Hi. Good afternoon and good morning, everyone, and welcome to VEON's first quarter results presentation for the period ending 31 March 2023. I'm Nik Kershaw, VEON Group's Head of Investor Relations. I'm pleased to be joined on the line today by Kaan Terzioglu, our Group CEO; along with our group CFO, Joop Brakenhoff. Today's presentation will begin with the key highlights and business update from Kaan. Following this, Joop will discuss the trading results. We'll then hand it back to Kaan to discuss our outlook and priorities for 2023. As ever, we will ensure that there's ample time for your questions at the end of the presentation and would ask that you submit your questions via Zoom. Before getting started, I'd 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 the 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 trading update and presentation, each of which include reconciliations of non-IFRS measures presented today can be downloaded from our website. With that, let me hand over to Kaan.

Thanks, Nik. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you very much for joining us today as we present our first quarter results for 2023. 2023 marks a year of transition for VEON, and our first quarter results demonstrate our effective execution as well as the exciting growth potential that our Digital Operator business model holds. Over the following slides, I will go in detail about the results we have achieved by focusing on delivering world-class connectivity combined with high-quality digital services in markets with attractive growth fundamentals. Before we get into the presentation, I would like to thank our Ukrainian team for their work, keeping Ukraine and Ukrainians connected, our team at large for driving VEON forward as well as our investors for their continued trust and confidence in our business. Now let's look at our key performance highlights for the first quarter. As we started 2023, VEON delivered another quarter of double-digit local currency growth in both revenue and EBITDA. Our top line grew 15.3% in local currency terms. Service revenues rose even faster, with 15.9% year-on-year growth. Group EBITDA was up 11.2% year-on-year in the first quarter, slightly over the top of the guidance of 10% to 14% growth for top line and EBITDA. If you would exclude Kyivstar's performance from beyond group first quarter results considering the unique circumstances the country is in, the revenues were up 19% year-on-year, and EBITDA rose by 17.6% year-on-year. Over a 2-year period, we have seen now local currency revenues increasing 30%, and local currency EBITDA is up 19.8%. VEON maintained its healthy liquidity position, and the group reported cash and cash equivalents total... [Technical Difficulty] Looking into our revenue performance in greater detail here. I have -- we have delivered 5 consecutive quarters of double-digit local currency revenue growth, accelerating…

Thanks, Kaan. Good morning and good afternoon to all participants. On the following slides, I will elaborate on the financial highlights for our first quarter results in more detail. The reclassification of the Russian operations as held for sale and discontinued operations that took place in the fourth quarter of 2022, reduces the group's reported revenue and EBITDA in absolute terms. This means that VEON is now a very different company. And quarter 1 marked another quarter of double-digit local currency growth in both revenues, which were up 15.3% year-on-year and EBITDA, which rose 11.2% year-on-year. As we move towards completion of the sale of the Russian business, we continued to maintain a very strong liquidity position at the end of March 2023. The $3 billion of cash and cash equivalents grew, of which USD 2.5 million held at quarter level. I want to first cover revenues on Slide 26. We delivered balanced growth across our countries as we executed on inflationary pricing while growing our pace of 4G and multiplay customers. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, all delivered another quarter of double-digit growth as they successfully executed on their Digital Operator strategies. In Ukraine, we once again want to express our respect and admiration for the team at Kyivstar who delivered 6% year-on-year growth in quarter 1, despite the challenging operating environment. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan both reported year-on-year revenue growth above 20% as higher 4G user penetration and our Digital Operator offerings led to growing mobile data usage. In Pakistan, revenues were up by 16% year-on-year, driven by a combination of inflationary pricing and successful execution of our Digital Operator offerings. Quarter 1 revenue performance was further strengthened by our financial service offering. Service revenues from JazzCash rose 65.3% year-on-year, while Mobilink Microfinance Bank delivered a 71% year-on-year…

Thank you, Joop. Let me begin by reiterating our guidance for 2023. Our 2023 outlook remains in line with the guidance issued in our last results announcement. Local currency guidance for both revenue and EBITDA is 10% to 14%, with our guidance for group CapEx intensity also remaining in the 18% to 20% range. I have already shared with you the run rate momentum of EBITDA in April '23 circa 20%. Let me caution you that in Q2, you will see a low single-digit growth in EBITDA due to the impact of one-off in 2023 Q2 results. This still does not change our reiteration of the guidance. That concludes our presentation, we provide an overview of our key ambitions for '23. First of all, finalizing the sale of our Russian asset is priority #1, and the team is working diligently to achieve this. Two, the Scheme of Arrangement for February and April 2023 notes has already been implemented, and we have also seen a marked reduction in group leverage. We will continue to focus on optimizing our capital structure, effective cash management and regaining access to the debt capital markets over time. Three, we are focused on executing our 4G for all and Digital Operator strategy, expanding our 4G network and portfolio of digital services and providing best-in-class customer experience. Implementing this strategy will help us accelerate growth by increasing our multiplay users, who use more data, the churn rates are lower and they generate higher average revenue per user. The work on monetizing our existing infrastructure assets, specifically our tower assets, is also progressing. This will allow us to further strengthen our balance sheet and unlock capital to focus on our vision of providing best-in-class online services across our 6 markets as an asset-light operator. Finally, we are committed to unlocking shareholder value. This will include our plans for listing of our entities locally when the right investment climate is available. Let me once again express my gratitude to all VEON employees for their hard work driving VEON forward. Joop joins me on today's call for the first time as our group Chief Financial Officer. So let me also welcome him once again. And thank you, Serkan, for all the contributions you have made to VEON, and I wish you all the best in your new capacity as a consultant to me and to Joop. With that, I would like to thank you for your attention. I will hand over to Nik so that we can move on to the Q&A session.

