ANKARA: Turkcell Group revenues rose 8.6 percent year-on-year in Q2 to TRY 3.358 billion. EBITDA grew 3.5 percent to TRY 1.029 billion, while EBITDA margin dropped by 1.5 percent to 30.7 percent. Group net income dropped 41.6 percent versus Q2 2015 to TRY 416 million. Capital expenditures, including non-operational items, amounted to TRY 1.618 billion in H1. Wholesale revenues grew by 11.2 percent to TRY 102 million with the increase in carrier traffic. Turkcell International revenues, comprising 6 percent of Group revenues, were at TRY 204 million driven by currency devaluation in Ukraine and Belarus as lifecell and BeST grew by 7.1 percent and 25.1 percent, respectively in local currency terms. Turkcell Group subscribers amounted to approximately 66.5 million as of 30 June, that’s 4.3 percent less year-on-year.
Turkcell Turkey revenues, constituting 90 percent of Group revenues, rose by 8.0 percent to TRY 3.008 billion. This was driven by 8 percent growth, both in consumer and corporate segment revenues to TRY 2.385 billion and to TRY540 million, respectively. Turkcell Turkey’s EBITDA grew by 0.9 percent to TRY 923 million, while the EBITDA margin fell to 30.7 percent from 32.8 percent. Data, services and products revenues, comprising 46 percent of Turkcell Turkey revenues, have been the key growth driver, up by 39.3 percent to TRY 1.389 billion. Data revenues rose by 36.2 percent to TRY 1.141 billion, while services and products revenues grew by 56.1 percent driven mainly by increased usage of Turkcell TV+, fizy, Smart Storage and other mobile services.
In Turkey, Turkcell’s customer base dropped by 2.8 percent year-on-year to 34.5 million. Postpaid customers rose by 956,000 year-on-year to 16.8 million, representing 52 percent of its subscriber base. The prepaid customer base declined 12.7 percent year-on-year to 15.8 million. Lower value generating customers mainly from the more price sensitive prepaid segment declined in parallel to expectations, which led the overall mobile customer base to fall by 763,000 to 32.6 million. Smartphone penetration reached 60 percent with 904,000 quarterly net additions. Accordingly, there were 17.5 million smartphones at quarter end, with 46 percent being 4.5G enabled. Fibre subscribers rose by 148,000 year-on-year to 965,000, with total fixed subscribers exceeding 1.6 million. The ADSL customer base increased by 27.9 percent year-on-year to 675,200, while the IPTV customer base more than doubled to 303,000.
Mobile churn remained unchanged year-on-year at 8.0 percent, while fixed churn was slightly higher at 5.1 percent versus 4.2 percent a year ago. Mobile blended ARPU grew by 7.1 percent to TRY 25.7, while fixed ARPU rose 7.1 percent to TRY 51.3. The notable demand for digital services has continued in this quarter. The number of customers who downloaded BiP, Turkcell TV+, Smart Storage, Goals on Your Mobile, fizy, My Account, Digital Media and Turkcell Academy applications has reached 31 million from 12.5 million a year ago. In accordance with Turkcell’s convergence strategy, the mobile triple play ratio, which includes voice, data and service users reached 20 percent, increasing by 3 percent in a quarter, while multi-play with TV service users increased by 3 percent to 33 percent in the fixed segment.
