Good day everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Airtel Money H1 2027 results. The presentation will commence shortly. After the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, you will be able to ask a question either through the Zoom webinar link provided separately or by submitting written questions using the Ask a Question button on the SparkLive Webcast page. If you have joined us via the Zoom webinar, please note that this call is being streamed to a webcast for a wider audience and will be recorded. I would now like to hand over to Andreas Goldau, Head of Investor Relations, to open the presentation. Please go ahead. Heartily welcome, and welcome to Airtel Money's first-ever results presentation and investor call. My name is Andreas Goldau, Head of Investor Relations. Over the next hour, we will take you through how Airtel Money has performed over the last six months across our 13 markets in East and Francophone Africa. This period has shown the strength of our business model. We have continued to grow profitability and increase financial inclusion by giving more people and businesses access to digital financial services across our footprint. Before we begin, a few housekeeping items. The presentation section of today's call has been pre-recorded. Afterwards, we will switch to a live Q&A session with management. There will be plenty of time for your questions. Zoom participants can submit questions through the chat or by raising their digital hand, or you can also email us at any time to ir@airtelmoney.com. This call is being recorded and a replay will be available on our website at airtelmoney.com. Finally, the usual disclaimer applies. Certain statements in this presentation may be forward-looking, and actual results may differ materially from those anticipated. Please refer to the forward-looking statements section in the presentation for further details. Turning to today's agenda, our Chief Executive Officer, Ian Ferrao, will begin with an overview of Airtel Money's landmark IPO, our first half highlights, and an update on strategy and operational performance. Our Chief Financial Officer, Alok Bafna, will then walk through the financial results. I will return briefly afterwards with an investor relations update before we move into the live Q&A. Please start sending your questions now through Zoom or by email to ir@airtelmoney.com. With that, let me hand over to Ian and Alok to tell you the Airtel Money story, how we are helping to make digital money accessible to millions across Africa. Ian, over to you. Thank you, Andreas, and a very good morning, good afternoon, good evening to everyone. These are our first results as a listed company, and I am absolutely delighted to share them with you. Let me begin with a milestone. On the 14th of October, 2026, Airtel Money was admitted to the main market of the London Stock Exchange under the ticker AMC. Existing shareholders sold 270 million shares, 10% of our issued share capital, at GBP 1.96 per share. This valued the company at approximately GBP 5.3 billion, or around $7 billion. The offer was oversubscribed and no new capital was raised. Ahead of the listing, we reconstituted our board with Arijit Ranjan Sarker joining as Independent Non-Executive Chair alongside new Independent Non-Executive Directors with extensive international experience. The listing is a vote of confidence in our business model and our strategy, and it brings us new responsibilities: transparency, strong governance, and consistent delivery, which we fully embrace as a management team. I would personally like to thank our customers, our agents, our merchants, our business partners, and all our colleagues across Airtel Money who made it possible. A very, very warm welcome to all of our new shareholders. We look forward to engaging with you. Our purpose is unchanged. Our vision is a digitally connected Africa. Our mission is to simplify lives and empower communities to digitize everyday transactions, no matter how big or how small. Our goal is to be Africa's leading FinTech platform. These statements reflect why we exist: to bring secure, affordable digital financial services to people and businesses across Africa who are underserved by traditional banking. Everything you hear today is anchored in this vision. Airtel Money is a scaled FinTech platform across 13 African markets, six in East Africa and seven in Francophone Africa. At the end of September, we served 56.7 million customers, up 18.7% year-on-year. This represents 42.9% penetration of the Airtel telco customer base, up 3.2 percentage points. With more than 75 million telco customers across our footprint not yet using Airtel Money, we have a large captive opportunity ahead of us. Our multi-sided network continues to scale. Active agents grew 26.3% to 2.4 million, supported by more than 43,000 exclusive retail touchpoints. Active merchants grew 85.5% to 587,000. Engagement is also deepening. Annualized total processed value for the second quarter reached $270 billion, up 36.4% in constant currency. 4.1 million customers now transact on our app, up 64.3% from 2.5 million a year ago, while app transaction value grew 100% year-on-year. Our first half was in line with our expectations. Operationally, we grew our customer base in both regions, and rising app adoption is deepening engagement. Customers are transacting more. Total processed value grew 36.8% in constant currency, and our product ecosystem broadens. Our rapidly expanding network, now with 2.4 million agents and 587,000 merchants, is widening access and deepening financial inclusion. Financially, growth was strong and broad-based. Revenue grew 34% in reported currency to $830 million, or 25.1% in constant currency, with all three core service lines growing at pace in both East and Francophone Africa. Growth was also profitable. Underlying EBITDA, profit after tax, earnings per share all increased. The underlying EBITDA margin of 48% reflects the change to intra-group agreements with Airtel Africa from July 2025 and remains in line with our guidance. The business remains highly cash generative, which supports continued investment in growth and returns to shareholders. The board has declared an interim dividend of $0.064 per share, in line with our policy of a minimum payout of 80% of profits attributable to owners. This slide brings our headline numbers together. Revenue grew 34% in reported currency to $830 million. Underlying EBITDA grew 26.4% to $398 million, a margin of 48%. Profit after tax rose 21.6% to $228 million, and operating free cash flow grew 27.1% to $378 million. The lower half shows how our ecosystem is broadening. In constant currency, wallet services grew 27.6% to $408 million, payments and transfers grew 29.4% to $360 million, and financial services was our fastest growing line, up 44.8% to $39 million. Payments, transfers, and financial services together now account for 48% of revenue. The only line that declined was other revenue, which is retention revenue from the telco, and it is being phased out by March 2027 as we guided in the lead up to the IPO. Our growth is transaction led. Total processed transaction value grew 46.1% in reported currency, or 36.8% in constant currency, to $128 billion in the first half. This was driven by more customers and higher engagement. TPV per customer rose to $397 a month, up 14.9% in constant currency, and in the second quarter, it crossed the $400 mark. Higher transaction value per customer is driving ARPU, which