Airtel Africa (LSE:AAF) Q1 2027 Earnings Call

0:01 Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Airtel Africa Q1 twenty twenty seven Results. All participants will be in listen only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions later during the call.

0:24 Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Sunil Tildare. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you very much, and a very good afternoon, good morning to everyone, and welcome, welcome to the call. Thank you all for joining, us on the call today. I'm joined on the line by Kamal Dua, our CFO, and Alistair Jones, our Head of Investor Relations. We will shortly be answering your questions. But first, I would like to provide you with a brief overview of the quarter's performance. I'm very pleased to report another strong quarterly performance, which reflects the continued underlying demand across our business and the sustained focus in execution enabling us to capture the opportunity.

1:12 Into this performance has been our focus on providing a best in class customer experience and the results reflects the benefits of our long term investment strategy, which continues to deliver value to all our stakeholders. We delivered strong growth across voice, data, and mobile money, supported by an acceleration in the customer base growth across all segments as adoption of digital and financial services continues to gather momentum. At the same time, we have accelerated investment in our network to strengthen coverage and capacity, ensuring we remain well positioned to capture the significant growth opportunities across all of our markets. Group revenues reached $1,850,000,000, growing by over 21% in constant currency despite no no longer benefiting from the Nigerian tariff adjustments, which underscores the breadth of growth opportunities across our markets.

2:12 With the most stable macroeconomic environment supporting an appreciation in most of our currencies, this translated into reported currency growth of 31%. This level of growth is not specific to just one segment. This is a broad based trend reflected in the strong performance of both the mobile services and mobile money segments. The mobile services segment recorded constant currency revenue growth of 19.1% as our customer base increased by 11.6%, an acceleration from the prior quarter. The ability to grow our customer base by this amount showcases the sustained demand and low levels of SIM penetration across our markets. Key to our strategy is driving increased digital adoption, and one metric we constantly track is smart is smartphone penetration.

3:04 We've seen smartphones on our network increase by over 24% with penetration increasing by over 5% to 51%. This increased adoption of these smart devices continues to translate into strong data traffic growth across our network, driving data ARPUs up by 10.3% in constant currencies and data revenue increasing by 27.2% in the period. The mobile money business remains a key pillar of group's existing and future growth potential. The Chorus performance was another example of the scale of the opportunity before us and of our team's ability to continue capturing this opportunity through strong execution, ongoing innovation, and a relentless focus on the customer experience.

3:53 In reported currency, annualized TPV exceeded $245,000,000,000, increasing over 51% in reported currency. As we continue to expand the ecosystem to drive more use cases, increased customer engagement, and expansion of our digital offerings. Mobile Money revenues grew by 25.8% in constant currency despite the ongoing impact arising from the intra group agreement check changes. On a regional basis, the growth the growth rates also read well. In Nigeria, revenues increased by 29.8% in constant currency and over 50% in reported currency. This quarter, the growth rates do not incorporate any benefit arising from the tariff adjustments, reinforcing our confidence in the long term growth potential of the Nigerian business.

4:41 East Africa revenues increased by 17.8% with robust trends across all segments, and Francophone Africa growth of 18% continues to reflect the step up in investment over the last few years and the strategic focus which has helped sustain this high level of growth. While our strong revenue growth demonstrates the demand for our services, it is equally equally important to highlight how this growth is translating into profitability. Let me now turn our turn to our EBITDA performance and the factors impacting it during the quarter. In the quarter, we've maintained EBITDA margins of over 50% with EBITDA of $928,000,000, growing 24.4% in constant currency and 36.66, in reported currency.

5:30 EBITDA margins increased by over 200 basis points over the prior year, which again reflects the strong revenue growth and the sustained focus on our cost optimization initiatives, which is translating to real savings across the group while not compromising on our ability to capture the revenue opportunity. Our quarter one EBITDA margin of 51.1% was marginally below the 50.3% margin reported in quarter four of last financial year, but clearly showcases our ability to offset a large portion of the rising fuel costs through a continued focus on cost initiatives. As we noted at the time of full year results, the developments in The Middle East have resulted in a steep increase in fuel costs, which which has impacted the margins during the quarter.

