VEON

Hello, welcome to VEON's 2Q26 results presentation. Today's presentation will be followed by a Q&A session where we will take questions from the room as well as from virtual attendees. For those of you who have joined the Zoom webinar, if you'd like to ask a question, you can use the raise hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen, at any time to join the queue to ask a question. You'll be called upon during the Q&A session. For those of you watching on the webcast, if you'd like to submit a written question, please use the Ask a Question tab at the top right of your screen. These questions can also be sent in at any time during the presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today.

If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. Anand Ramachandran, you may begin.

Thank you, Lucy. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone joining us for VEON's second quarter results. We are the largest NASDAQ-listed company in Dubai. We are taking this opportunity to host this call out of New York and are very pleased to be able to doing that. We thank the people in the room who've joined us. Thank you for the people who've joined us on the webcast. My name is Anand Ramachandran, Chief Corporate Development Officer. Let me introduce management in the room. Next to me is Kaan Terzioğlu, our Group CEO. Next to him, Burak Ozer, our Group CFO. As usual, Kaan will begin with the strategic and operational highlights, followed by Burak with a review of our financial performance. We'll then open up the call for Q&A. Before we begin, do note that today's presentation contains some Foward-Looking statements involving risks and uncertainties.

Further details are available in our SEC filings, including our Form 20-F. Our earnings release and presentation are also available on our investor relations website. With that, let me hand the call over to Kaan.

Thank you, Anand. Good morning, everyone. Exciting to have you in the room here in New York and do this earnings release here. Beyond excellent financial results, this quarter marks another important milestone in VEON's transformation. We are becoming much more than a telecommunications company. Today, VEON is building one of the world's largest digital ecosystems across emerging markets, combining connectivity, financial services, digital consumer platforms, and enterprise solutions. Our telecom networks connect more than 150 million customers. Our digital platforms deepen those relationships every day. The result is stronger growth, stronger cash generation, and increasing shareholder returns. Most importantly, today's results give us the confidence to raise the outlook for the year. Let me explain how we think about VEON today. Everything begins with connectivity. Connectivity is not the destination. It is our foundation. It is our competitive advantage.

It gives us scale, it gives us distribution edge, it gives us trust, and it gives us daily engagement with millions of customers. On top of that foundation, we have built three digital growth engines: financial services, digital life, digital enterprise. They reinforce one another. Every new service strengthens the customer relationship. Customers stay longer. They spend more. They generate more data. Better data improves AI. Better AI creates better products. Better products create more cash. That cash allows us to invest again. That is the VEON flywheel. Once you understand the flywheel, results are much easier to understand. Growth is broad based. Telecommunications continues to grow twice fast compared to traditional players. Digital is growing substantially faster, multiple times faster. Digital now contributes almost 27% of our total revenues. Cash generation continues to improve. Since August 24, we have already bought back $183 million worth of shares.

Today, we are taking the next step. Starting with this year, we commit to canceling at least $100 million of shares every year, not as a one-time action, but as a sustainable capital allocation framework. I am particularly pleased with the consistency of our execution. That consistency is why we are raising our full-year guidance. A little color. Reported EBITDA growth was affected by three exceptional accounting items. Bangladesh benefited from a provision release last year. Profit comparisons include the Pakistan tower transaction last year. This year, it includes the non-cash fair value adjustment on Kyivstar Group warrants. If you adjust for these items, our underlying business is even stronger. Revenue grew 18%, EBITDA grew more than 15%, like for like earnings per share actually grew 88% year-on-year. This is the clearest measure of our true momentum.

On the subject of consistency, Pakistan continues to deliver outstanding performance. Ukraine continues growing with extraordinary circumstances. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Bangladesh all delivered. This matters. It tells us that VEON operating model is becoming repeatable across markets. Only a few years ago, digital represented a relatively small part of VEON. Today, digital has become one of our main growth engines. Our digital platforms now reach more than 227 million customers. Importantly, all three digital businesses are profitable. Financial services, digital life, digital enterprise. They scale efficiently, they require less capital, and they generate attractive returns. Digital revenues grew more than 53%. Digital EBITDA increased more than 66%. Digital is now generating profits and cash more than telecom business. Financial services best demonstrates how the flywheel works. We do not begin with lending. We begin with engagement. Customers use payments every day. Daily engagement builds trust. Trust creates data.

Data improves underwriting. Underwriting enables lending, insurance, and wealth management. Pakistan demonstrates this model at scale. JazzCash has evolved from a payments application into a complete financial ecosystem. Our acquisition of TPL Insurance represents another important milestone in that journey. Our Mastercard partnership will accelerate AI-enabled financial products across every market. If there is one slide I hope you will remember, it is this one. Connectivity brings customers, and digital deepens engagement. Engagement increases loyalty. Higher cash generation funds better products. Every turn of the wheel strengthens the next. That is why multi-play customers already generate significantly higher value, and why we believe we are still in the early chapters of the story. With that, I will hand over to Burak to take you through the financials in more detail. Burak?

Thank you. In second quarter, revenue grew 17% to $1.27 billion, with growth across all of our five markets. First half revenue also grew 17% to $2.47 billion. 7.6% to $929 million, driven by disciplined pricing and rising customer engagement. Digital revenue grew 53.6%, reaching $342 million, reflecting broader adaptation across platforms and products, plus our recent acquisitions. EBITDA is $552 million, up 6.2% at a 43.4% margin. First half EBITDA grew 11.5% to $1.07 billion. Telecom and infrastructure EBITDA were $428 million, down 3.8% at a 46.1% margin. As Kaan noted earlier, the year-on-year comparison reflects last year's Bangladesh provision release. Digital EBITDA grew 66.2% to $123 million. Digital is less capital intensive than telecom, and that's driving strong cash conversion as it scales.

Profit and EPS for the period reflects $489 million of gain on the Pakistan tower sale in second quarter of last year, and a $22 million fair value loss on KGL warrants in this quarter. Cash generation was strong in the period. Operating cash flow rose 238% in the quarter to $463 million, and 51% for the first half to $860 million. Equity free cash flow after leases and licenses grew 47.5% for the first half to $320 million. EFCF for the second quarter was impacted by prepayment of taxes in Pakistan that will not reoccur. Turning the balance sheet and capital allocation. We ended the quarter with $2.2 billion in cash, including $468 million at headquarters. Net debt, excluding leases, was $1.8 billion, with lease-adjusted leverage at 1.1 times.

We completed a $1.4 billion bond offering this quarter, substantially addressing our 2027 maturities ahead of schedule and extending average headquarters debt maturity beyond four years. With that, I'll hand the call back to Kaan.

Thank you, Burak. Let me return to capital allocation. Since August 24, we have bought back $183 million of shares. We delivered exactly what we said we would. Now we are institutionalizing that discipline. Beginning this year, we will cancel at least $100 million of shares annually. Returning capital to shareholders is now part of our long-term financial framework. We are seeing strong execution. Digital is scaling faster than expected. Cash generation continues to strengthen, and as a result, we are increasing our guidance. Revenue growth is now expected to be 15%-18%. EBITDA growth is now expected to be 9%-12%. Our capital expenditure outlook remains unchanged. These revisions reflect confidence in the underlying strength of our business. Looking ahead, please join us at our Capital Markets Day in N.Y. on November 16th.

