Oman Telecommunications Company SAOG (OTEL) Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Foreign Language]. Thank you very much for joining us to the Q3 2025 Earnings Call for Omantel Group. Today, we have in our call joining us Ghassan Al Hashar, Chief Financial Officer; and also attended by the senior management team of finance with Amal Al Ojaily, General Manager, Strategic Finance; and Wahbi Al-Riyami, General Manager, Treasury; and Mr. Sudhakar, General Manager, Financial Control; and also Mr. Dharminder, Chief Strategist with the Chief Financial Officer. By now, we have uploaded the investor presentation, so you may access it through the Investor Relations website. So during this call, we might state forward-looking statements, and please take a very cautious -- taking these statements when you're assessing your investment decision. So this presentation has been prepared in good faith for the purpose of the investor community and the information is supplied in a summary form, and therefore, it is not necessarily complete. [Operator Instructions]. Now handing over to Mr. Ghassan Al Hashar.

Let's move to the next. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and a very warm welcome to Omantel's Q3 earnings call update. During today's call, we will present our financial results and share operational highlights. Before that, I just wanted to shed light on some key developments during the quarter, where the Board of Directors has formally expressed its deep appreciation to Sheikh Talal Al Mamari, the former Chief Executive Officer, for his outstanding leadership and significant contributions to Omantel's ongoing transformation journey. Under his leadership, Omantel has achieved notable regional expansion. The company has effectively broadened its presence, establishing itself as a prominent player beyond its initial markets. He has also overseen a significant acceleration in Omantel's transition towards ICT and digital growth segments. These efforts have positioned the company at the forefront of technological innovation, driving future growth and sustainability. Currently, engineer Sami Al-Ghassani, Chief Technology and Digital Officer, is acting as CEO. This is to ensure smooth transition and continuity at Omantel. We are pleased to share that Omantel also has recently been honored with 3 Investor Relations awards from Extel and MEIRA. This recognition reflects our ongoing commitment to excellence in Investor Relations and acknowledges the dedication of our team in this area. In response to these achievements, we have updated the content of our quarterly presentation. The enhancements are designed to provide a higher level of information and to better meet your expectations regarding transparency. We remain committed to ensure that all stakeholders receive clear, comprehensive and timely updates. Let us begin the call with the presentation of our Q3 financial highlights, where we are seeing in front of us, the growth in subscribers at the group level has moved up by 8.8% to 54.9 million and the domestic at 13.2% growth, up to 3.7 million subscribers. The revenues have grown at the group level to OMR 2.49 billion by 11.2%. And at the domestic operations, the revenue grew by 8.9%, to OMR 493.2 million. Our EBITDA has grown in both the group and the domestic level by 8.2% and 2.5%, respectively. At the net profit levels, we are seeing the group consolidated net profit has gone up by 29.8%, to OMR 243.4 million, and the net profit attributable to the shareholders of Omantel has gone up by 16.3%, at OMR 52 million as in 30th September 2025. Let's move on. Here, also to highlight more of the updates on Q3. As you are all aware, that we have updated the respective shareholders and investors, that TRA reduced the mobile services royalty rate from 10% to -- from 12% to 10%. And this also had a positive impact in our financial performance. Also, it's worth highlighting that we have -- we will be seeing also continuously a strong growth in ICT revenue, along with the growth in core telco revenues and EBITDA. It's also worth highlighting that Zain Group reported exceptional performance, led by growth, of course, in both Iraq and the recovery in Sudan. We continuously also -- as we highlighted earlier, we embarked in the journey of launching the new digital emerging tech -- emerging technologies vertical, where we have, of course, launched OMPay and XHAWI marketplace. We'll demonstrate those in the coming slides. And finally, as you are all aware, Omantel has disclosed recently the recent developments in regards to IAS 29. Just to update everyone, the assessment is still underway to implement this in the year-end financial statements. From here, I'll hand it back to Aisha to walk us through the remaining slides. Aisha, please?

Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Ghassan Al Hashar. And now we -- before we get into the detailed update of the 9 months performance, we will give you the usual macroeconomic updates that are supporting -- or to support Omantel's ambitions in moving in our journey from a traditional telco to a technology group. Giving you a high level on the growing resilient landscape in Oman, we can see that the -- it's on the backdrop of a positive growing macroeconomic KPIs, such as we've witnessed year-on-year, the population growth has increased by 2%, and the inflow of the tourism visitors is also continues to have a healthy number of inflows. And the debt [indiscernible], which was one of the key significant achievements from the government that they've been able to service the debt by almost from 60% to 35% as of reported in Q1 2025. Now going to the supportive regulatory environment, we also have seen that sovereign has been very active in helping the SME sector. We've seen from -- year-on-year from 2024, there is growth of 5.7% and also royalty rate cuts on mobile services reduced from 12%, to 10%, which this aligns perfectly with Omantel's group ambitions and plans when it comes to digitization and providing solutions for moving forward. On the last column, we have the tech savvy demographics. We've also seen the number of mobile and smartphone penetration reaching to 98% and also mobile penetration to 122% and FPB penetration to 83%, which gives us a room to increase in the fixed broadband segment. Also, we have seen over the past 5 years, there is a huge demand of data usage that continues to increase, around 22.4%, which is, this is the CAGR of the last 5 years. Also this positive trend also on the backdrop of the 3 credit rating agencies have updated the sovereign to -- or 2 of them has already updated, are waiting for the third to get the firm mark of the key rating agencies to uplift and improve the national credit outlook for the sovereign. As of the latest changes, Moody's has upgraded to IG rating alongside with S&P Global, waiting for Fitch Ratings meeting in December to follow the 2 credit rating agencies. Now to give you a high level on Omantel Group core segments and how we are moving to a regional connectivity and tech powerhouse, we are depending on 3 key verticals, which are the core telecom that we have witnessed a resilient performance on the retail and also on the wholesale regardless of the competition that's going on the market. We have a leading subscriber base of 3.6 million with a market share in FPB and mobile market share around 54.4% and 40.3%. And on the wholesale, of course, our business in wholesale is supported by a robust network infrastructure, having more than 20 subsea cables connecting the West to the East and making Muscat and Salalah one of the most connected cities in the region, in partnership, of course, with Equinix. On top of that, of course, we have ZOI, one of our key synergies between Zain and Omantel, which is right now managing both Omantel and Zain wholesale operations. Now moving to the ICT and emerging tech, has also been witnessing, as Mr. Ghassan has mentioned, a very impressive growth year-on-year, almost 69.5%, mainly driven by the cloud and hosting solutions and IoT services. You can see that our matured ICT portfolio, which is driving this performance, Oman Data Park, [indiscernible] and Infoline. And on the side as well, we have the developing digital portfolio that has been -- we launched OMPay and XHAWI recently and also utilizing or might monetize in the future the CAP base that has reached 1.4 million active subscriber base. Of course, Zain will be a very important element in Omantel's evolution where we are positioning Zain as a partner of growth and leveraging their 7 markets footprint with the subscribers of 54.9 million and leveraging Zain's expertise around ZainTECH and Zain Fintech and TaaS when it comes to future synergies and collaboration with our other 2 verticals in ICT and emerging tech and core telco. Now moving to Omantel corporate strategy. As you've seen in the recent quarter, we have shared and updated a strategy that we have built upon the foundational blocks of the Shift Gear strategy. So we continue to step forward with our strategic directions where we are positioning ourselves as the enabler of sustainable demand and innovation orchestrator and leader in AI and ecosystem of the future through various initiatives; to act as a sustainable telecom operator; by selling the next -- or scaling the next-generation capabilities powered by the emerging technologies that we mentioned earlier; and foster innovation-driven strategic alliances with Zain; and to expand our impact and leader in AI to -- we have already launched an AI center of excellence and a studio with a strong governance and up-skilled staff to scale AI; and build data mesh and deploy Arabic large language model use cases in mobility; has already been conducted in consumer and ICT to lift ARPU and retention and NPS; on the ecosystem of the future to create an immersive personalized digital content and entertainment ecosystems; and establish a regional research and development center. Now moving to Zain as a partner of growth. Just to give you a high level on the synergies that has been materialized or ongoing. We have procurement as of year-to-date. The savings has reached around OMR 3.9 million. And on wholesale, the ongoing synergies when it comes to ZOI and cross-border capacity optimization and also, there has been -- or there is ongoing also partnership and synergies when it comes