rose 12.5% in reported currency to $2.60 a month, or 5.1% in constant currency. Digital engagement is a key lever. App-transacting customers grew 64.3% to 4.1 million from 2.5 million in H1 2026, and app transaction value grew 100% year-on-year. App users generate higher ARPU than feature phone users, so driving app adoption remains a clear priority for the business. As it stands, we are on track to deliver our FY 2027 guidance. Revenue grew 25.1% in constant currency, in line with our guidance of mid-20% growth for FY 2027. The underlying EBITDA margin of 48% reflects the change to intra-group agreements, the impact which is concentrated in the first half. As this effect moderates, we expect the margins to strengthen in the second half, in line with our guidance that the margin will moderate by up to two percentage points relative to FY 2026. CapEx intensity was 2.4% of revenue, compared with 2.9% a year ago, and we continue to target 3%-4% of revenue in the near to medium term. The interim dividend of $0.064 per share is in line with our dividend policy. Over the medium term, constant currency revenue growth is expected to trend upwards in line with the historical constant currency growth, and our underlying EBITDA margin is targeted to return to upwards of the 50% levels. With that, I will hand over to Alok, who will take you through the financial review. Thank you, Ian, and good morning, good afternoon, everyone. I am Alok Bafna, Chief Financial Officer, Airtel Money. This is our first result announcement as a listed company, and I am delighted to take you through our financial performance for first half. We delivered another strong half. Revenue grew 34% in reported currency to $830 million, up 25.1% in constant currency, in line with our guidance. Reported growth was ahead of constant currency, mainly reflecting lapping impact of appreciation of Zambian kwacha. In July 2025, the intra-group agreement with Airtel Africa were revised, and this continued to be on arms' length term. The principal change was gradual phase out of retention revenue by March 2027, and there were other revisions to the terms of other intra-group agreement. Gross profit increased 31.3% in reported currency to $499 million, or 22% in constant currency. Gross margin was 60.2%, compared with 61.4% a year ago, reflecting revision of intra-group arrangement that took effect in July 2025. Principally, the gradual phase out of retention revenue. Underlying EBITDA grew 26.4% in reported currency to $398 million, or 16.1% in constant currency. The underlying EBITDA margin was 48% compared with 50.8% a year ago, and this is in line with our guidance. The 286 basis point decline is explained by two factors. The first one, the impact of change to the intra-group agreement impacting margin by around 270 basis point, and that new levy on revenue in DRC impacting margin by around 60 basis point. Together, these more than account for the decline. So excluding them, our margin would have improved. Intra-group agreement impact is concentrated in the first half, and we expect that margin to strengthen in second half. Profit after tax, before minority interest, up 21.6% to $228 million. Basic earnings per share increased by 21.1% to $0.079 from $0.065. In line with our dividend policy, the board has declared an interim dividend of $0.064 per share, representing 81% of consolidated profit to owners. In reported currency, revenue increased from $620 million to $830 million. East Africa contributed $148 million of increase, and Francophone Africa contributed $62 million of increase. East Africa grew 31.7% in reported currency and 20.5% in constant currency. The gap between two reflect the appreciation of Zambian kwacha. Francophone Africa grew 40.6% in reported currency and 40.2% in constant currency. This is led by a strong performance in DRC. Constant currency growth was driven by both growth in customer base and higher transaction value per customer. East Africa, our largest region spanning six market, delivered revenue growth of 31.7%, $615 million of revenue, 20.5% in constant currency. In reported currency, payment and transfer grew 37.7%, wallet services 32.1%, and financial services by 54.2%. Customer base grew 13.5% to 44.1 million, supported by increasing scale of our distribution network. Penetration of our telco base increased by 2.4 percentage point to 49.7%. Total processed value grew 46.5% in reported currency or 34.7% in constant currency to $98 billion. TPV per customer increased to $387 a month, up 17.8% in constant currency, supporting ARPU growth of 5.4% to $2.4. Underlying EBITDA was $303 million, up 27.9% in reported currency and 14.4% in constant currency. The margin, 49.2%, compared with 50.7% a year ago. This mainly reflect intra-group agreement change with the impact of 240 basis point. Excluding this, East Africa margin would have expanded by another 90 basis points. Francophone Africa, spanning seven markets, grew revenue by 40.6% in reported currency to $215 million, or 40.2% in constant currency. This is driven by strong performance in DRC. In reported currency, wallet services grew 50.1%, payment and transfer 38.3%, and financial services by 58.2%. The customer base increased rapidly by 41.9% to 12.6 million, and penetration increased by 5.6 percentage points to 29%, which leave significant headroom for growth. Total processed value increased 44.8% in reported currency to $30 billion. In constant currency, TPV per customer increased by 3% to $433, and ARPU was stable at $3.1. Rapid customer growth dilutes average because new customers start with lower activity. As they mature, they adopt more use cases, so we expect ARPU and TPV per customer to rise over a period of time. Underlying EBITDA grew 24.1% in reported currency to $94 million, a margin of 43.9% compared to 49.7% a year ago. This reflect impact of intra-group agreement change of around 360 basis points and the new levy on revenue in DRC impacting margin by around 220 basis points. In constant currency, revenue grew by $166 million or 25.1%. Wallet services added $88 million, payments and transfers another $81 million, financial services $12 million. Decline in other revenue of $16 million, reflecting gradual phase out of retention revenue. Currency translation benefit added another $45 million, mainly from appreciation of Zambian kwacha. Taking reported revenue of $830 million. Our core services continued to increase at pace. Financial services was again our fastest growing segment, up 55.9% in reported currency, followed by payment and transfers at 38% and wallet services at 37%. Underlying EBITDA increased by 26.4% in reported currency to $398 million, an increase of $83 million in reported currency, or 16.1% in constant currency amounting to $55 million. Revenue growth contributed $166 million. This was partially offset by higher direct cost of $76 million, mainly commission, and $35 million increase in operating expenses. Currency translation benefit added another $28 million to EBITDA. The underlying EBITDA margin was 48% as compared to 50.8% a year ago. As mentioned earlier, the impact of change to intra-group agreement was 270 basis points, and the impact of DRC levy was 60 basis points. Underlying margin is on increasing trend. As the revised intra-group agreement took effect in July 2025, H1 2027 carries a greater share of this impact. As the effect moderates over a period of time, we expect margin to strengthen in the second half, keeping us on track to deliver our full