There we will present the next chapter of VEON's long-term strategy and value creation. Let me leave you with one thought. Connectivity provides the foundation, digital creates the growth, and the flywheel generates the returns. Our second quarter results demonstrate that this strategy is working, and I believe we are only at the beginning. Thank you very much. Operator, now we can take the questions.

Operator, may I suggest we start with questions in the room. Then I'll probably queue you in to get questions from online attendees.

Thank you.

May I start in the room, would be great if you could put your hand up. There is a mic which will come around to you. If you could state your name and your institution and then your questions, that would be great. Tim, go ahead.

Good morning. Jesse Sobelson with BTIG. Of the values increase, how much was currency and how much was organic, and where are you specifically seeing a performance versus original expectations?

As I mentioned, consistency was one of the key drivers. You may notice a little bit out of cycle results from Kazakhstan, this is normal, and it is fundamentally due to the VAT regulations change in the country, which was a six percentage points increase. In concept of how much of it is devaluation, how much is performance. Our business model is very simple. The way to do business in frontier markets, in emerging markets, relies on your ability to continuously, in a disciplined way, to adjust your prices with nominal GDP growth. We rely on the fact that GDP and GDP growth is the best indicator of our wallet share success. Devaluation and inflation will converge in three, five, seven-year cycles. We are keeping our discipline on that front, and currently we are expecting actually about 9.5% inflation in weighted average in our markets.

This is up from 8%, the overall devaluation is 3% less than what we have expected to happen.

From a currency perspective, the currency assumptions in Q1 versus Q2 did not change. It was mainly organic from a growth perspective.

Yeah.

Thanks.

Hi, Vincent Fernando from Zero One Investment Research. Just want to talk a bit about your financial services business. I see that you've achieved about a 45% year-over-year growth in the first half. What's the latest in terms of your regulatory development outlook, particularly with Bangladesh? I think maybe if you could talk about the latest for Pakistan, which I know is much more mature, Bangladesh and Ukraine, which is very early, but will you start to have an outlook for Ukraine, maybe even when new licenses might be available, et cetera? Thank you.

Let me first of all give a little bit of a color of our business. Our business is really doing extremely well in Pakistan. We have 60 million bank accounts on a monthly basis, 27 million active users of our platform, JazzCash. We issue 225,000 nano loans every single day. We transact close to 16% of Pakistan's GDP. We have 1.6 million merchants on our network. We are a financial giant when it comes to the landscape. Naturally, with that comes a responsibility to work hand in hand with the authorities, including finance ministry and central bank, to make sure that we are basically serving the people in the right levels. I'm confident that the regulatory environment will also support us to expand our capacity to even grow our lending potential. Actually, this success, we believe, is quite repeatable in other markets, especially in Bangladesh and in Uzbekistan.

That's why we are working again with the new government of Bangladesh in terms of creating the right platform for us to launch, which we will start with payment services and later on move into full scale a financial ecosystem in Bangladesh as well. I expect that to happen in Q3. With regard to our operations in Uzbekistan, in order to accelerate deployment of similar services in all the countries, we are looking forward to getting necessary digital banking licenses in every single market we have. We do have already payment solutions and digital wallets in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In Ukraine, we are looking for the regulatory environment to allow us also to proceed in the same direction.

To kind of have a halfway solution before you can have your own full license that you work with, but maybe a bank to start building a financial services type of platform.

It's early to give you a clear answer on that, but clearly we will be looking for every possible business model in terms of how we can serve our customers the way they deserve the service.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Tim Ryan, Oppenheimer. You have a great relationship with SpaceX and Starlink. Could you just describe that relationship, how it's evolving? Also, how is the quality of the service that they're providing to you, and how do you think that changes, that connectivity changes these value-added services over time based on the fact that we're going to have connectivity almost everywhere?

As I mentioned, connectivity is the foundation. It's our competitive advantage, and there is no excuse for it is not to be available. It has to be ubiquitous, it has to be affordable, accessible, because all our business model relies on that connectivity in the digital services part. Now, if you assess the situation in different countries, we operate in emerging markets, in frontier markets. In Ukraine, there's an ongoing war going on, and there are cases where our infrastructure, terrestrial infrastructure, may not be accessible due to landmines. It might be on the front line. There might be energy outages. In those cases, we have observed that it is essential to integrate our terrestrial network with the satellite platforms. That's exactly what we did.

As of last quarter, more than six million people utilized the capabilities of connecting their smartphones without any other additional equipment directly to satellites and utilized messaging and light data services. This is remarkable because if you think about it, this allows us to be relevant to our customers literally every single minute in a day. Also it gives us the advantage that being a trusted partner when it comes to connectivity. We are expanding these capabilities to other markets, to Kazakhstan, to Bangladesh. We do not see Starlink as a substitution. We are complementary to each other. We are naturally in our markets, in sovereign countries, with sovereign regulations, protected in a way to keep our license and our technical responsibilities in each country to serve the populations in a safe and secure manner.

I look forward to expanding our partnership with Starlink. Also clearly there is going to be many other alternatives. We will do our best to make sure that our customers are always connected so that they can always do financial services on our platforms. They can always access marketplaces, healthcare services, education services, entertainment services if they are our customers on connected site.

I know you've had text for a little while, that sounded like it was working well. How's the data connectivity going? Related to that too, do you have an exclusivity for a period of time with them?

First, in terms of quality, we have initiated the light data services in Ukraine, we are optimizing certain applications. Sasha is also here, our CEO in Ukraine. Those applications are optimized in a way that they can function in this light data environment. We do not have exclusivity. I do not believe in exclusivities. Customers have the exclusivity to select their telecom operators when it is necessary.

Thank you.

I don't see any other questions in the room, operator shall we pass to the online attendees for their questions.

Thank you. For those of you in the Zoom webinar, if you'd like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button on the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn to ask a question, you will receive a prompt to be promoted as a panelist. Please accept, wait a moment, once you have been introduced, you may unmute yourself, turn your video on, and ask your question. Written questions can be submitted on the webcast by using the Ask a Question tab at the top right of your screen. Our first question comes from Nick Paton with Edison Group. Please turn on your video, unmute yourself, and ask your question.

Nicholas, you might be on mute.

Nicholas, please turn on your video.

My apologies. Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

Excellent. Thank you. Couple of questions. The first one on the guidance. I'm struck by how much the guidance has changed since the full-year 2025 numbers. At the low end of the guidance full-year 2025, we're at 9%. We're now at 18% for the top end of the guidance for second quarter. On EBITDA, we've gone from five at the low end to now 12 at the top end. Can you just run us through, briefly, the key drivers of that change? I guess the question for investors is, what makes you so sure that you can achieve those numbers now when you were unsure you could achieve those numbers at the top end of the scale at the full-year 2025 numbers? The second question is regarding the new businesses.

The numbers are, I'm gonna hate myself for saying this, they really are an impressive set of numbers, the digital businesses have been growing like crazy. When you look at the digital businesses, let's say three to five years in time, are you still able to leverage the capital returns that come from the established fixed asset base? Do you have to invest more in the fixed asset base? How do those returns on capital change between the core telecom business and the digital business, let's say, in three to five years' time? I'm reminded of your answer, Kaan. I think it was on the first quarter, maybe it was the full-year numbers, when you went through the difference between the digital and the core telecom returns on capital. I thought that was a very interesting and instructive answer.