to fintech and optimizing our operations on the fintech side. Now moving to the financial updates, Omantel Group performance. As mentioned by Mr. Ghassan, the group has really shown a strong revenue growth from Omantel Domestic and Zain Group. And the total subscriber increase was largely to the strong growth of Zain subscribers in Sudan. And also the solid EBITDA growth in Zain Group and Domestic business, mainly driven by Sudan and Iraq with the stable margins. And Zain Group contributions to group net profit increased year-on-year by OMR 11.7 million. Now moving to the Omantel Domestic performance. This is a high-level slide, will be followed with a more detailed slides to take each KPI mentioned here into much more details. We can see that the domestic revenue growth is on account of an increase in the core telco revenue, by OMR 27.5 million, which is almost of 6.4% year-on-year and ICT revenue of OMR 12 million, while the EBITDA increased by OMR 3.1 million on account of higher gross margins, partially offset by an increase in OpEx. And the net profit decrease is mainly attributable to increase in depreciation. Now just to have the zoomed in Omantel Domestic revenue, you can see that we have the core telecom revenue, which is the mobile fixed device and wholesale, has increased by OMR 27.3 million with growth mainly coming from the fixed device and wholesale compensating the -- I would say, the mobile -- which, it's really still a stable business -- despite the competition going in the market with the other 2 operators, we maintain our position in our core telecom and also growing our ICT revenue by OMR 12.2 million, mainly the growth is coming from cloud business and IoT solutions. Now looking at the profitability. Looking at the gross profit, the gross margin from core operation year-on-year increased by OMR 7.1 million. And on account, of course, as mentioned earlier, from the fixed broadband and the gross margin on ICT, increased by OMR 5.2 million on account of increase in cloud and colocation and smart solutions. And looking at the core telecom EBITDA, increased by OMR 4 million on account of increase in gross margin, which was, again, offset by an increase in OpEx year-on-year. Now looking at the core telecom financials, the revenue year-on-year showed an increase of 6%. Also, the gross profit -- the gross profit has increased by 3% year-on-year, and the EBITDA increased by 4% year-on-year. We maintain our market leadership in really a highly competitive market, and the growth in postpaid revenue was offset by a decrease in prepaid revenue, while the fixed revenue increase contributed mainly on account of an increase in fixed broadband revenue. Now looking at the core telecom operating stats, mainly covering the subscribers and ARPU, we can see that the mobile subscriber base increased mainly in end-to-end base. The postpaid mobile ARPU showed a marginal decrease on account of a decrease in revenues from VAS, and prepaid mobile ARPU decrease is attributed, also a decrease in [ data ] and VAS revenues. Now looking at the fixed broadband subscribers and ARPU, increased, mainly driven by customer upgrades to higher value plans. And we believe there also will be -- on account of the penetration levels, there is also a room to grow on the fixed broadband revenue. Now moving to the ICT and in emerging tech on the domestic side, we can see the revenue has increased again. This is mainly driven by the OMR 6.7 million in cloud and hosting solution, and OMR 4.9 million coming from the smart solution. While gross margins varies across business segments, the margin increase is supported by growth from colocation and smart solution, and the EBITDA decline is mainly on account of negative EBITDA from fintech and marketplace entities, which are still at the launch phase. And going forward, digital engagement on current telco base will support a growth in revenues from fintech and marketplace. And this is just a snapshot to give you on the CapEx overview. Our CapEx for 2025 as of September has reached to OMR 86.2 million, which posted a growth of 26%. With CapEx to revenue, almost 17.2%. The increase is mainly coming or contributed by investments in digital and CAP platform and marketplace, while the additions of OMR 27.6 million were invested in network infrastructure to expand coverage and boost capacity, to also help and make sure the customer experience are maintained across all touch points and OMR 16 million were directed toward digital transformation and innovation to enhance customer experience and drive operational efficiency. Moving to the cash flow slide. We have stable cash flow supporting ongoing investments. The operating cash flow has reduced by 1.2%. And the investing cash flow has also reduced by 3.3%. And the free cash flow has increased by almost OMR 600,000. We adjusted basically for the timing of same dividend year-on-year. Free cash flow has decreased by OMR 11.3 million on account of the cash outflow for the investments in associates of ZOI, almost OMR 14.5 million. And cash flow from operations decreased marginally on account of increase in enterprise and domestic wholesale business receivables. Lastly, on the balance sheet. This is just a snapshot of where we stand today in terms of the gross and debt composition and the repayments scheduled, including interest bank borrowings and bonds. And as you can see, we have a strong liquidity and also a credit rating from Moody's and Fitch as well. And this really brings us to the end of our updates for Q3 2025. Now we will open the session for Q&A. [Operator Instructions].