6:19 However, we will expect to see a further increase in margin pressure as the higher energy costs are captured into many of our tower contracts in Corridor 2. While there may be some pressure on margins in the near term, we retain our relentless focus on further cost efficiencies, supported by continued revenue growth that should help moderate this effect. Despite a strong balance sheet and very modest leverage of 0.5x, we have continued to actively optimize our debt portfolio, Coupled with a more favorable interest rate environment and an improved currency mix of borrowings, our effective interest rate declined by two eighty two basis points to 10.1 at the end of the quarter, lowering our overall cost of debt and further strengthening our financial position.

7:10 Excluding exceptional items, our earning per share came in at 5.4¢, up 57% over the year, which reflects the success I've been discussing. With basic EPS of 4.4¢ in the period, a growth of 27.3%. One of the most important aspects of this set of results is our CapEx spends. We have reported CapEx of $389,000,000 in quarter one, a substantial increase from the $121,000,000 in the previous year and reflects our increased CapEx guidance, which we set out at the beginning of the year. This accelerated CapEx spend is a very clear part of our strategy where we continue to see a substantial opportunity for growth, and it is right that we accelerate spend in order to capture this capture this growth.

8:00 We have, therefore, purposely brought forward investments into quarter one as we proactively invest ahead of demand. This CapEx is actively focused on the quality of network experience for customers with coverage and capacity remaining key components of the spend. Furthermore, new and emerging opportunities in enterprise, HDB, and data centers continues to be a focus as well. We remain compelled by the opportunity to continue investing across our markets as we continue to see benefits accruing to our business. Importantly, despite the significantly higher CapEx spends over the year, we have maintained a similar level of operating free cash flow in the quarter compared to the previous period, reflecting the strong trends in both operating and financial trends.

8:49 I know many of you are interested in our IP of the Airtel money business. And so before handing over to the q and a, let me give you a brief overview of where we are with the IPO. The first thing to say is we are progressing very well with our preparations, and our intention remains to undertake the IPO during 2026 subject to market conditions. Following an extensive review of the major listing venues, we can confirm that London is our preferred listing location.

9:20 As many of you know, London provides access to a very broad international investor base with a strong, experience of investing in emerging market assets, but also a strong understanding of the fintech and payment sector providing a suitable platform for Airtel money to be valued appropriately. Over the next few months, we will be updating the market at the appropriate time of the expected timeline and structure of the IPO in accordance with the regulatory and disclosure obligations. Before I hand hand it over the q and a, just to summarize a few key points. Firstly, these were strong results with constant currency revenue and EBITDA growing by over 2124% respectively, translating into thirty one percent and thirty six point six percent reported currency revenue and EBITDA growth.

10:11 The structural demand for digital connectivity and financial inclusion remains very compelling. The foundation is expected to continue supporting the financial and operating momentum in the near to midterm. Airtel Money continues to scale with strong results reflecting the truly unique business opportunity, and we look forward to providing more detail on the upcoming IPO of Airtel Money later this year. And finally, we have accelerated our investment to capture the significant growth opportunity that is available to us, and we believe this will put us in a much stronger position to showcase our ability to capture the structural growth potential.

10:51 We're excited by the future, and we see a unique opportunity to sustain strong levels of growth going forward through the continued and consistent deployment of our strategy. We look forward to reporting on our successes in the future and continuing to generate value for all our stakeholders. And with that, I would now like to open the line of line for questions for which I'm joined by by Kamal. Operator, I now hand over to you to facilitate the q and a session, please. Thank you, sir.