I'd be interested to hear an update on that and to hear how you think those capital returns change through time. Thank you.

Nicholas, thank you very much. Actually, you are absolutely right. I wish we could have been more precise two quarters ago. Flywheel is working, flywheel is working better than we expected. As you have rightly pointed in your second part of your question, it is growing. It is growing 50%-60% year-on-year, and it is beyond what we have expected. It's not only about the top-line growth. The EBITDA growth of digital services is also above our expectations, significantly above. Actually, EBITDA grew 66%. The margin on the digital services is expanding as well. Those two things combined gives us the confidence to raise our guidance. I think what we see, it's a sustainable business model. We are systematically seeing that more customers are embracing our solutions, and we still have room to sustain this growth.

When it comes to cash generative capacity. Our original business idea a year ago when I talked with you, that the digital services would deliver a margin of 20%-25%. We are at 36%. Digital services has a CapEx revenue ratio of 7%. 36 minus 7 makes 29. On the foundation side, we do have a margin of 45%, 20% goes to CapEx, you end up with 25. Actually, that's why I'm saying the digital services cash generation capacity has exceeded our expectations as a business model a year ago, which I am very happy to see. Having said that, please don't forget, foundation is our competitive edge. We will not stop investing in that. We will keep investing in where it is necessary. Just like in Pakistan, we have recently bought some spectrum.

We are now lighting up the spectrum for 4G, extended 4G, and 5G. We will do exactly the same in our other markets. The balance of our growth coming from digital will slowly actually put us in a better position in terms of cash generation capacity. I'm happy that it is happening faster than we expected. Apologize that the expectation was not spot on two quarters ago. I think we are on the right side of that equation.

Kaan, if I may just add on to that. At the end of first quarter, I think we pointed out that we wanted to see how the macro impact of what was happening in the Middle East and oil prices weighed in on operations. We'd made the very clear point of, therefore, our holding on EBITDA, just to get better clarity on how things evolved. Clearly sitting here today, it's pleasing to see that this turned out better than we thought, not just on the margin side, also on the revenue side. I think that's also the additional fact that I wanted to point out that leads to where we are today relative to year-end.

Last, on your CapEx question, whether we will spend more in the future. Yes, but the CapEx ratio will not go over 7% with the growth in revenue accelerating. Definitely, we'll stay with the same CapEx ratios on our digital businesses.

Sorry, just to follow-up with you. Is this a 7% CapEx to sales for the digital businesses in isolation?

Yes. That's today what we spend.

Yeah. You're saying that it won't go above that in the future either?

Yes, because of the growth in the revenue projections.

Oh, okay.

I actually would expect it to decline in a way. Yeah.

Business is evolving. I think the message is we're very pleased with the momentum of the business. Business is evolving. Margins are turning out better than where we expected. The flywheel, as Kaan pointed out, is working and working incredibly well, and we take it as we go along. As things stand, as Burak pointed out, we expect this business to continue to generate pretty material cash. As the business grows, hopefully, we continue and see it progressing in the same direction.

Makes sense. Thank you, guys.

Thank you, Nicholas.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Adrian Cundy with Emerging & Frontier Capital. You can now unmute your audio, turn on your video and ask your question.

Good morning, Kaan, Burak, Anand. It's good to see you, and congratulations on delivering again this quarter. I have two questions. One about just sort of your use of headquarter liquidity going forward, given that you've really turned the corner on the debt restructuring and that you've moved into a positive free cash flow to equity profile. You've nearly $1 billion of cash at the headquarters and no major repayments until out beyond what you're upstreaming 2031, 2033. Can we sort of expect further reinvestment of that cash into any of the key countries, particularly if they need to capitalize digital bank? Do you think you can continue to grow those opcos with their domestic cash flows? M&A broadly, is that now new markets that you're keeping an eye on, given that you have dry powder at the headquarters? That's my first question.

My second question comes down to the going back to the CapEx intensity, and thank you for the 7% number just now. 5G launching in Pakistan, Uzbekistan talking about significant investment in 5G post the sale of Mobiuz, 40% of subs by 2030 something, I saw a headline. Kazakhstan, obviously Bangladesh will come. Then there's Starlink. What do the relative margins look like between a Starlink data ARPU versus a terrestrial ARPU on 5G? Which is more profitable? What do you sort of see the balance of, and where will you be focusing your 5G investment? Are you confident that you can continue extended 4G, early stage 5G in high density areas at the current CapEx sales ratios?

Adrian, let me first start with the part about M&A. We are extremely disciplined when it comes to decisions about growing through inorganic means. Naturally, there are very accretive in-market consolidation opportunities that we will always be looking after. I truly believe that our stock price at today, trading at 3.5x EBITDA, is not at the level that we would be looking into acquisitions at a broad level. I will keep that discipline very strong over the next couple of years. That's number one. Of course, in market consolidation, naturally accretive synergies, these are things that we will be in the market continuously. You ask about the profitability of Starlink versus our other networks, terrestrial networks.

If you look to the cost of producing mobile data via terrestrial networks in terms of deployment of towers, equipment, et cetera, versus having access to satellite connectivity. Let me give you an example in Kazakhstan. The size of Kazakhstan is probably bigger than the entire U.S., and 20 million people live there. If I would try to deliver license requirements just in railways and roads based on terrestrial networks, it would cost me a fortune.

I do not see actually cost differentials or additional cost when it comes to access to satellite platforms. I consider it actually quite reasonable when it comes to comparing the cost of satellite connectivity versus terrestrial connectivity. Having said that, this is not about substituting terrestrial networks, fiber networks with satellites. It's complementing it when it is needed. I think, with that regard, the utility value to the customer definitely is much higher than the cost of the technology brings.

Just to add to that, as Kaan said during the presentation, we will definitely use cash for shareholder return. On top of that, he just mentioned the M&A opportunities that we have in order to grow our business for in-market consolidation and maybe on the fintech side in priority. Last but not least, we will be addressing some higher cost debt that is sitting on the balance sheet today to make sure that we kind of balance the cost to debt ratio there in terms of interest expenses.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Adrian.

Our next question will come from Matthew Harrigan with Benchmark StoneX. Please unmute and ask your question.

Great. Thank you. Firstly, when you look at the digital side, I mean, clearly you're a market leader in some areas where there's very substantial TAM, witnessed in other markets, and you can see a really nice growth curve all the way around. You're also involved on the LLM side as a critical player, working with Google Gemma and COSCO, clearly. How do you see the utility of LLM models developing for your frontier markets, and are they eventually monetizable in concert with your partners? Secondly, clearly in some other markets, people would be talking about targets of 5 times EV to sales, rather than 5 times EV to EBITDA. But when you think about valuation without giving out a number, I mean, clearly, Pakistan is one of the cheaper markets in the world.

I mean, even relative to the Morgan Stanley MSCI frontier markets basket. How do you feel about valuation in terms of, I mean, should people be doing 10-year models rather than five-year models? I mean, growth rates relative to GDP. I mean, do you think you get a fundamental re-rating of Pakistan or clearly Ukraine? I mean, if that starts trading like Poland, you've got an immediate pop in Kyivstar. Just kind of playing In a capital markets professor, just any thoughts you had on valuation without trying to say, well, I know you're not going to say what you think your stock is worth. Thank you. Congratulations on the results and guidance.

