Earnings Labs

Telecom Argentina S.A. (TEO)

Q4 2020 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 10, 2021

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Transcript

Solange Dennin

Operator

Good morning. On behalf of Telecom Argentina, I would like to thank everybody for participating on this conference call. The participants of today's conference call are Roberto Nóbile, Chief Executive Officer; Gabriel Blasi, Chief Financial Officer; Fernando Balmaceda, Director of Investor Relations; and myself, Solange Dennin, Manager of Investor Relations. The purpose of this call is to share with you the results of our fiscal year 2020 and fourth quarter ended December 31, 2020. If you have not received our press release or presentation, you 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. This conference call and presentation is being broadcasted and can also be replayed through our investor website at institucional.telecom.com.ar/inversores. If you'd like to go over some -- I would like to go over some safe harbor information and other details of the call. We would like to clarify that during the conference call and Q&A session, we could mention certain forward-looking statements about Telecom's future performance, plans, strategies and objectives. 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 ongoing industry and economic regulation, possible changes in the demand for Telecom's products and services, the effects of potential changes in general market and/or economic conditions, in legislation and the impact of the outbreak of COVID-19 on the global economy and specifically on the economies of the countries in which we operate, as well as on our operations and financial performance. Our press release dated March 9, 2021, a copy of which was included in Form 6-K and sent to the SEC, describes certain factors that may affect any forward-looking statements that could be mentioned during this call. The company has reflected the effects of the inflation adjustment adopted by Resolution 777 of 2018 of the Comisión Nacional de Valores, CNV, which established that the re-expression will be applied to the annual financial statements for intermediate and special periods ended as of and included December 31, 2018. Accordingly, the reported figures corresponding to fiscal year 2020 included the effect of the adoption of the inflationary accounting in accordance with IAS 29. In this presentation, we will also include figures in historical values which are easier to understand. Our press release is complemented by our earnings presentation. The audience should read the disclaimer contained in Slide 1 and 2 and -- of the presentation. The agenda of today's conference call is described in Slide 3 and includes our business and financial highlights. We will end the call with a Q&A session. Now let me pass the call to Gabriel, our CFO, who will start with the presentation.

Gabriel Blasi

Analyst

Thank you, Solange. Good morning, and welcome to everyone. Moving to Slide 4, which shows a summary of the company figures as of December 2020. During the fiscal year 2020, Telecom's revenues totaled $3.6 billion, revenues measured in constant pesos decreased 6.5% year-to-year. EBITDA totaled $1.2 billion, implying 34.1% EBITDA margin, which has been on the high side despite a challenging 2020 due to COVID-19. Our mobile subscribers in Argentina amounted to 18.7 million, decreasing approximately 228,000 when comparing with the previous quarter due to a decline of around 540,000 in the prepaid segment which were partially offset by an increase of more than 315,000 clients in the postpaid segment. Broadband and pay TV clients have maintained the number of clients during 2020, totaling around 4.2 million and 3.5 million, respectively. Fixed voice subscribers without considering IP telephone lines amounted 2.9 million. Thanks to our successful commercial strategy focused on the bundling and upselling of our product, we currently have 2.7 million convergent unique customers and 45% of our broadband customers have a mobile bundle. Slide 5 summarizes our main achievements during 2020. Our network has performed very well during last year and will continue to do so in response to the higher demand of mobile and fixed connectivity. Thanks to the investments in infrastructure done in the present year, Telecom has the equipment and systems that allows its network to perform efficiently, supporting important increases in home internet data traffic, mobile voice and data services, combined with a pretty strong growth in upstream traffic. Our business has proven to be very resilient during a challenging scenario. We have been able not only to refinance our financial debt, but also to maintain our CapEx to sales ratio according to industry standards, resulting on our historical EBITDA margin of plus 30%.…