11:49 The first question we have is from Rohit Modi of Citi. Hi, thank you for taking my questions and congratulations on strong set of results. I have a couple please. Firstly, Nigeria growth. Now that you are, already lapped completely the price increases from last year and kind of a 3.9% to 30% growth that you have reported. Is this the kind of run rate that you're expecting for rest of the quarter, which is like pretty much similar to what you had before the price increase? So this kind of trajectory that you see for the rest of the year. And then I believe there's also there might be some impact coming from the ban on Airtel advances. If you can just give a color on that, how how much that impact was on the top line? And second question is, basically the impact from diesel costs. You flagged it last quarter given Nigeria diesel prices doubled in few months,

12:45 which remains oil prices remain still high. How much impact have you seen from diesel in this quarter? And what are you what kind of margin dilution that we can expect of the if the diesel remains at the same level right now for for next next few next few quarters? And lastly, sorry, coming back again from last last quarter's question on capital allocation policy. I understand your leverage is like 0.5 now, and currently your dividend policy is quite good growth. But then are you looking at any other investment opportunities beyond the CapEx envelope, maybe in other markets or the other segments? If you can give any color around that would be great. Thank you. Thanks, Rohit. Thank you for for your questions and your comments.

13:33 First of all, let me talk about the Nigeria growth. You know, Nigeria is is a is is the largest market on in our portfolio and offers significant opportunities for growth. We see both opportunities. There is still a very large penetration opportunity in Nigeria and also an upgrade opportunity in Nigeria, and that seems to be driving growth. We also see opportunities with risk with respect to home broadband is a significantly large opportunity. B to B

14:00 is another opportunity. We've also announced a large data center, which which where the the construction at at this point is in at this point in time is currently on. So from a opportunity point of view, we see a large opportunity in Nigeria, and we are continue we continue to invest very, very aggressively in Nigeria. While we don't comment on on on on future guidance, but our efforts are making sure that, you know, we continue to maintain our investments to capture the big growth opportunity that Nigeria has to offer. And we should continue to see, you know, strong growth in Nigeria. Specific to your question on ACS, you know, as last quarter, according to as per the guidance from from the regulator,

14:49 you know, which was applicable industry wise, there were a certain selected set of vendors who provide airtime trade service, which are basically micro loan products were permitted. As a result, we had to disengage with a few vendors, which are not permitted permitted by the regulator to provide these these services. The the revenue impact for, you know, for the overall group at Airtel Africa was very minimum. Now what we've done is in the last quarter, they were, you know, as according as per the regulator's guidance, they've onboarded the approved vendors and the services are back on track. So therefore, there is no impact that we expect in quarter two, you know, because of this this slight disturbance that we had in in the first quarter in Nigeria. With respect to your question on capital allocation and other other opportunities, we continue to explore, you know, inorganic growth opportunities.

15:44 Right now, what we have identified is a big investment opportunity around home broadband where we are scaling up, you know, investments in Nigeria and across the group. The second is b to b. Data centers is is another opportunity.

15:57 A significant opportunity remains, you know, as you as you as you kind of alluded to on on expanding coverage and adding capacity. One area where where we're missing, you know, significantly now very aggressively is is deployment of five g sites, you know, primarily to support our executive ambitions in in Nigeria and across the globe.

16:19 How many of want to address the the fuel cost? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Sandeep. So hi, Rohit. So as what's been disclosed in the last quarter, the impact on the margin on the fuel price, this is the run rate at that time was roughly two and a half, 3% of our EBITDA margins, of which roughly half of the impact has flown in in this quarter, and the rest will follow in the next quarter, subsequent quarter two. You have seen large portion of that impact has been mitigated to our war room wage program and the scale which we are getting it. Now in quarter two, how much we would be able to mitigate it further is is yet to be seen. But, definitely, our endeavor to mitigate to an extent possible the impact which will be coming up.

17:12 And to answer your question on, like, if the fuel price continues at the current level, what would be the incremental impact? See, all our as per the contracts, the quarter two con rates have already been locked, which is the fuel price which has already been recorded. We have seen some slight softening of the fuel price in Nigeria. And if it continues the way it is, we'll see some marginal respite, which will be coming in in quarter three, not in quarter two because of the way we have structured our contracts. So I hope I've answered your question. Thank you. Very clear. Thank you. The next question we have is from Molly Whitcomb of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you for taking my questions.