year guidance. From underlying EBITDA of $398 million, we deduct depreciation and amortization of $19 million. An exceptional item of $6 million, which relates to one-off IPO expenses. Net finance cost were $18 million compared with net finance income of $6 million a year ago. This include $30 million of repatriation cost and foreign exchange conversion cost. This was partly offset by interest income of $12 million. Hyperinflationary accounting in Malawi contributed a net gain of $5 million. Profit before tax was $360 million compared to $305 million a year ago. Tax charge was $132 million. The reported tax rate of around 37% as compared to 38% a year ago. Profit after tax increased 21.6% to $228 million and net profit margin of 27.5%. After non-controlling interest of $15 million, profit to owner increased by 21.1% to $213 million. Basic earning per share increased 21.1% to $0.079 from $0.065. EPS has been calculated on the basis of 2.7 billion shares. Increase in EPS is largely contributed by higher operating profit of $0.026 and partially offset by finance cost and taxes. Excluding one-off IPO expenses, EPS before exceptional item was $0.081, up 24.3%. Our business is capital light and highly cash generative. CapEx was $20 million and operating free cash flow defined as underlying EBITDA less CapEx increased by 27.1% to $378 million. A pre-tax cash conversion of around 95%. After taxes, finance cost, and minority dividend, free cash flow was $189 million or 48% of underlying EBITDA. This strong cash generation enables us to continue investing in growth while delivering attractive returns to our shareholder. With this, I will hand it over back to Ian for strategic and operational review. Thank you. Thanks, Alok. Now, let's turn to our strategy and how we're executing against it. Our markets offer one of the most attractive long-term opportunities in financial services. Based on third-party estimates, U.S. dollar GDP across our footprint is expected to grow by 6.5% a year from 2026 to 2030. This is compared with 4.6% in developed markets. Our population is young, with a median age of 18.6 years against 42.6 years in developed markets. Only 36% of people live in urban areas, compared with 78% in developed markets. Financial inclusion remains low. Only around 20%-25% of adults in our footprint have a bank account, compared with 97% in North America. At the same time, our markets are going digital fast, with the GSMA expecting smartphone penetration in sub-Saharan Africa to rise from 51% in 2023 to 81% by 2030. Mobile money is the bridge. Mobile money transaction value in sub-Saharan Africa is around 66% of GDP. Compare this with 231% in Kenya, more than three times higher. Our own penetration of the telco customer base at 42.9% is rising in both regions, with Francophone Africa at 29% still at an early stage. Together, these factors give us a long growth runway. Our strategy to build Africa's leading FinTech platform rests on six clear priorities. First, acquire quality customers, specifically high ARPU smartphone users. Second, drive app usage and customer experience through digital-first journeys. Third, extend our distribution network with last mile reach through agents and kiosks. Fourth, accelerate our merchant network to speed up the shift from cash. Fifth, build enterprise payments through our enterprise portal, vendor payments, and payment links. Sixth, expand our product ecosystem across lending, international money transfer, savings, wealth, and cards. These priorities are enabled by three foundations: our people and culture, strong risk and compliance, and a scalable core IT stack. Let me now show you how we are delivering against them. Starting with customers. Our customer base grew 18.7% to 56.7 million monthly active users, lifting penetration of the Airtel telco base by 3.2 percentage points to 42.9%. With more than 75 million telco customers still available to reach, we focus on quality telco-linked customers supported by the synergies with the telco network, targeted campaigns, and referrals. On the app-transacting customers grew 64.3% to 4.1 million, and app transaction value grew 100% year-on-year. App users generate higher ARPU, so we continue to invest in seamless digital onboarding, gamification, and cashback rewards. In distribution, active agents grew 26.3% to 2.4 million, and we now have 43,000 Airtel Money branches and kiosks. Our agents provide in-person onboarding and support. They act as brand ambassadors, and their scale is driving customer growth. Turning to merchants, enterprise, and our wider ecosystem. Active merchants grew 85.5% to 587,000, up from 317,000 a year ago. We offer omni-channel acceptance through QR codes, through merchant codes, our merchant app, and POS machines, and supported by global payment network partners in both capital cities and regional markets. In enterprise payments, we are introducing a suite of new features on our enterprise portal, including vendor payments, improved transaction reversals, and user interface upgrades. We are prioritizing migration for our existing corporate and SME partners. Our product ecosystem continues to broaden. Financial services revenue grew 44.8% in constant currency to $39 million, increasing its share of revenue to 4.7% from 4.1%. Our product expansion areas include lending, insurance, savings, wealth, and virtual cards. Seven clear principles guide how we build products. We are digital-first, building for the best app experience. We are led by customer insights, solving real customer problems. Security is built in by design. Fraud and compliance are never an afterthought. Simplicity is at our core, so our products need no explanation. We earn transparency and trust through honest pricing and protected privacy. We move with speed to market. We launch fast, we learn fast, and we scale fast. We focus on go-to-market excellence so that every product that is built is clearly communicated to the market. These priorities are reflected in a steady multi-year shift in our revenue mix. Wallet services, our cash-in and cash-out business, remains our largest line at 49.2% of revenue. Payments and transfers, which includes P2P transfers, recharges, bill payments, merchant payments and bulk payments, collections, and international money transfers now account for 43.3%, and financial services for 4.7%. Other revenue, the telco retention revenue, is being phased out and is now down to 2.8% of revenue. Let me conclude. Airtel Money is well-positioned for sustainable, profitable growth. We have a compelling growth runway. Financial inclusion remains low across our 13-market footprint, and at 42.9% penetration of the telco customer base, we still have more than 75 million telco customers to reach. We are scaled, we are profitable, and we are cash generative. In the first half, revenue of $830 million grew 34% in reported currency and 25.1% in constant currency, with a 48% underlying EBITDA margin and free cash flow of $189 million. Our ecosystem is deepening with the fastest growth in payments and transfers and financial services, and 587,000 active merchants now on our network. Our focus is unchanged. Disciplined execution, connecting more people and more businesses to the formal financial ecosystem, and delivering value for our shareholders in line with our guidance. We reiterate that guidance here today. Revenue growth in the mid-20s in constant currency for FY 2027, with the underlying EBITDA margin moderating by up to 2 percentage points relative to financial