data usage. So the question is that data usage has been stagnant since Q2 and Q3. And then we've seen it fall in Q4. Why?

Thank you, Aleef. It's data usage, not data subscribers and revenue. In Q2 and Q3, data usage per user reached to more than 7 gigabyte, 7.1 gigabyte, which was a milestone and highest in the industry. However, in Q4, data usage actually got impacted. There are many factors by rising inflation. We have seen the preelection political instability also impacted overall economy and our customer spend and other macroeconomic challenges. Besides, during the quarter, lower validity packs actually were discontinued due to BTRC's instruction, which further impacted our data usage where the volume is high and the customer [ usage is ] very fast with a low validity period. So it's more of the customers are adjusting their usage pattern. That's other than the macroeconomic and other challenges. And we believe that this will have a strong record. Thank you.

Thank you, Azman bhai. Otto, 2 more for you. So let's take the first one. What led to NPAT to grow so significantly in Q4?

So net profit, if you compare to the same quarter last year, it was a significant growth. And then we see that there are some ups and downs in the quarter. I think the underlying profit growth is quite stable. And then we have, from time to time, some one-offs. So at this quarter, the growth stood at 58.2%. But like I said, if I would compare like-for-like, the growth in net profit was around 8%. And this is due to, like I said, one-offs. For example, we had a legacy litigation verdicts in the fourth quarter last year, which had an impact on the result. So you would see that if you take the long line, you would see that this will flat out and that we see a continued stable growth in net profit.

Thank you. Finally, there is one last question till now. So this has been covered though, but I mean, Otto, you can say a few words if you wish. It can be seen that the dividend payout ratio is around 51%. It has dropped significantly. Why is it so?

Yes. I think this -- first of all, we have a very strong balance sheet with a net positive cash position now as of Q4. And we have a very strong business. However, we do see a macro situation around us, which is challenging. So we prefer this quarter to be prudent, and we are staying within our dividend policy of at least 51%. But it's clear that we do have capacity to increase the dividends if the macro picture should improve. But we can never promise anything on dividend to see that quarter-by-quarter, and obviously, that has to be approved by our Board.

Thank you very much, Otto. And we do not have any more questions. So if though any of the analysts have further questions, please reach out to me. We can take it separately. So for now, we end the fourth quarter. Thank you, everybody, for joining us. Thank you, Azman bhai. Thank you, Otto. And goodbye.

Yes. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Aleef.

Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.