Earnings Labs

Telecom Argentina S.A. (TEO)

Q1 2011 Earnings Call· Tue, May 3, 2011

$11.18

-0.36%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day everyone, welcome to Telecom Argentina First quarter 2011 Earnings conference call. Today call is being recorded. Participating on today’s call we have Mr. Franco Bertone, Chief Executive Officer of Telecom Argentina; Mr. Adrián Calaza, Chief Financial Officer; Mr. Pedro Insussarry, Finance Director ; and Mrs. Solange Barthe Dennin, Manager of Investor Relations. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. Pedro Insussarry. Please go ahead, sir.

Pedro Insussarry

Management

Okay, good morning to everybody and thank you very much for participating in this conference call. As mentioned by [inaudible] our moderator the purpose of this call to share with you the consolidated results of Telecom Argentina and correspond to the first quarter fiscal year 2011 ended on last March 31st. We would like to remind you that for all those that have not received our press release or our presentation you can call our investor relations office or download them from the investor relation section of our website at www.telecom.com.ar/investors. Additionally this conference call is being broadcasted through the website feature available in sub section and can also be replayed through this same feature. Before we continue with the conference call I would like to go over the typical Safe Harbor information and other details of the call. So we would like to clarify that during the conference call and Q&A session we may produce certain forward-looking statements about Telecom’s future performance, plans, strategies and targets. 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 effects of the public emergency law or complementary regulation, the effects of ongoing industry and economic regulation, possible changes in demand for Telecom products and services, and the effects of marginal factors such as changes in general market or economic conditions, in legislation, or in regulation. Our press release dated March 2nd, 2011, a copy of which is being included in a Form 6-K report to be furnished to the SEC, describes certain factors that may affect any forward-looking statements that we may produce during this session. Furthermore, we urge the audience of this conference call to read the disclaimer clause contained in slide one of the…

Franco Bertone

Management

Thank you Pedro, and good morning everyone. First quarter 2011 delivered a strong results. We continue leading the mobile market retaining number one from net adds for the second year in a row capturing valuable customer and successfully developing the customer interest for mobile internet and other value added services. As highlighted in slide five in this quarter our mobile ARPU increased 16% year-on-year, thanks to booming value added service revenue fostered by mobile internet, social networking and SMS. We introduced tablet devices in the market maintaining our innovation leadership. In the fixed broadband business too, we kept pursuing product innovation to differentiate our service delivery and competition. Moreover in the fixed voice we have seen that migrating customer to smart [ph] plans has increased the minutes of usage and grown ARPU 6% year-on-year. Financial performance with sustained profitability with strong cash flow generation and the net income increase of 63% year-on-year. So let’s now drive to some detail of our mobile operations referring slide 6 of the presentation. In the Argentina mobile market we experienced strong quarterly result over a 16% year-on-year ARPU increase and a customer base growing 13% and posting 100 basis point increase in our estimate market share to a 32.7%. We represent net as in market share in excess of 60% over the last 12 months. We strengthen our leadership with tablet, 3G clients more than doubled boosting non SMS ADSL usage. Slide 7 shows the value added revenue growth at an impressive 72% year-over-year. This was achieved with continued expansion of 3G services which drove non SMS revenues to record level. We launched with exclusivity the Motorola XOOM tablet while it increases maximum penetration with [inaudible] and SRC dropped to 16% of service revenue because of lower subsidies. Slide 8 shows how our mobile…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) We will take our first question from Marcio Fernandez with Merrill Lynch. Marcio Fernandez – Merrill Lynch: Thank you good morning everyone. Have a couple of questions first on the challenge that Telecom Argentina has to keep the margins given the inflationary environment and the question is whether what kind of measures are you have been recently taken to try to preserve margins despite the inflation. And secondly clearly as also probably as a result of inflation you’ve been able to pass through customer some price increase given the ARPU that seems to be going up and what kind of rights do you think are reasonable to expect from ARPU growth going forward. If not giving the specific number if you think you can basically offset whatever the inflation is with the ARPU and if I may a third question, I apologize is an update on the spectrum auction in Argentina please thank you. Adrián Calaza: The challenge of keeping margins is definitely a challenge. I think we posted some success in that. I would say – I would make a general comment on that in saying that the overall pressure that we have on our margin on the cost side is quite limited. I mean it is nowhere near to the inflation rate that are currently being valued for the Argentina market so that help us and as a matter of managing supply and achieving increasing efficiency of our operations. We did adopt and we did pass a repricing on our products as all the industry as a matter of fact we were last of the operators over the last few months to adopt a price increase on our regulated carriage. As a matter of fact these price increases are pretty nominal as a matter of fact…