17:59 Firstly, sorry to just come back on CapEx. Obviously, you front end loaded your CapEx and I understand that you're reiterating guidance at present. But is there any scenario where later in the year stronger demand or competitive investment could push guidance out of the guidance range? Just a little bit of color on how you're thinking about that, especially against the backdrop of the diesel prices and the macro challenges that you're experiencing. And then secondly, and apologies if I missed it, just to come back to Rohit's question, Apologies if I missed the answer. I didn't hear if you said anything about exploring potential M and A options given the strength of your balance sheet and the current leverage.

18:39 Thank you very much. So our CapEx guidance for the year continues to remain $1,100,000,000 which is something that we highlighted last quarter. What we've done this year is we've actually front loaded our CapEx and this kind of what it does, about $389,000,000 of CapEx in quarter one so that we continue to get the benefit of these investments over the next three quarters. So it's really a phasing more than anything else as we see it, but our guidance for the year know, remains at $1,100,000. On the other question that you asked, which is on, you know, other m and a opportunities,

19:18 we have the strength of the balance sheet, which is which is there, and we continue to explore opportunities, you know, across other markets as well. As in when we see something which is very attractive and the right one for for us, we will surely evaluate that and and look at look at those, but it has to be a sizable opportunity for us. Other than that, you know, we continue, as I said, we continue to invest behind the growth opportunity that Africa has to offer, which is across, you know, as I said, b to c, whether it is in the mobile business or in the money business, b to b data centers, and there are other opportunities on b to b, and most most importantly, on on home broadband. But we continue to look at explore opportunities, M and A opportunities. As and when anything appears, we'll surely look at that.

20:10 Okay. Thank you very much.

20:17 Next question we have is from John Carides of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions and also thank you for the additional disclosure of mobile money customer mix. I just wanted to ask you one question about satellite operators. You've addressed this a number of times in previous conversations, but recent IPO has sort of rekindled investor concerns about the satellite operators potentially becoming bigger rivals

20:47 or rivals to network operators such as your good self. Would it be possible, please, to to advance what you've, told us to date and maybe specifically address, key asymmetries and things like network, capacity, also network economics, device economics, and distribution muscle? Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much for, you know, for your question.

21:22 We see satellite as a complementary technology, you know, which which especially in in a continent like continent like Africa and the markets that we operate in, can be accretive when when it comes to delivering customer experience, acquiring new customers, and it's by expanding our coverage. And that is the reason why and we've we've we've we've formed this view of, you know, after doing a full assessment of the entire technology and also after, you know, talking to our technology partners.

21:51 In our view, you know, this technology is, as I said, is complementary in nature. And that is the reason why we signed two agreements, and I'm sure you're aware of the nature of the agreement that we signed with satellite. It is it it's actually a three part agreement. One is to provide Internet, you know, enterprise connectivity to our customers in areas where it is economically, you know, either unviable or difficult to lay down fiber. It it allows us to offer, you know, enterprise connectivity to our especially the SME segment. And that's something, you know, as we started offering the services, the the customers have responded very positively. Second is for Africa, this technology allows us to to address our backhauling concerns or issues that we have, especially in remote areas where we are not able to carry traffic.

22:43 Now this is something that we have now started backhauling using satellite technology, especially SpaceX at a at a, you know, significantly lower cost.

22:53 That is helping us to solve a big problem that we had in the past, and, you know, you will hear more about this as we start to roll out a back hauling across more of markets. The third was with respect to, you know, direct to device. The way, you know, direct to device, there are two or three things that I I wanna highlight here. First and foremost, the direct to device, you know, the service that we will offer, we've we've signed a contract with SpaceX, which covers all over 14 markets. Cost Airtel customers in these 14 markets, you know, once we launch the service, you know, and this is subject to regulator approvals, using their existing four g or five g devices, once they leave the terrestrial coverage, they will they will connect to the satellite coverage. And once they come back from the satellite into the terrestrial coverage, they will come back on our network. So that's how the technology works.

