VEON VEON Ltd.

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VEON Ltd. Q3 F2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator
Conference Call Operator
Hello and welcome to EON's third quarter to 26 results presentation. For those of you who've 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 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.
Anand Ramachandran
Group Chief Corporate Development Officer
Thank you. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to EON's third quarter 2026 earnings call. I'm Anand Ramachandran, Group Chief Corporate Development Officer. Next to me is Kaan Terzioglu, a Group CEO. Next to him, Burak Ozer, a Group CFO. Kaan will start off, cover strategy and operations, Burak the financials, and then we'll take your questions. In response to your feedback, we have made three enhancements to our disclosures this quarter. First, we are providing like-on-like growth figures for revenue, EBITDA and profit, together with reconciliations. Second, event emergence for financial services, digital life and digital enterprise, the three pillars of our digital business. And third, we are providing standalone financial information for our digital operator and financial services businesses in Pakistan. The aim is simple, to show you more about how these businesses perform. Today's presentation includes forward-looking statements and non-IFRS measures. Reconciliations and risk factors are in our earnings release and SEC filings. With that, let me pass the call to Kaan.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Thank you Anand, and good morning everyone. We had another strong quarter. Let me start by explaining how we define our business at BEYOND today. Connectivity is the foundation of our business. Not the destination, but the foundation. It gives us scale, distribution, and trusted relationships with our customers. A super foundation enabling low-cost customer acquisition, know your customer abilities, and unbelievable distribution capabilities. On top of that foundation, we built our three digital growth engines, now reaching more than 220 million customers. Digital services deepen engagement, engagement increases loyalty, and loyal customers stay longer and spend more. This is the source of sustainable growth and cash flows, which we reinvest and continue more value for our shareholders. We believe we are in the very early stages of this opportunity. This quarter shows the model at work. Revenues grew 17.2% and EBITDA grew 10.1%. Digital revenues grew by 46% and now makes up 27% of revenue with a 36% margin. Excluding Kazakhstan, where EBITDA declined due to isolated issues, mainly due to taxation, impact EBITDA, our EBITDA would have grown 18%, and margins were sustained year-on-year. To be clear, we are comfortable with the year-on-year trends and expect the margins to improve from here. Growth is turning into cash. Operating cash flow is up 47% year-to-date and leverage is low at 1.05 times with a four-year average maturity across the board. Our strong cash generation allows us to increase returns to shareholders. Having completed $200 million of buybacks since August 24, we have doubled our annual commitment to at least $200 million a year. Year to date, we have already executed $200 million of buyback and canceled 1.5% of outstanding ADSs. We are halfway through our current program, which remains in execution. Our performance gives us the confidence to raise the midpoint of full year 26 revenue and EBITDA outlook. Beyond these results, we are also building the next components of the flywheel. In addition to what is on the slide, we today announced the closing of the OLX transaction, a leading classified marketplace platform acquisition in Kazakhstan. Further expanding our digital ecosystem. We also announced an agreement to take a controlling interest in Jungo TV and All Women's Sports Network. All Women's Sports Network and Jungo TV brings unique, cost-effective, sustainable content to more than 80 million entertainment customers in our markets. It also provides our platform's outreach across 65 countries. This is a bridge to audiences well beyond our footprint, particularly to more than 30 million strong diaspora from our markets having access to digital entertainment and augmented by our financial services, especially remittances. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that part of the consideration is settled in 1.2% of our existing Kyivstar shares at a reference price of $18, a 39% premium to yesterday's close, with a 12-month lock-up and orderly sell-down rules. We are focused on three objectives that we pursue consistently. Build AI-based digital banks, expand the digital ecosystem, and drive consolidation in our markets. Let us look at the numbers in more detail. Third quarter revenues was $1.31 billion, up 17.2%. EVTA was $577 million, up 10.1%. Telecom and infrastructure revenues grew 9.2%, while digital service revenues grew 46%. Digital service EBITDA up 54% to $128 million. Group net profit was $225 million. Like for like, revenues grew 15.8% and EBITDA 9.8% for the quarter. For the first nine months, like-for-like revenue grew 16.4% and EBITDA by 12.3%. Group EBITDA margin was 44.1%. Burak will take you through the details later. This page shows our revenue does not depend on any single market. Pakistan led the way with revenues up almost 29% and EBITDA up 26%. In Kazakhstan, EBITDA is still below last year as we absorbed the VAT impact and the last year's tax rebates. I am happy