Thank you, Matthew. Let me start with the second question you asked, because clearly we will be this year doing more than half a billion dollar of sales, and maybe I'm on the low side giving this number. In Pakistan alone on financial services, and if you look to the benchmarks, financial services businesses of this nature is just about to be IPOd for 7.5 times the revenues, not EBITDA. Clearly this excites me a lot because it shows the value that we are creating in the marketplace. Now Pakistan is a $2 billion run rate business for us. Among that, about half a billion coming from financial services shows the potential of the country. 250 million people and 20 million outside of Pakistan. I think it's a unique market.

We are blessed to be given the chance to serve Pakistanis around the world, we will continue investing. I think, the question you asked whether the valuations will reflect that, markets always get it right, and I'm confident in that. Time will show it. Looking to the first question you asked, AI. I was reading today the CEO of Ooredoo making a very relevant comment. He says, "I am seeing AI everywhere except for P&L." In reality, there is, I believe, a fundamental reality we have to focus on. Value proposition, right? A company exists because it proposes a value to the customer. Customers matter still. The old type telecom companies, what is their value proposition? Number of minutes, number of SMSs, number of gigabytes. A digital operator, the transformation we have been going through for three, four years now, sells meaningful digital services.

It's not enough. AI will change this as well. We will be providing customers an intelligence platform. I don't like to talk about this super intelligence, quantum, this and that. It's simple. We provide customers a chance to become superheroes, a doctor, a better doctor, a teacher, a better teacher, a farmer, a more productive farmer, a small business owner to be more efficient. A value proposition like a better version of yourself for $2 a month, for $0.50 a transaction, I think is unbeatable. That's where we are heading. That's our AI strategy. It will be all about sovereign LLMs. It will be all about embedding AI into our super apps, which has more than 65 million users today. We do not have a problem of customer acquisition cost.

We have a speed to market, bringing these LLMs at the fingertips of 600 million people. I see a huge revenue potential. We are working with every single country in our portfolio developing these LLMs. I believe developing sovereign LLMs is by itself a business, but developing data inference capacity for the customers is another business. Those are the things that we are working on today.

If I could add, Kaan, I think, Matt, if you're aware, Kaan mentioned $182 million of stock bought back to date. I think that's a very clear indication of management's perception of the stock being significantly undervalued. Today, we've again announced we are going to cancel minimum $100 million of stock per year. This is a velocity with free cash flow as we generate that should be the clearest vindication reflection of what we think about the stock price. Still, you're the experts. You're doing your own numbers. As Kaan mentioned, there are comparables out there. From our perspective, to generate that cash and use it to basically reflect in what is a very undervalued stock, and therefore buying it back, is probably the clearest signal that we can provide in the market, and that we'll continue to do.

Thanks, Kaan. Thanks, Anand. Very much look forward to your Capital Markets Day should be interesting.

Thank you.

Looking forward to seeing you there, Matthew.

Apologies. Thank you. Our next question comes from Max Findlay with Rothschild & Co. Please unmute and ask your question.

Hi, all. Thank you for speaking to us today. My questions are more focused on performance within your different markets. Bangladesh feels like it's split between a continuingly tough telco market, but you're managing to offset this with some impressive digital performance and cost performance as well. First on the telco performance, Telenor was very cautious about recovering the market, but both from incoming phones and your operational KPIs looks to be heading in the right direction, and your EBITDA margin stabilized quarter-over-quarter and I think expanded year-over-year if you exclude a one-off from last year. It'd be interesting to get your thoughts on how recovery proceeds from there. Secondly, relating to Bangladesh, digital grew there about $12 million in absolute terms.

Can you provide some color on what contribution came from holding the rights to the World Cup and what we should expect from this in Q3? Kind of broader expectations about the fintech business, which you hope to get live in the second half of the year. A final question on Kazakhstan. It was obviously a very difficult quarter there with performance deteriorating sequentially from Q1. The strategy change there, as I understand, was to target higher value customers and to do this by bundling services. Local currency ARPU fell at 1.5% year-over-year, and margins have dropped by 7% year-over-year in Q1 and nearly 9% this quarter. I guess the question is the shift in customer strategy working? What can we expect in terms of margin recovery in the near term? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Max. Let me start with Bangladesh. Clearly, I'm happy to see the stabilization of the market, and we have been consistently growing in the last three quarters year-over-year. This quarter is an interesting one because I think it shows the potential of the country. There has been significant energy outages in Bangladesh in April and May, to the level that the entire country has reduced its data consumption by 15%. Now, in an emerging market, you would expect data consumption to go up 40% year-over-year. This happened because of energy outages and practically because of the Hormuz Strait crisis, oil being not available in certain places. Despite this, we managed to grow our business. What really excites me in Bangladesh, we broke all records.

I was talking with Google executives recently, they said, "We have never seen such a thing like this in World Cup in terms of broadcasting the games to Bangladeshi population in and outside of Bangladesh." I was actually yesterday at a restaurant, and I met a Bangladeshi guy, and the moment I said, "Do you know Bengali and Toffee?" He said, "Yes, I watched all the games from Toffee at $5 rather than $20." It is good to see that we are even getting in New York some attention. In terms of the monetization potential of digital services, the growth you see there is thanks to the World Cup. I congratulate United States. I think they run the best World Cup that I have seen, but it also had a major impact in Bangladesh, and we are very happy to see that.

I'm more positive than other players in the market in terms of the progress and development of Bangladesh. I think when the energy stabilization also normalizes, we will see higher growth rates from the country. Now, coming to Kazakhstan, there are a couple of things that we need to keep in mind. First of all, VAT rates have increased by 6%. This is a significant change, and we were not able to adjust this to the pricing. Normally, we are better in doing this, but in this particular case, 6% disappeared from top line, and you can imagine the impact of that to the EBITDA. The second important issue is we have a model of bundling smartphones into family packages. It's a great idea, but it also has a temporary fluctuation in the marginality because of the way it is accounted for.

Those two important dynamics had an impact. I'm not concerned. Kazakhstan is the most advanced digitally aligned market that we have in our portfolio, and we are actually doing quite well despite the fact that we are providing 4G advanced services in Kazakhstan. We have a unique advantage in terms of customer satisfaction and net promoter scores. Overall, I see the Kazakhstan as a temporary issue in terms of margin erosion, but I'm sure that Kazakh market will prove itself to be an extremely dynamic and successful market as the time passes this year.

Just to add on top the Bangladesh, on top of the World Cup, there was a pricing adjustment we did year-over-year for our services. That also impacted the revenue growth.

I think just to complete that, digital is 13%. The World Cup helped that 13%, it's not as if we want to call that a one-off. I mean, there's flywheels in motion. There's a lot of other things. We're hoping for that momentum to kind of continue to sustain itself.

There are countries which loves cricket like Pakistan. There are countries which likes football like Bangladesh. Every Bangladeshi is either a Brazilian fan or a Argentina fan. You can go to during the World Cup time, the country is full of Argentina and Brazil flags. It was good that Argentina made to the last final game for us.

Thanks, guys. It's shameless. No more tariff anomaly supporters in Bangladesh. We live in hope. Just coming back on the EBITDA margin point on Kazakhstan. I mean, is this margin depressed at the moment because you're bundling it in with low margin equipment revenues? You don't expect further deterioration, but the kind of margins stay around the kind of 40%-45% kind of range where they've been Q1, Q2. Is that the right way to interpret that?

