China Mobile Limited (941) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to China Mobile Limited's 2021 Annual Results Briefing. To prevent the spread of COVID-19, we continue to communicate our results by way of telephone conference. We would appreciate your understanding on this. In today's presentation, I'll first go through the overall results for 2021. Then Mr. Dong Xin, our CEO, will talk about our operating performance. Finally, Mr. Li Ronghua, our CFO, will go through our financial results. Highlights of our operating performance in 2021 are summarized in the following 6 areas: first, we accelerated business transformation and upgrade and achieved outstanding business performance; second, our value-oriented operating practices use notable outcomes, and our innovative business gained strong momentum; third, we systematically optimized the layout of our new infrastructure and comprehensively enhanced our site innovation capabilities; fourth, we extended enterprise reforms in depth, and our Asia listings marked a new milestone; fifth, we touched our most important shareholders' returns and continuously create value for shareholders; sixth, we set the development goal of becoming a world-class information services and sci-tech innovation enterprise. By way of reference, we have provided results of key performance indicators for 2021 in this table. In 2021, faced various obstacles and challenges such as prevention and control of COVID-19, the disruptions of industry supply chains and a need for business transformation. We managed to mobilize everyone in China Mobile to work together and comprehensively promote digital intelligent transformation. We further our 5G+ plans and drove the comprehensive and integrated development of our CHBN markets. By doing so, we advance towards our goal of becoming a world-class information services and sci-tech innovation enterprise. And our high-quality development have viewed fresh outcomes. We achieved all-around growth in customer and enterprise values and shareholders' returns, along with our fastest revenue growth rate in a decade. Our net profit grew favorably, and overall business performance was remarkable. Operating revenues amounted to CNY 848.3 billion, up by 10.4% year-on-year. The growth rate was 7.4 percentage points higher than that of 2020. We have passed through a turning point and achieved a breakthrough in terms of revenue growth. Net profit stood at CNY 116.1 billion, up by 7.7% year-on-year, achieving favorable growth. Our profitability remained in a leading position amongst top-tier global telecoms operators. Return on equity was 9.8%, up by 0.3 percentage points over last year, maintaining our industry-leading position. Our business transformation and upgrade achieved significant breakthroughs. CHBN markets grew across the board, and revenue from the customer market recorded positive growth. The revenues from the home and business markets maintained revenue growth of over 20%, and [ thus ] from the new market, over 30%. Contributions of the home, business and new markets to service revenue increased by 4.3 percentage points to 35.7%, showing a further optimized revenue structure. Drawing on the advantage of our business scale, we continue to implement our value-oriented operating practices in greater depth. We achieved significant results in the comprehensive and integrated development of CHBN markets. We achieved all-around customer growth. Mobile customers, household broadband customers and corporate customers recorded net additions of 14.97 million, 25.88 million and 4.99 million, respectively. And IoT smart connections recorded net additions of 175 million, demonstrating a solid industry-leading position. We effectively enhanced customer value with a rebound in mobile ARPU, which increased by 3%. Household broadband blended ARPU increased by 5.6% year-on-year. We accelerated expansion -- extension of information services, and our innovative business gained strong momentum. Digital transformation revenue increased by 26.3% year-on-year to reach CNY 159.4 billion, accounting for 21.2% of subs revenue, up by 3.1 percentage points. It contributed nearly 60% of the growth of subs revenue to become our largest revenue growth driver. The second curve of growth with digital transformation revenue as the major component is leading us to explore a broader market in the bluer oceans of information services, amongst which, revenue from smart home value-added business reached CNY 20.7 billion, up by 33.1% year-on-year. And its contribution to the home market revenue went up by 1.9 percentage points over 2020. Revenue from digital content was CNY 16.8 billion, up by 47.1% year-on-year. DICT revenue amounted to CNY 62.3 billion, up by 43.2% year-on-year. And its contribution to the business market revenue went up by 6.9 percentage points over 2020. We maintained our leading position in the 5G vertical industry sector and launched 200 5G leading showcases, signed agreements with more than 2,800 high-quality commercial projects and developed 1,590 5G dedicated network projects, bringing the DICT contract value to more than CNY 16 billion. We have started implementing these projects at scale across a wide range of industries covering smart mining, smart factories, smart grid, smart metallurgy, smart ports and smart hospitals. Our mobile cloud [ speed it up ] is placed to become one of the top tier players in the industry with revenue of CNY 24.2 billion, up by 114% year-on-year, amongst which and-Caiyun customers from the customer and home markets exceed 130 million. For industry cloud, public cloud ran in the top 7 in the industry, and private cloud ranked the fifth. We systematically optimized the layout of our new information infrastructure with focuses on 5G, computing force network and smart meter platforms. For 5G, we fully implemented our 5G+ plan while advancing 5G network co-construction we're sharing with CBN. We're able to leverage combined balances of 2.6 gigahertz and 4.9 gigahertz capacity and 700 megahertz coverage to create synergy from multifrequency network and enable efficient