with the recovery quarter on quarter as we act to rebuild momentum. In Bangladesh, revenue held broadly flat in a soft economy with persistent energy outages as an added challenge. Yet, this was the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth. Importantly, our digital businesses continue to grow strongly in all five markets. We are applying a consistent playbook and adapted to local market conditions. Our partnership with Starlink Mobile delivers results. Starlink direct-to-device services now connects over 13 million subscribers across our markets, with services now live in Kazakhstan, Bangladesh, alongside Ukraine. Let me be clear on how we see satellite, not as a competitor, but as a perfect addendum to our terrestrial networks, running on our spectrum, over our customer relationships, compliant with sovereign license requirements. For a country at war like Ukraine, for the vast distances of Kazakhstan, for a market where energy outages interrupt the networks like Bangladesh, or floods and earthquakes that happen, the value of uninterrupted connectivity is priceless. And because it sits on our spectrum and our core network, satellites extends our reach. It does not replace it. This is where we are a pioneer in our industry. 6G will be all about weaving terrestrial and satellite networks into one seamless layer of connectivity. While everybody talks about it, we are executing on that vision today. Digital continues to scale and now reaches more than 221 million customers, including 64 million digital-only users. The quarter-on-quarter movements reflect seasonality in the timing of marquee events like FIFA World Cup or cricket tournaments. Underlying momentum remains healthy and strong. And that engagement is translating into profit. Third quarter digital revenue rose 46% to $355 million. EBITDA rose 55% to $128 million in 36% margin. For the first nine months, that is $1 million of revenue and $346 million of EBITDA. For the first time, we are disclosing EBTA margins for the three digital engines, and they are healthy across the board. Financial services at 32.7%, digital life at 39.6%, and digital enterprise at 37.5%. And with last 12 months capex, intensity of just 6.9%, digital services scales on efficient capital and generates cash. Digital is now a substantial profitable growth engine and we see significant runway for growth ahead. Multiplay is the flywheel in action. Multiplay customers have grown from around 35 million two years ago to almost 45 million today. That is over 50% of our smartphone user base. Compared to voice-only customers, they generate 4.2 times the average revenue per user and churn at half the rate. Over a lifetime, that is an 8.4 times value. As customers adopt digital services, they use more data and voice and spend more with us and stay longer. That is why Multiplay customers already generate significantly higher value. Financial services is one of the clearest example of our flywheel in action. We have brought our financial services assets together under Vyond Digital Financial Group. which already serves 60 million customers. One unified group strategy executed locally. Pakistan proves it can be done at scale. So let me tell you more about it. In Pakistan, we have built a complete financial ecosystem over $400 million of revenue and nearly $50 million of profit in nine months. It runs at scale, with more than 65 million registered accounts and 1 million active merchants. Over the last 12 months, the value of transactions on our platform was worth around 17% of Pakistan's gross domestic product. Given how large this business has become, we are adding more granular disclosures so you can better evaluate it against peers. Nano loans show the engine at work. They make up $166 million of our $486 million loan. But the real story is velocity over 230,000 loans a day, resulting in total disbursements of over $400 million in the quarter. These are four-week loans turning over and over again, helping customers meet everyday financial needs. Like a taxi driver covering his fuel in the morning. Like a small business owner purchasing ingredients, fulfill customer orders, and repay the loan from the proceeds. These are small transactions individually, but at scale, every cycle multiplies through the economy. It is critical that we grow with credit discipline. Measured to final outcome, reached 93.2% up 1.7 points. NPL ratio for term loans fell 2.3 points to 8.1%. And our loan to deposit ratio of 47% sits comfortably in the range you would expect of a best-in-class bank. JustSure formerly TPL Insurance extended our financial services ecosystem. We start where we can leverage our connectivity platform to remotely monitor the risk. Connected cars for motor insurance, connected devices for handset protection, and mini health and life packages for our subscribers. I hope these disclosures make the value drivers easier to access and show the discipline we bring as we build financial services across our footprint. Bangladesh is where we will execute this playbook next. We recently launched MuktoPay, our digital payment service, and Bangladeshi Central Bank has now approved our digital banking license. The opportunity is substantial. 180 million people, a large diaspora sending money home and a big portion of the population still outside the official banking system. We see significant opportunity to expand access and advance financial inclusion in Bangladesh. I will now pass the call to Burak to run you through the financials. Thank you Kaan.