Max, first of all, let me correct one thing. We do not subsidize equipment, it's not a matter of margin dilution because of subsidies of equipment. It is a matter of revenue recognition, which recognizes some of that margin in the previous quarters rather than this quarter. It's a cyclical movement of the volumes of business having the impact because the way the service and equipment integration into packages results in different type of an accounting procedure.

Right. Thank you.

In simple terms, we recognize equipment revenue up front, and the higher margin service revenue gets recognized over the term. Therefore, as the business grows, we recognize more lower margin revenue up front, and that's the success. That's actually success of business growing, that we recognize more lower margin revenue up front, and then the higher margin service revenue will come in turn.

Combined with the 6% VAT impact, you can understand where we are.

Brilliant. Very clear. Thank you. Thank you both.

Our next question comes from Ahmed Mostafa with Inam. Please unmute, turn on your video and ask your question.

Hello, everyone. Thanks for the presentation. Two questions from my side. First, digital ARPU margin reached 36% this quarter. What are the main levers and medium-term milestones for further margin expansion? Second, which markets still have the most headroom to increase multi-play penetration?

Thank you. Thank you for the question. Now, let me answer it this way. There are markets already where number of digital service customers have exceeded number of our telecom customers. When I look to advanced markets, especially Pakistan being the highest, I think we are getting close to 38% of our revenues coming from financial and digital services. This is just a constant, because as we bring the right services to each market on financial services side, entertainment side, healthcare, education, and AI services, I think we are going to see a constant increase. Our multi-play customer base was raised this quarter about 4.5%, which is actually the healthy trend that we would like to continue. The biggest upside that I see in this space is still Bangladesh, and this is related to smartphone penetration in the country.

There's an interesting metric that I want to share with you. If you look to GSMA reports, for the five countries that we operate in, this is 530 million people lives. Number of people connected to internet is 288 million. Number of digital service customers we have is 228 million people. Basically, six out of 10 people, whoever gets connected to internet is our customers already, one way or the other. Now, we need to push for equal inclusion for women on smartphone ownership. That's our number one priority. That will mean that we have to work hand-in-hand with the governments and equipment producers to increase the smartphone penetration, and especially on female population.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Jake Ng with New Street Research. Please unmute your audio, turn on your video and ask your question.

Jake, you are on mute.

Yes. Hi, sorry. Hi, this is Jake. I understand that VEON currently has a global framework agreement with Starlink, and we know Starlink is present in Ukraine. You guys are working with them in Kazakhstan and Bangladesh already. Is there a possibility of us seeing this in Pakistan and Uzbekistan as well? Just this.

Thanks, Jake. I assume Chris is on vacation already, please pass my regards to him and tell him both you and him invited to the Capital Markets Day. The answer is yes, as long as the government allows us to. There are quite a number of regulations to get to this point, and it takes a while to show the governments that this is an essential need for the populations. I think there should be no country in the world which would not be integrating their terrestrial networks with satellite platforms. We should not consider this as a threat. This is a responsibility for the populations. Actually, I wish the regulatory environments would be forcing every single operator to do this. We are doing ourselves, and we are working with all the countries' regulators to also demonstrate the value of doing this.

On top, our contractual terms do give us benefits as we add on more countries with Starlink.

Is it possible to elaborate on any of these benefits you mentioned?

I suggest we keep the commercial details to ourselves. Thanks a lot for the question, but I don't think we can share that.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question will come from Ali Zaidi with Inam. Please unmute, turn on your video and ask your question.

Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I just have one question. You have called out that there is a high energy cost in Pakistan, and there are also energy-related disruptions in Bangladesh as well. In Ukraine, you responded to that kind of problem by buying the generation there again. Is that something you would consider in Pakistan and Bangladesh as well?

Good question. Of course, in Ukraine, we have a stronger appetite to deploy capital in terms of this type of investments. In other markets, we are looking for alternative methods. Actually, deploying solar farms only works if there is a strong grid distributing the energy in the country. Both in Bangladesh and Pakistan, the grid infrastructure is not at the level that we can do the same playbook. Having said that, more and more, there are site-based technologies that could allow us to do solar and wind generation for the specific sites. Actually, last year, we have deployed one of those sites in Kazakhstan at a very remote location, which still works in a perfect manner. We will be looking for those. There are already projects in place, especially in Pakistan, to solarize some of our sites, giving very encouraging results.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks. Last question comes from Theodore O'Neill with Litchfield Hills. Please unmute and ask your question.

Thank you very much. Congratulations on the quarter. I'm looking over the results for the quarter, and I'm struck by the fact that country by country, you've got, with the exception of Bangladesh, for reasons you already mentioned, you've got double-digit growth in revenue in dollars, but the mobile customer numbers are all essentially unchanged. At some point, do you need to see those mobile customer numbers go up? Or is it partly what you just talked about, too, with the female population that you're trying to address?

Yes. First of all, we are focused on the flywheel that I described. How much of that customers are multi-play customers versus just an end-to-end SIM card or practically customers who are only using our voice services. We are very satisfied with that evolution overall. In our markets, there is still a challenge, especially when it comes to Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are big populations in terms of smartphone availability. Our ability to make smartphones affordable and accessible and also penetrating into markets which there is very low smartphone ownership, especially the women, I think is a critical success factor. Of course, we have programs to address those, but you will only see that growth picking up in the way that we want with regard to multi-play customer base, if we can grow the penetration of smartphones in the markets.

Thank you. See you November 16th.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Anand Ramachandran for closing remarks.

Thank you so much. I'd probably take a last call for any follow-up questions in the room. I don't see any. With that, guys, thank you very much for your time and attention. As Kaan said, we will have the Capital Markets Day in November, and obviously the third quarter results before that. Thank you very much for your attention and support to VEON. We'll keep talking, see you as a part of this group again next quarter. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thanks a lot

Hello, and welcome to VEON's Q1 2026 results presentation. For those of you who have joined the Zoom webinar, if you would like to ask a question, you can use the Raise Hand button which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen at any time to join the queue to ask a question, and you will be called upon during the Q&A session. For those of you watching on the webcast, if you would like to submit a written question, please use the Ask a Question tab at the top right of your screen. These questions can also be sent in any time during the presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. Anand Ramachandran, you may begin.

Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone joining us for VEON's first quarter results. My name is Anand Ramachandran, Chief Corporate Development Officer at VEON. Joining me today are our Group CEO, Mr. Kaan Terzioğlu. Next to him, our Group CFO, Mr. Burak Ozer. As usual, Kaan will begin with our strategic and operational highlights, followed by Burak with a review of our financial performance, and we'll then open up the call for Q&A. Before we begin, please note that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties. Further details are available in all our SEC filings, including our Form 20-F. Our earnings release and presentation are available on our investor relations website. With that, let me hand it over to Kaan.

