Turkcell group revenues climb 19.8% in 4Q19

Consolidated group revenues at Turkey’s Turkcell grew 18.8% year-on-year to TRY6.684 billion (USD1.094 billion) in Q4 2019 driven mainly by strong ARPU performance at its Turkish division, supported by increased data usage, a growing post-paid subscriber base and upselling initiatives. Turkcell also highlighted its ‘microsegment layered approach enabled by strong data analytics capabilities’ as a driving force in its sales growth success. Turkcell Turkey revenues (fixed and mobile) rose 20.9% y-o-y to TRY5.741 billion in the three months to end-December 2019, comprising 86% of group turnover. Turkcell International division revenues, including Lifecell (Ukraine) and BeST (Belarus), rose 33.0% y-o-y to TRY561 million in 4Q19 (representing 8% of group revenues), mainly driven by continued ARPU growth at Lifecell and positive impact of currency movements.

Quarterly consolidated EBITDA improved by 23% y-o-y to TRY2.753 billion, with operating income (EBIT) jumping 41.7% y-o-y to TRY1.349 billion. Targets for the 2020-2022 period were set at: 13%-16% revenue growth (CAGR), 39%-42% EBITDA margin, 18%-21% EBIT margin, and operational CAPEX to sales ratio of 16%.

Turkcell’s Turkish post-paid mobile subscribers (excluding machine-to-machine [M2M]) reached 17.8 million at 21 December 2019, up from 16.4 million a year earlier, while pre-paid users fell from 14.9 million to 12.4 million in the same period. Fibre broadband subscribers increased from 1.386 million to 1.485 million in the year, while ADSL connections declined from 906,000 to 719,000. Turkcell’s ‘Superbox’ fixed-wireless broadband subscriber base grew from 33,000 at the start of the year to 323,000 at year-end (note: the Superbox figure was included as part of the ‘mobile’ total).