Burak Ozer
Group Chief Financial Officer
For the third quarter, Revenue grew 17.2% to $1.3 billion, and EBITDA grew 10.1% to $577 million. EBITDA margin was 44.1% against 47% a year ago. As Kaan pointed out, this reflects the increasing contribution by digital services to group revenue, as well as the VAT increase in Kazakhstan. which was one of the drivers of lower margins in Kazakhstan. In the third quarter, telecom and infrastructure delivered a 47.2% margin. Digital EBITDA, growing at 54.5%, delivered a 36% margin. Third quarter profit was $225 million against a loss of $127 million a year ago. which carry non-cash charges for the Kyivstar listing and the currency translated adjustments from the sale of Kyrgyzstan operations. For the nine-month period, last year's figures included a $502 million gain on the sale of our Pakistan towers. On a like-for-like basis, nine months' profit grew 25.5% year-on-year. Turning to cash, Operating cash flow rose 39.4% to $450 million and 46.9% to $1.3 billion for the nine-month period. Pre-cash flow, which we previously called equity-free cash flow, was $201 million. Last year's $303 million included $230 million of asset disposal proceeds. This year, that figure is $61 million. Excluding these, pre-cash flow grew 91.8% year-on-year. Our underlying cash generation continues to strengthen and asset monetization supports this. We will keep executing on-board. For us, asset monetization is not one-off. It is the systematic delivery of our asset-wise strategy executed with discipline. Moving to the balance sheet. We ended September with $2.03 billion in cash, including $755 million at headquarters and $532 million of Pakistan banking deposits. Net debt excluding visas was $1.78 billion. Leverage improved 1.05 times. We repaid $210 million of syndicated debt in the court. Average debt maturity is now 4 years versus 2.7 a year ago and 4.9 years at headquarters versus 2.3 a year ago. Let me pass the call back to Kaan on capital allocation and all. Thank you, Burak.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Let me step back and show you how we think about capital allocation. It starts with cash generating strength of our businesses. Telecom and infrastructure gives us scale and predictable cash. Digital services adds growth at scale. Together, they are turning earnings into cash. As you can see, operating cash flow at $1.3 billion, up 47%. We are, of course, focused on converting operating cash into free cash flow. We invest where returns are visible and hold capex intensity inside our guided range. And we unlock value from our assets. When an asset is worth more to someone else, we monetize it and recycle the capital. We have three clear priorities for free cash. First, shareholder returns. We have doubled our buyback commitment to at least $200 million a year. Year to date, we have already executed $200 million and canceled 1.5% of outstanding ADSs. Our current program will repurchase and cancel 2.9 million ADSs, roughly 3.8% of issued shares. We have repurchased 1.5 million ADSs to date, roughly halfway through, and the program remains in execution. Every single share we buy back will be canceled. Second, a strong balance sheet. Our leverage remains conservative at 1.05 times, supported by a well-managed maturity profile of four years. And third, invest for growth. Investment that strengthens our core, scales digital, and deepens our relevance to customers. Capital discipline is the first filter we apply. We pursue opportunities to meet that bar and walk away from what does not. So message is simple. Growth creates cash. Cash is allocated with discipline to accelerate wealth. And we will deliver on all three. Returns to shareholders, balance sheet resilience, and growth. With nine months of the year behind us, our performance gives us the confidence to raise the lower end of both of our revenue and EBITDA guidance. We now expect full-year revenue growth of 16-18% and ABTA growth of 10-12%. CAPEX intensity excluding Ukraine is unchanged at 15-17% of revenues. This is a disciplined upgrade supported by performance year-to-date. Finally, I look forward to seeing you in New York at our Capital Markets Day in 10 days, where we will lay out the next chapter of EON's strategy and our plans for creating long-term value. Let me leave you one key message. Connectivity is the foundation and grows organically. Digital services accelerates our growth. The flywheel results in double digit growth and rising cash flows. Thank you. We are now happy to answer your questions. Thank you.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
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've 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 and rejoin the queue. We will pause for a moment to allow the questioneers to enter the queue. Our first question comes from the line of Bharat Nagaraj at Cantor Fitzgerald. Please unmute your audio, turn your video on and ask your question.
