HKT Trust and HKT Limited (6823) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good evening, and welcome to the HKT 2023 interim results webcast. In attendance today, we have Susanna Hui, Group MD; and Patrick Poon, Chief Financial Officer. We'll start with the presentation followed by Q&A. And with that, let me turn it to Susanna.

Good evening. Thank you for attending the HKT interim results announcement webcast. For the first half, I think with the reopening of the borders and also lifting of the COVID restrictions by the end of last year, we saw travel resumed and obviously, the related domestic private consumption also revived. And -- so despite that there is lingering uncertainty around the pace of economic recovery in Hong Kong, with HKT scale and broad portfolio of service offerings, we delivered a set of very solid results, achieving a 3% in terms of our service revenue growth, particularly marked by the 10% growth in our Enterprise revenue and 5% growth in our Mobile Services revenue. EBITDA also expanded by 3% on the back of continued operating efficiencies, while AFF grew by 2.2%, leading to a distribution of HKD 32.05 per SSU. Let us first look at our Mobile business. I think the most obvious evident trend is the roaming revenue inflecting, driving a 5% growth, as I said earlier, in terms of the Mobile Services revenue for the first 6 months, on the back of subscriber expansion as well as 5G penetration. Overall, we see the postpaid customer base grew by 2%, with net additions of 78,000 during the first 6 months. Of note is that our premium 1O1O base also expanded by 2%, with net adds of 17,000 for the period. Postpaid churn rate further improved to 0.8% from 0.9% for the same period last year. And postpaid exit ARPU also lifted by HKD 2 to HKD 189. Now as I was saying, roaming revenues saw a strong rebound during the first half. And year-on-year growth achieved was more than 160%. Now this represents up to 63% recovery of the pre-COVID levels. And in particular, Q2 was very strong, with roaming recovery up to 75% of the same period in the year 2019. However, we did see and observed that in terms of the commercial segment that they were a little bit lagging behind, obviously, due to the still cautious attitude towards corporate travel. But the recent trend is very encouraging. In June, single month, both a number of roamers as well as consumer outbound roaming revenue already exceeded the pre-COVID levels that has exceeded the June level in 2019. And total revenue actually reached more than 80%, and we did think that this 80% recovery will be achieved for the full year as well as we are benefiting from more inbound visitors expected in the second half. Now looking at the 5G customer upgrade. The penetration of our postpaid customer base continue to deepen. As of July, we now have 1.27 million 5G customers, which represents 38% of our total postpaid base versus the overall penetration of 29% in the Hong Kong market. Indeed, 5G conversion is even more pronounced in our premium segment, representing around 45% penetration across our 1O1O and CSL brand segments. But of course, it might be inevitable that the future pace of 5G migration and the related ARPU uplift growth will be a little bit slower than the initial upgrade phase. In terms of our network investment, during the first half, we continue to invest in the network using different spectrum and state-of-the-art equipment. This included, number one, deploying 4x4MIMO technology in the 700 megahertz band to boost indoor performance as well as to enhance the outdoor coverage in rural areas. Secondly, we employed dual C-Band 3.5 gigahertz and 4.9 gigahertz, massive MIMO base stations in order to double the speed and capacity for the heavy traffic areas. And number three, we continue to roll out the 3.3 gigahertz in order to specifically tackle the indoor coverage, in particular, with deployment of the new LampSite technology for 5G indoor coverage in F&B and retail outlets. And finally, we have also started technical trials on mmWave 28 gigahertz in selected locations, which we believe will deliver significantly higher speeds for indoor and also for FWA use in remote areas. Now while our mobile network is well integrated and supportive of our unique 100-gig-ready citywide fiber network, we are ensuring that these high-speed network, fixed and mobile, will reach all parts of Hong Kong. And including the traditional remote areas and outlying islands, which is, in particular, supported by the government through its subsidy scheme launched a few years back. And this is, of course, to ensure Hong Kong development as a smart city. During the first half, we completed the connection of Lamma Island with a dedicated optic fiber cable, with similar cables already connected to Peng Chau and Cheung Chau Islands. So household in these locations can now enjoy home broadband speeds of up to 10 gig. And of course, our Now TV content in 4K as well. This would also entirely improve mobile performance through the faster backhaul connections to the cell sites. Now looking at our broadband business. With working from home streaming and Web3 applications becoming the norm, consumer demand for even higher bandwidth connections is indeed accelerating. To address this, we launched upgrade campaign in May from 1,000 meg to 2,500 meg, and this has the impact of lifting ARPU by HKD 98. To date, the take-up has been are really encouraging. Upgrade to 2,500 meg has also the advantage of enabling seamless