Hello, and welcome to VEON's Q3 2024 Trading Update Call. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal remarks, at which time you will 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 third quarter results presentation for the period ending September 30th, 2024. I'm Faisal Ghori, Head of Investor Relations. I'm pleased to be joined in the room today 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 discussion of detailed financial results by Joop. We will 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 involves certain risks and uncertainties. These statements relating partly to the company's anticipated performance and guidance for 2024, future market developments and trends, operational network developments, network investments, and the company's ability to realize its targeted 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 risk details in the company's annual report on Form 20F and other recent public filings made by the company with the SEC. The earnings release and the earnings presentation, each of which include reconciliations of non-IFRS measures presented today can be downloaded from our website. With that, let me head it over to Kaan.

Thank you, Faisal. Good morning, good afternoon, and welcome to everyone. I appreciate you joining us today for VEON's presentation of Q3 results for 2024. Today, I am hosting the call from Dubai, our designated HQ, as the largest NASDAQ listed company headquartered in Dubai once the transition is completed over the next couple of weeks. I am thankful for the Dubai authorities, especially it’s Excellency Minister of Economy, Mr. Al Marri, for proving how welcoming Dubai is and why it is so easy to do business in this wonderful country. I would like to also remind you that the last day of trading of our stock on the Euronext exchange in Amsterdam will be November 22nd. And as of November 25th, VEON's stock will be exclusively traded on NASDAQ Stock Exchange. This will position VEON as a frontier market's bellwether for US investors who wish to participate in extraordinary growth of Central and South Asia. Going to the quarterly results, another strong $1 billion quarters growing well above nominal GDP growth. In the third quarter of 2024, we grew revenues by 9.8% year-over-year in US dollars and 14.1% in local currency terms. Underlying growth, taking into account the impact of the Bangladesh Revolution, would be 16% year-over-year in underlying local currency terms. As a note, the weighted average blended inflation rate across our markets has decelerated from 16.5% in Q3, 2023 to 8.2% as of now, marking a substantial reduction of 830 basis points, while weighted average blended GDP growth has stayed over 3.4% over the same period. Against this backdrop, our revenue growth underscores VEON growing faster than both inflation and nominal GDP and thereby gaining wallet share. Group EBITDA decreased 1.5% year-on-year in US dollars and increased 3.5% in local currency. EBITDA performance was impacted by certain…

Thank you, Kaan. For the recent quarter, we've achieved double-digit year-on-year growth in local currency revenues across our six markets, with total revenue growing 40% year-on-year and digital revenue growing 33% year-on-year. Our reported revenue on a US dollar basis increased 9.8% year-on-year. This performance is despite the revolution in Bangladesh. 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 pricing strategies. Excluding identified items, underlying group revenue would have increased by 60% year-over-year in constant currency. We are also seeing positive macroeconomic tailwinds in our markets, which is assisting in our growth. Turning our attention to our EBITDA and EBITDA margin. Group EBITDA increased by 3.5% year-on-year in local currency terms, reaching $438 million and declined by 1.5% in reported currency. Our EBITDA margin stood at 42.2%, a decrease of 4.9% [indiscernible]. Our EBITDA growth was impacted by identified items in Bangladesh and cost associated with researching at our HQ. Excluding these identified items, underlying group EBITDA would have increased by 9.8% year-over-year in constant currency. Shifting focus to key balance sheet figures. As we close the quarter, the group maintained a healthy liquidity position with a cash reserve of $1 billion, plus 80% year-on-year. Of this amount, $453 million is held at our headquarters. In the first nine months of 2024, net dividends upstreamed from OpCo growth amounted to $396 million, strengthening our financial position. Turning now to our debt profile. Our average cost of debt is now just under 10% and reflects the blended rate of borrowing in our market currencies. Apart from some insignificant other facilities, Pakistani rupee debt generally has the highest cost and is about 28% of our total group debt, excluding leases. Our average debt maturity is now 2.7 years, 3.3 years if we include our lease liabilities. Turning to our debt maturity schedule. We have no material maturities anymore in 2024, only smaller maturities that are operating subsidiaries. At HQ, the nearest maturity is in April 2025. Let me hand it back to Kaan.