Bharat Nagaraj
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald
Hello, hi, thank you for the presentation and congrats on another good quarter. I have one question on the EBITDA margin that you said is set to expand from here. Did you mean at the group level and what are the drivers for that? And related to that, I just want to understand from a Kazakhstan point of view, is 40% the new kind of structural margin post the VAT reset or is there any path back towards the mid 40s or higher? Thank you.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Thank you very much, Bharat, for the question. Now, Kazakhstan had a very specific quarter where we were impacted by the revenue side VAT increase and last year's tax rebates coming in on Q3. So that is kind of an isolated case. And as I mentioned, if you would exclude that, Our EBITDA growth was also around 48% year-on-year, and I believe from this point on, naturally, there will be a dilution impact of the 36% margin digital business, but I still believe that we will be from 44% onwards improve the EBITDA margin despite that. And frankly speaking, the impact in Kazakhstan will also improve over the time as we normalize the impact of price increases as well as the tax rebate normalization.
Burak Ozer
Group Chief Financial Officer
And just to add on top of that, the Kazakhstan impact is already visible between Q2 and Q3. The margin has improved in Kazakhstan. Yeah, true. Thank you, Barat.
Bharat Nagaraj
Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald
Thank you.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jake Ng at New Street Research. Please unmute your audio, turn your video on, and ask your question.
Jake Ng
Analyst, New Street Research
Hi. Just two questions. Thanks for the additional disclosure on Starlink direct-to-sell customers this quarter. Are you seeing this direct-to-sell service support higher pricing or help attract new customers in your markets? And secondly, could you share how overall consumer output, so including both mobile and digital services, trended in Pakistan and also Kazakhstan in 3Q? I think you previously used to disclose this metric for each country.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Let me start with the second question you asked. I will check our disclosures and we will provide, if need be, also the country-level multiple ARPUs. But it is a very, very similar picture in all the countries that we operate in. We actually see the customers who also consume our digital services consume more data and generate about 4 to almost 4.5 times more ARPUs. and same impact on the side of the churn. So it is quite a standardized, actually multiple, as we say. With regard to the Starlink, you know, Naturally, the answer is when you are in a country in a landmine area, lack of coverage like Kazakhstan because it's too big, or you are in a country where networks may be on and off due to energy outages, having being connected is a priceless value. So you can imagine that we are currently enjoying a period where we are the only operator which does this. But I believe over the time people will see more offers of similar nature. But I do see that as a major differentiator of the customer acceptance excitement. I was in Dhaka actually two days ago and I have seen literally some customers trying to get outside of the coverage area. Just to see the satellite sign on their phones. So I think this is really an exciting offer that we brought to these markets. And as I mentioned, terrestrial and satellite network integration The main feature of 6G will be. And we are demonstrating that even today, there are opportunities to show value in this technology. And because it uses our spectrum, our core network, and because licenses that we have basically complies with national security rules, it is a perfect fit. We do not see as a competitor on the other side. It is a complementary service.