migration in future to 5 gig and 10 gig service without additional field visit. And in May also, we were the first to launch the 5 gig fiber service as well, reinforcing navigator's leading position. And we do expect that this adoption of higher speed Fiber-to-the-home service will endure, especially when the Wi-Fi 6E devices are becoming increasingly available at affordable prices. And eventually, we are expecting the Wi-Fi 7 devices will also be available in 2024. So now every household member will be able to enjoy high-speed broadband in every corner of their home. And therefore, for the first half, our consumer broadband base continued to grow with net adds of 4,000, to a total of 1.468 million subscribers. Churn was very stable despite the price competition in the market and also the lingering impact of emigration of Hong Kong families. Now fiber uptake continued with FTTH subs further increasing by 2% year-on-year to over 986,000 subscribers, representing around -- penetration of around 67% of our base. And in terms of our range of home broadband solutions, it is not just connectivity, we also provide home Wi-Fi solutions. And you can see here that the Home Wi-Fi solution also saw a 2% increase in the customer base, which is now 345,000, representing a penetration of 24%. This continued upselling of the WiFi solutions, routers and so on to homes will continue to drive revenue growth going forward. Of course, core to our strategy is the extension of our offerings beyond connectivity and to address the growing demands of Smart Living solutions in order to enhance quality of living. So on top of us directly selling to consumers, we also have partnerships with property developers in terms of [ B2B ] side. So during the first half, we signed contracts with over 41 new residential projects being signed, which is up 20% from the previous years. And projects include names like China Resources, University of Hong Kong, to bring our solutions to their properties as well as to university campuses. And together with our JV partner, we also provide Smart Charge EV solutions. This momentum of this Smart Charge solutions is expected to take off as EV adoption accelerate in the city. To date, we have implemented solutions across 32 large-scale residential estates already on both owned and rental models. Turning to our Now TV business. As we are saying, we are the only Pay TV operator in Hong Kong. Competition does not come from others, but come from the D2C video streaming offerings by the OTT operators. And of course, to differentiate ourselves, we -- Now TV continue to expand our strength in terms of offering of live sports content. So on top of the original exclusive British Premier League, the golf tournament and so on, we have, during the first half, had renewed three more seasons for LaLiga. We have added Formula One, the recent Wimbledon Tennis Championships as well as the recent FIFA Women's World Cup. And also following the recent market consolidation, we have deepened penetration in terms of the commercial segment, particularly in hotels, which enjoyed a very strong rebound from the border reopening and also initial return of inbound visitors. So we saw subscribers grow by 4% during the first 6 months to almost 1.428 million, adding new screens of around 50,000, bringing in incremental contract value of more than HKD 100 million. Now -- just now, I did say that one of the highlights of our performance for H1 was the enterprise segment, with local data and project revenue increasing by 10%. And this was contributed -- if you look at the slide here, is contributed by the growing 5G application in several specific industries, supported by our divert and customer-centric portfolio of enterprise solutions. And projects in the first half included Smart Healthcare, basically private 5G networks in the different hospitals, Smart Campus. Just now, we talked about the different universities. And on the commercial side, we also have developed Smart applications and IoT control facilities and private network for the university campuses. We have also penetrated into the Smart property and hotel side as well. So next slide. In addition to the 5G private network and application, we also are leveraging our unique fixed mobile network together with emerging technologies in AI, Cloud, IoT, AR/VR and so on to expand our managed solutions to both the private and government sectors across different industries. Solutions being offered include all the omnichannel AI-enabled contact center, AI-enabled modern workplace solutions, cybersecurity solutions and so on. And this is aimed to improve our customers' productivity, promote sustainability and obviously, to address manpower shortages as well. With enterprises focusing on digital transformation, the total contract value of new project wins for the first 6 months hit HKD 1.7 billion, which represents a year-on-year growth of 9%, and we remain confident that the new contract momentum will continue into the second half. Another growth area is China, especially the GBA. So while we continue to support Hong Kong enterprise as expanding their reach in Mainland, we are also supporting the Chinese enterprises expanding into Hong Kong and beyond. And industries covered include retail, financial services and biopharmaceutical as well. In particular, we also see revival of business opportunities in Macau, as the gaming sector recovers with diversification to entertainment and resort facilities. So overall, for the first