Hello, and welcome to VEON's Q2 2024 Trading Update Call. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal remarks, at which time we'll be given instructions for the question-and-answer session. Also as a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. Faisal Ghori, you may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining us today for VEON's second quarter results presentation for the period ending June 30, 2024. I'm Faisal Ghori, Head of Investor Relations. I'm pleased to be joined by Kaan Terzioglu, our Group CEO, along with Joop Brakenhoff, our Group CFO. Today's presentation will begin with the key highlights and business updates from Kaan, followed by a discussion of detailed financial results from Joop. We'll then open up the line for Q&A. 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 relating partly to the company's anticipated performance and guidance for 2024, 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 incentives, including current and future contact. 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 and Form 20-F, and other recent public filings made by the company with the SEC. The trading update and presentation today, each of which includes a reconciliation of non-outcome measures presented today can be downloaded from our website. With that, let me hand it over to Kaan.

Thank you, Faisal. Welcome, everyone. I appreciate you joining us today for our Q2 results for 2024. I am excited to highlight the robust growth in U.S. dollar revenues. In the second quarter of 2024, we grew by 12.1% year-on-year in U.S. dollars, marking a strong acceleration from the 6.6% growth recorded in Q1 and 1% in Q4 of 2024. Group EBITDA recorded double-digit growth in dollars as well, increasing by 10.6% in Q2, demonstrating strong momentum compared to 0.2% in Q1. Please remind ourselves that as of this time last year, weighted average inflation rate in across our markets was 17.4%. And in those days, underlying local currency growth of our business was around 18%. This year, weighted average inflation in the market is around slightly less than 10%, and our trailing local currency growth rate averages around 16%. Now during my presentation, I will concentrate on local currency growth rates, which is a more accurate reflection of the true underlying growth trends and operational achievements across our operating companies. In the Q2 2024, we achieved double-digit revenue growth of 15% year-on-year in local currency terms. Service revenues rose at a similar rate, up 14.5% year-on-year on local currency. Local currency EBITDA grew 14% year-on-year. We ended the quarter with a cash position of $722 million, of which $375 million was held at headquarters level. As promised, gross debt has been reduced significantly decreasing 23% year-on-year, demonstrating effective cash management. Capital expenditures increased 6% year-on-year, totaling $181 million for the second quarter. CapEx intensity on a 12-month basis came at 18%, which is lower by 1.6 percentage points. I will now provide a brief overview of our service revenue and EBITDA growth across the portfolio for Q2. In Ukraine, Kyivstar is back to single-digit high growth, both on local…

Thanks, Kaan. For the recent quarter, we have achieved double-digit year-on-year growth in local currency revenues across our 6 markets, with total revenue growing 50.1% year-on-year and service revenue growing at a 40.5% year-on-year. Our reported revenue on a dollar basis increased 12.1% year-on-year. This performance is despite the cyber impact in the Ukraine. The driving forces behind our revenue growth include gains in market share and the expansion of our digital platforms across all operations, coupled with the implementation of disciplined inflationary rising prices. We are also seeing positive macroeconomic tailwinds in some of our markets, which is assisting in our growth. Turning our attention to our EBITDA and EBITDA margin. Group EBITDA increased by 30.9% year-on-year in local currency terms, reaching $459 million and by 10.6% in reported currency. Our EBITDA margin stood at 44.7%, a slight decrease of 0.6 percentage points. This strong performance was driven by higher 4G penetration and the adoption of digital services across all operations. Pakistan and Kazakhstan were notable contributors with significant EBITDA growth of 20% in both markets in local currency terms. However, we faced some challenges in Bangladesh, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan impacting our overall margin. Shifting focus to key balance sheet figures and especially our debt and liquidity status. As we closed the quarter, the group maintained a healthy liquidity position with a cash reserve of $722 million, a 40% year-on-year growth. Of this amount, $375 million is held at our headquarters. In the first half of 2024, net dividend upstreams from proposed amounted to $280 million, strengthening our financial position. Turning now to our debt profile. Our average cost of debt now is a little bit less than 10%, and reflects the blended rate of borrowing in our market currencies. Pakistani rupee debt remains the highest cost, and is about 27% of total group debt excluding leases. Interest costs over the period have increased due to the additional rupee and taka debts. [indiscernible] in terms of [indiscernible] and the economic cancellation of PGSE, [indiscernible], and health bonds, which had lower average interest rates. Our average debt maturity is at 2.8 years, 3.4 years if we include our lease liabilities. Turning to our [indiscernible] schedule. We have no material maturities anymore in 2024, only smaller maturities at our operating subsidiaries. At HQ, the nearest maturity is in April around 2025. Let me hand it back to Kaan.

Thank you, Joop. Let me close by reiterating our guidance for 2024. In order to make a like-for-like comparison, we need to consider the impact of the Ukraine cyber-attack, which was around $46 million in revenue and $47 million in EBITDA. Our normalized growth rates for both revenue and EBITDA are 16% in local currency. I would like to reiterate our guidance for 2024 as 16% to 18% revenue growth, 18% to 20% EBITDA growth and 18% to 19% CapEx intensity. Let's open for Q&A, Faisal.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Luke Robert at Barclays.

Hi, thank you for the presentation. First of all, thanks for disclosing the upstreaming figure from the OpCos. I was wondering if you'd be able to give us an approximate breakdown of that by country?

Luke, thanks a lot for this question. I will not ask Joop to answer that because we specifically don't want to do that. The governments [indiscernible] are not very happy to disclose. So let's stick to that.

And then maybe just on Bangladesh. You stated in the presentation, you expect $10 million revenue impact. I was just wondering if you could give us any other color on other impacts for Q3? And then longer term, any thoughts on the implications will be on from the current transition?

Sure. First of all, since the elections early in February, we had an increased level of tension, network lockage due to different reasons, which later on resulted in banning of Linear TV broadcasting over Toffee. So there was an ongoing issue that was getting a little bit of a burden on our revenues. But definitely, in the last 15 days, the protests led into violent clashes and almost 10 days, we were not allowed to provide any Internet service in the country. Now with the interim government, it is open. We are providing full services in the country and what we see is our business operations and the volumes are even at record levels in all fronts, including voice, data and entertainment services perspective. As I mentioned, the leader of the interim government is someone very respectable in international environment. He is someone who also knows very well the expectations of international investors and who is familiar with our industry overall. So I do think that this unlocks the power of Bangladesh as a very resilient country, and it also unlocks the growth potentials for us in a new liberal economic model.

[Operator instructions] We have no further questions at this time, I will hand it back to Faisal Ghori for closing remarks.

Thank you, Laura. We have one question from Rumen Ivanov from Verition Fund. What are your plans to repay the 2025 maturities?

Yes, to pay them. That's -- we are well funded for that. Thank you for asking.

Laura, do we have any other questions on the line?

No further questions on the line.

Okay maybe we just wait another minute?

[Operator Instructions]

Thank you, Laura. Thanks, everyone, for participating. Thank you very much.

Goodbye.