[indiscernible].

Yes, Abhishek, please.

[indiscernible]. So what is the situation currently in Sudan?

Sorry, your voice is not clear, Abhishek.

Yes. Is it audible now?

Just give us a minute.

Yes. Is it audible now?

Can you speak?

Yes. Is it audible now?

Just give us a second.

Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead, please.

Go ahead. Go ahead.

Okay. Can you just throw some light on what is situation in Sudan and growth going forward in terms of ARPU subscriber or penetration?

In Sudan, Abhishek?

Yes, in Sudan.

Okay. So Sudhakar, he's asking what's your comments on the situation in Sudan and what is your outlook for Sudan in terms of customers and ARPU?

Can you hear me, Abhishek?

Yes. Yes.

Yes. So Abhishek, I think on your first question, in terms of the current situation in Sudan, see, at a country level, I think the situation is still not very encouraging. You would have seen the news in terms of the friction in the country. But I think in certain major parts of the country, that has slowed down, and that is contributing to a good recovery in terms of the performance of Sudan operations. So year-on-year, they have grown. Their revenue has grown by close to 13%. Net income also went up by 92%. That is also one of the major reasons why Zain has reported an exceptional performance when it comes to Sudan operations. Most of the network-related sites, which were off-air last year, Zain Group was able to get them back on air. That was through various modes. So a major part of Sudan is now well connected. So that's as far as Sudan is concerned. Can you just repeat your second question?

Yes. Just on the first part, the current penetration seems to be 33%, if I'm not wrong. And if region is almost covered. So do you expect any further increase over the next 4 to 5 years in terms of penetration?

I'm sorry, Abhishek, there's a problem with the audio. We are not able to hear you fully.

Yes. Can you hear me properly now?

Yes, but go ahead. Maybe [Foreign Language].

Yes. If almost all part of the Sudan is covered, I see the penetration level is 33% around, currently. So do you expect any further increase over the next few years, 4, 5 years?

Are you talking about Sudan again?

Sudan, yes.

Sudan, yes. In terms of growth, we are still not closer to the levels which we were in before the war actually broke out in Sudan. So in terms of recovery, there is still some way to go in terms of growth in subscriber base and in terms of growth in revenue. Now all that is subject to the fact that the current situation in Sudan is well controlled. The country has to come back to a normal path. And then it would take them some time on a macro part to recover, and that would have its effect on the telco sector also. So yes, I think the levels are going to go up much bigger. We expect the growth from Sudan to be much higher than what we are seeing at the current levels.