Anand Ramachandran
Group Chief Corporate Development Officer
Jake, mobile ARPUs are something we've disclosed at the country level. So for Pakistan, you will see they grew 7% year on year. And clearly, combined with the subscriber growth, they drove a 14% increase in telecom and infrastructure revenues for the Pakistan digital operator business. Kazakstan, they were down 10% year on year, and that's obviously driven by the VAT impact, as Kaan pointed out, and the fact that we are looking to improve tariffs, and that's taking us a little more time than we thought. Let's take it offline for any other metrics that you want to know. It's all available. I'm very happy to take it offline.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Thank you. Thank you, Anand. Thank you, Jake.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ali Zaidi at INAM. Please unmute your audio, turn your video on and ask your question.
Ali Zaidi
Analyst, Enam
Hi, guys. Thank you for the opportunity and congratulations on your latest results. I have a couple of questions. The first one is related to Pakistan. So the recovery rate on the nano loans for JAS Cash and MNPL is around 93%. and we have seen that Nanobook is scaling at a very fast pace. So how do you see this rate settling over the longer term and are you happy with it? And the second question is that with Maktubay now live in Bangladesh, how do you see the Bangladesh financial service opportunity as compared to Pakistan?
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Ali, thanks a lot for the questions. First of all, 93.2% and improving. We are very comfortable with this rate. There are two important elements of our financial services business. and it is our ability both to acquire merchants so there is a small business element to that and then there are transaction of course you know value that we drive and then the nano loans and all these three including the store value capabilities we have at MMBL bank in terms of taking deposits are extremely accurate and this is the model we are now exporting to Bangladesh Bangladesh is a slightly smaller population compared to Pakistan, but from an economic activity perspective, I consider Bangladesh actually at par, and the opportunity is definitely as big as Pakistan. and also we should not forget that there is another market that we are after and that's the diaspora and the remittances flowing into Pakistan and also Bangladesh. In both of those countries, 60 billion each is the amount of remittances flowing. Most of that money is flowing to our customers. We will also take our fair share. And as we deploy our digital bank in Bangladesh, we will have the same capabilities of also storing value on our bank accounts.
Anand Ramachandran
Group Chief Corporate Development Officer
Kaan, if I may add, given that we're disclosing these numbers for the first time, these recovery rates did not happen by accident, right? So these have been over the years. A build-up of proprietary data-driven credit models now utilizing AI analytics capabilities built on tons of customer transaction behavioral data. I would, in fact, encourage all of you, invite all of you to visit Pakistan and the team, and this is something which is to be seen to be believed. So, as Kaan pointed out, these are skill sets Thank you Ali. Thank you. Our next question comes from Ahmed Mustafa at Enam. Please unmute your audio, turn on your video and ask your question.
Ahmed Mustafa
Analyst, Enam
Hello everyone, thanks for the presentation. After questions, first, could you walk us through the commercial rationale for creating Veon's digital financial group, and how you expect it to improve growth and profitability? And second, on just cash, you have mentioned that around 46% of transaction value is currently chargeable, so how much could that dare to inflate that share? and what would be the main drivers?
Anand Ramachandran
Group Chief Corporate Development Officer
So, let me take all those questions. So, you know, the Beyond Digital Financial Group, as we scale our assets, Clearly Pakistan, we've proven that at scale. Bangladesh, we now have the license. It's something we want to do in the other markets as well. So there's a lot of, I guess, pretty specific skill sets to do with the financial business. We don't run the business like telcos. So kind of bringing it across into a separate group to leverage the common knowledge we have. Anand Ramachandran, Burak Ozer, Inanc Cakiroglu, Second question is a very interesting one. Yes. Look, the market is still at a very early stage of growth. We're probably still scratching the proverbial tip of the iceberg. 15% of GDP is where transactions are at. So there's a combination of looking to encourage customer adoption and therefore offering a bunch of things for free or at very nominal rates. And second, obviously, working with the government to encourage financial inclusion. So I'd like to see this as one potential indicator of both volumes because we want to drive financial inclusion in the market and these are things that we want to do. Obviously, over time as we grow the businesses, these are potential opportunities for us as well to kind of grow what we take out of it. But again, we'll be slow and deliberate over time because the primary Our next question comes from Vincent Fernando at Zero One Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Vincent Fernando