Adrian Calaza

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And we will return to Marcio Fernandez. Marcio Fernandez – Merrill Lynch: Thank you very much for the follow up. Any idea of how much the spectrum – well first of all how many megahertz are coming and how much spectrum? How much will that cost. Has the government gave any new indication of that and you mentioned you are confident that it will happen in the near term, is this still first half this year is it going to happen second half this year. Thank you. Adrián Calaza: Sure, the question is difficult to answer. The exact date well of the auction is still unknown to the market. I mean we definitely hope that will happen at the earliest. In terms of megahertz that will become available rather than the prevailing factor is not what the bandwidth that will auctioned is what the 320 cap that applies to individual operators into individual area of operations. As far as we are concerned in the metropolitan area [inaudible] we have an ability to grow at 7.5 megahertz and in the North and Southern part where we can grow 10 megahertz of our exhibiting frequency allocation. So that what we will be bidding, similar thing would apply to the other players in the market. At what price? We are not prepared to disclose and obviously we don’t know. Marcio Fernandez – Merrill Lynch: And is there any possibility that this cap on spectrum will be could be higher than what you were expecting?

Adrian Calaza

Analyst

Not at this round we believe that there is a following round of spectrum auctioned in the 1.7 and 2.1 gigahertz bandwidth that is being announced and should be put in place at a later date. That will definitely require additional frequency [inaudible] that is a common request from all operator and I think the regulator is considering that option but that would not be part of the 850 and 1900 auction we are expecting shortly for which the currently frequency cap would apply. Marcio Fernandez – Merrill Lynch: Okay, and then on two different subjects clearly as a percentage of revenues is outstanding in Telecom Argentina now 40%, actually 46%. Do you have any benchmark because clearly in case of Argentina I think SMS plays a key role here to explain why it’s so high and is there any market you are looking as there – besides probably Italy but is there any market that you are looking as a benchmark to what you can do in Argentina? Adrián Calaza: I think we are the buying benchmark on the others I mean. But we still believe that there is a scope of growth I mean our experience over a year or so is showing that there is a scope for growth in that I mean Argentina has extraordinarily development in value added services from the time of short messaging. The rate of growth as we are experiencing on non SMS and therefore navigation browsing content and the rest is much stronger obviously of the longer term we had on internet so I think we are entering the phase two and [inaudible] SMS stage in which we are expecting the market to be as buoyant as it has been for the SMS in the past. But we are really happy to be the benchmark for the others. Marcio Fernandez – Merrill Lynch: Okay, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And we will go next to Jasmine [inaudible].

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, thank you very much and congratulation on a fantastic result. I was surprised at the 6% voice ARPU growth, could you elaborate and give us more color on that and do you see that repeating going forward. Thanks.

Franco Bertone

Management

Jasmine can you repeat your question? You really came out pretty low.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Sorry, so the 6% voice ARPU growth what drove that exactly if you could add more colors to that and also do you see that repeating going forward?

Franco Bertone

Management

In fixed line ARPU?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes.

Franco Bertone

Management

Okay, well, I think – thank you for your remarks, I understand it attracts your attention since we are operating with growth in tariff on regulated service. They do apply to our fixed line business. The 6% is the result of supplementary service we have been introducing in the market that are built on top of services to which frozen tariff do apply and based on – the second factor is that there is a growing percentage of our customer base that is in excess of 30% of the base itself that did migrate from carriage kind of building to slab services that we have been offering since on wire. And then the flat [ph] packages are [inaudible] arrival of minutes of usage that is above the average of the customer base and that’s consequently the corresponding flat rate is widely above ARPU of the non-slab traffic customers. Its combined effect of supplementary priority service and flat slab pricing has been delivering this 6% or slightly higher of the 5% that we have in the past. That is a sustained and sustainable trend for the future as well.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) And it appears that we have no further questions.

Franco Bertone

Management

Thank you very much for attending our conference call for the quarter and please keep touch with us for any additional and further clarification you may have we would be at your disposal, thank you very much for your attention.

Operator

Operator

And that will conclude today’s conference call. Thank you everyone for your participation.