VEON Ltd. (NASDAQ:VEON) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
VEON Ltd. (NASDAQ:VEON) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript March 21, 2024
VEON Ltd. isn't one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Faisal Ghori: Hi, good afternoon and good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us today for VEON's fourth quarter results presentation for the period ending December 31, 2023. 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, as is usual, begin with the key highlights and business updates from Kaan following discussion of detailed financial results by Joop. We'll then hand it back to Kaan to discuss our outlook and priorities for 2024. 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 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 network developments and network investments, and the company's ability to realize its targets in 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 detailed in the company's annual report on the Form 20-F and other recent public filings made by the company with the SEC. The earnings release and the earnings presentation, each of which include reconciliation of non-IFRS measures presented today, can be downloaded from our website. We also note that today's presentation will include ratings from credit agencies. A rating is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold securities and may be subject to revision or withdrawal at any time. With that, let me end it over to Kaan.
Kaan Terzioglu: Thank you, Faisal. Good morning, good afternoon. Happy Nowruz, Ramadan Kareem to all. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter's 2023 and full year's results webcast. Before we get into the detail, allow me to turn and zoom out and refresh our memory. When Russia-Ukraine war started, we made a choice. We chose Ukraine. Our exit from Russia resulted, as you can see, in full year results in a very different VEON. We might be more compact in terms of balance sheet, half the size, but today we are a much faster growing company with a very healthy balance sheet. We continued delivering strong results in Q4 2023. Normalized revenues were up 18% year-on-year, and normalized EBITDA grew even faster at 25% year-on-year.
For the full year, we have 18% top line growth, 20% EBITDA growth and 53% free cashflow growth, taking the free cashflow yield of 24%. Such results makes us extremely satisfied. Our decentralized operational model with world-class governance allows us to build a leaner, faster, more profitable, and more cash-generative company. Our local brands may be different. Jazz in Pakistan, Kyivstar in Ukraine, Banglalink in Bangladesh, Beeline in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Names, brands may be different, but they all execute the same strategy, drive for the same targets, and they grow faster than their local competition. In the majority of our markets, we have the highest net promoter scores, fastest broadband networks, and we are not only gaining market share, but also gaining wallet share.
VEON today is resilient. It is strong. VEON is tough, which takes me to Kyivstar in Ukraine. I want to thank our CEO, Alexander Komarov and his exceptional team. In the aftermath of the cybersecurity attack on December 12th on our network, thanks to their swift response, as of yesterday, we have surpassed the activity levels in terms of number of customers, data consumption, voice calls, roaming users, TV entertainment consumers, as well as health services consumers. And we are even more than pre-attack levels. Moving on, let me also speak a little bit about our ongoing integration into capital markets. I'm happy to see that we are reintegrating to the capital markets community. Recently, we attended New Street Research, BCG Conference this past quarter, and we have also attended JP Morgan and EFG conferences in the past few weeks.
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