Good morning, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to VEON's Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results Presentation for the period ended 31 December 2022. Nik Kershaw here, Group Director of Investor Relations. I'm pleased to be joined today by Kaan Terzioglu, our Group CEO; along with our group CFO, Serkan Okandan, and together we'll take you through the results presentation. We also have our incoming CFO Joop Brakenhoff with us on the call. Today's presentation will begin with an operational overview of our fourth quarter results from Kaan followed by the financial review from Serkan. We will then hand it back to Kaan to discuss our outlook for the balance of the year. We will ensure that there's time for your questions and we would ask you to submit these through the questions on [indiscernible]. Before getting started, I would like to remind you that we may make forward-looking statements during today's presentation, which involve certain risks and uncertainties. These statements relate in part to the company's anticipated performance and guidance for 2023, future market developments and trends, operational and network development and network investments and the company's ability to realize its targets and commercial and strategic initiatives, including current and future transactions. Certain factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements including the risks detailed in the company's annual report on Form 20-F and other recent public filings made by the company with the SEC. The earnings release [indiscernible] presentation, each of which include reconciliations of non-IFRS financial measures presented today, can be downloaded from our website. With that, let me hand over to Kaan.

Well said, Nik, thank you. Good morning and good afternoon to all, and welcome to the presentation of our fourth quarter and full year results for 2022. From this announcement onwards, you will see a different view on with our Russia business now classified as asset held for sale and discontinued operations, our group, while smaller in size will not only have a higher growth rate in both financial and operational metrics, but also the sale of Russia will result in the significant deleveraging of the group balance sheet. This comes with significant growth opportunities that we are excited to see, working diligently to meet the demand in our markets. As we will share with you in greater detail over the next hour, our teams delivered 2022 priorities despite various macro and geopolitical challenges. In the fourth quarter, we have strengthened our position further and accelerated our growth, positioning us as we start 2023. For this, I would like to thank all of our teams and especially our colleagues at Kyivstar in Ukraine for serving our customers with essential connectivity and increasingly relevant digital services. I would also like to thank our leadership team who are joining me on the call today and especially to our group CFO, Serkan Okandan who will pass his CFO duties to our Group Chief Internal Audit and Compliance Officer, Joop Brackenhoff on May 1. Allow me to thank Serkan for a very successful 3 years and continuing to serve VEON in an advisory capacity and cordially welcome Joop to his new position. With that, let me turn to review our performance. Let's start with a snapshot of fourth quarter. In the quarter, VEON accelerated local currency revenue and EBITDA growth and continued to gain market share in each of its markets. Our top line…

Thanks, Kaan. Good morning and good afternoon to all participants. On the following slides, I will elaborate on the financial highlights for our full year results in more detail. As Kaan mentioned already, the classification of the Russian operations as assets held for sale, and discontinued operations and we also reported financial performance, reduces the gross reported revenue and EBITDA in absolute terms. For the full year 2022 we reported double-digit local currency growth in both revenues and EBITDA. Local currency service revenues were up 13.9% year-over-year, and local currency EBITDA was up by 12.6% year-over-year. For the full year CapEx was -- sorry, for the full year, CapEx was USD 823 million, up by 2.9% year-over-year. The higher reported EBITDA and stable CapEx compared to last year resulted in a [ USD 746 million ] unlevered free cash flow, whereas the FCF for the year was $142 million. Moving first to revenue on Slide 20. In 2022, we saw solid revenue performance across all of our markets. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, all stood out with double-digit growth. In Ukraine, we achieved 8.2% year-over-year revenue growth despite the challenging operating environment. This is a testament to our [indiscernible]. In Pakistan, revenues were up by 14.3% year-over-year. This strong revenue growth in Pakistan comes despite the negative impacts of changes in taxation legislation and the reduction in mobile termination rates. Pakistan revenues were positively impacted by a favorable decision from the Islamabad High Court on a pending litigation as a result of which a related provision on revenue and EBITDA was reversed. The overall revenue performance for the year was supported by strong 4G adoption, a continued increase in usage of our digital services and various pricing initiatives. This strong performance has continued into 2023 with year-to-date February local…