Thank you for your questions in the chat.

Thank you, Sandesh. There's a question -- 2 questions from your end. Do you expect any material change to the reported growth in Iraq or Sudan following the FSA requiring a restatement? And the second question, how do you expect ARPU to evolve in the coming periods? Are you observing any structural pressure related to mix shift between prepaid and postpaid segments? So I believe the second question is regarding domestic? Okay. I think while he confirms for the second question -- yes.

Your first question is, relating to the FSA announcement, relating to a couple of qualifications in our auditor's report. The first qualification is relating to the use of functional currency for our Iraq operations, going back to 2020, in the year in which Zain Iraq actually shifted from IQD to USD. Now that's actually in terms of accounting, it's a difference of opinion between the auditors. So just to caution, it doesn't have any impact on the business performance itself. As you see, the business performance of Zain Iraq is pretty stable. Now coming back to that closure of that qualification. Now there is an agreement that even at Omantel level, in terms of the use of dollar as the functional currency, during the period between 2020 to 2024, so that's not going to have any impact on the performance itself. Now coming to your second question, second qualification, which is relating to the application of IAS 29 for the Sudan operations. If you would have attended the Zain investor call also, the Zain management has confirmed that based on their preliminary assessment, the impact on equity up until 1st January 2025, that is expected to be marginally positive, although the components of the equity will differ, but overall equity is expected to be marginally positive. For year 2025, the preliminary assessment shows that IAS 29 will have a positive impact. Now this is at Zain level. At Omantel level also, as we have mentioned, we are carrying out the same assessment for our group financials. And the reason for doing this assessment again at Omantel level is because of the fact that we acquired a stake in Zain Group back in 2017, whereas Zain is applying this standard from 2015, which is when Sudan was a hyperinflationary economy. So at Omantel level, this assessment is underway. We believe probably that the assessment can lead to results which are similar to how Zain is seeing its impact on equity, but that assessment is still not yet completed at our end, and we will update you as soon as that exercise is done. And that will be part of the year-end financial statement.

Thank you, Sudhakar. Any additional questions?

We have the second additional question.

Yes. We have the second question. It's related to the domestic. How do you expect ARPU to evolve in the coming periods? Are you observing any structural pressure related to mix shifts between prepaid and postpaid segments?

Sudhakar?

On the -- in the mobility market at the domestic level, if you would have seen in terms of year-on-year, it's pretty flat or a marginal decrease. Now mobility market, as you all know, is a very, very fiercely competitive market, particularly the prepaid market. But with the change in strategy, what we have invested so far, our postpaid growth is quite good. Even this year, year-on-year, we have grown in postpaid to the extent that it has completely offset our degrowth in prepaid. But prepaid is something which we are closely working on in terms of ensuring that the pricing and all that is well maintained. Omantel as a market leader, enjoys a very healthy ARPU on postpaid -- you have seen our ARPU is close to OMR 17.3. Even on prepaid, our ARPU is in the region of close to OMR 3, much higher than the other operators in the market. So mobility is a segment which we are closely watching to maintain our current market share. And probably with the addition of some new services and the fact that we are investing in this emerging telco, with all the surrounding players, we should be in a position to engage our customer base and reduce the churn even on the core telco.

Thank you very much, Sudhakar. Any addition -- yes, Omar. I need to unmute you. Yes, you can unmute yourself.

Yes. I just had a follow-up on the competition in the domestic market. So you say that, obviously, the weakness in the prepaid has been offset by the momentum in the postpaid. But isn't it also true that there is a little bit of, let's say, cannibalization between both segments in a way because you are -- through CVM and other initiatives, you are working on converting prepaid subscribers to postpaid. So obviously, what I'm trying to say is that the strong performance or the healthy performance that you're seeing in postpaid is not because of a positive momentum in the market itself as much as that you are getting subscribers to move from prepaid to postpaid, correct?