Analyst, Zero One Investment Research
Great. Congratulations, the quarter. So this is the first time we can see the Pakistan Financial Services as a full P&L. Saw that the GTV is up 79% and active merchants more than doubled. Now that you have the digital banking license and Mukto Pay live in Bangladesh, which parts of the Pakistan model do you expect to carry over in terms of, I guess, the first things that you would prioritize as you go to other markets such as Bangladesh? What should we look at to see the first proof of your proven Pakistan playbook now rolling out in Bangladesh? Thank you.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Sure. So, Vincent, first of all, we believe Pakistan model and Bangladesh model could be a perfect match in terms of replication. And Pakistan model, if you look how we made our network be relevant to the country, merchant acquisition, it's very critical that we acquire Thank you very much. Banking in Bangladesh as well. And that ability to then monetize the velocity that will be driven about from your shopping window, which will be the marketplace. So actually the one component that I would like to develop also see in Bangladesh is the marketplace or classifieds. And we can carry some of our capabilities, maybe Kazakhstan to Bangladesh from that regard. But our flying wheel is very simple. The Foundation Telecom acquires the customer, has the KYC component. The shopping window is the marketplace. And the bank basically from the shopping window takes the business opportunities and the money flows from a merchant bank account on our bank to a consumer bank account on our bank. Money stays with us, but we make the money from the velocity through non-loans and payments. And as long as we can build this flywheel, which we have successfully done in Pakistan, we will successfully do the same in Kazakhstan. Bangladesh is a huge opportunity for us.
Vincent Fernando
Analyst, Zero One Investment Research
Okay, thank you. I'll save my other questions for offline. Thank you. Thank you, Vincent.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Our next question comes from Himanshu Powell at Gramercy. Please unmute your audio and ask your question.
Himanshu Porwal
Analyst, Gramercy
Hi, good morning, good afternoon. Thank you very much for the presentation and congratulations on strong results. I have a question on financial services. I see it currently accounts for almost 13% of your total group revenue. What is your target going forward, especially considering the Pakistan financial services? Could you elaborate on the average loan size? What sort of provisioning coverage do you have on the book? And what is the headroom versus the minimum capital adequacy ratios? and if you expect any parent capital injection to fund future growth. Thank you. Sure.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
So, Himanshu, I would suggest that from a mid-term outlook perspective, this is best to be shared at the capital market state and days from today. So let's wait for that because I don't want to give any, you know, selective disclosures at this stage. But from a, you know, market perspective, I believe financial services Anand Ramachandran, Burak Ozer, I don't see that as a risk. I see that as an opportunity. And we will operate our telecom companies like a telecom company. We will operate our banks like a bank.
Burak Ozer
Group Chief Financial Officer
And on the capital-equity ratio, we will be looking not to go below 15%. Whether this will need capital injection? No, the current velocity of our business is enough to sustain that capital ratio. But at the same time, again, if we go into digital banking after getting the license in line with our growth projections, we might be injecting capital into that bank. But definitely that would be not more than what we see today.
Anand Ramachandran
Group Chief Corporate Development Officer
One of the reasons to start providing this level of detail is just to get people familiar with the amount of discipline we bring to the business. Provisions, ECL, look, We don't want to overload people with data, but we can assure you in the 20 years you have data for last year, it's all pretty stable and we will start providing more detail on this as we go along. So I'd rather say that we want to get people used to the kind of data we are providing. We'll take your feedback on what additional data we can provide. Our intention is to assure you of the discipline that we bring to this process. As Kaan pointed out, this is a significant opportunity for us, and this is something where we see a significant tailwind and significant scale for us to look to operate in. But at the same time, we want to do it with significant discipline, and that's why the disclosure. We can take investors along and assure you that we will do it in the right way with the right absolute capital discipline.
Burak Ozer
Group Chief Financial Officer
Another data point to add is today 89% of the loans that we give out at MMBL is collateralized.
Himanshu Porwal
Analyst, Gramercy
And what's the average ticket size to do? Is that something you can share?