Thank you, Anand. VEON has entered 2026 with clear momentum: double-digit growth, accelerating digital revenues, stronger cash generation, and continued capital returns. Revenues in USD grew 17% year-on-year. EBITDA increased 17.7%, and margins expanded by 20 basis points. Importantly, this growth translated into strong cash generation with equity free cash flow up 73.4% year-on-year to $246 million. This performance reflects the strength of our digital operator strategy, combining resilient connectivity, fast-scaling digital platforms, and disciplined capital allocation. As a result, we are raising our 2026 revenue outlook, which I will return to later. Second, we are seeing strong acceleration across our digital portfolio. Digital revenues grew 57.7% year-on-year and now represents over 25% of our group revenues.

Importantly, this growth is increasingly profitable with EBITDA margins of 34.6%. This quarter, we also refined our reporting by including enterprise identity and credentials management within digital enterprise. These are mature services that are increasingly shifting from traditional A2P messaging towards API-based platforms. On a comparable basis, excluding this reclassification, our digital revenues actually grew over 75%. Third, we continue to execute multiple growth levers within disciplined asset-light framework. In Pakistan, we secured the largest spectrum allocation in the March spectrum auction, strengthening capacity and supporting future growth. We are expanding our financial services footprint, and our acquisitions of TPL Insurance and Apna Bank acquisitions to come are on the right course. We are deepening our ecosystem through targeted acquisitions such as OLX and Tabletki. These initiatives enhance engagement, expand monetization opportunities, and reinforce our long-term growth platforms. We remain firmly focused on shareholder value.

We continue to believe our shares do not reflect the value and cash generation of the business, we are acting on that conviction through our buyback program. At the same time, we are reducing leverage and maintaining financial flexibility. Management ownership remains a key signal of alignment, reinforcing our confidence in the value we are building. Let us review our Q1 financial performance. Let's move to the next slide. Our strategy is translating into strong, high-quality financial performance. Both telecom and digital segments are contributing meaningfully to profitability and cash flow, demonstrating the strength of our integrated model. Telecom revenues grew steadily while digital revenues increased significantly and now account for a quarter of total revenues. As highlighted earlier, we are encouraged by the strength of our cash generation this quarter and continued reduction in leverage. Next slide, please.

Our growth continues to outpace inflation across our markets, reflecting the strength of our operating model. On a like-for-like basis, which adjusts for the divestment of Pakistan Towers, Kyrgyzstan business, and the acquisition of Uklon and Tabletki, revenues grew 15.4% and EBITDA grew 15% year-over-year. This reflects our ability to execute fair value pricing supported by strong demand, high engagement, and increasing customer reliance on both connectivity and digital services. Let us move to our digital performance, which continues to scale in size and quality. Let's go to the next page. Digital revenues reached $303 million for the quarter, now representing over a quarter of group revenues. The reclassification of enterprise identity and credentials management within digital enterprise, which I highlighted earlier, contributed $44 million for the quarter, with prior periods reclassified for comparability.

Growth remains broad-based, with financial services leading and strong contributions from entertainment, ride hailing, and healthcare. We also began consolidating Tabletki from February, further strengthening our healthcare vertical in Ukraine. Our digital platforms continue to benefit from structurally low customer acquisition costs and highly efficient distribution, creating a scalable competitive advantage across our markets. Importantly, digital services are structurally lower in capital intensity, supporting strong cash generation capacity. Let's go to the next page. Multi-play customers remain a key growth driver. These customers use connectivity with digital services, and they deliver significantly higher value, with ARPU now 3.9x that of voice-only customers. This fact also helped us raise overall ARPU to $2.3 for the quarter from $2 a year ago. Multi-play revenues grew almost 18% year-on-year and now represents 58% of consumer revenues.

Let me now update you on the operational performance across our markets in the Next page. We are seeing strong operational momentum across the board. Pakistan and Ukraine continue to lead, while Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan deliver steady growth. Bangladesh is continuing its growth for a second consecutive quarter in a row. Digital momentum is consistent across all markets, supporting both growth and diversification. Our focus is clear: to sustain this momentum through disciplined execution and balancing revenue growth with profitability over the course of the year. Next slide, please. Our financial services business in Pakistan continues to grow from strength to strength. JazzCash served over 29 million users during the quarter, while our merchant base expanded to over 600,000 merchants. This is driving a powerful network effect.

Transaction volumes remain robust, with last 12-month transaction value reaching $60 billion or 15% of Pakistan's GDP, reflecting a sustained growth in usage and engagement. We are also scaling lending at pace with over 200,000 loans issued daily while maintaining disciplined risk management. Asset quality remains strong, non-performing loans NPL ratios remain well-controlled. Mobilink Bank's loan portfolio has reached $289 million and is supporting the continued expansion of our digital financial services ecosystem. Together, these capabilities position us well to support financial inclusion and capture long-term growth. Next slide, please. We have refined our definition of digital customers to reflect active users in Q1, providing a more comprehensive view of engagement across the quarter. Across our ecosystem, we now serve 229 million digital customers, including over 72 million digital-only users.

Our platforms are becoming go-to super apps in our markets. Transaction value reached almost $63 billion over the last 12 months, reflecting both scale and deepening engagement. This creates increasing opportunities in cross-sell, advertising and monetization. Next slide. Our consumer digital platforms continue to scale across multiple networks. Financial services, entertainment, healthcare, ride hailing and super apps now serve millions of users across our markets. Our premium digital brands are delivering a differentiated customer experience by seamlessly integrating connectivity with everyday lifestyle services such as healthcare, e-commerce and mobility. Together, these platforms deepen engagement and unlock multiple opportunities, providing people that are underserved with service quality they deserve. Next slide, please. We are also building strong momentum in digital enterprise. Our platforms in augmented intelligence, cloud and data analytics are scaling across our markets, supported by almost 2,000 engineers and data scientists.

Our AdTech platform reaches over 100 million screens, enabling increasingly sophisticated AI-driven targeting and monetization across our ecosystem. Within our identity and credentials management services, the focus is rapidly shifting towards secure real-time authentication as a primary defense against fraud and scams and protection of children. Let's go to the next slide, please. Augmented Intelligence or AI is a core pillar of our value creation. For us, AI is not a standalone initiative. It's a productivity engine across networks, customer care, digital services, and enterprise solutions. We are building sovereign local language AI capabilities. Our Ukrainian LLM, Svio, which means globe, was named by Ukrainian citizens, showing its national importance and strategic value. Our ambition is to put AI to work in real-time economy, helping doctors deliver better outcomes, teachers reach further, and farmers produce more. This is practical augmented intelligence delivering measurable impact in everyday life.

We have over 1,000 prioritized use cases across the group. Over 1.4 million customers are using our AI products across our footprint. We are focused on turning AI from potential into performance. With that, Burak, I hand over to you.

Thank you, Kaan. We continue to deliver strong financial results in the first quarter. Group revenue reached $1.2 billion, growing 17% year-over-year in U.S. dollar terms, with broad-based contributions across our markets. Digital services grew 57.7%, reaching $303 million and representing over 25% of total revenue. This reflects strong execution across both telecom and digital businesses. Next slide, please. EBITDA reached $517 million in Q1 2026, growing 17.7% year-on-year. Margins expanded by 20 basis points to 43%, reflecting operating leverage and continued cost discipline. This demonstrates our ability to grow profitability while maintaining a disciplined cost base. Next slide, please. Now turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $1.75 billion in cash, including $457 million at headquarters level.

