China Mobile Limited (941) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to China Mobile Limited's 2024 Annual Results Presentation. In today's presentation, I will first brief you on our overall results for 2024. Then Mr. He, Biao; our CEO, will talk about our operating performance. Finally, Mr. Li, Ronghua; our CFO, will walk you through our financial results. The company attained good progress in 2024. First, we delivered favorable operating performance. Second, we obtained significant achievements in business transformation. Third, we achieved key results in the 3 major programs. Fourth, our reforms fully unleashed vitality. Fifth, we continue to increase shareholder returns. Sixth, we made all our efforts to become world-class. We have set out our key performance indicators for 2024 in our materials for your reference. Amid a complex and stressful external environment marked by various challenges, the company united as a team and remain committed to scaling new heights in 2024. We seized the significant opportunities brought about by the development of new quality productive forces to the information services industry. We continue to implement the 1-2-2-5 strategy and achieved favorable operating performance. Operating revenue reached CNY 1,040.8 billion, up 3.1% year-on-year. Telecommunications Services revenue reached CNY 889.5 billion, up 3% year-on-year. Net profit reached CNY 138.4 billion, up 5% year-on-year and hit a new record high. We effectively realize the company's value, taking up a leading position amongst global operators in terms of total market capitalization. Our brand also secured a prominent position in the brand value ranking issued by international authoritative institutions. Thanks to our continuous efforts to consolidate our fundamental advantages and effectively stimulating growth drivers, we obtained significant achievements in business transformation. Total number of connections reached 3.67 billion with a net increase of 320 million. The numbers of mobile customers and wireline broadband customers surpassed 1 billion and 300 million, respectively. We maintained our position as a global leading operator in terms of network scale with industry top-tier customer satisfaction. Digital Transformation revenue reached CNY 278.8 billion, up 9.9% year-on-year. It accounted for 31.3% of Services revenue and represented an increase of 1.9 percentage points from last year. Digitalization revenues from all 4 customer, home, business and new end markets grew across the board. We achieved key results in the 3 major programs. We accelerated the upgrade of the 2 new elements with ongoing improvement of smart digitalization infrastructure. We spent an overall CapEx of CNY 164 billion for 2024. CapEx to revenue ratio stood at 18.4%, down 2.5 percentage points year-on-year. Our dual gigabit network maintained a leading position. Accumulatively, there were over 2.4 million 5G base stations put into use. We have built the world's first large-scale commercial 5G-A network with RedCap covering all cities nationwide and gigabit broadband covering 480 million households. Our computility network continued to lead the industry. Our intelligent comp utility capacity has reached 29.2 EFLOPS, representing a net addition of 19.1 EFLOPS. Our megascale intelligent computing centers with 10,000 level processor capacity in Hohhot and Harbin have commenced operation and provided services. Our 400G backbone OTN was selected as one of the top 10 mega projects of China's Central SOEs in 2024. We have comprehensively upgraded our data centers towards AIDC. Our integration platform applications continue to expand. We have launched 1,348 capabilities on the platform with a total number of deployments reaching 777.6 billion. We continue to optimize our smart info service spectrum. Our product offerings have significantly expanded. In the mass market, 17 products have a customer base exceeding 100 million. And in the corporate market, 6 products have generated revenues exceeding CNY 10 billion. China Mobile Cloud comfortably positioned itself as a first-tier domestic cloud service provider, expanding more than 370 intelligent computing services. The number of new visual Internet connections has gone up by 165% year-on-year. Revenue from our security business has gone up by 103%. For the low altitude economy, we have set benchmarks for 50 applications and our Beidou satellite messaging service was newly launched. We have continuously improved our customer service with the proportion of AI+ service continuously increasing. We have also persistently strengthened brand-building efforts with brand rejuvenation for China Mobile Aijia gaining huge popularity. Further, we stepped up efforts to profoundly advance channel transformation with a number of monthly active customers of China Mobile APP exceeding 230 million, up by 46.9% year-on-year. We comprehensively pushed forward the BASIC6 sci-tech innovation initiatives with fruitful results. We won 2 First Prize awards and 3 Second Prize awards in The State Scientific and Technological Progress Award. We achieved more robust innovation and technological breakthroughs. In tackling turnkey technologies, our computility network brain achieved large-scale nationwide commercial use. We proposed the industry's first 5G-A integrated sensing and communications technology system. And our 6G communications, sensing, computing and intelligence integrated test device was selected as a major technological achievement at the Zhongguancun Forum. Our Jiutian large model became the first central state-owned enterprise developed large model to obtain dual filing. And our quantum computing cloud platform was selected for the National Supercomputing Internet Platform by the Ministry of Science and Technology. In terms of standards and patents, we ranked first amongst global operators in leading the setting of 5G international standards. We also served as the joint reporter in 3GPP for the world's first project on 6G standard. We have more than 17,000 effective patents in total. Our innovation yielded more prominent outcomes. We made significant contributions to the commercial conversion of scientific innovation outcomes, creating over 48,000 5G industry commercial cases. We promoted DSSN to become the mainstream technical facility and implementation plan for the national data circulation and utilization infrastructure. Also, we continue to improve the sci-tech innovation system and mechanism further strengthening our Unified Five Rings innovation system, the sci-tech reform echelon and the talent pool under the ten 100,000, 10,000 program. The company seized opportunities to promote the AI+ initiative with progress in full swing. Our AI+ capabilities continue to optimize. We have honed high-quality core AI capabilities. Our duty in general large model was selected as one of the