Anand Ramachandran
Group Chief Corporate Development Officer
Yes, the average ticket size for the nano loans was $600. Avli Gibodik, and it was 5,700, sorry, average loan size. The average term loan size was 634,000 rupees. It's in the earnings release. Average nano loan size was 5,700 Pakistani rupees. You know, that's roughly around 20 US. So it's all available in the earnings disclosure. And yeah, this is the kind of information we want to get you more comfortable.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Term loan average size is around $3,000, right? Yes.
Himanshu Porwal
Analyst, Gramercy
Got it. Thank you very much.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Unknown
Analyst
It's very positive to see the growth in digital services and the margin expansion, particularly in fintech. We've obviously seen the IPOs of Airtel Money, seen the IPOs of Mint recently, healthy multiples, and it does look as if international groups are attracting higher multiples than single country. I was interested to see the consolidation of your fintech and I was just wondering whether those IPOs had shifted your thoughts about the timing and structure of a valuation crystallization event in fintech?
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Now, I have been also very closely monitoring the valuations of both GCash and Airtel Money. I think they are encouraging and it shows actually the potential of the business. Clearly, you know, we see, we tackle our markets, market by market, but on the other side, we are not blind that there are synergies, there are best practices, and there are capabilities when it comes to credit scoring and loyalty technologies. So as we build our businesses, we will create the right synergies and especially when it comes to international money transfers and remittances. By definition, this is a capability that we have to build at the center in a very strong way with AML So that's why we brought in a chief payments and digital assets officer, both addressing the capabilities in terms of remittances, including either fiat currency or stable coins. And that will be the first steps towards creating a multi-country financial services group. That's why we named it Beyond Digital Finance Group, and it will be our value generating unit in the future.
Unknown
Analyst
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Unknown
Analyst
Hi there everyone, many thanks for all the updates today and the additional disclosures as well. I wondered if you could ask about the Uzbekistan market, you announced the acquisition there, if you could talk about this entity, what the market share is at the moment, what kind of opportunities you see in Uzbekistan, perhaps the EBITDA contribution that we could include going forward and how this will be funded, that would be great.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Thanks a lot for allowing me to talk about Uzbekistan a little bit. Uzbekistan is a remarkable transformation story. In the last nine years, the new president of Uzbekistan, Şevkat Mirzozoev, has turned into a closed economy. Almost at the level of North Korea into a globally connected liberal economic platform. And in the same time, this double-landlocked country turned itself into a well-connected country to the digital economy. And we see this transition as a 40 million population country growing 1 million a year. Andrey Pyatakhin, Muhterem Kaan Terzioglu The acquisition we have done, Perfectum, is a very good example of that. Perfectum is the only standalone 5G operator in the region, actually, and maybe one of the handful ones around the world. And it gives us a unique spectrum of fleet. already deployed standalone 5G network and ability to deploy very fast fixed wireless access solutions for a fiber-poor environment. So that's why I consider Uzbekistan as one of our star growth markets of the future.
Burak Ozer
Group Chief Financial Officer
From a funding perspective, half of the acquisition will be funded from the HQ cash, half will be debt that will be funded through the operations.
Unknown
Analyst
Your final question of today comes from the line of Adrian Cundey at Emerging and Frontier Capital LLP.
Anand Ramachandran
Group Chief Corporate Development Officer
Please unmute your audio and go ahead.
Adrian Cundey
Analyst, Emerging and Frontier Capital LLP
Hi, I'm Khan Burak Anand. Greetings from another frontier market of Vietnam. Most of my questions have been answered by yourself by earlier participants, particularly as relating to Perfectum and to the Bangladesh digital bank and wallet. But maybe I could ask a little bit, something a little bit more granular on Perfectum. From what I can tell, it's very much a spectrum-driven acquisition and network assets. It puts you on par or better with both Uztel or Mobius and the other operator in the market from that capacity. So maybe could you give us some idea on what your sort of 5G capex in Uzbekistan might look like in the coming year or two? In terms of also your consolidated sales in that market, given its low customer base. And just from an accounting perspective, you've bought an asset with debt and equity. Is there any risk that you might have to look at some kind of impairment on having paid any goodwill that might result in impairment? Or does the spectrum that you've acquired in a network Thank you very much.
