Veon Group said it met or exceeded its targets for growth in organic revenue, EBITDA and cash flow for 2019 and declared a final dividend of 15 cents per share. The company also announced the new co-CEOs Sergi Herrero and Kaan Terzioglu. They will take over from 01 March from Ursula Burns, who will return to being chair of the group.
Terzioglu will lead on Veon’s core telecommunication services and oversee operations in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Georgia. Herrero will lead on building new ventures, digital products, partnerships and oversee operations in Pakistan, Ukraine, Algeria, Bangladesh and Armenia. Herrero and Terzioglu become co-CEOs following four months as Veon’s joint COOs. Before joining Veon, Herrero served as Facebook’s global director of payments and commerce partnerships. Terzioglu was previously CEO of Turkcell.
Veon also announced the departure of Vasyl Latsanych as CEO of its operations in Russia from June. A successor will be named in due course.
The Russian operations continued to weigh on the group's results in Q4. Reported revenues rose just 0.2 percent to USD 2.254 billion, and organic revenue was down 0.2 percent. Veon blamed the 0.6 percent organic fall in service revenue also on regulatory changes in Pakistan. Excluding that, organic service revenue was otherwise up 1.5 percent, the company said.
EBITDA amounted to USD 935 million, up by 30.9 percent, or an increase of 13.1 percent after adjusting for IFRS16. This was primarily due to good performance in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, as well as a further reduction in corporate costs, Veon said.
Over the full year, the company achieved organic revenue growth of 3.4 percent, in line with its outlook, and EBITDA excluding IFRS 16 rose 9.6 percent, better than the forecast for mid-single-digit organic growth. Equity free cash flow excluding licenses totaled USD 1 billion, also on target, after capital expenditure (excluding licenses) rose to USD 2.05 billion.
For 2020, Veon gave the same outlook of low single-digit local currency growth for total revenue, mid-single-digit local currency growth for EBITDA and operational capex at around 21-22 percent of revenue (versus 23.1% in 2019). Growth will continue to be data-led and enabled through the expansion of 3G and 4G networks, with a goal to raise 4G ARPU through continued deployment of new services.
