Turkcell Group saw its revenue increase 13.6 percent year-on-year to TRY 6.587 billion in Q3 mainly driven by the strong ARPU performance of Turkcell Turkey on the back of rising data and digital services usage of subscribers and upsell efforts. Turkcell Turkey revenues, comprising 86 percent of Group revenues, rose 15.2 percent to TRY 5.652 billion.
The main drivers on the fixed front were the increased ratio of multi-play subscribers with TV, upsell efforts and price adjustments.
EBITDA grew by 18.6 percent year-on-year in Q3 leading to an EBITDA margin of 43.1 percent, up from 41.3 percent. This was driven by the increased share of telecommunications services revenues and effective opex management.
Depreciation and amortisation expenses increased by 22.8 percent in Q3 year-on-year, while net finance expense decreased to TRY 521 million from TRY 869 million in Q3. Income tax expense increased 58.7 percent year-on-year in Q319.
Net income of the Group surged to TRY 801 million from TRY 241 million in Q3, mainly driven by a solid operational performance and lower net FX losses after hedging. The company booked a provision of TRY 128 million for wireless tax related to 2018 and 2019 fiscal years in Q3 which had after tax net income impact of TRY 116 million.
Consolidated cash as of 30 September increased to TRY 10.975 billion from TRY 10.687 billion as of 30 June.
Turkcell Turkey
Turkcell Turkey’s EBITDA rose by 16.8 percent to TRY 2.392 billion leading to an EBITDA margin of 42.3 percent, up from 41.7 percent.
The company's total customers rose by 1.3 percent to 37.3 million. On the mobile segment, subscribers rose to 34.4 million on 526,000 quarterly net additions in Q3 on the back of customised offers leveraging big data analysis. The postpaid subscribers grew on 503,000 quarterly net additions to 56.3 percent of its total mobile subscriber base. On the fixed front, the subscriber base was at 2.2 million as of Q3. The operator registered 124,000 annual and 29,000 quarterly net additions to its fibre subscribers. Superbox, its fixed wireless access product, continued its strong momentum and reached 217,000 subscribers on 88,000 quarterly net additions. IPTV subscribers reached 683,000 on 30,000 quarterly and 102,000 annual net additions. Turkcell TV+ mobile application was downloaded 14.3 million times as of Q3.
Average monthly mobile churn rate rose to 2.5 percent from 2.2 percent in Q3 2018, while its average monthly fixed churn rate was at 2.1 percent, up from 1.8 percent a year earlier. The regulatory change in registration of the prepaid lines led to closure of lines with no resident permit and impacted the mobile churn rate by 0.1 percent.
Mobile ARPU (excluding M2M) rose by 17.6 percent year-on-year in Q3 to TRY 42.5 mainly driven by favorable customer mix, upsell efforts on increased data consumption, price adjustments and higher revenue generating subscriber acquisitions.
The operator registered all time high residential fibre ARPU growth of 19.8 percent in Q3 year-on-year, mainly on upsell performance and price adjustments along with higher revenue generating subscriber acquisitions. Multi-play subscribers with TV, reaching 52.2 percent of total residential fibre subscribers, also contributed to ARPU growth.
Average mobile data usage per user rose 50 percent in Q3 year-on-year on the back of increased number and higher data consumption of 4.5G users along with the contribution of rich digital offerings. Accordingly, the average mobile data usage of 4.5G users reached 10GB in Q3.
The number of 4.5G compatible smartphones on the operator's network continued to increase in Q3 and reached 19.6 million on 0.7 million quarterly additions comprising 85 percent of total smartphones on its network.