half, we reported China revenue growth of around 21% year-on-year, and we are on track in terms of hitting the HKD 1 billion top line target in short order. Turning to our loyalty program. The Club remains at the center of our digital ecosystem, and we saw our Club member base expanding by 4% year-on-year to 3.78 million. And it is also worth pointing out that around 35% to 40% of this subscriber -- member base is basically non-HKT service customers. So it represents a very good pool of customers for us to tap into. Now The Club continues to offer a range of premium digital services to members, ranging from e-commerce, insurance, personal finance, online travel packages as well as telemedicine. And because of the pent-up demand from consumers, we did see lifestyle items, including dining, wine and dine and travel product spending expanding by 8% for the first 6 months, which are quite in line with the government report yesterday in terms of the growth in the Q2 for the private domestic consumption. And obviously, we are expecting that H2 will -- we will continue to see the spending and the reward in terms of Club members continue to increase. Now next slide is the Tap & Go -- our Tap & Go payment platform, which is handling basically online and off-line transaction securely and efficiently. Our Tap & Go account expanded to around 3.71 million, which is an increase of 5% year-on-year. And 2 major highlights for first half for Tap & Go is that, number one, we continue to support the CVS consumption voucher disbursement by the government in its third year and that we were selected as part of a consortium to participate in the monetary authorities' Hong Kong Dollar Pilot Programme. All these experiences have positioned us as a wallet of digital assets should the development of e-HKD take off in future. For our merchant payment solutions, our smart point-of-sale solutions also registered an increase of 20% in the first half, with merchant subscription totaling 8,000 now across Hong Kong. The smart point-of-sale solutions provide invaluable transactional and point-of-sales data, which would enable merchants to accurately monitor and analyze their sales activity. And obviously, this is most helpful in terms of helping SMEs enhancing their credit data for future borrowings. And in the meantime, we will be continuing in terms of integrating our financial services, offerings onto the Club ecosystem, including the ability to use our Club point in the various smart POS solutions used by the different merchants and also allowing the Tap & Go customers to have mini platform to buy basically our Club products as well. Now with elevated focus of consumers on their health, post-COVID, it is also worth pointing out that our telehealth -- TeleTech business protocol is also registering strong performance in the first half, with registered members continuing to grow, hitting 371,000. And the video consultations also increased by 70%. And therefore, we see continuous addition of doctors, which now total around 130. And also, we have altogether 16 medical service partners on our platform. We continue to add a number of additional services onto our DrGo platform. And this includes the FibriCheck, which is a telescreening program, enabling users to check their heart rates on the app and also women wellness services as well as launching our private label health supplements, which can be personalized for individual needs in the second half. Now on the ESG front, we are pleased to participate in this Strive and Rise Programme, which is a program to support the development and upward mobility of underprivileged youths through volunteering and different activities, such as visits to our Now TV studio, Viu TV studio and so on, and also our HKT Innovation Lab. In the first half, our corporate volunteering hours reached nearly 2,800 hours. And stepping out -- stepping up our efforts to combat climate change, we have committed USD 2.7 billion sustainability-linked loan facility so far, on top of the numerous energy-saving initiatives implemented in our exchanges and network. And to support further the Smart City transformation, we have revitalized our HKT phone booth into Smart Kiosks, providing not just phone service, but also free connectivity and useful information for residents and visitors and also help locate dementia -- missing dementia patients as well. Finally, to summarize our strength and focus going forward. As we look ahead to the rest of 2023 and beyond, I'm really excited by the prospects for HKT because we are the only provider of core play services in Hong Kong. We will continue to be customer-centric, with further investment in the latest technologies, talent and customer support. We would continue to invest in the digital services because we see the accelerated digital adoption during the pandemic, driven by both private and government services, which have entailed really a prevalent shift in terms of consumer behavior, and we will continue to invest in this area to make sure that we build value beyond Telco. We are also committed and, of course, would benefit from the Smart City development in Hong Kong by leveraging our network and latest technologies. And last but not least, we have seen accelerated integration of Hong Kong into the Greater Bay Area, and this would stimulate cross-border travel and economic activity, which will provide added impetus to our business growth. With that, I will pass it to Patrick to walk through the financials. Patrick?

