VEON Ltd. (NASDAQ:VEON) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 20, 2023
Faisal Ghori: Hi, good morning, and afternoon, and thank you for everyone joining us today for VEON’s Third Quarter Presentation for the Period Ending September 30, 2023. I’m Faisal Ghori, Head of Investor Relations. I’m pleased to be joined in the room today by Kaan Terzioğlu, our CEO; along with Joop Brakenhoff, our CFO. Today’s presentation will begin with the key highlights and business updates from Kaan, following discussion of detailed financial results by Joop. We’ll then hand it back to Kaan to discuss our outlook and priorities for 2023. We’ll then open up the line for Q&A. Before getting started, I would like to remind you that we may make forward-looking statements during today’s presentation, which involve certain risks and uncertainties.
These statements relate in partly to the company’s anticipated performance and guidance for 2023, future market developments and trends, operational and network development and network investments and the company’s ability to realize its targets and commercial and strategic initiatives, including current and future transactions. Certain factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, including the risks detailed in the company’s annual report on Form 20-F and other recent public filings made by the company with the SEC. The earnings release and the earnings presentation, each of which include reconciliation of non-IFRS measures presented today can be downloaded from our website. With that, let me hand it over to Kaan.
Kaan Terzioğlu: Faisal, thank you very much. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone. Thank you very much for joining us for our presentation of VEON’s third quarter results for 2023. Before we jump into it, please allow me to take a few minutes and zoom out and talk a little bit about where we are today, and how we got there. I have been in the industry for nearly 30 years. And in that time period, as you may imagine, I have seen quite a bit. VEON is beyond all these and it has a very special place in my heart. VEON is resilient. VEON is strong, VEON is tough. And let me say it again, resilient, strong and tough. Nearly two years ago, we were thrown into an unprecedented situation. Two of our largest markets, 70% of business went to war with each other.
The company was thrown its largest set of challenges ever. Not only did we have to deal with the day-to-day challenges to continue providing essential vital services to our customers, we had extraordinary challenges dealing with regulators, governments, sanctions, and financial market actors. I want to thank all of our employees, our partners, and our shareholders for supporting us under very trying circumstances. We could not have done it without you. I also want to talk a bit about culture. I’m a believer in the adage, culture eats strategy for breakfast. We had a good culture at VEON prior to the challenges we have faced, but now having been thrown into the fire, we have emerged tested by war, battle ready, excited and optimistic about our future, about what we can do for our customers, our partners, and our shareholders.
We now have an exceptional culture at VEON, which is reflected across all of our portfolio. Let me give you a few examples. In markets like Pakistan and Bangladesh, our companies are the highest ranked national employers. Employees that had previously departed our companies are rejoining our groups, helping us to deal with the challenges and showing their loyalties. Why I am confident that we can continue delivering growth? Because we have exceptional people and the performance-driven culture. During the last 24 months, we have not only survived, but we have tried. We have continued to deliver services to our customers and delighted them. We will continue to generate significant shareholder value. We are working tirelessly to deliver profitable, sustainable growth.
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