year 2026, and targeted to return to upwards of 50% levels over the medium term. Above all, we remain focused on what Airtel Money does every single day, helping millions of people and small businesses across sub-Saharan Africa to transact, to save, and to grow. Thank you very much, and I am handing back over to Andreas. Thank you, Ian. Before we close, a quick word on how we engage with the market. After the first half results, our next updates will be the Q3 results at the end of January and the full-year results in May. With regards to conferences, we are still working on our schedule. If there is a conference, a roadshow, or a meeting where we should be, please tell us. Thank you very much to New Street Research and HSBC, who already have published the first reports on AMC. The research blackout period for the syndicate banks ends in November, and we are expecting more sell-side coverage after that. If you cover the sector, we would like to talk to you. If you want to contact Investor Relations, always available under ir@airtelmoney.com, and everything from today onwards is also available on our website at airtelmoney.com. With that, I hand back to the team for the Q&A instructions. Thank you. Participants can submit questions in written format via the webcast page by clicking the Ask a Question button. If you dialed into the call and wish to ask a question, please use the Raise Hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you are dialing in via phone, you can raise your hand using star nine and unmute yourself by pressing star six. We will take our first question from Madhvendra Singh at HSBC. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi. Thanks a lot for taking my question. I have four quick questions, if that is okay. If you want to go one by one, let me know, or I can give all the questions now. Let's hear them, Madhi. Okay. All right. The first question is on the margins in Francophone. Quarter-on-quarter also looks a bit of dilution, so if you could talk about the drivers behind that. Is the similar driver for the overall group margins, that retention revenues or something else? Some color there will be helpful. The second question is on the average number of transactions in second quarter. If you could share any details around what is the average transaction per user, generally, and also any market-specific colors there. I'd be quite keen to hear on Zambia specifically, what are the trends. The third question is on your guidance. You're talking about re-acceleration in revenue run rate going forward, let's say next year onwards. Is that purely a function of, again, retention revenue-driven headwind going away, or there's something else as well there? The final question is on the trends around withdrawal fees. That has been falling. The revenues driven by withdrawal fees is what I mean. Share of that has been falling. If you could talk about what is the level you had in second quarter, and where should we see that in the next two, three years? These are the four questions. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much, Madhi. The first one was about the margins in Francophone. Thanks, Andreas, and thanks, Madhi. You have rightly pointed out there are two factors impacting in margin for Francophone. The first one is change in IGA. That impacted margin by roughly 360 basis points. Impact of the DRC levy on the revenue impacted margin by 220 basis points. Together, the entire margin drop of 580 basis points can be explained. Both these are already baked in and factored in our results go forward, and we see that margin will evolve through our structural operating leverages. Yeah. Hi, Madhi. This is Ian here. In terms of the transaction volumes, roughly we are doing around 2 billion transactions every single month. This is growing roughly in line with the TPV growth that we reported, 36.4% up year-on-year. Average per customer has stepped up roughly 14.9%, and is up to $397 per month per customer. In line with historical trends, we continue to see this number growing as our customers start to trust us more, keep more balance, and start to migrate into more use cases as well. In terms of the guidance, the guidance is reiterated. As we said that the IGAs are being phased out during the course of this year. By the 1st of April next year, the retention revenue will be zero. It was 2.8% of revenue as of H1. All you have to do is sort of plan for the lapping of that in FY 2028. Our guidance is that we expect to come back towards historical trend levels. Just on the withdrawal fees, wallet services, 49% of the business. Yes, the mix is changing. For us, this mix change is extremely positive. We are moving more towards payments and transfers and financial services. This is higher quality revenue for us, with better flow through into margins. Yes, it has some impact on the take rates as well, but we continue to see this trend going forward. If you look historically as well through the prospectus that we have, you will see that that has been the trend over the last few years. Thanks a lot, Ian. Just to follow up on that one, does the wallet service only have withdrawal fees, or there is also the peer-to-peer transfer included in that? No. Wallet services— Or peer-to-peer transfer? —is just the withdrawal fees. Peer-to-peer transfer sits within payments and transfers. Understood. Thank you very much for your insights, and congrats on the listing and the first set of results. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Madhi. All right. We take the next audio question. Our next question comes from Shahrukh Nawaz at FAB Research. Please unmute your line and go ahead. Your line is now open. Please go ahead. Am I audible now? Yeah. Hello. Yeah. Okay. Thank you for good set of results. Congratulations. I have two questions. First is, out of the 2.4 million agents, how much are multi-brand non-exclusive? Are you planning for any change in the commission structure? Second is in terms of revenue mix, I think during the IPO time, what we came to know, going ahead, wallet services, there will be transformation from wallet services towards payment and transfers. But this quarter still we have seen payment and the wallet services to be on the higher side. Do you feel from 2027 or 2028, the contribution to the revenue will be higher from payment and transfer, and also financial services to be on the higher side, which is growing now? Okay. Thanks for the question. Yeah, 2.4 million agents. Within that, roughly 43,000 are exclusive agents, i.e., franchise partners where we are directly contracted, and we put infrastructure into the markets, either an Airtel Money branch or an Airtel Money kiosk. Out of the 2.4 million, it is difficult to say how many of those will be multi-brand. There will be a large overlap with competitor agents. But again, when we look at that, the agent line that is held for Airtel Money can only service Airtel Money customers, and if it is a competitor line, they would have to have another line in there. So it is very difficult for us to know what that exact number is in terms of who are multi-brand. The key is ensuring that you have the best liquidity of float and cash in the market. We do that by localizing our distribution as close as possible to the market, in order to serve the agents and to build trust between the dealers and the agents themselves. There are no planned commission changes at this time. We try to stay away from messing around with pricing or commissions, especially when