PCCW Limited (8) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the PCCW 2025 Annual Results Announcement. Presenting today are Ms. Susanna Hui, Acting Group Managing Director and Group CFO; and Mr. Michael Wong, Head of Investor Relations. Over to Susanna, please.

Thank you. Despite global trade uncertainties and cautious consumer sentiment, the Hong Kong economy recovered steadily throughout 2025. And against this market backdrop, PCCW delivered a resilient performance supported by disciplined execution on our side and continuous scaling of our core businesses. Reflecting on our key achievements during the year, our regional video streaming platform, Viu, remains the undisputed #1 Asian player in the greater Southeast Asian markets with paid subscribers reaching 16.8 million and new growth initiatives, including Viu Shorts, gearing the business up for sustainable growth. ViuTV continued to deepen engagement, expanding its reach among younger viewers with a strengthened and expanded talent roster and an exciting lineup of group concerts planned for the coming year. As for HKT, we announced results yesterday, and we remain committed to offering the best-in-class digital infrastructure to support enterprises and enhance customer experience as they embrace AI-enabled technologies. Looking at the financial highlights for 2025. In terms of revenue, PCCW delivered a 7% increase in terms of top line to over USD 5.16 billion with EBITDA increasing 3% year-on-year to USD 1.704 billion. We have OTT business recording improved performance with 5% revenue growth as well as over 50% increase in EBITDA, benefiting from the expanding economies of scale, improving operating efficiency and a prudent content strategy. Our domestic TV business, ViuTV and MakerVille performance was also steady, say, for the timing differences of the lineup of concerts in 2024 and 2025, which led to a slight reduction in terms of revenue and EBITDA, details of which will be covered later. And in terms of the HKT business, we announced results yesterday, and there was a 5% solid growth in terms of revenue, 4% growth in EBITDA and a 4% growth in terms of AFF and dividend, which translates to a dividend income upstream to PCCW of approximately USD 415 million. So on the back of this performance, we are pleased to report that the Board has declared a final dividend of HKD 0.2848 per share, bringing the total full year dividend to HKD 0.3825 per share, representing a pass-through ratio of 91.5% of the HKT dividend upstream to PCCW. Whilst PCCW continued to benefit from HKT's solid growth and distribution upstream, PCCW will adopt a very disciplined dividend policy, prioritizing financial strength and sustainable shareholders' return in the long run. And the following slide is a slide on our ESG. Basically, on the social responsibility side, we continue to strengthen our community engagement through our media platform as well as our efforts in terms of supporting a broader range of underprivileged and vulnerable members in the community via various programs, workshop and services. In terms of environmental stewardship, we have exceeded our 2025 environmental targets while also contributing to Hong Kong's ongoing push in terms of sustainable development, including the citywide deployment of Smart Charge EV bays. Our progress in this area has been recognized with an A rating in the MSCI ESG ratings ever since 2019. Let us now turn to the performance of our core business. On the OTT side, we would share with you some more statistics and KPIs. Despite intense competition from the regional and global players in the market, Viu reinforced its leading market position with further growth of 1.3 million subscriber base to 16.8 million paid subs as a result of our deepened telco partnerships, particularly in larger markets like Thailand and Indonesia. During the year, we were also able to enhance monetization by refining our pricing strategy on our direct-to-consumer premium packages. As a result, subscription revenue grew by 13% year-on-year. And going forward, we will continue to prioritize high-growth markets to capture the benefits of economies of scale. In terms of advertising revenue on our regional platform, despite the tighter ad spending, we were able to expand monetization opportunities as the AVOD penetration on connected