Thank you, Serkan. Let me give a quick recap of our guidance for 2023. Our 2023 local currency guidance for both revenue and EBITDA is 10% to 14% growth. VEON's 2023 outlook for the group CapEx intensity will be in the range of 18% to 20%. With our February to-date results ending at 15.2% year-on-year for revenue and 11.8% of EBITDA, we have an encouraging start to the year. With this, we are returning to provide guidance, and I'm pleased to note that this guidance is in line with the growth ambitions we have stated in our Capital Markets Day back in December 2021. In other words, we are picking up where we have left off. Let me also talk about our achievements of 2022 priorities and where we stand. Last year, we talked about our priorities as protecting our people and supporting our employees, and this was our #1 priority and continues to be so. Connectivity is a fundamental in humanitarian needs and we are providers of an essential service. We operated with this awareness in 2022 and this service continuity will remain to be a top priority in '23. Throughout this challenging year, we're protecting the good standing of our company, maintaining appropriate liquidity and capital structures have been a top priority, and I'm happy to say that we have successfully delivered on this. We promise to continue to drive growth with 4G and digital operator focus and have ended the year delivering on these promises as we elaborated in greater detail earlier on this call. In 2022, maintaining a disciplined approach to our portfolio is a must. We concentrated in larger markets conducive to digital operator value generation and have successfully divested Algeria and Georgia operations. Now, moving on to 2023. Let me set our priorities for…

[Operator Instructions] There have been a number of questions that have come through. And let me start, Kaan, actually, with the first question for you. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about your guidance again. We obviously saw you had a very strong start to the year in January and February. I do think this is the right sort of guidance at this stage.

And yes, I wanted to start our guidance where we really left back in December 2021 as we shared our aspirations with our investors that our company is able to sustain an average 10% to 14% cumulative average growth rate. And I think it's prudent to start with this guidance given the complexity we have in many of the macroeconomic situations. But I'm encouraged with the strong start for the year, as you said.

Thanks, Kaan. Serkan, this a question for you, when do you expect the scheme to become effective and maybe some comments on the timing of the licenses and also particularly around the amendments becoming effective as well.

Thank you, Nik. As you know, this scheme has become effective from first of January, when the U.K. court approved the scheme. We anticipate to receive the related licenses from related authorities. Once we receive all the licenses or we receive the confirmation that there is no need for a license, the amendments will also be effective. In the meantime, we are hedging the tensile period. If we cannot receive all the licenses until May 2nd, this scheme will go away. However, we consider that this will be a very unlikely scenario.

Thank you, Serkan. Kaan, back to you. Maybe comment on the status of the tower transaction across some of our markets.

Sure. We are committed to our strategy of being an asset-light operator, and we will be focused on looking for monetization of our tower assets. This is not as a matter of a need for cash generation. Actually, we are disciplined in terms of having clear demarcation lines for different type of business models. Power operations, infrastructure operations are fundamentally different. And today's realities are putting telecom operators in a position to delay themselves. No operator is rich and luxurious enough to have exclusive networks. Towers in the hands of capable independent tower operators represent a much bigger value and operational efficiency. This is why we will continue on our journey for modernizing our towers. This includes Pakistan, Bangladesh, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan operations and we already have also a power company in Ukraine, and we are looking forward to peace and the next monetization opportunity there.

Thanks, Kaan. And Kaan, question for you. Can you comment a little bit about the current operating environment in Pakistan, particularly given the current macro and geopolitical challenges that we always hear about.

Pakistan is going through a tough macroeconomic challenge, and we are well aware of that. We believe that the situation and the times are challenging. The strongest players with a healthy operation becomes even more important for the market. We are closely watching the macroeconomic situation and the foreign currency account deficits and taking the necessary measures to make sure that our values are not eroded by the inflation. And our teams are focusing on making sure that our customers are provided with high-quality services and with the right prices.

Thanks, Kaan. Serkan, just to you, what will happen to the remaining bonds on completion of the Russian operations transaction and bonds that are still remaining and maybe still outstanding to the Russian business.

Annual bonds and bank loans at the level of [indiscernible]. We service [indiscernible] at closing and annual bonds issued or bank loans raised by VEON Holdings B.V. will remain as VEON Holdings B.V. debt. And after the closing of Russian transaction, we will review VEON's longer-term capital structure in more detail and once we have a better visibility about access to capital markets after the closing.

Okay. I guess then, sort of linked to that question, have you had any discussions here to the rate -- with rating agencies around that?

Well, we have not started a formal discussion with the rating agencies yet, but we anticipate to have better visibility about the capacity to go back to the markets after closing the Russian transaction.