Gross debt remains stable at $4.9 billion. Net debt excluding leases stood at $1.76 billion with leverage reduced further to 1.07x. This provides us with financial flexibility and resilient capital structure. We are also proactively exploring strategies to manage our upcoming debt maturities. With that, I'll hand the call back to Kaan Terzioglu.

Thank you, Burak. Returning capital to shareholders remains a key priority. Our current $100 million buyback is underway with ADS buybacks continuing. We are committed to a minimum of $100 million in annual share repurchases subject to market conditions and liquidity. Following completion of the current program, shares repurchased under future programs will be canceled, supporting long-term shareholder value. Next slide, please. We have a long track record of navigating frontier markets. Volatility is not new to us. We are proactively executing targeted actions to mitigate the impact of recent energy price movements. Reflecting our strong first quarter performance and continued commercial momentum, we are raising our 2026 revenue growth outlook to 11%-14% while maintaining EBITDA growth guidance at 7%-10%. We are making further investments in Pakistan following the recent spectrum acquisition to support future growth.

CapEx intensity, excluding Ukraine, is expected to be in the range of 15%-17%. To conclude, VEON has made a strong start to 2026. We are delivering double-digit growth, scaling digital revenues profitably, strengthening our credit profile, and returning capital to shareholders. At the same time, we remain disciplined and mindful of external volatility. Our model is increasingly diversified, resilient, and cash generative, and we are confident in the opportunities ahead. Thank you for your continued support. We will now open the line for questions.

Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn to ask a question, you will receive a prompt to be promoted as a panelist. Please accept, wait a moment, and once you have been introduced, you may unmute yourself, turn your video on and ask your question. Written questions can be submitted on the webcast by using the Ask a Question tab at the top right of your screen. As a reminder, we are allowing analysts one question and one related follow-up today. If you wish to ask more questions, please raise your hand again to rejoin the queue.

We will pause a moment to allow the questioners to enter the queue. Our first question comes from Max Findlay with Rothschild & Co Redburn. Please unmute your line, turn your video on and ask your question.

Hi, all. Thank you for taking the time to speak to us today. The EBITDA guidance implies a downgrade for the business ex-Kyivstar and margin contraction of about 1% following Kyivstar's EBITDA upgrade earlier today. Are you able to walk us through what's changed since we last spoke? Secondly, and linked to my first question, I was wondering if you could provide some color about what you're seeing in your markets now as a result of the Iran conflict and what risk there is to further EBITDA margin compression. I obviously appreciate the high uncertainty around the situation. Finally, I asked at full year results whether your CapEx guidance was a bit conservative following the Pakistan auction. I guess I'd like to know what has changed regarding your network build plans there.

Is this CapEx being brought forward, that was perhaps targeted for next year, or is this new CapEx? Thank you very much.

Thank you, Max, for the question. I think, you know, second part of the question is kind of the answer to the first. We have reiterated our guidance as it is on the EBITDA side, and I would like to see the next three months to give a more clear picture about how the EBITDA growth will curtail. If you would ask me, you know, I do not think any margin compression will happen because we have strong control over our pricing. Our services are differentiated, and the tolerance towards price elasticity is quite healthy in the markets that we operate in. Having said that, you know, today President Trump is in China. I would like to see a little bit more clarity on geopolitical landscape before making a change in our guidance on the EBITDA side.

Now, looking into, you know, the impact we see in our markets, especially about the oil prices. Today in South Asia, a barrel of oil goes in between $160-$180, not like in line with the brands. It is not about the pricing, but it is also the availability of fuel which is important. I am very glad to see that actually Pakistan over time has been diversifying its energy production capacity towards wind, solar and hydro. The hydrocarbons have been steadily declining in the needs. In markets like, Bangladesh, we have seen some availability issues over the last couple of weeks, I hope that, you know, the pricing, liberal pricing of oil will adjust this availability issue over the time.

I think it's important to understand that the impact from the current weighted average inflation rate of 8.1% across our markets, we do expect to see double-digit inflation moving onwards, and that's of course something that we are watching very carefully. With regard to investments in Pakistan, we have tripled our capacity on spectrum, and specifically with 700 MHz spectrum getting into our fleet of spectrum, we will accelerate our deployments. It will be our coverage layer for 5G and also 4G non-standard services as well. That's why we decided to upgrade our guidance slightly. Having said that, if you look into our profile of our revenues, now one quarter comes from digital services. Digital services CapEx to sales ratio is in higher single digits rather than higher 20s.

That's why, you know, we believe over time there will be a moderation of CapEx to revenue percentage in terms of investments. Still, for the remaining of the year, we will accelerate our deployments in Pakistan because the average data consumption in Pakistan today is around 7.5 GB per month, which is 1/3 of what it should be. It's not that Pakistanis don't like to consume more, it's because the capacity is limited. We believe that putting more capacity in place will give us the chance also to monetize that business.

Kaan, could I just follow up on the.

Right

EBITDA margin point? I think from what I understood, you're suggesting there will be no margin contraction. Given the upgrade to revenues and EBITDA guidance staying the same, you know, if you take the midpoint of both, that obviously implies margin contraction. Are you suggesting that we should instead be thinking about you ending up at the full year at the top higher end of the EBITDA range if margins are going to stay stable?

Max, I would suggest that, you know, we wait for Q2 end to give more clarity on that. At this particular stage, we wanted to stick to the guidance that we have given on the FTA side.

Okay

I think, you know, our pricing control and inflationary pricing discipline will allow us to keep our margin levels the same.

Brilliant. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Nicholas Paton with Edison Group. Please unmute your line, turn your video on and ask your question.

Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for the additional information on the Pakistan financial services business, which I thought was very interesting. It reminded me of the work that we did in our initiation, and I think when I look back at that now, we were considering the transactions with MTN Group Fintech and Airtel Africa, looking at potential valuations for that business. It looks as though the business has grown something of the order of about 30% in EBITDA terms over the last over the last year or so. At the time, we were looking for a valuation around about a billion for that business. I'm also aware that investors have been discussing a potential strategic investor for that or maybe even an IPO. Have you any more thoughts about crystallizing value in that business?

I'm extremely happy with the progress we have with our financial services business in Pakistan, and specifically, you know, expanding our service lines into insurance and potentially to digital banking products that we do not cover today. I think there is a huge potential of serving 250 million population in Pakistan, and additional to that, 12 million population outside of Pakistan as diaspora. There's a huge potential in this particular market, I would like that growth to show itself a little bit more. What I'm even more excited is applying the same business model in a market like Bangladesh, where there's an additional 180 million population with also a strong diaspora footprint.

I think, you know, our intentions of at certain point opening up this as an investment opportunity stays, but we will not hurry as we see the growth rates actually are still allowing us to develop the business.

Should I infer from that, if you were to look for a crystallization of the value in those businesses, you might look to, for instance, merge the JazzCash business with businesses from other countries? Or would you try to look at options with, on a country basis?

We will keep an open mind in terms of how we see the consolidation, but clearly there are certain aspects of the business which later on actually turn into products such as, digital assets, including stablecoins, remittances. These are global businesses, so some of these things actually could justify a global, multi-brand strategy.

Makes sense. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Our next question comes from Adrian Cundy with Emerging and Frontier Capital. Please unmute your line, turn your video on and ask your question.