TVs continue to rise. We also secured premium advertiser-funded projects, for example, an ad integrated variety show with Samsung in Indonesia, continues to strengthen our position as a premium ad solutions provider and also allowing us to command higher rates in this area. These efforts, together with prudent content investment and also improving operating efficiency, led to a substantial increase of 56% in terms of EBITDA and a margin improvement of 8 percentage points from 16% to 24%. Our content diversity, including Korean, Chinese and local productions powered by our advanced viewer analytics continue to drive viewer engagement. During the year, over 200 new titles were added with the blockbuster Taxi Driver Season 3 winning over 30 million views and ranking #1 by video minutes across 6 of our Southeast Asian markets. These high-impact releases have generated healthy subscription acquisition as well as viewer engagement, enable us to maintain clear differentiation and lead across key operating metrics in terms of monthly active users and streaming minutes, both ranking only second to Netflix. Looking ahead to 2026, we have exciting new growth engines in place. Firstly, it's basically our first-of-its-kind Viu and HBO Max streaming bundle, which combined premium Asian and Hollywood content, which is now available in 5 of our Southeast Asian markets, and we expect that this will be able to help expand our market penetration going forward. In January this year, we also launched Viu Shorts tap into the very fast-growing micro drama format, which represents a very cost-efficient content, but we're able to unlock new advertising opportunities. Initial results of these Viu Shorts are extremely encouraging with viewership penetration of our base exceeding 11% within the first 3 weeks. Now let us turn to our domestic free TV ViuTV. We continue to be committed to delivering high-quality and locally relevant content. We have developed a very strong digital engagement with our viewers, evidenced by our 3.6% growth in terms of digital membership to an impressive 3.4 million and a close to 7% surge in terms of weekday prime time viewing. The digital viewing is important in expanding our digital advertising inventory for advertisers versus the traditional linear TV. Compared to our competitors, we have greater share of the highly engaged younger audience with 38% of our viewers under the age of 44. And this, together with our integrated capabilities in content production, artists representation and events management and organization offer strong appeal to advertisers in terms of end-to-end solutions, particularly in areas such as finance, F&B, beauty and fitness. As a result, advertising revenue for our Free TV reported a growth of 2% amidst the persistently weak retail environment and tightened advertising budget in Hong Kong. Looking ahead into 2026, we have put in place a very strong content slate from captivating new dramas produced by reputable production houses, new IP launches to the return of fan favorite reality shows and drama shows. This strong lineup will extend our momentum, strengthen our advertiser appeal and drive sponsorship and advertising revenue in the coming 2026. Taking a look at our talent management business by MakerVille, we have made great strides in terms of elevating the international profile of our established artists, featuring Marf, which is a member of our Collar girl group in the Coldplay concert this year; and Edan Lui, one of the members in our Mirror boy group in the popular Korean drama Taxi Driver Season 3. At the same time, we continue to strengthen our talent pipeline, and we recently debuted ZPOT, a dynamic new group of 7 very young and handsome emerging artists discovered through our talent show, King Maker Season 6. In terms of live concerts and events, in 2025, we organized 28 shows across 11 concert series. We have strategically focused on promoting solo as well as subgroup mini group performances in order to showcase individual artists and amplify their appeal. For 2026, a stronger comeback of our group concerts has been planned, and this strong lineup of events and a strongly expanded talent roster will continue to drive revenue and boost opportunity in the coming year. And on this note, I will pass to Marco to discuss our financial section. Marco?