Fernando Balmaceda

Analyst

Thank you so much, Gabriel. Turning to Slide 15, we show the evolution of global inflation. As of December 2020, the year-over-year increase in inflation has been 36.1%. During the fourth quarter of the year, inflation has accelerated to 11.3%. The breakdown that we are including shows that the share of communication services, the CPI amounts to approximately 2.8%. Communication services during 2020 have increased by 7.6% according to the official National CPI data published by the INDEC. Slide 16 shows that during fiscal year 2020, consolidated revenues on nominal terms grew by 33%, reaching almost ARS 257.3 billion. When analyzing said figures adjusted by inflation, revenues amounted to almost ARS 301.6 billion, showing an increase of 6.5% in the real terms. Service revenues showed a 33% nominal increase in a context where prices have been frozen for the most part of 2020, being mainly driven by mobile revenues, which grew more than 1% in real terms when comparing fiscal year 2020 with fiscal year 2019. EBITDA increased by 36% year-on-year in nominal terms, thus generating an EBITDA margin of 34.3%. EBITDA margin in real terms was 34.1%. The company performed well in real terms -- well in terms of cost control. Operating costs before D&A decreased by 9% in near terms versus fiscal year 2019. The company achieved an aggressive cost reduction. Slide 17 shows the company's EBITDA evolution and the impact of the reduction in operating expenses. There was a positive contribution to the EBITDA margin due to the reduction in handset costs, which decreased 24% in real terms, mainly to a lower sellout. Operating efficiencies have been obtained both in programming and content costs and also due to the elimination of segments, mainly related to sports. General fees, maintenance and material expenses have been reduced due to…

A - Solange Dennin

Analyst

Thank you, Fernando. With this, now we are more than pleased to answer any questions you may have. However, before we start, we'd like to remind you of how you can address your questions during the Q&A session, which will be opened immediately. (Operator Instructions) The first question that we have received is from Marcelo Santos with JPMorgan, that said, will you please comment more on the wallet initiative? What is the current size in users? What are the features currently enabled? Additionally, he asks, are the prices increases adopted by Telecom enough to sustain margins, perhaps, coupled with efficiency increases? Roberto Nóbile: Hello, everyone. This is Roberto. Going back to the first question regarding the wallet. Today, it's a project. We have put in place an NBP product that is already running. We are launching this application by June, by mid-2021. We already have more than 4 million prepaid wallets between brackets. These are customers that will constantly and in -- with high frequency, they will put money into this wallet between bracket and use it on a prepaid basis. So we are trying to leverage on prepaid. We are trying to leverage on our 2 million customers that use our fidelity club what we call Club Personal, where we give out prices and discounts with certain shops for our major customers. So we're trying to leverage our wallet on prepaid, on Club Personal, and of course, on all the transactions that we do within our own ecosystem. We have our own marketplace, where we have millions of transactions. Gabriel mentioned Switch. Switch is a new platform, a digital platform that we put in place, and it's working, and it's already producing a lot of synergies and new revenue streams for the company, and we're going to leverage on that. The project is in place. We are launching that in June probably. On the second question regarding if we can keep the margins either by inflation adjustment or synergies, we are looking for both things. What we -- we are confident that we will be able to adjust our prices by inflation, probably not always looking backwards. We will be trying to catch up inflation. That has always been the idea, and we are confident that we will keep on doing that as long as we are still working on synergies. The improvement in EBITDA margin last year was partially done with these synergies that are part of all the plans and all the things that we are working on, trying to put the 2 big companies into 1, and we have been very successful in doing that. So I assume that we will keep margins at the right level, and that will allow us to keep investing as much as our customers need.

Solange Dennin

Operator

Thank you, Roberto. The following questions came from [indiscernible]. What percentage of mobile clients use over 1 gigabyte of data and what percentage of broadband clients have over 25 megabyte speeds? The second question is what are your plans and date for further price increases for the remaining 2021? What were the drivers -- another question, what were the drivers of mobile and broadband subscriber loss for the third quarter of 2020? Roberto Nóbile: I will start with the last one, and we'll look for the right information on the first one. The loss is due to -- during the pandemia, the government decided to freeze any type of -- we were not able to disconnect any customers during the pandemia. So we've been dealing with customers with more than 6 or 7 invoices due, and we were not able to disconnect them. By the end of the year, that decree was not renewed. So we were able to work very hard on those customers trying to negotiate a payment. And for those that didn't pay, we decided to go forward with the disconnection. So the loss is due to that. It is due to the after-pandemia program. The second question regarding the inflation -- the adjustment of prices. We have already talked about it. Most of our, I would say, more than 90% of our customer, 95% of our mobile postpaid customers are over 1 giga. And that is the number. On the prepaid, we have like probably almost 100% are already above 1 giga. So we don't see -- I mean, our customers are using the mobile Internet very heavily. And that's why we were able -- because of all the investments that we did before the pandemia, we were able to keep the service running and being as long as open signal another -- other third parties agencies are telling us that we are the best service provider -- mobile service provider in Argentina. So that's the real thing. In terms of Internet, 70 -- more than 70% of our customers are over 20 megabytes. Those that are not over 20 megabytes, I can tell you that it is because they are on copper networks, probably networks that we need to upgrade through investments, and that will take longer if the conditions of Argentina keep the same.