23:48 The customers will be able to use their existing devices, four g or five g devices. The service that they will get, which is the gen one service that, you know, once we launch at this point in time, which is available from SpaceX, is is is text messages and OTT calling on certain apps on the satellite coverage. So customers will remain connected. It's a gen two, which will happen in 2028 and beyond. You know, so the current timelines are in 2028 is when customers will be able to do the calling. Now so that's how we see this. And, you know, obviously, there is a you know, for the for the spectrum, the the spectrum actually the the satellite operator, you know, kind of relies on our spectrum.

24:37 The customer the entire customer experience, the onboarding of the customer end to end process is managed by the mobile operator. So that's how the technology works. And as I said, that we see this this as a complementary technology

24:55 to enhance customer experience, and that is the reason, you know, we are you know, we signed this agreement to offer this this this service to all our customers across our 14 markets. Thank you very much.

25:11 Thank you. The next question we have is from Prashindran Oddiyar of three sixty one. Please go ahead. Thank you, operator. Thank you, guys, and congrats on the results, Sunil and team. I've just got three questions. First, just focusing on Nigeria. We'll only know MTN's numbers next week, but just looking two quarters back, your effective data pricing seems quite attractive, yet your growth rates in Nigeria is still lagging that of MTN. I mean is there anything that you guys are doing to actively try and close that gap? And what levers are you trying to pull? And how successful has that been? The second question is around the oil prices.

25:58 You mentioned the impact on diesel for your telco costs. But in the markets that you guys are operating, is the higher oil price not coming through in inflation that's impacting the demand for telco services. So basically, I mean, how has your top line been affected from the consumer given that oil prices are up and inflation is probably up?

26:22 And then your last question is, I don't know if you can share with us what percentage of your network uses IHS as a tower provider? And does the deal with MTN in any way affect your CapEx expansion plans given your CapEx envelope that you have for this year? Thanks.

26:46 Thank you very much for those questions. Well, I will not comment on on MTN's performance. We will surely talk about our own performance. If you look at, you know, our performance, we are very pleased with the way the business is tracking. While there is a significantly higher opportunity, you know, big opportunity that Nigeria has to offer. Our current data revenue growth of about 38%, you know, is in Nigeria is very, very satisfying. Voice revenue continues to grow at about, you know, in very strong numbers at 23%. We are seeing, you know, data consumption per sub also continues to grow. And there are there are efforts being made to capture, you know,

27:31 more demand by very strong investments in network that that we are doing in in Nigeria at this point in time, both in terms of adding capacity to support this very strong data consumption growth that we are seeing. So business will will continue to track. As per expected lines is is what we're seeing right now. On your question on oil pricing, oil prices is, you know, kind of impacting customer demand. You know, it is actually evident that if if look at the the voice usage per customer, while there is a marginal decline, but voice usage per customer continues to remain very strong. Data consumption per customer continues to remain very, very strong. We are seeing very strong upgrades, which is reflected in our smartphone customer base growth.

28:20 Smartphone penetration has increased. So at this point in time, while we are seeing oil, you know, oil prices driven inflation, overall, we have not seen any softening in in the demand, and I'm, you know, alluding more to the consumption across services, our, you know, transaction value per customer, you know, on the money side. So at this point in time, we are not seeing we continue to see and there was a question, you know, last quarter, if I remember, on whether we will see softening on upgrades. We're not seeing we continue to see upgrades, and that seems to be fueling demand. And that's where we are right now from a, you know, from a customer demand point of view. On the on the IHS, we continue to, you know, to to engage with with MTN on, you know, the first and foremost important thing is is to make sure that our services remain uninterrupted, and MTN is right now in the in the process of, you know, completing this transaction.

29:28 At the same time what the way we see it is, we see no reason to believe that owning and running their own infrastructure, you know, the by MTN will have an adverse impact either on on the performance of our network or in on, you know, overall capital capital allocation from our side because I think what you're alluding to is is primarily on sharing of sites. Because of sites such, you know, available, whether it is MTN or IHS, sharing sites should be available to us because our understanding is if they've acquired this business to make sure that this business independently remains profitable. And no tower company, whether IHS or any other tower company, will be able to run a profitable tower co business on single tenancy.