Thank you, Susanna. Let me recap the key financial lines for the first half 2023. Our AFF continued to deliver a solid growth of 2.2% year-on-year to USD 311 million. Our service revenue grew 3% to $1.96 billion. The growth was driven by the accelerated growth in Mobile Services revenue from the gradual recovery of roaming revenue and continuously strong demand of our broadband and local data connectivity services as well as our unique integrated digital transformation solutions for enterprises in Hong Kong and Greater Bay Area. And including handset sales, total HKD revenue was up by 2% to $2.1 billion, softened by the lower mobile product sales, which dropped by 11% to $148 million. Our total EBITDA for the period was up by 3% to USD 770 million, attributed to enhanced operating efficiency achieved across the group, leading EBITDA margin expanded to 37%. And our net profit grew 2.2% to $250 million. Looking into details of our TSS segment. From the chart on the right-hand side, you can see our local TSS services revenue grew by 2% year-on-year, reaching to USD 1.05 billion, in which local data and broadband services continue to be the key growth drivers. As mentioned by Susanna just now, the growing demand for our unique integrated digital transformation solutions across different industries, incorporating 5G applications with Smart City solutions in both Hong Kong and Greater Bay Area, drove up our local data revenue by an impressive growth of 10% year-on-year. As the demand for our high-speed and reliable fiber service from individuals, households and enterprises continue in the new normal, our broadband service revenue report another 2% year-on-year growth. Overall, local data service revenue registered a solid growth of 7% year-on-year. Backed by the comprehensive offerings of world-class sports content, entertainment and kids programs, Pay TV services delivered a stable revenue of $154 million, with higher commercial subscription, particularly from hospitality sector, in anticipation of tourism recovery. Our international business dropped 3% to $452 million due to lower revenue from wholesale voice business revenue and the absence of one-off cable revenue in the period. TSS revenue as a whole went up by 1% to $1.5 billion. TSS segment EBITDA grew 3% to $541 million, attributable to the continued operating efficiency achieved. TSS EBITDA margin as a whole was, therefore, improved to 36% as a result of ongoing focus on cost initiatives. Now let's turn to our Mobile business. Showing on the chart, right-hand side, Mobile Services revenue rose 5% to $459 million for the first half 2023, underpinned by gradual recovery of roaming revenue, which grew 166% year-on-year as travel resumed with full border reopening. Secondly, continued expansion of our postpaid customer base to 3.38 million, a net gain of 78,000 or 2% year-on-year growth. And our 5G customer base further increased to 1.19 million, representing 35% of our total postpaid customer base. Exit ARPU grew 1% to HKD 189 million at the end of June. Handset sales slowed down by 11% year-on-year to $148 million due to cautious retail market sentiment, lack of new handsets during the period and also the longer handset replacement cycle. Total EBITDA for the Mobile grew 3%, of which Mobile Services EBITDA went up by 4% to $281 million, with Mobile Services EBITDA margin being stable at 58%. Let's have a closer look at our operating expenses. The group achieved an overall 4% OpEx savings, down from $281 million to $271 million, with OpEx to revenue ratio improving from 13.5% to 12.9%, of which TSS reported 3% OpEx savings from the continuous focus on efficiency improvement across each business line through business process digitalization and optimizing offline to online, the O2O sales channels and retail footprint to drive higher sales efficiency. In addition to TSS, mobile network operations also captured efficiency gain from improved [ SIM ] mobile cell site architecture, enabling network design optimization. As such, a 5% OpEx saving was achieved by the mobile segments. Apart from OpEx, we are also exercising cautious control over our CapEx spend. Our total CapEx for the first half was further lowered to $145 million, representing a 4% year-on-year saving. Mobile CapEx registered a 10% saving to $50 million, reflecting the completion of our territory-wide 5G coverage rollout last year. Looking forward, our CapEx spending is mainly for capacity upgrades and indoor coverage enhancement to meet customer