deployment. We put in use, cumulative, more than 730,000 5G base stations and basically achieved continuous 5G network operate across urban districts, counties, towns and villages. With number of 5G network customers exceeding 200 million, we maintained our industry-leading position. For computing force network, we will construct a ubiquitous and integrate CFM to provide plug-and-play, ready-to-use computing force services. Applets will be made to provide efficient integrations for computing force in physical space, logical space and heterogeneous space. And by integrating computing with network, we will build a brain of computing network, enable an integrated scheduling and orchestration. We gradually promote computing force as an essential service, similar to water and electricity serving the whole society. For the supply of computing force, we responded to the national strategy of channeling more computing resources from the eastern areas to the western areas, establishing our 4+3+X data centers. With a total of 407,000 IDC cabinets available for external use, representing a net addition of 47,000. We continue to build up our cloud infrastructure and improve the layout of N+31+X mobile cloud infrastructure. For the Computing Force services, we actively explored business integration and innovation. During the Beijing Winter Olympics, we applied and integrated the metaverse concept to create digital intelligence sports personas, XR broadcasting studios, AR snowtowns and other snow applications to promote winter sports. Our Smart mid-end platform, we established an open and sharing smart mid-end platform, offering modular and ready to deploy capability services. In 2021, we centralized 325 common capabilities. And these capabilities were deployed more than 8.1 billion times per month on average, empowering digitalization and intelligence in more than 2,000 internal and external scenarios. Our Wutong big data centers cumulatively passes more than 600 petabytes of data, of scale that puts us at the forefront of the industry. We made great efforts to force technological innovation and transformation. We further increased R&D investments and continue to optimize our integrated layers for technological innovation system, effectively stimulating innovation and vitality and creating new drivers for our high-quality development. In 2021, our R&D investment amounted to CNY 18.6 billion. R&D investment as a proportion of revenue was 2.2%, and the size of our R&D staff force was around 14,000. As part of the national technological innovation system, we devoted ourselves scaling critical technological breakthroughs, developing first-class regional technologies and serving as a leader in the modern industrial chain. The innovation consortia we founded with industry partners worked fairly effectively to new breakthroughs in areas including cloud and network convergence, 5G+ beta and a cooperative vehicle infrastructure system. We're industry leaders in standard-settings, having cumulatively led 155 5G international standard-setting projects and applied for 3,600 5G patents, which positioned us among the top-tier global telecom operators in terms of the numbers of applications. We deepened enterprise reforms and open collaboration. For system reforms, we further optimized our corporate governance and market-oriented operational mechanisms and actively explored max ownership reforms, effectively stimulating business vitality. For organizational reforms, we implemented reforms in key operational areas in greater depth, improved organization layout of scientific and technological innovations, further deepened grid base reforms and continue to improve operational efficiency. For strategic cooperation, we proactively formed the deepened strategic partnerships with local governments, enterprises and public institutions, collaborating on the promotions of digital industry and digitalizations of industries. For ecosystem construction, we made concerted efforts to help upgrade the industry change through capital investments in funding and further expanded the information service ecosystem. We also follow the guiding directions of digital intelligent transformation and formed a cycle of relatives. On the 5th of January 2022, the company's A shares were officially listed on the main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, making us the first red-chip stock listed on the main board of A share market and marking another milestone in our history of development. We have introduced 19 diverse and high-quality strategic investors, including national level investment platforms, well-known leading enterprises in various news and long-term financial investors such as the National Social Security Fund. The powerful joint forces resulting from the collaboration of strong enterprises is set to maximize synergies to create a bright future for the digital economy. We always balances the interest of shareholders and the future development of the company and strive to provide better returns to shareholders and share the fruits of development on the basis of maintaining the long-term value of shareholders and ensuring the long-term development of the company. The Board recommends a cash dividend of 60% of the profit attributable to equity shareholders for the full year of 2021. It also recommends a final dividend payment of HKD 2.43 per share for the year ended 31st December 2021, an increase of 38% year-on-year. Together with the interim dividend of HKD 1.63 per share already paid, total dividend for the 2021 financial year amounted to HKD 4.06 per share, an increase of 23.4% year-on-year. To create higher returns for our shareholders and share the fruits of our operating gains after giving full consideration to the company's profitability, cash flow generation and future development needs, in the 3-year period from 2021, the profit to be distributed in cash for each year will gradually increase to 70% or above of the profit attributable to equity shareholders of the company for that year. The company will strive to create more value for shareholders. With advancement