Hi, Kaan. Gentlemen, it's good to see you again. Congratulations, first of all, on beating our digital growth estimate this quarter. Last time we did the call, you said that you had a vision of getting to 30%+ of turnover by the AE end of next year, half from organic, half from potential M&A, and 1% a quarter. You seem to be running ahead of that right now. Do you think on an organic basis you might even get to 30% earlier than planned, given what's going on in, particularly in Pakistan?

Well, I think, you know, as I mentioned, you really, the momentum we see, not only just in financial services, but entertainment, our digital premium products, healthcare, marketplaces is very strong. Now actually I see that as a team, we look to end of 2029 to achieve more than 50% of our revenues from digital services. Having that insight, I think half of that should come organic, half of that probably will come with acquisitions that we will see in the markets that we operate in. You know, I'm very happy to see that, you know, we modeled our digital services growth, of course, as 35%+ growth business, and it is proving to be almost twice as fast. I'm happy to see that happen.

Don't wanna give a guidance on the year on growth. That's not something we do at this particular time.

Okay. Just outside of sort of Ukraine and Pakistan and in terms of the growth capital for these, for, you know, digital wallet in Bangladesh, what you might be doing Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, do you see potentially a need for more risk capital or a primary issue in those businesses at the group level? It sort of relates to earlier discussions you said about listing operating companies, particularly Jazz in Pakistan. Is that still on the agenda given the, you know, current geopolitical situation?

I think it's important to look into these not only as, you know, crystallizing of the value, but having the right partners, right investors in place to develop resilience and strength. From that perspective, we are, of course, always looking for, you know, what we can achieve, around the world. Yeah.

Okay. If I could ask a final question for on the debt. You last call, you indicated that you'd like to refinance the notes coming due before they become current in the fourth quarter of this year or address it. Do you sort of, just for our modeling purposes, do you have a target debt to capital in mind? Given that, you know, cash flow continues to accrue at the group level, will there be when you do move on the notes due in 2027, do you need to refinance a whole billion, or will there be a principal payment and maybe an issue of something a bit longer duration, at a smaller size that would provide a further acceleration of free cash flow to equity?

Let me ask Burak to answer that since they have been quite busy on this front. Please, Burak.

Yes. I mean, the work has been going on, and we still plan to address the debt before it becomes current in November 2026. We are working on that, and all options are on the table. Of course, I think we will go for a minimum benchmark size whenever we go for it. On top of that, we will have to decide based on all the capital inflows and outflows that we are foreseeing right now.

If you sort of look two, three years out, what sort of debt to capital structure would you see as optimal for the business?

Excluding leases, we don't want to cross the 1.5% mark, where we are at 1.07% today. That's where we see ourselves.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the Raise Hand button at the bottom of your screen. Written questions can be submitted on the webcast by using the Ask a Question tab at the top right of your screen. Our next question comes from Ahmed Mostafa with INAM. Please unmute your line, turn your video on and ask your question.

Hello, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity. I have a question on Uzbekistan. Customers are nearly flat or declining, but ARPU keeps growing. How should we think about the growth strategy in this market?

Ahmed, thanks a lot for the question. You have noticed, you know, our strategy is around multi-play nature of our services, and that practically means as customers move from being a single-play customer, meaning just consuming our voice services, and transforming into consuming our digital services, the potential of ARPU quadruples and the churn goes down significantly. That's also what we are observing in Uzbekistan. Our customer base is maybe stable, but actually the type of services we provide is getting richer and richer. That allows, especially with the family package models, a much higher traction in our wallet share.

Mm-hmm. That's helpful. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Himanshu Porwal with BMO C. Please unmute your line, turn your video on and ask your question.

Hi. Thank you very much for taking my question, and congratulations for a strong set of results. Just to get some clarity with respect to your financial services business, as in like, how much of the Pakistan revenue comes from the financial services arm, and what are your plans on this very division itself, like the financial services, and do you plan to grow it outside of Pakistan on the similar verticals? Thank you.

Sure, Himanshu. Thanks a lot for the question. To give you an overall indication, for us, financial services business is about a $500 million business. A significant portion, almost 2/3 of it, comes from Pakistan. It's a combination of digital wallet services, insurance business, lending business, as well as, of course, remittances. We are serving almost 29 million customers actively. We have 60 million. Actually, we just crossed the 60 million bank account number. With that, we believe, you know, transacting more than 80% of RAAST transactions and transacting almost 15% of GDP, we are already well-established financial services player, basically.

Sorry. I mean,

Yeah

been more clear. I mean, I meant more with respect to the lending business.

Oh, You mean the percentage of lending business?

Yes.

Okay. We.

So-

Yeah, please. Go ahead

Himanshu, what we Look, we don't get into that level of disclosure, but what we've indicated is that Lending and interest income is slightly over half of the total revenues for the Pakistan business. That's what we've indicated in the past. Clearly, as the business grows in size, we are aware that people want to know more. That's something we are evaluating. I guess over the next six-nine months you'll see us providing more color around that. For now, I think we'll probably leave it at that. Yes, you know Kaan Terzioglu pointed out 200,000+ loans. Mobilink has a pretty big loan portfolio. If you look at the financial services business as a whole, lending and interest income is Yeah, it's north of half of that total revenue base that we have today.

That is precisely what was my concern, I mean, should we start seeing you guys as more of, like a NBFC sort of thing, or are you going towards that? Are there any ambition of moving in that direction or?

Himanshu, I think you should definitely perceive us as a financial services company which serves from wealth management to lending to remittances to digital assets, services in the country. You know, we are already, I think from a numbers side, account numbers side and number of, you know, loans side, we are number one in the country. You will see us getting our fair share from the financial services business as a consumer-oriented financial services company.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Jaslin Ng with New Street Research. Please unmute your line, turn your video on and ask your question.

Hi. Thanks for having me. Just one question. Mobile ARPU growth in general, and especially Ukraine, was really impressive. Can you give more color on that? Is it really all from bundling and multi-play customers?

Look, if you look to our telecom growth, which is I think around 8%, 9%, versus digital services growth, which is around 57%. Then there was another number which I disclosed, which was multi-play services growth, right? This is actually the telecom growth, but for the segment of customers who are consuming both telecom and digital services. We do not recognize the revenue as digital service. We recognize the revenue as telecom service because it actually improves the data consumption. That grows more than 17%. That is actually the sweet spot why our ARPUs are growing. Even if our total number of telecom customers is stable at 150 million year-over-year, our ability to generate more telecom revenues from those customers are increasing because the customers who also consume our entertainment services, they consume more data.

They even talk more on the phone, and they stay longer with us. Those three drivers allows us to create more ARPU from the same customer base.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Ali Zaidi with INAM. Please unmute your line, turn your video on and ask your question.

Hi, guys. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I just have one question. Does Apna Microfinance Bank holds a different kind of license than MMBL? Can it, like, unlock any regulatory capabilities for JazzCash and MMBL in the future?

Well, we are definitely taking a very important role within the digitalization of the financial services landscape in Pakistan. We truly believe that as we grow our footprint, including insurance businesses and Apna Bank, we will be basically operating as a digital bank, providing the services that our customers are in need of in the marketplace.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

We have no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Anand Ramachandran for closing remarks.

Thank you very much for your interest in VEON and for supporting us. As always, the investor relations team and all of us are available for any follow-up questions. We look forward to staying in touch. Till then, it's goodbye from us till the next quarter on this call. Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.