Earnings Labs

Telecom Argentina S.A. (TEO)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 12, 2018

$11.18

-0.36%

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Same-Day

-1.34%

1 Week

-0.29%

1 Month

-6.36%

vs S&P

-1.92%

Transcript

Solange Barthe Dennin

Operator

[Call starts abruptly] We would like to remind all of those that have not received our press release or presentation that they can call our Investor Relation office to request the documents or download them from the Investor Relations section of our website located at www.telecom.com.ar. Additionally, this conference call and slide presentation is being broadcasted through the webcast feature available in such section and can also be replayed through the same channel. Before we continue with the conference call, I would like to go over some Safe Harbor information and other details of the call, as we usually do in this type of events. 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 effect of ongoing industry and economic regulation, possible changes in the demand for Telecom's products and services, and the effect of more general factors such as changes in general market or economic conditions in legislation or in regulations. Our press release dated November 7, 2018 a copy of which was included in a Form 6-K report 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 1 & 2 of the presentation. The agenda for today's conference call as seen in Slide 3 is first to go over general market overview, then moving onto our industry trends and strategy, which will be followed by the discussion of our business highlights and immediately after, we will…

Gabriel Blasi

Analyst

Thank you, Solange, hello to everyone. As mentioned in the prior call, remember that the merger between Telecom and Cablevision was considered inverse acquisition under IFRS 3, business combination, with Cablevision being the surviving entity for accompanying purposes [ph]. That was the purpose of preparing the consolidated financial agreement of Telecom Argentina as of September 30, 2018. First, the competitive figures as of December 31, 2017 and September 30, 2017 were a response to those that arise from the consolidated financial statements of Cablevision at the respective dates, and second, the corresponding information of the 9 months period ended September 30, 2018, incorporation on the basis of figures corresponding to Cablevision, the effect on applications of Telecom Argentina [indiscernible] decisions, and deferred value in accordance with IFRS 3 guidelines and the operation of Telecom Argentina as of January 1, 2019. On the other hand, in order to reach understanding and analysis of the earnings evolution by CUPs [ph], additional figures of the income statements are included exposing the pro forma basis, the comparative figures for 9 months of 2017, as is the merger between Telecom and Cablevision has been effective during that period. The variations of result versus 9 months of 2017 identified in this presentation, managed [ph] of the comparison with their formation, performance information. Additionally, you may find a detailed pro forma comparison in financial table 6, 7, 10, 11, 14 and 15 included in our press release. Moving to Slide 9, you can find some industry trends that we would like to share with you in order to clarify the strategic approach that the company currently has. The goals of the company is to offer to it's clients in the near future, a convergent offer 4 hour service. As you cannot serve the previous quarter experiences in…

Solange Barthe Dennin

Operator

Thank you, Gabriel. We will go over the impact that this positive business terms have -- as described by Gabriel generate over our operating income. Please turn to Slide 18 where we can analyze the consolidated revenues and EBITDA. For the first nine months of 2018, consolidated revenues amounted almost to ARS99.5 billion reaching the growth of 29% year-on-year. In turn, service revenues grew 29%, thanks to the strong performance of PayTV revenues and internet revenues, followed by mobile service revenues and more specifically, mobile internet. Furthermore, EBITDA show a strong evolution growing by 36% year-on-year as we have concentrated in improvement of our revenue quality and profitability. EBITDA margin increased substantially by 180 basis points to 35% for the nine months of 2018. It is important to highlight that the improvement of EBITDA margin is explained by a solid performance in cost management as we will analyze in the following slide. Please refer to Slide 19 where we show the performance on EBITDA as dedicated of the different components of revenue and cost. The company has taken actions to gain operational efficiency and manage it's cost structure and these actions have positively impacted our profitability, as always, it has grown below revenue growth and inflation level. We can observe a positive evolution of labor cost over which the company is focusing heavily alongside which fit for services, maintenance and material which in turn were affected by lower network maintenance cost. Additionally, effective cost management has delivered good results in interconnection cost through better negotiation in international interconnection, and also enhanced it's cost mainly affected by lower sellout. This effect has been partially offset by increases in programming and content cost and other costs, we conclude bad debt expenses. Although these expenses have registered such an increase, they are in…

Gabriel Blasi

Analyst

As Solange has stated, it's important to alert the issue that the company has refinanced almost completely today with a gain of much better on [indiscernible] profile, we've been able during this delta environment to have a very significant improvement costs and is important to alert the fact that this improvement cost is starting because we are still in the process of deployment of all our new systems, especially on the back and the front and yet a significant additional effects according to come from there but on the EBITDA evolution in Page 19 where we saw the different components, we think it was very easily shown how we were able to focus the cost structure at a very slower pace than inflation phase with only the section of a programming and of course important costs which are on a relative but on the rest of the cost of the company, they have been below inflation, probably the only one that has been aligned with inflation in the tax as it is shown there. And we've been able to bring the offset inflation effects on our revenue side. It's final, we continue to move ahead and going deeper on the effects of the merged valuing our cost of structure and our different processes, they -- the industry event next year will be very significant with the inclusion as I already mentioned of the new preference related to [indiscernible]. With this, I will open the session to questions.