Solange Dennin

Operator

Thank you, Roberto. The following question came from [indiscernible]. Can you please provide more details on the CapEx plan for this year, also on the perspective for 5G rollouts? Roberto Nóbile: Thank you for the question. We have several, I would say, plans for the CapEx of 2021 and it's the same thing that we did in 2020. We have a plan. We know exactly what to do. We have a strategy behind the plan of investment. But we need to make sure that the conditions and the payback of that investment is right there in place at the moment of investing. So last year, we were very cautious and until we have the precedent condition that was the refinancing of the debt of the 2021 bond, up to that moment, we were very, very cautious and trying to keep the CapEx at a very low rate. As soon as we have the -- a perspective of the near future that was good for the company, we keep rolling the CapEx, and we were able, for the most part, do almost $700 million in investments. That was the plan. But we -- if you take a look into the quarter-by-quarter basis, we were very cautious at the very beginning, and then we accelerated at the end. This year, we are doing the same thing. We have set a minimum CapEx of maintenance. Maintenance means making sure that we can have the CapEx for the churn, for new installations and on the turnover that we have on the CPEs investment. As long as the maintenance -- the minimum CapEx that we have to do on the networks to make sure that our customers do not suffer any problems in connectivity. That CapEx is around -- between $350 million and $400 million,…

Solange Dennin

Operator

Thank you, Roberto. The follow-up question came [indiscernible]. Would you please comment on the current status of the average discounts across products? Are they below the 60% we have seen last year?

Fernando Balmaceda

Analyst

Yes. The evolution of the different discounts that the company provides reached a peak during last year. But by the end of the year, it decreased reaching about levels of 30%, 35% of the customer base. But that's the total situation. Today, in the range of 30%, have some type of discount. Remember that due to the regulatory environment, the figures are not absolutely comparable. But we have a group of customers that were pushed to [indiscernible]. For those customers that were put to [indiscernible] because they didn't pay, the company has the campaign, providing certain additional financial relief to them, and we have recovered almost 70% of our customers to the customer base of the company.

Solange Dennin

Operator

The following question came from Alejandra Aranda. How should we think about pricing strategy and increases during 2021? And if you could give us some guidance in terms of cost. Roberto Nóbile: Alejandra, I think we have talked about trying to keep prices adjusted by inflation. Always looking backwards, trying to catch up inflation. And in terms of costs, we are pushing cost at the minimum. We are confident that we will be able to sustain margins stable. The only cost that will be difficult to keep below inflation probably will be the labor cost. The government is pushing unions to move with inflation despite the price freeze, and that is something that we need to work on, and we are already working on. But that could be the only cost that will move with inflation or just a little below inflation. The rest of the costs are under control, and we will keep them under control. So we are working on maintaining and sustaining the margin rate.

Solange Dennin

Operator

Thank you, Roberto. The following question came from [indiscernible]. How do you plan to comply with the extension of Central Bank Communication "A" 2106 considering the remaining maturity of Class A notes 2021?

Gabriel Blasi

Analyst

I'll take it. Well, regarding our maturity of the bond 2021, as we have refinanced more than 80% of the 1 last year, there remains, mainly the $100 million that we have to pay this year is not reached by this regulation in terms of the [indiscernible] specifically allowed payments to the debt that has been refinanced during 2020 with that condition, meaning that we can access to the -- absolutely free to comply with this term. It's important to address that the only significant maturity that we have in this year is [indiscernible]. Because the rest of the maturities are local or minor and so we have no pressure on digitalization. Regarding our maturity in 2022 from a total outstanding of $516 million that we have maturing next year, only $140 million which is part of our term loan with our core banks, it's reached by -- theoretically, might be reached by this type of regulation, if Banco Central decides to move it forward, and we don't think that it's going to be difficult for the company to refinance this with its core bank because hearing that we have decrease in 2 years of $1.5 billion of outstanding to only $140 million of debt and also because these are the relationship banks of our business. Having said that, we are increasing our presence in the local capital market with different type of instruments to be sure that no financial stress is there. Also, I think it's important to recall what Fernando has mentioned is that we have already granted a credit line of up to $200 million subject to considerations with CDB, which have only used $20 million up to now.

