Turk Telekom announced its 2021 year-end financial and operational results. Closing 2021 with a 21.2% revenue increase, Turk Telekom’s annual consolidated revenue reached ₺34.3 billion and its net profit reached ₺5.8 billion. Announcing its investment expenditures for 2021 as ₺8.8 billion, Turk Telekom’s subscriber number exceeded 51.8 million with 1.5 million net subscriber gains. Turk Telekom CEO Umit Onal said, “We left behind a successful year on the way we set out to make everyone feel valuable.”
Turk Telekom, Turkey’s leading information and communication technologies company, announced its financial and operational results for 2021. The company, which generated a revenue of ₺34.3 billion in 2021, continued its revenue growth with an annual increase of 21.2%. Turk Telekom, whose profit before interest, depreciation and tax (EBITDA) reached ₺16.4 billion, announced its EBITDA margin as 47.9%. The investment expenditures of the company, which pioneered the digital transformation of Turkey, rose to ₺8.8 billion. Turk Telekom’s 2022 investment forecast is determined as ₺12.5 billion.
OUR TARGET IS TO CREATE UNICORNS
Making an evaluation of the year, Turk Telekom CEO Umit Onal said: “The year 2021 offered us opportunities to innovate, improve ourselves and work with determination. As Turkey’s leading telecom company, we focused on providing the best service to our customers, while observing our financial and operational performance and our responsibility to our stakeholders, on the way we set out to ‘make everyone feel valued’. In 2021, we signed many international cooperations. We offer our services and products to the world market in cooperation with Juniper Networks and Net Insight, one of the world’s leading technology companies. In addition, we aim to carry the power of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in our country to the global arena through our cooperation with Plug and Play, one of the world’s largest entrepreneurship and innovation platforms. In addition, we doubled our portfolio with the investment we made in 4 new artificial intelligence initiatives with TT Ventures in 2021. Our goal is to create ‘unicorns’ from our country who have the potential to carry their success to the global arena. In 2022, we will continue to protect the financial strength of our company, create value, expand our ecosystem and discover new initiatives.”
“CONSUMER BEHAVIORS CHANGED”
Stating that the changing consumer behavior during the pandemic became permanent, Onal continued as follows:
“With increasing digitization, adaptable new business models and changing socialization tools, the demand for speed and data is now permanent. Data consumption in fixed broadband increased by more than 48% in 2021. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have upgraded our millions of customers to unlimited and higher speed packages. A similar trend continued on the mobile side with the acceleration in the transition to postpaid and Premium packages (or upgrades). We closed 2021 with pride in our agility, high efficiency, customer-focused strategies and solid performance. In 2022, we will continue on our way with great motivation to make each of our subscribers and stakeholders feel valuable.”
“WIDE FIBER NETWORK WILL LEAD THE TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION”
Onal continued in his statement, “Fiber network is the milestone of new and future technologies. As the industry leader, we continued to expand the fiber network in 81 provinces of Turkey to meet the connection demand across the country. Our widespread fiber network will be an effective advantage in the transition to 5G. In this context, we increased our fiber network to 366,000 km by the end of the year. Our fiber network, which has exceeded 26.8 million households as of 2020, covers more than 30.2 million households as of 2021.”
“WE ARE ONE OF THE FEW TELECOM OPERATORS IN THE WORLD THAT REDUCE THE ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION”
Underlining that they carry out projects for the efficient use of energy resources and systematically reducing carbon emissions, Onal said, “Despite the significant increases in the total number of customers and bandwidth, we are one of the few telecom operators in the world that has reduced electricity consumption in recent years. Our total energy consumption has decreased by 3% in the last 5 years. We have renewed our more than 3,000 base stations with efficient equipment that consumes less energy. We are proud to share that we have prevented an average of 15,000 tons of carbon emissions by saving 31 million kWh of energy annually in five years.”
“WE ARE IN THE HEART OF CULTURE AND ART”
Making a statement regarding the agreement signed between the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Turk Telekom, Onal said, “Just like communication, art has a role that unites and brings people closer. Based on this unifying effect, we aim to transfer our technology and digital transformation experience to the field of culture and arts. In this direction, while being the main supporter of AKM, we gave our name to the ‘heart’ of this valuable structure and to the grand opera house as ‘Turk Telekom Opera Hall’ for 7 years.”
“A RESULT EXCEEDING OUR FORESEEMENTS FOR 2021”
Onal continued his words as follows:
“Our company finished the year with outstanding operational and financial results. Consolidated revenues grew by 28.9% year-on-year in the 4th quarter, the highest increase since the IPO. Operational revenue grew 21.2% in the last quarter to reach its highest annual growth of 19.5%, beating our revised 18% forecast for the full year. For 2022, we foresee revenue growth of approximately 23 to 25%, EBITDA of approximately ₺17.5 billion to ₺18.3 billion, and investment expenditure of approximately ₺12.5 billion.”
TOTAL NUMBER OF SUBSCRIBERS REACHED 51.8 MILLION
Turk Telekom gained 1.5 million net subscribers in 2021, and the total number of subscribers reached 51.8 million. Fixed broadband internet subscribers rose to a total of 14.3 million. The total number of fiber subscribers, which makes up 67% of the fixed internet base, increased by 54.3% in 2021 and reached 9.6 million. Fixed broadband ARPU growth reached 14.2% year-on-year in 2021, supported by pricing, new subscriber acquisitions and upgrades. While the number of mobile subscribers reached 24 million with a net increase of 844 thousand in the postpaid and prepaid segments, mobile ARPU grew by 13.8% annually.
Source: Sabah / Translated by Irem Yildiz