00:00It sounds like it was quite a positive, constructive quarter. Just talk us through some of the dynamics and where the growth momentum is coming from.
00:09Thank you, Jamana. Look, it's not just been a quarter. I think it's four years in a row. Second year in a row. Now we have record years for the history of the group.
00:19And the first nine months of this year are no exception to this. We've managed to grow our top line by a full 3 percent, expand our EBITDA margin at 44 percent and increase our bottom line by 6 percent.
00:35And just a caveat. This year we're taking a 15 percent provision for the pelleter tax, which we didn't have last year. So if you adjusted it for that, our net income would have grown actually 12 percent year on year.
00:48I think that's a testament to our focus, our discipline and our portfolio mix between mature cash generating markets in the GTC and very high growth markets such as Iraq, Algeria and Tunisia, which have double digit growth.
01:04And another testament is the confidence of the board. As you mentioned, we've been increasing our dividend by nearly 160 percent over the last four years.
01:14We've been at the top of our payout ratio and the board has has changed the payout ratio now going to 50 to 70 percent of normalized profits.
01:26So it shows their confidence in our momentum and trajectory.
01:29I did want to ask you about the increase in the dividend payout, because also I'm assuming that you are going to have big R&D spends, big capex spends coming up in the next few years.
01:42So why did it make sense now to increase the percentage of your dividend payout?
01:48Look, we're one of the best free cash flow generating telco around the world. I think we're in the top quartile.
01:55We've been able to organically deliver our balance sheet from two times net debt to EBITDA. Right now we're at 0.6 time net debt to EBITDA.
02:04I think we have one of the strongest balance sheets in the industry. We've been very, very disciplined on the telco sides in terms of capex to sales ratio.
02:13We're always sub 16 percent. And we are investing a lot. We've committed the billion dollars in data center expansion, half a billion dollars in international connectivity with C cable.
02:26Despite that, we're still delivering. And I think, you know, one of our commitment is shareholder returns and shareholder value creation.
02:34And we've been at the top of our payout ratio for the last three years, despite all these investments and that growth. So it's only logical that we increase our range.
02:47Yeah. Talk to me about the data center ambitions and the build out there, obviously hugely topical for the market. Ultimately, how much do you see this contributing to the bottom line of the business?
03:00Because right now, of course, you're still very much in investment phase. Yeah. Today, we have a relatively small operation in terms of data centers when you look at the huge announcement in the U.S.,
03:12et cetera. But we are a market leader within our footprint was around 66 percent of installed capacity. Just this year, we've managed to increase just by expanding existing facilities,
03:25our installed capacity in Qatar by around 25 percent. We have a committed target of growing our full installed capacity to above 120 megawatts in the next three to four years.
03:38There are long term projects, as you know. There's around 18 to 24 months build out, depending on the projects. But the stated goal as a digital infrastructure company
03:49is by 2030 to have at least 25 percent of our EBITDA coming from the infrastructure stack. This is not just data centers is in the data centers, towers and on the sea cables and connectivity because people focus a lot on the data centers.
04:07They tend to forget that they need to be connected between each other. And 90 percent of the data between Europe and Asia flows through this region.
04:17And we have an exceptional footprint to leverage that growth.
04:21Yeah. Interesting. I'm going to pick you up on that. But let me just ask you one question. Do you have access to all the chips that you need that are necessary for the build out of these data centers?
04:30We were the first telco in the region to be an NCP. We announced that close over a year ago. And NCP is an NVIDIA cloud partner. So we have priority access to the chips.
04:43We've actually deployed chips today in Qatar. We're deploying them in Kuwait, in Oman and in Tunisia. This doesn't just focus on Qatar. It focuses on all our footprint.
04:54Indonesia. Our subsidiary in Indonesia is actually leading. I think they have they were the first telco in Asia to deploy the GB 200 ships nearly five months ago.
05:09So we are investing and deploying AI for our customer at the fastest speed we can. Yeah. And just quickly because you mentioned this.
05:21Talk to me about the importance of the undersea connectivity and what you're doing in that space. So as I mentioned 90 percent of the wealth of Europe to Asia's connectivity flows through the region.
05:35There hasn't been many significant investment in undersea connectivity through the region in the past five six years. You know all the problem of saturation and security.
05:48You have at the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz. Given our footprint operating in Oman and Iraq. We're laying fig which is the first cable which will connect Oman to Iraq flow through Iraq directly into Turkey and connecting to the Mediterranean.
06:05This will be the first cable connecting Asia to Europe which circumvents the Suez Canal and the Hormuz Strait. The demand we have on that is extremely significant because of its speed resilience but also security benefits.
06:25Since now and many things we have well known for millions of markets that we can have
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