ANKARA: Turkcell Group revenues rose by 8.3 percent year-on-year in Q1 to TRY 3.225 billion. EBITDA increased 8.1 percent to TRY 1.0 billion, achieving a 31.1 percent EBITDA margin. Proforma Group net income rose by 15.1 percent to TRY 544 million, while net income as per IFRS increased 298.8 percent to TRY 563 million. Capital expenditures, including non-operational items, amounted to TRY 738 million in Q1. Total debt as of 31 March declined to TRY 4.028 billion from TRY 4.214 billion as of 31 December 2015, in consolidated terms.
Turkcell Turkey revenues, comprising 91 percent of Group revenues, grew by 10.0 percent to TRY 2.928 billion due to a 10.0 percent rise in consumer segment revenues to TRY 2.338 billion and an 8.7 percent increase in corporate segment revenues to TRY 525 million.
Consumer and corporate segment revenues of Turkcell Turkey in total rose by 9.8 percent, while wholesale revenues grew by 13.9 percent to TRY81 million. Turkcell International revenues, constituting 6 percent of Group revenues, rose by 2.1 percent to TRY 197 million, turning to positive growth after 7 quarters of year-on-year decline.
Other subsidiaries’ revenues, comprising 3 percent of Group revenues, which includes information and entertainment services in Turkey and Azerbaijan, call centre revenues and revenues from financial services declined by 18.0 percent to TRY 101 million, due to lower revenues from Azerbaijan, partly driven by currency devaluation. Turkcell Group subscribers amounted to approximately 67.6 million as of 31 March, down from 68.9 million in Q4 2015 and 69.5 million in Q1 2015.
Mobile customers in Turkey declined by 673,000 during the quarter to 33.3 million in total, mainly on losses in the more price-sensitive prepaid segment. The operator continued to disconnect subscriptions that had not topped-up at all within the stipulated period, which amounted to 196,000 during the first quarter and reached 575,000 in total in the last two quarters. Meanwhile, the postpaid customer base continued to expand by 124,000 quarterly net additions to 16.7 million, to 50.1 percent (45.3 percent) of the total.
The fixed customer base reached 1.6 million supported by a strong fibre network, dedicated sales force and customer care. The operator recorded 61,000 quarterly net additions, of which 36,000 were fibre and 25,000 were ADSL subscribers. The Turkcell TV platform reached 268,000 customers on 44,000 quarterly net additions. Including mobile TV and web TV users, Turkcell TV customers amounted to 679,000.
Mobile churn improved by 0.2 percent year-on-year on the back of value focused customer acquisitions and targeted retention actions. Mobile ARPU rose by 8.8 percent year-on-year, while fixed ARPU increased by 6.8 percent year-on-year with growth of multiplay customers with TV1 , comprising 30 percent of total residential fibre customers. Mobile MoU rose by 8.1 percent driven by the operator’s increased postpaid base and upsell strategy.
Smartphone penetration on the operator’s network reached 55 percent as it registered 514,000 quarterly net additions. There were 16.6 million smartphones on the network at the end of the quarter, of which 42 percent were 4.5G enabled.