Yes. To some extent, yes, there is a movement from prepaid to postpaid. Year-on-year, if you look at our subscriber base, in terms of postpaid, we have maintained our postpaid base. But Omar, I think the important thing to notice is that the ARPU in case of postpaid is relatively higher compared to prepaid. Now if you take our active prepaid subscriber base compared to our total own base, our ARPU actually on prepaid is somewhere in the region of close to around OMR 5 to OMR 6. This is considering the active base. But when the same subscriber actually has moved to postpaid, our ARPU kind of jumps to a significantly higher number. And I think that's where the mobility growth actually comes in and offsets that shortfall in prepaid. So I think, yes, to some extent, there is a big movement of subscribers coming from our own base. But in addition to that, we also have growth coming from -- subscribers coming from other operators also onto directly postpaid.

So are you saying that you're seeing actually some market share gains compared -- taking away some market share from the competitors in the market currently?

Market share, not to a great extent. Market share, our revenue market share has been pretty stable. It's in the region of close to 53%. In terms of subscriber market share, that's close to 40%. But yes, in terms of revenue market share, we have not gained significantly year-on-year. But at the same time, we have maintained that market share, and we have grown in terms of revenue from our existing subscriber base. That's why our postpaid revenue went up.

Understood. And then one last follow-up, if I may. Just wanted to get a sense of how the overall market is doing. So when you look at the overall pie, let's say, it doesn't really feel like there's any growth. It feels like the market is pretty much saturated. And basically, what you're seeing is movement within that pie between the 3 operators, but -- or more if you're looking at brands, including MVNOs as well. So is that assessment correct?

Omar, if you look at the current state of the market, yes, probably your reading is right. But as you know, Aisha was stressing on the macroeconomic developments, right. Where we see growth at least in the mobility market going forward? One, on the consumer space, the expansion in population, both in terms of Omani and the expat segment, that would start giving some growth in the overall market -- overall market size. And Omantel being the leader should start getting some share of -- a significant share of that growth, which is going to come on the population. In addition to that, the country has been investing in a lot of development projects, right? Now that itself adds to the overall economic activity, which will also supplement the growth in the mobility segment. This is where we are hopeful that probably on the core telco, the growth is going to come. But obviously, it will not be in double digits or so. It's going to be a marginal growth. So we see positive action over there. I think the area where we are also seeing growth is on the fixed broadband side. On the fixed broadband side, you have seen that the penetration is still low, and that's where we have grown significantly. And for the coming few years also, we believe that on the fixed broadband side, there is a bit of still good potential for the operators to grow.

In addition to what Sudhakar highlighted here as well, I just wanted to add, yes, the core telco revenue streams are obviously important. But what we are focusing on in Omantel is to have a key differentiation between us and what other operators are offering. That's why you are seeing us looking at expanding into emerging tech and ICT revenue streams. So that's very well going to ensure, of course, that we maximize shareholders' value for the long term. For the short term, I believe Sudhakar highlighted, most of the macro indicators are positive. So we hope so if the business expands, then we are going to see also more core telco revenue streams growth as we move on. Our priority is to ensure the highest stickiness when it comes to our consumer base. And as Sudhakar mentioned, that's being maintained. And the higher potential growth will be coming out of the fixed broadband business if we are seeing growth where the penetration is relatively low in that area.

Thank you very much, Sudhakar and Ghassan. And now -- [ and how much ] for any questions. I will allow the mic for Abbas. You may ask your question.

I have just 2 couple of quick questions. The first one is regarding the recent reduction in the royalty rates from 12% to 10%. So is that reduction have materialized in this year? Like does it have a positive impact on the margins in this result? And secondly, how do you expect this development to impact your profitability going forward in the next couple of years? And what would be your strategy, like you're going to pass that to end consumer or retain it completely? So this is regarding reduction in royalty rate. And my second question is specifically with respect to the launch of Starlink in Oman, right? So how do you see this development? And what -- do you feel this is an increased competition for your broadband services in the country? And like what's your view on that from both residential customers as well as commercial angle?