of a new wave of technological revolution and industry transformation, information technologies increasingly become the fiber of every aspect and process of the economy, society and people's livelihood. The pace at which the digital economy is developing and the breadth and depth of these impacts are in previously unseen levels. Connectivity, computing force and ability have gradually become the pillars to support the digital intelligent transformation in the society. The information and communications sector as a key driver of digital economic development. We have ample room for growth. It is estimated that by 2025, the revenue of China's information services industry will exceed CNY 20 trillion with a CAR of 14.4%, while its computing network market size will exceed CNY 1 trillion with a CAR of 25%. Faced with a new development trend, we reiterate our development goal of becoming a world-class information services and sci-tech innovation enterprise. We spare no efforts in building a new information service system of connectivity, computing force and ability based on 5G, computing force network and smart metering platforms in order to create a new model of value growth. 2022 is a critical transitional year in the 14th Five-year Plan, building on the past and preparing for the future. We will embrace new phase of development, fully, accurately and comprehensively implemented new principles of development and devoted ourselves to the new paradigm to promote high quality of development. We will pursue stable progress. We are forging ahead with a staff that's focused on innovation-driven development. At the same time, we still have concerted efforts to fund towards new positions of becoming a world-class information services and sci-tech innovation enterprise and implement our new strategy of building world-class at powerhouse. We drive new infrastructure, integrate new elements and instigate new growth momentum, striving to achieve favorable growth in subs revenue and net profit and consistently creating greater value for shareholders and customers. That basically concludes my part of the presentation. Now let me turn it over to Mr. Dong Xin for operating performance.

Thank you, Chairman Yang. I'm delighted to present our operating performance in 2021. In 2021, our CHBN markets grew across the board. By way of reference, we've shown in this table the revenue data of the CHBN markets. For customer markets, we further the integrated operations of data assets, applications and customer benefits and creating more synergy with the home, business and new markets. As of the end of December 2021, our mobile customer base reached 957 million, of which 5G package customers reached 387 million. Mobile ARPU amounted to CNY 48.8, up by 3%. Revenue for the customer markets grew by 1.4% to CNY 483.4 billion. For home market, we're focused on setting up a service suite that combines full gigabytes network connections for cloud-based applications. We saw favorable growth in both customers and revenue. Household broadband customers reached 218 million, of which mobile users reached 167 million. The customer growth rates, smart home network deployment, home security and smart remote controls all exceeded 100%. Revenue from the home market amounted to CNY 105 billion, up by 20.8%. Household broadband blended ARPU reached CNY 39.8, up by 5.6%. For business market, we promoted the scale and all-around development of network, cloud and DICT. In 2021, business market revenue amounted to CNY 137.1 billion, up by 21.4%. We consistently strengthened our cloud product structure. Our industry cloud achieved an industry-leading growth rate of revenue CNY 19.2 billion, up by 110%. We continue to optimize the 4+3+X data center deployment layout. IDC revenue increased by 33% to CNY 21.6 billion. For new markets, revenue amounted to CNY 30.3 billion in 2021, representing a growth rate of 34.2%, which hit a record high, of which revenues from international business and digital content were CNY 13.3 billion and CNY 16.8 billion, respectively. The digital content, the size of MIGU Video's monthly active customers climbed to rank third in the industry. For Internet finance, monthly active customers of and-Wallet recorded growth of 155.7%. For equity investments, equity investment income contributed 10.3% of net profit. In 2021, we spent an overall CapEx of CNY 183.6 million. We plan to spend CapEx of about CNY 185.2 billion in 2022, which will be mainly used for the construction of the first-class [ streaming ] with 5G network, the ubiquitous and convergent Computing Force network in industry-leading smart meter platform and support of CHBN business development, which 5G-related CapEx will be about CNY 110 billion. I would expect to put in use 1.1 million 5G base stations by the end of the year. CFM-related CapEx will be CNY 48 billion. And we expect that a cumulative of around 450,000 IDC cabinets will be available for standard use. More than 660,000 cloud servers were commissioned cumulatively. In 2022, we continue to strengthen our innovation-driven growth momentum with a budgeted R&D investments of around CNY 19 billion. We strive to enhance market presence by promoting quality products and increased efficiency by managing our business using scientific approaches. In 2021, we further improved product management and formulated a product system that fully covers CHBN businesses with 10 products that each recorded more than 100 million customers. In terms of penetration rates, mobile certification ranked first in the industry. MIGU Video, MIGO Music and and-Caiyun ranked industry top 3. We've also promoted the concept of management using scientific approaches, making it a common belief among staff members. We also proactively implemented target measures to different businesses and functional lines, achieving notable results in terms of collaboration between the central management, regional companies and specialized teams. Looking forward with an open attitude, we proactively cooperate with external partners and continue to provide high-quality information services, consistently