30:17 And most markets have either two or three operators at least on our footprint. So we will continue to see interdependencies across across, you know, each other, And therefore, you know, we're less concerned about either any impact on our service levels or our our own cost or capital allocation at this point. And and then, sorry, Sunil. Just to follow-up on that. I mean, are you able to share, like, what percentage of your networks is shared among the various tower operators? We don't we don't share that information. You know, our our share of ours across our companies. Okay. Cool. No. Thanks thanks very much, and congrats again, Sunil. Thank you very much.

31:11 The next question we have is from Maddie Singh of HSBC. Mehdi, your line is live. You may go ahead. Hello? Hi. Can you hear me? I think so. Carry on. Yep. Sorry about that. So thanks for taking my question, and congrats on strong numbers. I have a couple of follow ups and, you know, a few points where I need some clarity. Follow ups are very simple. On mobile money IPO, have you suggested any time timing update? What what's the timeline as of now?

31:57 And then second one on the Airtel Africa Plc, you said that it is immaterial at the group level, but if you could also quantify it in Nigeria level, that will be helpful. And then a follow-up on the M and A question. Would you be willing to participate in any in market consolidation efforts in Nigeria fintech space, especially? So if you could give any comments there. And then couple of questions where I want your inputs. On the CapEx side, you know, very interesting to see the, you know, front loading of CapEx. But I was wondering whether, you know, this this is also driven by, let's say, you know, your demand actually running ahead of capacity.

32:46 So if you could comment on your you know, have you seen demand strong demand growth, but, you know, capacity not available to monetize that? And is that is what is driving this front loading of the CapEx in in q one? And then second one is on the you know, we have seen that news about Indus Tower looking to get into Africa. So your incremental CapEx and site rollouts, have you already factored that into your strategy that, you know, some part of that probably go you know, you will you will do it in the tower, or it is primarily going to be with the existing strategy? So any comments on the in the tower coming into Africa and and any change in your strategy around that?

33:36 Thank you. Thank you very much, you know, for your questions. Let me just respond to your first question, which is on mobile money, IPO timing. Subject to market conditions, we are committed to to IPO to Airtel money in in 2026. So in the second half of this year, you know, we are committed to doing the IPO. As I said, this remains subject to market conditions. On the ACS impact in Nigeria, the, you know, the impact was mitigated, and and therefore, you know, we don't expect to see this this continuing in in the second quarter. As I said, there were it was a temporary, you know, kind of disturbance that we had in the business, and we onboarded the the the new partners and the services are are are on.

34:31 On the in market, you know, you asked about in Nigeria. Are we open to to looking at, say, for example, you know, you know, any fintech opportunity? As I responded to the question earlier that was asked to me, we are absolutely looking at, you know, acquisition opportunity or inorganic growth opportunity across mobile money and GSM both. The you know, as in when we have an attractive opportunity where we we think it is synergistic to our business, there is no reason why, you know, we will not go after that, especially our our balance sheet today supporting us, you know, so you keep it's we have a strong balance sheet today. Your then your question on, you know, this CapEx. The CapEx really is as I said, it was if you look at the nature of our business, if you deploy CapEx upfront, there is always this opportunity for and there's a there's a significant amount of work that went behind to make sure that we have a good start to the year.

35:33 And that's the reason why we front loaded with the CapEx. There is nowhere that, you know, our network is actually chasing demand. It's a very strong process that that we run to assess where the demand will come from given the long lead times that we have in terms of CapEx deployment. So it's very rare, very, very rare, you know, that it happens with your capacity comes in in a constraint. So it is not a situation of actually demand ahead of of our capacity. What we are actually doing is we are proactively investing in capacity to be able to service demand going forward. Because when you look at at an aggregate level of 50% plus growth in overall data that we're carrying, that actually necessitates us to, you know, to invest ahead of demand, and that's something that that we're doing.