top 10 national pillar brands amongst central state-owned enterprises in 2024. In addition, we have deployed 40 AI industry large models in sectors such as energy, transportation, health care and education, assisting various industries in intelligent transformation, digital transformation and network integration. We aggregated a high-quality AI industry ecosystem, actively building the Jiutian ecosystem aggregation platform, introducing multiple high-quality domestic and international large models, datasets and intelligent agents. The China Mobile Cloud is advancing through a strategic transformation and upgrade with a shift from cloud infrastructure to smart capabilities and with basic cloud products undergoing comprehensive AI iterations as well as a new large model service platform. Our innovative AI+ applications have proliferated. We have launched 24 AI+ products and 39 AI+DICT applications, accelerating the comprehensive upgrade to intelligent services. In the corporate market, we have established more than 100 AI+DICT showcases covering central and provincial state-owned enterprises, higher education institutions and leading enterprises across industries and securing more than 500 projects. In the mass market, there were 190 million customers using our AI-powered products. We have launched our AI agent, China Mobile AI intelligent assistant Lingxi. The company continued to drive reforms and enhance management fully unleashing growth fatality. Mechanism reforms have progressed in greater depth with the development of an implementation outline for furthering reforms across the board and the orderly launch of multiple key reform measures. Ground level reforms were effectively implemented with remarkable progress seen in scientific reform action, Double-hundred Action and the reform that drives transformation towards specialized, refined, differentiated and innovative operations. Management was enhanced using scientific approaches to optimize the collaborative mechanism between the headquarters, regional companies and specialized teams and to continuously upgrade precise and quality management. We continue to cultivate a prosperous and thriving digital intelligent ecosystem by strategic cooperation, capital cooperation, innovation cooperation and ecosystem cooperation amongst other means. Our circle of relatives and circle of friends are constantly expanding. We obtained comprehensive progress on green development and solidly fulfilled social responsibilities on top of our remarkable results in corporate governance. Our overall ESG performance has won wide recognition and we have been awarded the highest 5-star excellence rating in the 2024 China ESG listed companies Pioneer 100 list for 2 consecutive years. The Board recommends a dividend payout ratio of 73% for the full year of 2024. It also recommends a final dividend payment of HKD 2.49 per share for the year ended the 31st of December 2024. Together with the interim dividend already paid, total dividend for the full year of 2024 amounted to HKD 5.09 per share, an increase of 5.4% year-on-year. To create higher returns for our shareholders and share the results of our growth after giving full consideration to the company's profitability, cash flow generation and future development needs in the 3-year period from 2024, the profit to be distributed in cash for each year will gradually increase to above 75% of the profit attributable to equity shareholders of the company for that year. The company will strive to create more value for shareholders. Moving forward, we operate in a business environment where opportunities and challenges are intertwined, offering ample growth potential. We are at a critical stage with strategic opportunities, business transformation and intensive reforms all interwoven. On the one hand, the external environment has become more difficult and complex. Despite being on the path to recovery, the macro economy remains fragile. This is coupled with weak effective demand and consumption, causing difficulty in production and operations for some businesses. Traditional communications demand is becoming saturated. Homogenous competition within the industry is intensifying and cross-disciplinary competition is becoming more complex. On the other hand, we see valuable opportunities as our business transforms. First, the positive long-term macroeconomic trajectory has not changed with the vast market scale, well-equipped industry system, abundant labor and talent and other favorable conditions. Second, economic and social development has opened up new spaces for information services. Strategic emerging industries and future industries are accelerating development, while traditional sectors are speeding up their transformation and quality upgrade. The demand for a cost effective, high-tech, high emotional value and beautiful digital life is growing. The development of smart cities is on the fast track. Third, the evolution of information technology has brought about new growth opportunities for information services. AI-powered smart devices, intelligent connected vehicles and smart robots are fast becoming the new trio of information consumption across personal vehicle and home scenarios. AI+DICT will become the new form of information services driving the rapidly rising popularity of new productivity platforms such as Model-as-a-Service. These developments mark the full arrival of the AI+ era. Facing all of these opportunities and challenges, we will closely adhere to the 1-2-2-5 strategic implementation plan and put the 3 major programs into full practice. We will further reform and drive innovation, transformation and the cultivation of new growth drivers. We will continue to refine operations and implement precise management. Focusing on the customer-centric philosophy, existing customer and value operations based on market segmentation will become our long-term strategy. We will strengthen the 2 new elements and expand the scale effect of A+, while vigorously promoting the deep integration of technological and industry innovations and striving for breakthroughs in the BASIC6 sci-tech innovation initiative. We will implement supply side reforms to support high-quality development, alongside other reforms in innovation, systems and mechanisms. We will advance all these measures in a practical and effective manner, weaving precision, refinement and efficiency across the full process of operations and management and empowering management and performance improvement with digital intelligence. We will reinforce the new paradigm of high-quality development and be committed to becoming a world-class information services and sci-tech innovation enterprise and creating greater value for our shareholders and customers. That's the end of my presentation. Now I would like to invite Mr. He, Biao, to introduce our operating performance.