you have a growth market and the market is evolving at pace. There is nothing in plan at this moment to bring down commissions from a specific commission level. We do see as the mix changes, that the commission as a percentage of revenue will start to come down. Two things will happen. One, more money will stay in the ecosystem in terms of the mix change into payments and transfers, which will continue to turn without the corresponding commission cost. The second is that there are more digital inflows coming through every quarter, specifically coming from the bank interoperability or international money transfers coming into the continent, which also removes the cash-in commission for money entering the wallet. In terms of the mix change, I think the way to look at this is that wallet services grew 25% in constant currency, payments and transfers grew 32.8%, and financial services grew 49.7%. If those growth rates continue on that basis, then the mix is going to continue to evolve each quarter and each year. Okay. One more question about the commission rates. Mostly what I believe is in the wallet services, it is highly related to the commission structure. When it comes to payment and transfer and financial services, it is like user can do through this app. In this case, you do not need to pay much to the agents, correct? In this case, you will be having a positive edge on the margin side. That is correct. We pay commissions to the agents for deposits, for withdrawals, and if there is an agent-led recharge. When you are doing a peer-to-peer transfer, a merchant payment, a payment of bills, a recharge, et cetera, there is no commission payable. This all stays within the ecosystem and has a much better flow-through into profitability. Okay. In terms of enterprise, how you are seeing the growth in the market? Also, I think at the IPO time, we have your growth prospect, you have the virtual cards and also the loan you will be introducing short-term period loans. How do you see overall growth in the African market for this? Yeah, we definitely see a good opportunity in the enterprise space, especially in the SME space. Our enterprise portal is now live across all markets, with our phase one features. We are continuing to evolve that. There is a user interface upgrade going on. There are more products being built into the enterprise portal. We are prioritizing all of our existing partners, especially the bill payment and bill collection companies, to migrate them onto this first. Following that up, we will be going on a go-to-market design and a go-to-market execution in terms of enterprise acquisition, specifically in that SME space. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Our next question comes from Hannes Leitner at Jefferies. Please unmute your line and go ahead. Yes. Thanks for letting me on, and congrats to the first post-IPO results call. I got a couple of questions as well. Ian, you referenced that you are trying to acquire customers with high ARPU using the app. How can you target your marketing? What marketing efforts you have to really target them, or is this a little bit of collaboration through Airtel Africa? The second one is maybe you can elaborate on the DRC higher levies. I think the DRC also introduced potentially something that telcos have to have local ownership. Can you give us an update there if this is now impacting you given your parent? Then maybe just a couple of housekeeping questions. You reported some exceptional items. Maybe you can talk about those that were mostly IPO related, but what do you expect for the remainder of the year? Then overall related party transactions, despite the retention revenues going down, went actually up by $10 million for the half. So maybe you can talk about that. Just like a philosophical— Yeah. —question about the loans given. Is this something which you expect to recur given some of them are short-dated? Thank you. Okay, thanks. Yes, so our strategy is absolutely to go after high-value customers. You are absolutely right that is probably a synergy that we have with the Airtel Africa and the telco, in terms of customer ownership of high-value customers. This includes smartphone customers, this includes urban customers in our top cities. We are absolutely able to segment the base that is available within the 75 million telco customers available to us. There is obviously a lot of data that we have as a group, and there are group data transfer agreements already in place that allows us to be much more concise in terms of targeted marketing, and specific rewards and incentives that are required for different segments. Secondly, on the DRC levies, yes, this levy was introduced earlier this year in January. It's a levy on revenue, so it's roughly 7% on cash-out revenue, 10% on peer-to-peer transfer revenue, and I think 3% on merchant revenue. This was implemented, and as Alok has mentioned, this is diluting the DRC and the Francophone margins within H1. But it's now fully in and we're focused on working on operating leverage now within the Francophone markets to bring our margin back up. The local ownership rules, this at this moment, applies to the telco, and not to Airtel Money, so it's not something that we are actively addressing as the management team of Airtel Money. In terms of exceptional items, Alok? Exceptional item is one-off and are relating to IPO. We don't foresee any further exceptional item in H2. Regarding the DRC, at the group level, the impact is roughly 1% on EBITDA margin. Then there was one more point on related party transactions. The loans. The increase in related party- Increase in related party revenue is largely volume driven on account of the recharges. There was a question on loans given. The loans given was to the parent now to utilize the surplus fund for yield maximization. These are short-term loans and callable— On demand. —on demand. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Hannes. Our next question comes from the line of [Danielle Yape] at Absa Group. Please unmute your audio and go ahead with your question. [Danielle] from Absa. Thank you very much for the opportunity to ask questions, and congrats on a great set of results. I have two questions, please. Firstly, financial services is your fastest growing core product category, even from a relatively small base. Just wondering if you could provide more color on the contribution from lending, insurance, savings, and other financial products. Explain which of these offerings you see becoming the most significant contributors to the revenue and profitability over the medium term. Secondly, looking beyond FY 2027, how should we think about the balance between customer acquisition and monetization across the footprint? In particular, are you more mature in top six markets, increasingly driven by usage and monetization while customer acquisition remains the larger opportunity in the rest of the business? Thank you. Yeah. Thanks. Sorry, the line wasn't so clear, so I hope I got your questions. Financial services, 4.7% of our business. The majority of that revenue in there today is coming from three line items. It's our lending business, it's the virtual cards, and there's a small amount coming from interest, which we earn on the float balances in three of our markets, or three and a half of our markets. We see the opportunity in the short term being driven by the lending business. There's clearly a large demand for short term and small micro loans across the portfolio. We're