Kaan Terzioglu, CEO of Turkcell (NYSE:TKC) (BIST:TCELL) and CFO Osman Yilmaz spoke at the Citi 2019 Global TMT West Conference on January 8, 2019 in Las Vegas. Among leading companies in the TMT space including Netflix, NTT Docomo, HP Inc., Samsung, AT&T and Verizon that participated in the conference, Turkcell was the only company invited from Turkey and the region.
In his remarks, Terzioglu stated that: “Developing applications that allowed us to sell processed data rather than raw data, we enriched our value proposition to our customers. We have transformed Turkcell into a Digital Operator. That is our vision. Our strategy is to serve our customers as much as we can in each of 1440 minutes of a day through our digital services. This vision and strategy brought us where we are today, 59% topline and 97% EBITDA growth in the third quarter of 2018 in a two year cumulative basis. We also take our digital know-how and make it available to other telecom operators around the world through our Lifecell Ventures subsidiary.”
Kaan Terzioglu also expressed his views on 5G process and stated that Turkcell has a 5G ready network, and the company and Turkey will be the early adapters of 5G. Terzioglu also addressed the macro-economic environment, referred to Turkcell’s successful business hedging strategy based on FX hedging tools, strong liquidity and inflationary pricing which enabled the company to exhibit strong resilience to volatility in financial markets during the summer 2018.