improving our management level. We actively fulfilled our corporate responsibility and received wide-spread acclaim. For environment, we implemented the national strategy of clean carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality as well as established a new development model based on the free access of energy and six green initiatives with social responsibilities to further improve network speed upgrade and tariff reduction to benefit corporate and individual customers. We also supported coordination development across regions due to strong defense against COVID-19 using information technologies and successfully completed emergency rescue and disaster relief communication missions and network securities missions. The corporate governance continue to implement the compliance plan and strengthen risk and internal control management systems. As we move further into 2022, we adhere to our business strategies and advanced a comprehensive and integrated development of CHBN markers, striving to achieve favorable growth in service revenue and net profit. By way of reference, we have a list of major full year business targets on this slide. Now let me turn it over to Mr. Li Ronghua for our business performance. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dong. I'm delighted to present our 2021 annual financial results to you. In 2021, we continue to promote transformational development and recorded a favorable growth in both revenue and profit. Operating revenue was CNY 848.3 billion, up by 10.4% year-on-year, of which telecom service revenue was CNY 751.4 billion, up by 8% year-on-year. Sales of products revenue amounted to CNY 96.8 billion, up by 33.8% year-on-year. While we continue to strengthen cost management, we're appropriately increasing investments to support further transformation. Operating expenses increased by 11.4% year-on-year. Benefit to further optimizations of our wealth management product portfolio and enhancements to the rate of return, interest and other income went up by 16.7% year-on-year. For investment associates, SPD Bank, China Tower, et cetera, also brought contributions to our returns. Income from investments accounted for using the equity method reached CNY 11.9 billion. As a result, our net profit increased by 7.7% year-on-year to CNY 116.1 billion. Our profitability continued to stay at the leading level amongst top-tier global telecommunications operators. In terms of breakdown revenue growth by business, the increase in telecommunication service revenues was mainly due to growth in wireless data traffic, wireline broadband and applications and information services, of which the incremental revenue contributions from wireless data traffic, wireline broadband and applications and information services amounted to CNY 7.2 billion, CNY 13.4 billion and CNY 35.9 billion, respectively. As for breakdown of revenue contributions by CHBN markets, the incremental revenue contributions from the customer market, home market, business market and new market reached CNY 6.5 billion, CNY 17.3 billion, CNY 24.2 billion and CNY 7.7 billion, respectively. Going forward, we'll continue to drive the comprehensive and integrated development of our CHBN markets and advance digital intelligence transformation, promote continuous enhancement to business structure and accelerate the shift to growth drivers. As part of our consistent efforts to promote low-cost and high-efficiency operations, we tightened cost control measures involving all staff members and elements of production as well as our entire workflow, which generated desirable outcomes. Network operations and support expenses went up by 9% to CNY 225 billion. The increase is mainly attributable to the investment ramp-up in areas such as smart family, DICT and the construction of smart metering platforms to address accelerating transformation. In addition, we expanded the scale of our 5G and computing force network. The corresponding operation and maintenance expenses have gone up. Depreciation and amortization increased by 12% to CNY 193 billion. We have adjusted residual value rate of certain assets to further enhance the quality of assets. After excluding the associated impact, depreciation and amortization grew by 6.5% year-on-year on a comparable basis. Employee benefits and related expenses increased by 11.5% to CNY 118.7 billion. The government introduced a one-off [ XIAOXUE ] insurance reduction and exemption policy during the COVID-19 outbreak last year, resulting in the lower base of comparison in the same period of 2020. Meanwhile, we have further increased resources to nurture and recruit management talents for the business in new markets as well as R&D talent for the use of 5G and AICDE. Selling expenses decreased by 3.4% to CNY 48.2 billion. The decrease mainly due to decelerating channel transformation, we have strengthened our online sales and service capabilities. The efficiency of the utilizations of market resources further improved. Benefited by favorable growth in revenue and sound cost control, our profit model continued to rise. EBITDA increased by 9.1% year-on-year to CNY 311 billion. EBITDA accounted for 41.4% of telecom service revenue, up by 0.4 percentage points. Net profit reached CNY 116.1 billion. Basic earnings per share increased by 7.7% year-on-year to CNY 5.67. The company continued to record favorable cash flow. Net operating cash flow increased by 2.3% year-on-year to CNY 314.8 billion. Free cash flow went up by 3.2% year-on-year to CNY 131.2 million. Our capital structure maintained stable and healthy with corporate credit rating equivalent to China sovereign ratings. In 2022, we continue to stimulate the company's vitality and value creation by enhancing the management efficiency, resource efficiency, asset efficiency and capital efficiency. Meanwhile, we've further strengthened our risk prevention and control system to safeguard healthy operations of the company and achieve high-quality development. This is the end of our presentation and analysis of our 2021 annual results. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]