Thank you, Chairman Yang. Next, I will present the operating performance of the company for 2024. We comprehensively advanced our CHBN strategy and drove the integrated development across all 4 markets. Thanks to our all-out efforts, we have successfully achieved our 2024 revenue target. The table displays our revenue data for your reference. For the customer market, we continue to use a holistic approach to manage existing and new customers and refined our operations. We maintained stable development of this market. The number of mobile customers surpassed the 1 billion mark with mobile ARPU standing at an industry-leading figure of 48.5. We continue to adopt a brand-first operating strategy and refine the management of existing customers with revenue from benefit products reaching 26.8 billion, up 19.7% year-on-year. We have fostered customer segments and use cases with a cumulative sales volume of M-zone Mango Card product reaching 29.77 million. We have also promoted the transformation of growth drivers with revenue from personal China Mobile Cloud drive increasing by 12.6% year-on-year to reach 8.9 billion. The number of monthly active customers of our AI agent Lingxi exceeded 23 million. Turning to the Home market. Thanks to our efforts to promote smart upgrades with value uplift, the Home market achieved favorable growth. Revenue from the Home market was CNY 143.1 billion, up 8.5%. Household broadband customers reached 278 million, a net increase of 14.05 million. Household customer blended ARPU reached 43.8. We have strengthened a brand-first approach on China Mobile Aijia, AI Home, brand to foster integration and expansion and propelled smart home upgrade, application upgrade and service upgrades. The numbers of gigabit broadband customers and FTTR customers increased by 25% and 376% year-on-year, respectively. The number of AI+ mobile home security customers reached 12.8 million, while revenue of elderly care services increased by 85.5%. We have also released 27 service pledges under the China Mobile Aijia Three Hearts initiative. For the business market, we continue to leverage our strong capabilities and deeply cultivate vertical industries. As a result, we achieved favorable growth in the business market. Revenue from the business market was CNY 209.1 billion, an increase of 8.8%. We maintained a leading position in terms of the proportion of contracts won in open tenders in the industry, which stood at 16.6%. We continue to reinforce three-pronged conversions of our offerings, launching 99 solutions with 3-pronged conversions. At the same time, we have scaled up key businesses and markets. China Mobile Cloud revenue reached CNY 100.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 20.4%. We also saw net increases of 14.43 million factory installed IoV connections and 21.4 million commercial customer packages. We have also proactively extended our footholds in new quality sectors with Big Data revenue reaching CNY 5.6 billion. Our capabilities for the low-altitude economy and secure operation services have systematically taken shape. In terms of the new market, we insisted on pursuing innovation and breakthroughs and increasing contribution. We saw favorable growth in the New market. Revenue from the New market reached CNY 53.6 billion, an increase of 8.7% year-on-year. We have made efforts to grow the footprint of our international business in which revenue has recorded double-digit growth for several consecutive years. We have enriched our offerings of innovative digital content with the monthly active users of MIGU Video reaching 520 million, up 12.1% year-on-year. We have also strengthened FinTech application, where the scale of our industry chain finance business has increased by 52% year-on-year to CNY 116.5 billion. For fostering industry investment synergy and collaboration investment gains from our equity investment amounted to CNY 11.1 billion, an increase of 23.9% year-on-year. Our major full year operating targets are detailed here for your reference. This year, the company will remain committed to high target, high standards and high operating efficiency. We will build new patents of high-quality development, striving to achieve a new phase of high-quality development characterized by a stable increase in revenue growth rate and favorable growth in profit. We will adhere to targeted investments to continuously strengthen the foundation of digital intelligence. Planned CapEx for 2025 amounted to CNY 151.2 billion, a decrease of CNY 12.8 billion from 2024. CapEx to revenue ratio will continue to decrease. By the end of this year, we expect to have accumulated 2.75 million 5G base stations, more than 500 million households with gigabit broadband coverage and more than 34 EFLOPS of intelligent comutility. We will further deepen business transformation to enhance high-quality market development capabilities. While market segmentation will continue to be our core development approach, we will maintain customer retention and value generation as our long-term strategic priorities. While strengthening product offerings and innovation capabilities as our overarching operating guidelines, we will comprehensively advance the transformation