The first, you take it, royalty.

On the royalty, the royalty rates -- the change in the royalty rates is effective from 1st of January. So yes, there is a positive impact of close to OMR 3.1 million reflected in the 9 months results. So going forward, this is a pretty good development, which has improved our margins.

And the second question, I believe, if whether we are going to pass this to the customers? I believe it's not sort of straightforward, as you highlighted. And in Omantel, we always believe that we should present the consumer with more value. And that's where I highlighted that where we can enhance the stickiness and bring in more value-added services to the customer. On the second point in relation to the Starlink. Yes, the Starlink, of course, was licensed by the TRA earlier. And of course, we understand that they are there. As you know, Oman is very well spread in its area from north in Musandam all the way south to Salalah. We have lots of areas that are not covered fully with the most advanced technology, connectivity and networks. So I believe this comes to hand to hand, maybe useful in areas as Starlink, to be used that are not feasible for the telco operators to invest in. So that may be useful. However, we still believe that we -- as terrestrial operators, we will still continue to offer better services in terms of consistency, experience and speed as well. However, that's given us an alternative options, maybe for areas that may be required to be complemented across this alternative plan. So we don't see sort of a threat or a competition in that at this stage because, as I said, as a telco operator, incumbent telco operator, we have further alternative solutions to give our customers against the limited sort of service that comes from the satellite service providers.

Thank you very much, Mr. Ghassan and Sudhakar . And now I will unmute Joy. You may ask your question.

Am I audible?

Yes, you're audible.

Yes. Perfect. And my first question is on Zain. So Zain had an unexpected dividend payout in November, which was -- which usually comes as a final dividend next year early in March or April. So any thoughts about that? Like why is it -- why is Zain paying additional dividend? And how do you plan to use it? Would you be also paying up -- increasing your dividends?

Yes. Actually, just, Joy, to highlight, I'm sure you -- you've seen the market disclosures from both Omantel and Zain announcing, of course, the road map or the plan to implement IAS 29. And prior to that, of course, the announcement of the distribution of dividends by Zain during the month of November. So we are receiving that. That's against the full profits of 2025. Zain achieved an EPS of 41 fils, and they have distributed in Q1 25 fils, an additional 10 fils in Q3. And now this is another 25 fils. So the Q1 25 fils was related to the prior year, which is 2024. So if we look at the total final payment for 2025, which was supposed to be paid in March, Q1 or early Q2 of 2026, it has been preponed to this year. So this does not mean that there will be another payment in Q1, similarly to the past years. As you are aware, Zain made commitments, so their dividend policy has been cleared to be 35 fils per year. This is going to be equivalent to about OMR 29 million coming in this quarter. And on your question, what are we planning to do with it? Of course, it's going to be in preparation for our working capital and future payments that come at the beginning of the year, which is, of course, dividends, royalty and tax. So -- and besides other, as I mentioned, working capital requirements. So I hope this covers your question.

Thank you very much, Sudhakar.

Yes. Thank you for that clarification. I just have one additional question, so in total, 2. So my second question is, overall on how should we think about Omantel? Do you plan to -- I've seen that there has been an increase in CapEx. So how do you plan to use the cash flows going forward? Is it more towards CapEx and investments? Or will it be more towards paying back to the shareholders -- or maybe reducing the debt?

Can you hear us?

Yes.

Turn off the speaker. Let me turn on the mic for me.

Can you hear us?

Yes.

Okay. So what was your second question? Sorry, again?

Yes. So what is the plan going forward for Omantel? Is it focusing more on CapEx? Or will you be using the cash flows to pay off the debt or paying back to the shareholders? What -- where is the focus towards?