Solange Dennin

Operator

So going to the following question. The following question came from Guilherme Haguiara, BBI [ph]. Has ENACOM or the National State appealed the exemption with spend provision of Decree 690? What's your view on price regulation going forward? Roberto Nóbile: The ENACOM, of course, has appealed. That appeal is underway. And we are confident that the injunction is still in place and in full force. So that's -- and we believe that we will start taking notice of new injunctions coming from different courts. Moving forward, as I mentioned, we are confident that we will be able to go back to the pre 690 Decree, we are confident that we will be able to suspend that.

Solange Dennin

Operator

Thank you, Roberto. The following question, I believe, you touched -- partially answered from [indiscernible]. Can you walk through in more detail about the regulatory process of pricing about 5% under the provision 1466? How frequently would you be able to raise prices this year? Roberto Nóbile: Thank you for the question. Right now, the ENACOM has -- I will say something before that. On the appeal of ENACOM against our own injunction, for example. In that appeal, the ENACOM defined that they were not able to determine prices. They have no power to define or determine or put in place prices for the industry. That was written by the own legal department from ENACOM. Despite that, they issued several resolutions, implemented a 5% increase in January, a 7.5% increase in February for the mobile customers and another 5% for the fixed in March and a 2.5% increase in the mobile for March. In the mobile, by March, you already have 15% increase authorized by ENACOM and only 10% increase in the fixed services. That -- and there is no -- according to what we know, there is no idea how ENACOM will allow further increases in prices throughout the year. I mean there is no process already in place. There is no idea how they will do that. We believe and we're confident that we will have the right to increase prices adjusted by inflation throughout the year because of our appeal, not because of ENACOM allowing us, but just because a court will allow the industry to move forward.

Fernando Balmaceda

Analyst

Just a clarification regarding the question about the discounts. I am not sure if I set it out properly. The average discount today is on the 30% on the total customer base affected by this type of pricing.

Solange Dennin

Operator

Thank you. The following question came from [indiscernible]. A follow-up question, [indiscernible] how are the company's plans for expanding operations and diversified businesses in Uruguay and Paraguay? Roberto Nóbile: As you have seen throughout 2020, we have invested a lot in Paraguay. We have increased our fixed network coverage. We have moved from 30,000 customers on broadband to 135,000 customers in broadband by the end of December 2020. So our idea of expanding our businesses outside Argentina are in place, are there. We're committed to investing in Paraguay, which is our operation and a very good operation with a very high margin. And if you compare our margins with our competitors, you will see that we are -- we have been very successful in that. In Uruguay, we are taking a close and very reasonable look at the possibilities. There are still some things that the government has to solve, that's the new -- we need to understand how the new policy or the new legal framework or regulation for the industry will come out after Congress debating the new telecommunication law. So we are waiting to see how it come out from Congress, what -- and incumbent will be able to do or not, working based or not if there is a convergence between fixed and mobile is one thing. If that's not allowed, the value creation is different. So we will take a look, but we will wait and see also.

Solange Dennin

Operator

And we have the last question from [indiscernible], which says any news regarding new spectrum for 5G from ENACOM? Roberto Nóbile: No. There's no -- any leads. We should see in the future, 5G spectrum coming up and the remaining 4G spectrum coming out. We don't see that in 2021, basically because the industry is concerned of investments and also concerned on the payback of those investments. If we take a look at the previous bid, in 2014, '15, Telecom paid more than $500 million for the spectrum for 4G spectrum with a very clear close, saying that, that bid was making sure that all the companies will have the free access to price -- determination to price adjustments and that is not occurring now. So the same government is going against the bid and -- what was signed and offered in the last bid. So there are things to solve. I think that the 690 Decree is a problem right now. And I don't see new spectrum coming out very soon. It is something that the industry needs a spectrum if we want to move to 5G and new services. But we need to make sure that the context is good enough for new investments.

Solange Dennin

Operator

Thank you, Roberto. As we have no more questions, we would like to thank everybody for participating in our quarterly conference call. Please do not hesitate in contacting our Investor Relations department for any further inquiries you may have. Good morning to all, and have a nice day.