Thank you very much Joop. Let me start looking to the 2024 outlook. Blended weighted average inflation rates in the countries that we operate has declined from 16.5% in Q3, 2023 to 8.2% in Q3, 2024, a reduction of 830 basis points. At the same time, blended weighted average real GDP growth in our markets is around 3.4% for the period. As a result, six weeks to the end of the year. For the full year, we now expect total revenue growth of 8% to 10% year-on-year growth in US dollars and an EBITDA growth of 46% in US dollar terms, assuming current foreign currency rates. We are revising our prior local currency guidance on this call, given above considerations to 12% to 14% year-on-year growth for total revenue and 9% to 11% year-on-year growth for EBITDA in local currency terms. Taking into consideration the identified items that we have mentioned, underlying growth in local currency is expected to be 15.7% growth in revenue and 11.2% growth in EBITDA. This marks a change from our previous guidance of 16% to 18% growth for revenue and 18% to 20% growth in EBITDA for 2024 in local currency terms. I would like to mention that we are very satisfied with our current trajectory of growth, given that we are beating actually more than planned the nominal GDP growth, which demonstrates solid wallet share gains in the countries that we operate in. With that, I would like to end our call and pass it to you and start the Q&A session. Faisal?

Thank you, Kaan. We can now open up the line to Q&A.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Stella Cridge with Barclays. Please unmute your audio and ask your question.

Hi, there everyone and many thanks for all the updates that you gave today. I wanted to ask about the base case that you have for addressing the 2025 maturities. I mean, we obviously saw the whole core cash increasing quarter-on-quarter and I was reading that you were expecting to receive the proceeds of the sale of TNS+ within six weeks at the end of September. So I just wondered if that happened also or would you plan to still engage in some refinancing? That would be great.

Stella, thank you very much for your question. We feel very comfortable about the servicing the 2025 and that will happen through our operational cash proceeds as well as, as you mentioned the TNS+ sale. A portion of the sale proceeds has already been collected and the rest will happen over the next couple of weeks. So we do not see any issues with regard to that. Joop, anything that you would like to add?

Well, Kaan, you're fully right. Based on the current upstream of cash and the products from the TNS+, we will be able to pay back the bonds in April.

Super, and many thanks for that. And if I could take the opportunity of this follow-up option for the question as well. I mean, you're obviously speaking today from Dubai. You've communicated about the change in the headquarters. I just wonder from a corporate structure point of view, does this have any other implications than the structure? You obviously got Beyond Holding [indiscernible] as the issuing entity. Would you plan to issue from another entity in the future or do you think you would kind of keep that as your kind of bond related entity.

Stella, I think those decisions will happen over the time, but we will definitely explore alternatives to it as we will be paying back the old bonds and the new bonds will probably be issued from a new entity.

Super. Many thanks.

Thank you very much.

We have a submitted question from a retail investor. Given Shaw Capital’s roadmap to $160 share price or 5.5 times EV EBITDA valuation by 2026, can you discuss the feasibility of achieving these targets and the strategies you plan to implement to reach them? What are we doing to increase worth?

Thank you very much and thanks a lot for raising this question. We have actually responded to the letter sent by Shaw Capital in a proper way approved by our board. And first of all, we are delighted to have committed and excited shareholders in supporting our strategies. All the seven issues Shaw Capital has raised in their letter are actually part of our game plans. And we are in the process of delivering on those. So given that and given the, I think a reasonable 5.5 metric he has set for it, of course we will do everything in our control in terms of executing the strategy and achieving that value creation opportunity. Naturally, there are certain things which might be out of our control, like the wars and revolutions in different parts of the world. But so far, our team, I believe, has proven to be very resilient when it comes to challenges of that nature, and we will be executing our strategies as previously planned. Thank you very much.

We'll take another submitted question from a retail investor. What is the amount of tax savings that VEON is expecting in 2025 with the headquarters move to Dubai? Will there be any savings for 2024?

To be precise, moving to Dubai has never been an issue about saving taxes. We do pay our taxes in the countries that we operate and there is no particular differentiation in between Netherlands and United Arab Emirates, nor Dubai in terms of taxation of enterprises. So we are not expecting any changes to our effective tax rate because of our move to Dubai. There are other areas where we have prioritized our effective tax rate as something that we have to improve. And if you would remember, this was also one of the seven points of the famous [Shah] (ph) letter that we will of course take into consideration most of them related to our local operations. Thank you.

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

Thank you, everybody. Thank you for joining our quarter three earnings call. Myself and the IR team is available for any additional questions that you may have. So feel free to reach out. Thank you, everybody.