Thank you, Susanna. Let me take you through a review of the financials for 2025. As was announced yesterday, HKT's total revenue grew by 5% to USD 4.69 billion, with the key drivers being accelerated demand from enterprises for our digital transformation solutions, which contributed to a significant 8% growth in enterprise revenue as well as 3% growth in broadband revenue, driven by sustained demand for our high-bandwidth low latency fiber services. There was also a strong 5% growth in mobile services revenue, underpinned by continued growth in roaming, expansion of the postpaid customer base and 5G upgrade as well as growing demand for enterprise solutions, including 5G deployment. And there was also finally a 30% growth in mobile handsets, primarily from new flagship handsets launched in the second half. As you see on the right-hand side of the chart, EBITDA also grew with mobile registering a 5% EBITDA growth and TSS EBITDA also reporting a 2% growth, benefiting from enhanced operating efficiency across the group. This resulted in an overall 4% EBITDA growth, leading to EBITDA of USD 1.83 billion, with the service EBITDA margin improving slightly to 43.1%. Adjusted funds flow registered 4% growth correspondingly, reaching USD 795 million. And the Board approved a full year total distribution of HKD 0.8177 per SSU. Turning to our core businesses. On the OTT side, we saw Viu's subscription revenue growing significantly by 13% on the back of expanding subscribers as well as refined pricing strategy, which was moderated by softer advertising revenue amidst restrained ad spend. As a result, OTT revenue achieved 5% year-on-year growth to USD 331 million. On the EBITDA side, you'll see that OTT surged by 56%, benefiting from diversified content offerings alongside growing economies of scale in high-growth markets. This led to an EBITDA margin improvement of 8 percentage points to 24%. On the Free TV and related business side, while advertising revenue reported a 2% growth, total revenue, including events, recorded a slight drop of 2% to USD 133 million from USD 136 million last year. This reflected fewer concerts in 2025 against the previous year as well as a strategic focus on subgroup and solo artistes' performance to help amplify individual performance profile. And we expect upcoming group concerts and an expanded talent roster to fuel revenue growth this year. On the EBITDA side, this softened to USD 20 million, as mentioned, due to the fewer and smaller scale concerts in 2025. We expect the profitability to rebound in '26 with the strong event and content lineup. On the OpEx side, total OpEx decreased by 3% to USD 696 million, driven by cost optimization across the group with the OpEx to revenue ratio improving from 14.9% to 13.5%. And this was helped by OTT enhanced operating efficiency as well as marketing effectiveness by integrating advanced analytic tools. On the HKT side, they also achieved 4% OpEx savings, driven in large part by AI adoption to improve workflow as well as the group's continued effort in streamlining business structures, network as well as IT platform rationalization. Looking at the CapEx side, total CapEx dropped by 6% to USD 282 million with the revenue ratio further improving from 6.2% to 5.5%. On the mobile CapEx side, this fell by 4%, reflecting the efficiency gains from capacity upgrades and network maintenance following the completion of the territory-wide 5G coverage rollout. On the TSS side, CapEx also fell by 2%, reflecting the already extensive fiber coverage to support growing demand for FMI solutions from both public as well as private enterprises as well as investments in subsea cables. On the media side, CapEx spending decreased year-on-year to USD 11 million following the completion of the initial phase of its new production studio facilities. If we look at the capital structure, starting with debt maturity, you'll see the top chart shows HKT. As mentioned in yesterday's results announcement, we have strong liquidity totaling USD 2.8 billion, comprising of cash of USD 300 million as well as USD 2.5 billion in bank lines. And in terms of refinancing the bond that's coming for maturity in July 2026, this gives us more flexibility in terms of when to tap the fixed income market. And as you can see at the bottom of the chart, you'll see PCCW's debt profile. There is no significant debt coming due in 2026. Across the group, we continue to maintain a balanced mix of short term as well as longer maturity borrowings and bonds. The ratio of fixed to floating rate debt is approximately 53:47. The effective interest rate was approximately 3.9% and average debt maturity is around 3 years. Overall, the group's liquidity is strong, and we are well supported by banks at around USD 3.9 billion, which comprises undrawn facilities of USD 2.5 billion for HKT and approximately USD 1 billion for PCCW as at year-end as well as overall cash of almost USD 400 million on a group basis. If you look at actual consolidated net debt as at December year-end, this increased by USD 150 million, primarily to fund large-scale long-term enterprise projects. But if you assume, as we announced yesterday, the use of proceeds for the further sale of 9% in our FiberCo business by HKT, the pro forma net debt-to-EBITDA ratio would improve to 4.1x. And with that, that's the end of my presentation. Thank you.

This takes us to the end of the analyst briefing. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today.