Turkcell posts revenue of TRY12.8bn for FY15, up 6% y-o-y

Turkcell, Turkey’s largest cellco by subscribers, has announced its financial results for the year ended 31 December 2015, recording total revenues of TRY12.769 billion (USD4.314 billion), up 6.0% from TRY12.043 billion in 2014. EBITDA amounted to TRY4.141 billion in the period under review, up 10.1% year-on-year from TRY3.761 billion, while the EBITDA margin grew 1.2 percentage points from 31.2% to 32.4%. Turkcell attributed the revenue increases to a 10.2% rise in consumer segment revenues to TRY2.391 billion (up from TRY2.170 million) and a 6.0% rise in corporate segment revenues to TRY529 million (TRY499 million). Net income, meanwhile rose from TRY1.865 billion in FY2014 to TRY2.068 billion in FY2015, with CAPEX – including non-operational items and the 4.5G license acquisition – reaching TRY8.536 billion, of which TRY7.752 billion was related to Turkcell Turkey and TRY770 million to Turkcell International.

In operational terms, Turkcell’s total domestic subscriber base fell 0.3% from 35.9 million at the end of 2014 to 35.8 million one year later, with 34.0 million being mobile subscriptions (having dropped from 34.6 million), broken down into 16.6 million post-paid as at 31 December 2015 (against 15.2 million twelve months earlier) and 17.4 million pre-paid (19.4 million). Fibre connections, however, increased from 735,100 to 899,400 y-o-y, while Turkcell’s ADSL customer base rose from 456,200 to 620,800 in the same period.

Looking forward, Turkcell CEO Kaan Terzioglu notes: ‘For a more efficient balance sheet, we increased our stake in lifecell, our subsidiary in Ukraine to 100%; restructured the debt of our subsidiaries; established a consumer finance company and raised USD2.9 billion in funds at favourable terms having secured an investment grade from three rating agencies. Moreover, having purchased the highest number of frequencies at the 4.5G spectrum tender, we have solidified our leadership in terms of the superior network … The highlight of the sector in 2016 will be the implementation of 4.5G infrastructure. Turkcell will … offer over 1000Mbps speed on mobile devices through carrier aggregation [CA] technology in the coming years.’