Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTC) held its corporate briefing session today to discuss its CY22 year-end results and future outlook. To recall, the company unconsolidated NPAT of PkR9.1bn (EPS: PkR1.78) in CY22 vs PkR6.9bn (EPS: PkR1.35) in CY21, growing 32%YoY.
· On standalone basis, company has posted highest ever revenue of PkR83.4bn, up by 9%YoY and NPAT of PkR9.05bn, highest ever since 2013. Increase in the revenue is attributed by increase in the Wireline data/Corporate & wholesale by 12%/20%.
PTCL has achieved increase of 111%/103%YoY in volume/revenue growth of Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and 3%/12.2% YoY volume/revenue growth of Fixed Broadband (FBB). Going forward company is determined for another 2x growth in FTTH base in term of revenue and volume as well.
· During the year, Ufone has added 12% of the new site taking the total number of sites to 11K and ~90% of those sites are 4G. Investment in network rollout contributed to the year-on-year revenue growth of 12% in 4QCY22 vs. 1% in 1QCY22.
· Management of the company expects the consolidation of the mobile operators to three players and believes that this consolidation would be good for mobile operator business, shareholder and customers as well. Management also iterated that they are continuously evaluating and exploring the opportunities for growth (either organic or inorganic) of the business.
· On Ubank side, balance sheet footing of the bank stands at PkR221bn and deposit book has increased by 68%YoY. Moreover, branches of the bank have increased to 301 in 2022 vs 201 in 2021 and ATMs increased to 232 in 2022 vs. 195 in 2022. Furthermore, 57% of the Gross Loan Portfolio (GLP) is secured via Gold Backed Loans. Loan portfolio of the bank stands at PkR14bn.
· On consolidated basis, PTCL group has reported highest ever revenue of PkR151.6bn, up by 10.2%YoY. Revenue growth is attributed by all three companies, as all of them posted positive revenue growth in the group. While EBITDA remain on year-on-year basis despite inflationary pressures to clock in at PkR41.8bn vs PkR41.7bn in 2021 .
· On the flipside, bottomline got adversely impacted by exchange loss (more than PkR3bn) in result of currency devaluation. Where high exchange losses are combinations of exchange losses on Ufone side while exchange gain from PTCL side as PTCL has Dollar denominated assets.
· Bottomline of the company is sensitive to increase in the power and fuel cost as half of the network cost (consist of 60% of the total Opex) is related to power.
Courtesy – AKD Research