working to roll out a number of loan products across the 13 markets. We have been doing this in a rather cautious way, making sure that we pre-qualify customers, making sure that we manage the performance of those customers after they take a loan. We don't take any risk on those loans. We're partnering with the banks, and the banks cover the NPLs. We do need to make sure that we don't have any deteriorating impact on the active days of the wallet post-lending. So we're very cautious, and we step that up gradually every single month. The virtual cards, this is a product that comes with high take rates. It can open up the subscription economy across Africa. We're live in four markets now, and the plan is to continue rolling out these prepaid debit cards in conjunction with Mastercard, and our processing partner, Network International. In terms of the balance between customer acquisition and monetization, I think this is probably best displayed through the segments. East Africa, more mature. The customer base growth is probably slightly slower than what you're seeing in Francophone Africa, and you're seeing the mix change happen faster in East Africa because it's a much more mature business, because customers have been on our platform for longer, because they are more trusting of the brand and the wallets. We're starting to see the mix change happen quicker there. As opposed to Francophone Africa, under-penetrated, we're seeing a 40%+ customer growth in those markets, and that's leading to the 40%+ revenue growth in Francophone Africa, whilst ARPU is relatively flat. I think this is probably going to be the trend as we move forward in the next couple of quarters as well. Thanks very much. I will improve on my line next time. Thank you. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Darren Smith at 337 Frontier. Please go ahead with your question. Good afternoon, good morning, folks. Congratulations on the listing. Two questions, one on distribution. How much further can the agent network expand from here? It is surprising to see that kind of growth still. Just some color there. Second, we talked a little bit about commissions on cash in, cash out. It is surprising to see that your commissions as percentage of revenue has not declined over the last couple of years, given that dynamic. Is it just that it is too early that that shift in cash in, cash out has not declined enough? Other MoMo operators that we look at, we have seen that profile change dramatically over the years, and margins have expanded on the back of much lower commissions. Is there any reason to think that that is not going to happen for Airtel Money in the medium to longer term? Thank you. Yeah, thanks. I personally think that there's still more to go in building out the agent networks. Yes, there are markets where the agent network has already gone pretty deep and pretty wide. Again, some of these markets in East Africa, where we had a head start. If you look at Francophone Africa, and this is where probably the volume of agents growth has also come from. You take a country like the DRC, which is just massive, and you can literally drive for hours to get from one town to the other. There's definitely still opportunity to improve distribution and to drive agent density into not just the peripherals of cities which are growing with the level of urbanization that's happening, but also to get down deeper into the rural areas. For us, it's still going to remain a focus. There are also greenfield markets like Niger and Chad, where we're building the agent network for the first time. We're starting to see strong agent growth in those two countries specifically as well. Even in East Africa, I can tell you that the rural areas still have gaps, and because of the level of data that we have, we're pretty clued up in terms of where those gaps are and directing our sales team to go and help us to fill those gaps with the right quality agents. You will continue to see this number go up even in the short to medium term. In terms of commissions, you will see the same thing happening with Airtel Money. In fact, commissions have traditionally come down, especially as they are more maturing markets. As I said, the cash-in commission as a percentage to revenue starts to fall with bank interoperability. Where we've got national switches in place, we've definitely seen those commissions fall. In terms of that line item, just to bear in mind, it also has a couple of other costs in there. One is the variable cost from our virtual card, and the second is that interoperability costs are also sitting in that line item between revenue and gross profit. With the switches and all the interoperability growth that we're seeing, that number's also building up, and it may be cushioning what you're seeing in terms of the commission optimization that's happening. It would be helpful, I think, going forward, if there's any way that can be separated further. Whether you guys can do that or not, I don't know. Thank you for the response. Appreciate it. Thanks, and feedback noted. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tracy Kivunyu at SBG Securities. Please unmute your line and go ahead with your question. Thank you so much, and congratulations to the team for a great set of numbers. Few questions from me. First, to start with the app rollout progress. In a couple of quarters, or maybe a couple of months back, we talked about the initial rollout of the new app into Kenya, and you expect it to roll out into the rest of the other markets. Where are we on that, and how is that progressing in terms of how it is aligned to your acceleration in users in this quarter? Second on DRC, congratulations again, very strong acceleration in Francophone. I would just like to understand, what are you seeing differently there? What are you executing differently there to unlock this level of strong growth? DRC has historically been a very difficult market to operate in, so it would be interesting to know if there has been any improvements there. Third question is on Malawi and your ability to upstream or repatriate cash from there. Are you seeing any improvement in terms of that friction? Your finance costs were actually very well managed in this quarter, despite the Malawi kwacha remaining under pressure. The last question is on employee costs that seem to have accelerated in the second quarter. Is this still related to IG agreements or is there something separate there? Thank you. All right. Thanks. On the app, the app is rolled out and it is operating across all 13 countries. It is a joint app where we have the financial services leading and telco bolted on as well, so that we do not have to have customers deploy two separate apps with two cost of acquisitions in markets where smartphones often do not have the storage capacity for multiple apps. We are continuing to upgrade the app in terms of the interface, in terms of the products that are available on it. We have spent quite a bit of time over the last few quarters really improving customer journeys, looking at transaction drop-off rates, and fixing some of the user experience issues that may have been there in certain products. I think on the back of that, with our go-to market, and some of the investment that we have made, that is really translating into strong numbers, with app growth, as I said, at 65% up 4.1 million customers. Of course, there is a long runway there, and it is important for us because we do see the ARPU step up pre and post. Of