to customer integration, AI-powered products and services, platform-based operation and sales and marketing efficiency, achieving evolutions in quality, driving forces and efficiency. Key initiatives include: first, we will put in place a system upgrade that facilitates the seamless integration of the market and our business. We will continue to deepen our engagement in CHBN markets, prioritize 5 key customer groups, fortify the 5 + 9 business system, bolster the first growth curve of telecom services while strengthening the second growth curvey of information services. Second, we will focus on integrated operations of existing and new customers and efficient segment-based operations, shifting our development approach from pursuing quantitative leadership based on scale to qualitative leadership with a focus on improving effectiveness and efficiency. Third, we will focus on product innovation to promote AI-powered products and services, transforming growth drivers from telecom services to AI+ information services. Fourth, we will focus on building an efficient open and intensive operation platform, transforming the operating model from telecom operations to platform-based operations. These efforts will ultimately enable us to achieve stable growth in our long-term value. Now I would like to invite Mr. Li, Ronghua, to present our financial performance.

Thank you, Mr. He. I will now present our financial performance for the year of 2024. In 2024, we continue to advance our digital intelligence transformation while pursuing high-quality development and achieved good financial performance. Operating revenue reached CNY 1,040.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 3.1%, of which Telecommunications Services revenue were CNY 889.5 billion, up by 3.0% and revenue from sales of products and others reached CNY 151.3 billion, up by 3.8% year-on-year. While we continue to strengthen cost management, we have appropriately increased our investment to promote transformational development, resulting in a 2.7% year-on-year increase in operating expenses. The company strengthened its fund management and operations, leading to an 8.9% year-on-year growth in interest and other income. Benefiting from the improved efficiency of the invested companies, income from investments accounted for using the equity method increased by 23.9% year-on-year. As a result, our net profit increased by 5% year-on-year to CNY 138.4 billion. Our profitability continued to stay at a leading level amongst top-tier global telecommunications operators. In terms of breakdown of revenue growth by business, growth in traditional businesses has slowed down, while the revenue contribution from wireline broadband Applications and Information Services business has steadily increased, reflecting a smooth transition of growth momentum, of which the revenue from wireline broadband increased by 9.6% year-on-year and the revenue from Applications and Information Services increased by 10% year-on-year. Going forward, we will further deepen the digital intelligence transformation and promote the continuous optimization of revenue structure. The company continued to enhance quality and efficiency and strengthen precise and quality management, achieving favorable results in cost control. Network operation and support expenses amounted to CNY 283.3 billion, up 5.4%. This was primarily driven by the continued expansion of transformation businesses and increased investment in innovation. Depreciation and amortization decreased by 7.7% to CNY 191.1 billion, mainly attributable to the impact of adjustments to depreciable lives of 5G wireless and related transmission equipment. Employee benefit and related expenses were CNY 151.9 billion, up 5.3%, which was mainly due to the in-depth implementation of the sci-tech and innovation-driven strategy and ongoing efforts to increase incentives for scientific and technological personnel. Selling expenses amounted to CNY 54.6 billion, up 4%, due to increased spending on channel operations and customer services. Other operating expenses were CNY 68 billion, up by 14.6%, which was mainly due to the increase in expenses for settlement of international business and others. Our profitability continued to improve with net profit of CNY 138.4 billion, up 5% year-on-year. The annualized return on equity was 10.1%, up 0.1 percentage points year-on-year. The company's cash flow performance remains healthy and sufficient. Net cash generated from operating activities amounted to CNY 315.7 billion, up 3.9%. Free cash flow reached CNY 151.7 billion, up 22.9%. Our capital structure maintained stable and healthy with corporate credit ratings equivalent of China sovereign ratings. In 2025, the company will focus on enhancing quality and efficiency, strengthening precise and quality management and reinforcing risk prevention and control. We aim to see progress while maintaining stability and leverage progress to reinforce stability continuing to build a new pattern of high-quality development and striving to create greater value for shareholders. This is the end of our presentation and analysis on our 2024 annual results. Thank you. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]