demand. TSS CapEx dropped slightly to $86 million, with focus on meeting the growing demand for our unique integrated digital transformation solutions, including Smart City solutions for the enterprises. Accordingly, the overall CapEx to revenue ratio further improved to 6.9% from 7.3% last year, which is well-contained within our stated guidance of 10%. Next, just the AFF. We have already covered the EBITDA and CapEx just now. Next is the CAC and license fee, which increased from $76 million to $102 million, mainly due to a higher customer acquisition cost to serve our growing base of consumer -- customers, especially on the mobile postpaid customer base with net gain of 78,000 for the period. Fulfillment costs in respect of customized project improved to $35 million as compared to $40 million last year, largely due to the timing of delivery enterprise projects. Payment for right-of-use assets, which is representing rental payments, was stable at $87 million, reflecting our effective and accessible shop rationalization strategy. Payment for finance costs increased to $89 million, a 96% increase year-on-year, caused by the general increase in cost of finance linked to HIBOR. Tax payment was also higher due to the delayed settlement of a tax paid demand lock deferring from late 2022 to early 2023. Change in working capital was improved and turned around to a positive $24 million as we were able to cash out the higher inventory level at last year and during the current period. Therefore, the overall AFF for the first half 2023 grew 2.2% year-on-year to $311 million, translating into an interim distribution of HKD 32.05 per SSU. Income statement. For the detailed P&L, we have basically covered the revenue to EBITDA lines just now. Depreciation and amortization decreased by 4% year-on-year to $346 million. This mainly came from the lower amortization as certain intangible asset in relation to the customer base, which was fully amortized in last year. And as explained in the AFF slide, our P&L finance costs went up by 48% to $118 million, caused by the higher market interest rate. As such, our net profit for the year -- for the first half 2023 was up by 2.2% to USD 250 million. Turning to our gearing position. Our total gross debt at the end of June 2023 was stable at $5.78 billion. Corresponding gross debt-to-EBITDA ratio increased slightly from December, 3.38x to 3.41x. As of today, we have over $1.6 billion total liquidity, including undrawn banking facilities of around $1.4 billion and $244 million cash on hand. We continue to carry an investment-grade rating at BBB and Baa2. Our current portion of fixed to floating rate debt is approximately 55 to 45, slightly more tax on fixed interest rate to counter adverse impact from the interest rate hike. Our effective interest rate was up to 3.77%. We shall continue to monitor the market environment, such that we can further enhance and optimize our debt profile and structure when appropriate. There is no imminent need of refinancing in the coming 2 years, 2023 and 2024. The average debt maturity is now approximately 4 years. This ends my presentation. Thank you.

We'll open up the floor to questions. The first question is, what is our 5G adoption target by the end of 2023?

Well, if we look at the current trend, in July, we are at 38%. So I'm sure that we will be able to exceed 40% to 42% as at year-end. But as I was saying, in terms of the 1O1O and the CSL, basically, the adoption is already 40-something percent. So I'm sure that it will exceed 50%, just looking at the 1O1O and the CSL segment.

Next question, do you expect the first half growth in roaming to accelerate in the second half and even further into 2024?

I think so. Now if we look at the first half, the roaming revenue is altogether around 65% as compared to first half of H1. But we dissect into 2 quarters. The first quarter is a lot lower. The second quarter is up to 75%. And in particular, May and June are -- the acceleration of the recovery is particularly strong. So we do think that the second half, in terms of the roaming rebound, would be a lot better. So yes, I do think that the growth will be higher. And in fact, for 2024, if we compare it to 2023, as I was saying, the first quarter of this year was still relatively low, despite the fact that it's already on the -- sort of on the upward trend. So I do think that there will be some more growth in 2024 as well.

The next question is, what is our outlook for CapEx spending over the next 3 years?