course, the app cohort has a much stronger ARPU. There is some selection bias. That is a greater than a $9 ARPU on the app customers. In terms of the DRC, for us, it is a great market. We really believe in the strength of the DRC as a country. We know it is complex to operate there, but I think we have been doing this for many, many years as a group. There are three regions that we sort of break it into. You have your Kinshasa region, you have your mining belt at the bottom around Lubumbashi, and you have your eastern belt around Goma. We have focused actually in our strongholds, which is in the south of the country and the east of the country. We have put a lot of investment into our distribution assets. I think the execution of our DRC team has been fabulous in terms of delivering the agent growth, and the customer acquisition in those markets. We have also spent a lot of time really figuring out the right set of products for that market, because it is a slightly different market. It is the only market where we have dual wallets. We have a USD wallet and a local currency CDF wallet. We have a lot of services between those two wallets as well. It has been good growth, that is leading, and supporting the Francophone growth that we are seeing. We continue to invest in the DRC given the level of under penetration that we see from a mobile money perspective as an industry, with a long runway to sort of grow that towards East Africa levels. I will ask Alok on the Malawi upstreaming. Yeah. You have rightly mentioned Malawi is a challenging market. Official rate MWK 1,700. In H1 we have been able to upstream significant amount of dividend out of Malawi, definitely at a cost. This cost is booked as a finance cost. We upstream selectively depending upon the various deals which are available and various avenues which are available. We will continue to watch for this space and hope that over a period of time in Malawi will stable. On the employee cost, if you are looking at the back half of the present press release, the employee cost also include in a one-off IPO benefit. Stripping that employee cost increase is in line with the overall trends, largely on account of the additional headcount and annual salary increment. Thank you. All right. I think we are going to take— Thank you. —a few of the written questions now. Let's start with a question from Craig McDowell. He is asking on the DRC levies. How are you managing it? Are you taking the cost fully or is it being shared with customers? Are competitors taking the opportunity to price competitively given this change in regulation? Yeah. Thanks, Craig. So because the levy is a levy on revenue, it is one that we have absorbed into our P&L. It sits in the OpEx line as a regulatory cost. It is not one that we passed on to customers per se. But there were some adjustments that were made in different product areas in the DRC at the beginning of this year. So that has helped to sort of cushion some of the overall impact of the levy. In terms of competitors, again, the pricing landscape in the DRC is relatively mark to market, similar to most of our other competitive markets, where there is very little difference in terms of pricing between each of the competitors. Do you see the levy slowing down customers or transaction growth in the DRC? Not at this stage, actually. We are seeing strong growth in the DRC, and that is probably because we have absorbed it and not passed it on. Are you expecting any further levies in other countries? No. Look, I think other countries have implemented levies over the past few years. So we already have levies in Zambia, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, and now the DRC. Those are five out of our top six markets. There is nothing that we see in the short term. Of course, this can always happen. We have managed to absorb it in the past when this has happened or readjust the business model or the mix of the countries to ensure that we continue to deliver on our growth aspirations. Great. Thank you very much. The next question from [Muammar Ismaily] and [Jennifer] actually emailed us the same question. With regards to the Uganda shilling, are you concerned about the continued depreciation, Alok? What is your view what is causing this? Since September, Uganda currency has devalued significantly. Right now it is around UGX 4,500, almost 12%-15% devaluation since September. Definitely, if the currency devalues, it concerns. There are a few factors. Our business model is locally anchored. Both our revenues as well as the costs are in the same local currency. The FX cost between OpEx and CapEx put together is 3%-4% of revenue, not a significant amount. No significant debt in the balance sheet, in fact, zero debt. That means the translation risk is almost negligible. The risk comes in when a local currency is translated to dollar for the reporting purpose. We continue to grow significantly at the higher pace on the local currency. We cannot give a specific guidance on how the Ugandan currency will impact on our Q3 results. We have given the guidance that at group level, if all currency devalues at same time by 1% on FY 2026 basis, excluding dollarized DRC and euro-linked CFA countries, the impact would have been $11 million on revenue and $6 million on EBITDA at the group level. I will just add to that. I think that with where all the prices are right now, there are certain emerging market currencies that are under some pressure. Whether that is short or medium term lived, we will see. I think our focus is to keep the constant currency growth in all of these markets, at the levels that we have aspiration for and we have guided to. That should be sufficient to outpace the impact of currency devaluation, and still deliver a solid set of results. In terms of Uganda and the impact of it, we have disclosed in the prospectus what the percentage of revenue was at that time. You can use that to factor your calculation. Great. There are two more questions from [Wilma]. One is with regards to the $47 million tax dispute. He is saying that we made a 30% deposit of the assessed tax. Are you making any additional provisions? Yeah. Can you comment on the tax dispute? No, we have obtained an interim order staying an enforcement of 30% tax deposit. We have not paid any single amount on this one. We have classified this as a contingent liability, and there is no additional provision required at this point of time. The case is under legal dispute. In case there are any development, then we will come back. Got it. Next question is with regards to related party loans, $223 million, $152 million out of these is to the parent. What are the repayment terms here and do they impact future dividend payments in any way? Repayment terms, all the loans which are given to the parent, including at the OpCo level and the HoldCo level are callable on demand. These are short-term in nature, and definitely they do not have any impact on the future dividend payment. Mm-hmm. Next question comes from [Anton Berg]. "How does management think about using lower pricing in a market like Kenya to grow market share against a large incumbent?" Yeah, thanks, [Anton]. Look, in general, we do not actually like to mess around with pricing and customer pricing. To be honest, where we have, there is never really immediate elasticity that happens from lowering pricing if you do not have the rest of your fundamentals in place. So the strength of your agent network or the liquidity and floating cash in your