Well, of course, the focus, as we highlighted in our strategy that we will, of course, moving -- transforming Omantel from telco to techco. And therefore, these investments, we will have to be active on. With that, doesn't mean we will stop investing in the core as the CapEx. However, we will continue in our journey towards investing in emerging tech and ICT. So that's -- and of course, any excess in cash flows that come from monetization of any of our assets [indiscernible] deleveraging and to reduce our debt levels.

I think now we will go to the chat box questions from Baha. What do you think Omantel's -- I think this partially was answered by the CFO. Does M2M included or excluded in your ARPU calculation? It does exclude the M2M in our ARPU calculation, Moosa.

So our ARPU calculation is excluding M2M. Yes.

And what are the main driver in the increase of fixed revenue? Does it result of the higher prices? I think this is also covered in the presentation and by Sudhakar. The fixed revenue growth is on the back of the fixed broadband revenue, as explained in the presentation as well, mainly from migrating the customers to higher plans. Can you shed light on the impairment loss of nonfinancial assets seen this year in other income section? What is this attributed to? This is from Thomas. Sudhakar?

Can you hear?

Yes, yes, definitely.

Yes, Thomas, I'm not sure what impairment loss are we referring to. Because in the 9 months financial statements, there is no impairment loss recorded on nonfinancial assets. Last year, 9 months, there was an impairment loss, which was recorded for Zain's assets in Sudan operations. But this year, there has been no impairment loss recorded.

That is sufficient, Robin. Now we have -- I think Omar has another follow-up question. I think this might be the last question before we go, concluding the meeting. Go ahead, Omar.

Yes. Just a follow-up on what we discussed regarding the domestic market. Sheikh Ghassan and Sudhakar, you mentioned that you're seeing positive momentum from macro indicators. So just wondering if you have like a ballpark idea of when this is going to materialize. So when do you think you could see this translating into better growth at the domestic market?

Well, to answer this question, I believe it's important to sort of draw a line when we talk about the core telco revenue stream and the competitive landscape over there and the ICT, which is the other side of the business where we are going. Now, Omar. the ICT is very much underpenetrated, and we see high potential opportunities for us in the B2B and B2G. And this is what we've been highlighting earlier, being the incumbent operator and being the country's national champion for digital transformation as we move forward to embark with a 2040 vision. I believe this, we are going to see materialize as fast as we can. However, in the consumer front, I believe that's an area where it will probably be taking some time. And for us, it would be difficult to draw a ballpark figure in that side. However, the indicators are showing positiveness and there will be a lag between the indicators and the growth in the market. How long will that take? It depends on the continuity of this growth as we move forward. In the ICT, we are hearing lots of projects coming in, in relation to smart cities and so on. We kept highlighting in several meetings and investors conferences that we are definitely looking at a high-growth area part of the ecosystem, which Aisha presented. We have the subsidiaries giving services in cloud solutions, data centers, IoT, smart cities. And of course, on the B2C side, there, we are seeing also the potential opportunities in emerging tech. As Aisha mentioned, the fintech and the marketplace and of course, overall, the customer experience platform that we have.

And just to complement on what Mr. Ghassan has just mentioned, Omar, we're also looking at our current base and how we monetize it. So we already have really a large existing customer and how the management are focusing on introducing new products for this existing base, whether it was core telecom or on the emerging tech side. So there is a focus from the management on the core telecom and also on the new core to protect the space and increase it, and we can see this also being supported by the ARPU numbers. I hope this is clear, Omar. And if anyone has any additional questions, we came to an end of the session for Q3. I really -- on behalf of the management, we really thank you for joining us. This has been a really very engaging session. And of course, I hope everyone got the invite for the CEO dinner on Sunday. I really hope you spare us some time and join us to show you our growth engines on the 24th of November. And we look forward to see you also on the dinner and then the year-end results as well next year. And we wish you good holidays upcoming in December as well. And see you next year [Foreign Language] and in the dinner as well. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.