Okay. Kaan, back to you. Could you maybe update us on your -- are you making to talk about the basin subsidiary [indiscernible] potential timing, maybe give some comments on that.

Sure. All companies in the respective countries, Jazz in Pakistan, Banglalink Bangladesh, Beeline in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, they're among the largest enterprises in these countries and they are blue-chip brands. As we see these countries building their capital markets infrastructure, we play, this is an important role and opportunity for us also to consider local meetings to tap into local investor base, which is growing in a fundamental way. So these will be the kinds and preparation that we will do this year, and we will, of course, keep investors posted on the developments.

Thank you. Serkan, can you talk about once the Russia transaction is completed how will that impact VEON's liquidity and debt position?

Sure. Under the agreement with the buyers, the total consideration for the second debt offering is RUB 130 billion and based on the December fixed rate this represents around USD 1.8 billion. And it is expected that the total consideration will be paid by the buyers by taking on and discharging certain VEON Holdings debt by [ the stockholders ]. And if we take into consideration this $1.8 billion, plus around USD 3.2 billion that's including capital leases and [indiscernible] balance sheet, we are talking about around USD 5 billion that should be discharged from the VEON Holdings consolidated balance sheet, which is a quite material amount for VEON.

And so a second stab at you -- I mean, would you consider buying back your long indentured bonds given the current pricing and our liquidity position?

And while I mentioned in the presentation, currently, we are focusing to ensure that we keep a strong liquidity. And as I said, we are keeping around USD 2.5 billion liquidity at the HQ level. However, having said that, we are currently evaluating various options around our long-term capital structure.

Thank you. Kaan, maybe could you just please comment on our ability to increase price, particularly considering the current inflation levels and some of the challenging macro environment in some of our markets.

It is really very critical for us to be able to, in a disciplined way, increase our prices in line with the inflation as the inflation rate gets higher and we have successfully done that this year, and we have proven that we are able to move our prices in line with the value that we deliver to customers. We see ourselves in a good position, considering that we are among the lowest ARPU level countries in telecom sector. And this actually gives us room to improve our pricing as we enrich our offers and provide more relevant digital services to customers bundled with our offers.

Serkan, could you give any comments on some of the ongoing cost initiatives in our cost initiative program?

Yes, sure. As I mentioned in the presentation, we will keep very focused on implementing the cost initiatives across the board. In serving customers, we delivered around $95 million of savings in 2022. And we expect that this kind of savings will continue in '23 and also in the upcoming years as well. And understandably, we incurred some one-off costs, extraordinary costs in '22, which will gradually reduce in '23 and the next year as well.

And Serkan, an important question has actually come through from a number of people now is obviously given what's going on in the banking environment. Can you comment on which institutions are holding our cash and in what form our cash is held at the moment?

Unfortunately, I cannot name the institutions. All I can say is all are kept in Tier 1 international banks in the U.S. and Europe and also our cash is fully held in U.S. dollars and euros. And we do not have any cash in bonds because they are all invested in demand deposits plus by money market funds.

Thank you, Serkan. Kaan, can you maybe just give us a bit about the timing on when you expect the Russian transaction to close and just an update on the process and what is still needed there.

As we have announced on February 7, we have received the approval of the transaction by the Russian regulators, actually, the approval was given to the buyers so that they can start the process. And as we have earlier stated, we expect this transaction to be closing after the necessary procedures on or before June 1.

And then Kaan, let's start with you, the turnaround in Bangladesh has been very, very strong. Can you just comment around this and what's driven this very strong turnaround, one?

What we have seen in Bangladesh is actually almost like a Blue Motion market opportunity. And this is why we decided to improve our regional network to nationwide deployment and together with our digital operator strategy, the introduction of new digital services like education, health care, but most importantly, healthy on the entertainment side, we really made an improvement in the way our Net Promoter Scores work and availability of our services also improved. Most importantly, for the 6 consecutive quarters, Banglalink network has been voted as the fastest network in the country. And as I mentioned, during the last quarter, we almost acquired 50% of the new customers in the entire country. All these things is a combination of well planned investments, brilliant execution by the local leadership team and also excellent innovation on our product portfolio.

That's great. I think that's all we have time for from a question perspective. There are 1 or 2 outstanding questions that have come through, and I'll get back to those individually. I just want to thank everyone for dialing in. I appreciate your attendance on the call. [indiscernible] thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.