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TurkCell: A Worthwhile Long Term Investment

I was also impressed by Turkey and the Turkish people on a visit in 2002. My wife has been very impressed by the quality of TKC employees in her interactions with their technical staff. But most importantly, I just like the value here. Despite a 38% drop in the lira relative to the dollar, they're still on track to make roughly $1.38 billion this year (this is just a guestimate = 4 x Q1 earnings). With a market cap of $11.33 billion, this gives them a P/E of 8.2. If the dollar hadn't had such a huge run-up vs. the lira, earnings for this year would probably be close to last year's $1.84 billion (Q1 earnings in lira dropped only 3.5%). That would leave you with a P/E of roughly 6.2. And as Albert Mayer pointed out, they've got a solid balance sheet, with Cash and Equivalents minus total liabilities of over $500 million. Finally, the dividend payout is roughly 6.2%; not bad.