36:25 And as we are investing, the market is is responding and the customers are responding because we are also able to expand coverage, our capacity, and deliver great experience. On on Indus towers, just, you know, to give give the full context, Indus has, you know, we Indus Towers announced entry into three markets, which is Nigeria, Uganda, and Zambia. We are currently, you know, we are starting operations in in in Zambia and, you know, operations in in the towers will soon start in the other two markets. We will you know, what we've, you know, said is subject to to overall commercials.

37:10 We would be the the anchor customer for, you know, for in this in this towers. And there is, you know, with respect to the capital outlay, I don't see there is any difference because eventually, you know, Indus Traverse will will be a will be another tower company, which will which will meet our requirements. The capital will be capital allocation will be a function of our need for expanding our coverage or investing in in our capacity in the networks. So that's the way I see it. But the way we see is and this might bring in, say, for example, some new solutions given their expertise in a very large market that they come from that is India. And we see some operational efficiencies, you know, to accrue to us. But from a capital allocation point of view, it should primarily be, you know, a need based depending on the need for us to expand coverage of that capacity.

38:08 The next question we have is from David Lopez of New Street Research. Please go ahead. Hello, and thank you for taking my questions. Actually, I have just one on your home broadband strategy. I was wondering if you could comment on maybe the proportion between fiber to the home and fixed wireless access. And on fixed wireless access, it would be helpful if you could comment on how is the price of the equipment going. I mean, is is the price of the box still going down, or is it going up given some chipsets shortages? Yeah. Any color on that? Maybe what's the cost of the equipment? That's more direct question.

38:55 Thank you. Thank you very much. So let me just give you a little bit of a perspective on the home broadband business. It's a very large opportunity on our footprint. You know, it is the current penetration of home broadband is is circa about 2% or so. And there's there's a large, you know, customer base or high value base, which is the addressable base for this opportunity. When we explored all options to offer the service to our to our customers, FWA, given the topology of it, you know, in Africa and the current usage patterns, FWA is the right solution for us to offer is the right technology to, you know, to offer the service to our to our customers, you know, for home broadband.

39:44 And for that, what we are doing is we are investing very aggressively on five g network in in our markets. And we started the service offering the service in in most of our markets, and we're getting very good response. And, you know, we see this opportunity across both b to b as well as b to c. B to b predominantly in the in the, you know, SME segment. But for, you know, some very very selected clusters where we see high demand and high usage, what we are also doing is we're deploying fiber. But that number remains relatively much smaller. The primarily, the demand is being serviced through FWA, which is where we are right now. And we are, you know, as I said, we're rolling out five g sites to to support FWA and meet this demand.

40:32 With respect to the the the device the cost of the device. I'm not be able to share the cost of the device, but, you know, the other question that you asked, yes, the global chipset pricing is is putting pressure on the cost. For this year, we are we are by and large covered, you know, the inventory and the the contracts that we have. But over a period of time, this you know, the cost as it is going up across across the market, across the world, we'll also be impacted by that. But given, you know, the the nature of the of the business, this is something that we factored in the business plan and, you know, it meets our payback period requirements.

41:17 So therefore, we continue to push, you know, behind this particular opportunity, and we remain very, very optimistic about the home record opportunity in Africa, especially on our footprint. Very clear. Thank you. Thank you. The next question we have is from Desmond Gabriel of WSTC Financial Services. Please go ahead. Good afternoon or good day, everyone. So during the presentation, I heard something about an IPO. So I wanted to ask what it's about if I can get details about it. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you very much. You know, the IPO that I was talking about is the IPO IPO for our Airtel money business, which is something that we said that our preferred location is London, you know, subject to and timing is about before the end of this year, subject to market conditions.

42:22 Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the q and a session. And I will now hand the conference back to Sunil Todorov for closing remarks. I would like to thank you all for joining this call, and I look forward to speaking to you again at the time of our half year results. Thank you once again. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.