Local currency growth accelerated to above 60% in Q2 (from 40% in Q1), driven by a full quarter impact from the 50% price increase approval, and the improving macro. EBITDA performance in Q2 was very strong for both players and especially for MTN.
Service revenue improved to almost flat (-0.3% YoY from -1.1%), supported by Fibre growth and Postpaid growth offsetting Prepaid weakness. Operationally, Maxis delivered stronger EBITDA growth on cost efficiencies while CelcomDigi was weighed by higher bad debt provisions. Both reiterated their LSD service revenue guidance, implying a stronger second half.
We hosted a Zoom call with Liberty Latin America CFO, Chris Noyes, and Head of IR, Soomit Datta on Monday this week. The call was split 50/50 between the group ex-Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rico. Tone on the business ex-Puerto Rico was positive. Regarding Puerto Rico, the tone was cautiously optimistic.
Thai telcos posted LSD service revenue growth, while EBITDA slowed to MSD. TRUE underperformed due to May’s power outage but still guided for 2H recovery on spectrum rental savings despite the guidance downgrade. While risks from soft tourism may persist, sector discipline and its value-based pricing approach remains intact.
Service revenue growth stayed modest with China Telecom improving while peers slowed. EBITDA margins are expanding which drove mid-single digit earnings growth. YTD capex is down 16% YoY ahead of the 9% fall guided for full year. China Telecom will be added to the Hang Seng Index from next week. For investors unable to access this space, we recommend to monitor the developments in China as we see it as a leading indicator for EM telcos more broadly.
August was a rather eventful month for two of top picks as LILAC announced the Puerto Rican asset separation and Kyivstar, the Ukraine arm of VEON, successfully listed on the NASDAQ (see our initiation HERE). All of our top picks performed well again. This note also includes key news & other thoughts, to try to help investors generate alpha within the EM Telco space. We make our first change to the list, swapping TIM Brasil for Telefonica Brasil.
Axiata saw an all-around improvement as constant currency EBITDA inflected to growth and underlying EBIT accelerated. YTD EBIT performance (+8.4%) is tracking well against its high-single digit guidance. Leverage is also falling closer to its 2.5x target, aided by the cash proceeds received from the XLSmart merger.
We initiate on Kyivstar post its IPO via SPAC. In common with other VEON opcos, we believe Kyivstar is executing well on the transition to a digital-first business model. Given the situation in Ukraine there are many uncertainties, but the stock seems undervalued, and we initiate with a Buy and a price target of US$ 16.
SKT underperformed in Q2 due to April’s cyberattack. As SKT’s Customer Appreciation Package is expected to cost KRW500bn (US$360m) coupled with the associated churn, SKT is expected to take a heavier hit in the second half. The government’s AI campaign should be supportive for telcos’ Enterprise operations, and we expect to see stronger Enterprise revenues in H2 too. KT remains one of our Top Picks in GEM Telcos for its exposure to Enterprise and focus on cost and capex discipline.
In this note we assess the likely cash flow at the parent of Liberty now that the decision to spin off Puerto Rico has been taken. We show that EFCF after minorities in 2026 at the parent is likely around $280m, driving a close to 20% EFCF yield.
Revenue trends were steady as the softer mobile growth was offset by improvement in non-mobile. Softbank remained the outperformer, but this has already been baked in as expectations for Group revenue are sitting ahead of guidance by 3%.
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