Thanks very much, Kaan. Good afternoon, everyone, again. I think we've got a few questions that have already come through on the Zoom link. Kaan, the first question is for you. Could you please update us on the timing of the closing of the Russia sale?

Thank you, Nik. In line with our previous communications, the company anticipates that the transaction will be completed in accordance with terms of the share purchase agreement. As I have mentioned earlier, we have completed the scheme amendments. That gives us actually ample time to close this deal in accordance with the rules and the regulations that are set forward, and we will do that as early as possible over the next couple of months.

Thanks so much, Kaan. You have a couple of questions for you. Firstly, how is the Russia sale impacting on VEON's financials?

As we have previously disclosed, the position is being concluded as an enterprise value of $5 billion. As of the end of March 3, 2023, we already saw a significant reduction in consolidated gross debt from $7.5 billion at the end of 2022 to $5.7 billion at the end of Q1 2023. We also reported group gearing of 1.6x, down from 2.6x at year end. So as we conclude the balance of the transaction, this will have a further positive impact on both debt and gearing levels.

Thanks, Joop. So actually another question for you. Could you comment a little bit on the ongoing cost-saving initiatives that we have at the group.

Yes. We remain focused on effective management, of course, both at headquarters and in our operating coverage in the countries. Understandably in the past, we faced a number of extraordinary costs at the HQ level, but these are expected to reduce, both in this year and in 2024. But we ultimately delivered $95 million in savings in 2022. And excluding Russia, closing '21 as a base, we expect to deliver on the $75 million in savings by the end of 2024. I also mentioned the smaller size of the new team, and we are undertaking a rightsizing of our headquarters.

Thanks, Joop. Kaan, could you maybe comment, I know there was a recent shareholder letter that was presented that we on board that was made public as well?

So first of all, I would like to thank Shah Capital for increasing their holding in our company above 5%. And the company to that disclosure, they also share a letter, clearly reiterating their expectations. I value and I welcome all these comments, and I can commit that we'll be looking for creating shareholder value, considering all possible opportunities, including the ones that he has suggested when the right climate arrives.

Thanks, Kaan. And again, this is an update on the status of our card transactions.

Eliminate that as well. We are committed to being an asset-light company. I believe that no telecom operator in the world can afford the luxury of having exclusive infrastructure. Therefore, we are looking for not only tower asset sales, but also sharing of the infrastructure and all the operations that we are engaged in. The tower sales are complex transactions, naturally, impacted by the overall macroeconomic environment as well. We are committed, we are progressing, and we will deliver on that promise over the next couple of quarters.

Thank you. Joop, back to you. Could you maybe update us on the timing of the filing of our financials, please?

Yes, at this point in time, and again, based on the current circumstances. Our best estimate is to file our quarterly financial statements to the AFM and provide this to our lenders before the end of June 2023, our newest filings, that's our annual report on the Form 20-F in July with the SEC. Both VEON Limited and Holdings are beginning to submit financial statements to its lenders on both holders within 180 days of the year-end, which is June 29. We have the right to be informed, the AFM and Euronext of this and are working closely within our chain of execution of the other procedures. We won't do the AFM refolm or any significant changes in the expected guidelines. And we informed the SEC for the expected delay in our 12b-25 filing with the SEC on May 2 of this year.

Thanks, Joop. Also still with you, could you update us on our capital structure plans for the medium term.

Yes. As discussed previously, our recent priority has been to ensure the group has a strong liquidity position. You have seen our cash balances at head quarters at an amount of $2.5 billion, which earlier already mentioned at quarter end and approximately $2 billion today following the conclusion of the put option in April. We're currently actively evaluating various options around the appropriate capital structure for the group post the conclusion of the Russian sale.

Thank you. Kaan, maybe just could you give some comments on the current operating environment in Pakistan.

Pakistan is an amazing market. We are extremely proud to be serving to the Pakistani community as the #1 operator in the country. Pakistan has also gone through some difficult times this year. As you know, the country was heavily hit by the floods, which has never been experienced in the recorded history. And it is also severely impacted by macroeconomic crisis and current account deficit. We believe Pakistan will overcome these issues. But in the short term, the impact of import limitations is, of course, hang-over to -- on the entire industry in terms of slowing down investments. I am happy to see that we continue to gain market share in the country. We are progressing very strongly in the adjacent markets, especially on entertainment as well as financial services, and we are growing high teens in this market in order to be able to catch up with the higher levels -- heightened levels of inflation. It is a tough macroeconomic situation, but I think we are doing our best to make sure that we continue serving our customers the best way possible.

Thanks, Kaan. Also Kaan, still with you, there was a story on Interfax earlier this week about the sale of Kazakhstan. Maybe just update people on what the status is there.

Look, maybe I can use this opportunity to clearly state that all our operating companies, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan are directly owned by VEON Holdings in Holland, and there are no entanglement of the subsidiaries into our Russian on held-for-sale operation.

Great. I think we have time for one last question, maybe an appropriate question. Kaan, can you just sort of comment again on the guidance, particularly given the strong start we've already seen this year.

Yes, the first quarter actually was slightly above the guidance that we have provided. We said 10% to 14%, we delivered to 11% to 15%. And actually, April results are also very encouraging. But the time has taught me to be prudent, so we are keeping our guidance for '23 as we have expressed before.

Great. Thanks very much. Thank you very much, everyone, for attending. I know there's a few more questions that have come through on Zoom. I will respond to those individually. So thank you very much for that. And if you have any additional questions, please just reach out to me directly. Thanks very much, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.