markets, the user experience, the transaction success rate, and all of the other customer experience that is important in building trust before a customer will decide to use you as their wallet provider. Obviously, there is a large opportunity in Kenya. It is a big market. We are up against the Goliath in M-PESA. But I think we are making some good progress there. We have used some incentives and rewards, in terms of cashback programs, to try and incentivize customers to come and try us. That is now because we are confident that we have got a lot of the other fundamentals taken care of. Some of the things I just spoke about. So we are up to 11% customer market share in Kenya, as per the Central Bank of Kenya's recent report. We believe we can still push that further, and then we will look for opportunities to monetize that in a better way going forward. Mm-hmm. Great. Then we have a question from [Murian] regarding Nigeria. "The telco company, Airtel Africa, has an operation there. Why does not Airtel Money as one? Are there any plans to include Nigeria in future? What do you think about the opportunity in Nigeria and in rural Nigeria for Mobile Money? Yeah, thanks. Nigeria is an important market, of course, where there is 200+ million people. It is a big market. It is a complex market. It is heavily banked. 56% of the adult population have a debit card, one of the highest in Africa. 60% are banked. There are a lot of fintechs obviously operating in the market. Unfortunately, when we were licensed in Nigeria, it was a payment service bank license, which had specific regulation that it needed to be owned by the telco business. Today, Nigeria sits outside of our perimeter. As an industry, with the other telco Mobile Money arms, we are trying to work with the regulator to bring the fintech businesses into their rightful place, where all of the skill, the IP, and the technology sits. Over the next few quarters, we hope that we will be able to find a solution with the regulator. Whether it is the change in regulation on the existing license or whether it is looking at alternative licenses, hopefully we will have some way to bring the Nigerian opportunity back. We do think there is a good opportunity, and you are absolutely right, rural Nigeria definitely has a need still for a very strong payments provider and digital financial ecosystem. Great. I am afraid we are already past the allotted time, but I think the question from [Girish] has been answered already, and we had one more hand raised by [Lynette]. [Lynette], do you still have an audio question for us? We no longer have [Lynette], but we have another question from Madhvendra Singh at HSBC. Go ahead, please. Please go ahead. Yes, thanks a lot for taking my follow-up. It is actually on the shilling depreciation in Uganda. Now you have been operating in Africa for quite a long time. I am sure over those decades you have seen currency depreciations in many markets. In your experience, how does the constant currency revenue growth respond in the periods following the large depreciation of the local currencies? Typically, they are importing countries, they should import inflation with the currency depreciation that should actually boost your TPVs more or less over a period. Not immediately, though, but over a period. If you could talk about those aspects, it will be very interesting. Thank you. Madhi, as I have rightly pointed out, the currency depreciation has a direct and a correlation with transaction value. In case there is a currency devaluation, the inflation goes up, that means transaction value goes up. Our business model is simple, transaction value times take rate. In the past, we have seen wherever there is a large-scale currency devaluation, that particular OpCo is one of the fastest growth OpCo in terms of the constant currency. Yeah. I will just add to that as well. There is usually a bit of a lag. Of course, pricing does not move immediately. We saw a bit of a lag in the past when this happened in Malawi and Zambia. But then they did become fastest growing operations in constant currency, which helped us to cushion the impact on reported currency in the medium term. No, thank you. This is very, very helpful because that helps understand the moving part here. Because if the concern is that currency depreciation is bad, this other side of the story that it actually helps boost the growth later on, so you do recover the value over time. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. All right. I think Lynette is back online. I see her hand raised. That is the last question of the day then. [Lynette], your line is now open. Please go ahead. Maybe not the last question then. Let me take the question from [Muammar]. He is asking about the cross-border transactions. Are you seeing increased international transactions there through international transfers or P2P? Is that a metric that you are tracking given the opportunity in all certain market footprint? Yeah, absolutely. International money transfer is a great opportunity for us. Market size is roughly $50 billion-$60 billion of inflow coming into sub-Saharan Africa. In our market specifically, we are seeing inflows improve. We actually track the corridors that they're coming from and the partners that they're coming from as well. I think the next opportunity will be on outbound international money transfer from the markets, and that will be both global and Pan-African, and it's going to be subject to regulatory approvals. So each market is different, and each market will require a certain level of approvals. We have East Africa already approved in terms of those East Africa markets being able to transfer between one another. Given that if you look at our footprint, we cover countries which all sort of border with one another. I think we're in a great position to extract from the international money transfer opportunity for Pan-African payments. Excellent. Thank you very much. With that, we cleared all our questions. Just a quick IR update before I hand over to Ian for the closing remarks. Thank you all for joining today. We are looking forward to your feedback, and if you have any follow-up questions, do let us know at ir@airtelmoney.com via email. Our next results are due Q3 in January of next year. If you have any suggestions with regards to conferences, road shows, meetings where we should participate, let us know. We are just building up our Investor Relations program and very much looking forward to engaging with the buy side and also with the sell side. The blackout period for the syndicate analyst is going to be open pretty soon, and we are expecting more detailed coverage in November. With that, I hand over to Ian for the closing remarks. Okay. Thanks to everyone on the call today. Appreciate your time. Look, I am pleased with the first set of results, and I think it was a strong first half of results. Hopefully it demonstrates some disciplined execution from the management team. We are focused on obviously delivering value for our shareholders, and I think we are in line with the guidance that we have obviously put out, which is great. Ultimately, we are confident in the durability of this growth story, committed to executing on the strategy that we have set out in the presentation today, and we need to do that at speed. Really, we look forward to building on these results as a publicly listed company, and look forward to engaging further with each of you. So thank you once again. Thank you. This concludes the call.