Kaan Terzioglu
Group Chief Executive Officer
Let me start with Uzbekistan. When we looked into the opportunity in Perfectum, clearly Spectrum was one of the attractive things, but the other thing is the synergies that we will be able to Thank you very much. It is really important that countries like Uzbekistan adapt a network sharing strategy in order to maximize the network performance, accelerate it, We will be actively looking for further consolidation opportunities or network companies, infrastructure company formations. But currently even if nothing more happens, we are very happy with the Perfectum asset in terms of the spectrum it provides us and the ability to create synergies from our joint networks coming together. With regard to Bangladesh and how much capital we will need, the secret sauce of digital banking and specifically AI-driven digital banking is not only about the Thank you very much. Thank you very much. But that's why when we enter into markets, we always go through digital banking licenses. I do not think standalone digital wallet businesses is credible in terms of driving nano-lending type of opportunities.
Burak Ozer
Group Chief Financial Officer
On the capital, it's not a triple-digit million. I mean, there's definitely a business case that we sent in to the Bangladesh Central Bank to get this digital license. We
Anand Ramachandran
Group Chief Corporate Development Officer
So, Bangladesh, Burak generates $200 million give or take EBITDA per annum. So, it's probably going to be, you know, like Burak said, it's much lower than a three-digit number and there's probably ability to stagger it over time. So, relative to the EBITDA, it's not going to be a number that moves the needle significantly either way. So that's probably the best way to leave the answer for now.
Burak Ozer
Group Chief Financial Officer
And on the accounting question, we are currently going through the purchase price allocation, but eventually we are acquiring a business, not asset. That's how we will account for it. And any impairment, if any, will be determined after a year, according to the business plans we set for the entity and the synergies that we will get in the operations.
Adrian Cundey
Analyst, Emerging and Frontier Capital LLP
NetNets, I think it's a positive move across the board, and I think in Bangladesh, going hand-in-hand with a license puts you in a better place than a, say, Bcash standalone, because Bcash has to answer to its bank, and you're going hand-in-hand with a bank and a wallet. So, all good. And congratulations on what was a pretty good number of results. Thank you very much, Andrey. Thank you for your confidence. I'm flying from Vietnam to New York on the 15th, so I might turn up tired, but I'm going to be there. Thank you so much.
Vincent Fernando
Analyst, Zero One Investment Research
Looking forward to seeing you there in person.
Adrian Cundey
Analyst, Emerging and Frontier Capital LLP
Excellent, excellent.
Vincent Fernando
Analyst, Zero One Investment Research
Bye-bye.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Thank you. We have one additional question from Himanshu Pawal at Gramercy. Please unmute your audio and ask your question.
Himanshu Porwal
Analyst, Gramercy
Hi. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up a bit about your refinancing. I mean, any plans to refinance or pre-fund your headquarter maturities?
Burak Ozer
Group Chief Financial Officer
We just closed a syndicated loan in the headquarters. We are looking into it. Definitely our target is to keep the maturity level above four years, which is the current level today. So there is no need. What I always said is we have this 1.5 cap as a ratio in terms of our The other way to look at this question, as we have discussed before,
Anand Ramachandran
Group Chief Corporate Development Officer
We would want to keep our credit investors well updated with what we do. You've been very loyal to us. We are a company that does many things, so if ever there is a need to raise capital, we can move very quickly. And therefore, we want to keep all our stakeholders fully updated on what we are doing. And therefore, keep your comfort levels with us at an optimal level. It just increases our flexibility on the financing front.
Operator
Conference Call Operator
Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Anand Ramachandran for closing remarks.
Anand Ramachandran
Group Chief Corporate Development Officer
Thank you very much, as always, for taking the time to attend our call. As Kaan pointed out, we look forward to seeing all of you, if not a whole lot of you, in New York in 10 days' time, when Kaan will be talking about the next chapter at BEYOND, and we'll be talking about a bunch of the businesses that we spoke about today in more detail. As always, any follow-up questions, we are here. Thank you again, and goodbye till the next time.