PCCW Limited (TH3C.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the PCCW 2024 Interim Results Announcement. Presenting today are Ms. Susanna Hui, Acting Group Managing Director and Group Financial Officer; and Mr. Marco Wong, Head of Investor Relations. Over to Susanna, please.

Hi, everyone. Let me start by sharing a quick overview of the financial performance of PCCW for the first half of 2024. If you look at the slide here, you can see that we have demonstrated a consistent and stable financial performance with a 5% growth in top line to USD 2.26 billion and a 1% growth in EBITDA reaching USD 727 million. On the back of greater contributions from our media businesses, with double-digit revenue growth of both OTT and Free TV segments and also benefiting from the ongoing stable revenue from HKT as well as the cost efficiencies from the HKT side. Moving on to the dividend policy. The Board has earlier declared an interim dividend of a stable HKD 9.77 per share. And whilst PCCW continues to benefit from the HKT steady and robust growth, we would always at the PCCW level adopt a prudent dividend policy to prioritize our financial position for sustainable growth, while, of course, also striving to provide attractive returns for shareholders. And we will regularly review this policy in order to adapt to changing circumstances in view of the prevailing high interest rates. Now let us move into taking a closer look at the operations. The next slide here shows our -- the operating metrics at Viu OTT. Our Viu OTT continued to maintain its leading position in the region, competing against large global platforms. We maintain our #2 position in terms of ranking across the key operating metrics, namely, #2 in terms of monthly active users, streaming minutes, as well as the paid subscribers. This achievement is a testament to our ability to provide locally relevant and premier content, our market-specific pricing and flexible package options as well as a diverse and thriving ecosystem of partners. Moving on to the next slide. During the first half of 2024, we continue to enrich the content portfolio by adding over 110 new titles to cater to the wide range of audience presences. At the same time, we have strengthened our value proposition in the multiple markets where we operate by providing a strong pipeline of offline fan meets and so on, in order to create market buzz. Also during the first 6 months, we have enriched our collaborations with the different partners in the ecosystem, namely the telcos, the online platform, as well as the device manufacturers. So you can see here that our paid subscribers have increased by 11% year-on-year to 11.6 million as at June end. And we see notable growth in markets like Indonesia, Thailand and the Middle East. Moving on to the next slide. Our team's focus basically is to build on our success and scale of our OTT business in the region and to focus on prioritizing the development of an optimal diversified and sustainable content portfolio. Pretty shortly is that we are optimizing and rebalancing the content portfolio amongst the different titles from the different countries, including Korea, Chinese Titles, and Thai Titles, as well as our local Viu Originals productions. So during the first 6 months on top of the crowd pleasing Korean Titles, such as the highly acclaimed #1 hit Lovely Runner. We have also added a wide range of Chinese anti-programs, which have received critical acclaim and are gaining traction across Southeast Asia. In addition, we have released seven Viu Originals in the first half tailored to local audiences and continue to resonate with viewers, topping multiple charts and further strengthening our foothold in the markets. With a number of Korean, Chinese, Thai dramas almost equally represented. This rebalancing of our content portfolio will help drive margin improvement to achieve cash flow breakeven in the near term. Moving on to our domestic Chinese language free to edge business, our Viu TV business. We have continued to produce different genres of drama series, reality shows, and films in order to enhance the stickiness of our platform. Notably, we have achieved 7% increase in the number of viewers during the key week night time slots as well as a 6% growth in terms of digital membership to reach an impressive 3.2 million members on our digital platform, which present increasing potential value for our advertisers. Despite the soft advertising market overall in the first half, we have witnessed very positive contributions from certain key sectors such as F&B as well as the financial services. And heading into the second half, we have already lined up a very strong slate of original productions across, again, a range of dramas, including reality, Beauty Pageant, including a reality show, selecting actors to become leads in our drama series forecasting, as well as an adaptation of a Korean drama casting some of our key MIRROR members. Moving on to the next slide. This is basically a slide on MakerVille. And during the first 6 months MakerVille continue to focus on producing content, featuring popular artists, including in-house and external performance. And we have basically produced a number of content output, which have garnered quite some accolades and international exposure. And by distributing selected content into more than 11 markets worldwide, we have also started to establish an international presence that pave the way for future growth. At the same time, the highlight of the first half is that we have held a number of concerts and with very good feedback and all the tickets have been sold out for a lot of our artists in Hong Kong as well as overseas. And through these live events and movies and international exposure, we have also provided our artists with the platform to showcase their skills and talents. It is also not mentioning that we have established a live event streaming platform called MakeALive, which enable our artists to engage directly with their respective fan base, including the global audiences. And so looking ahead, we are committed to maintaining this momentum of nurturing the talents and extending the reach of our repertoire. So on that note, I will pass to Marco to share the financial highlights.

Thanks, Susanna. Now let me take you across the financial heights of the main business units within the group. As announced yesterday, HKT service revenue increased by 3% to USD 2.01 billion with the key growth drivers being a strong 5% growth in mobile services, reflecting a full recovery of consumer outbound roaming as well as increased momentum in 5G adoption, which has a 40% uplift in ARPU compared to 4G, as well as sustained demand for our high-speed and reliable broadband services as well as robust demand and execution in our enterprise projects in both the public and private sectors. As you can see on the chart on the right-hand side, TSS EBITDA reported a 2% growth, while the mobile showed a higher 5% EBITDA growth. Which, together with a commitment to operating efficiency across the group resulted in an overall 3% EBITDA growth to USD 791 million, which resulted in an EBITDA margin steady at 37%. On the adjusted funds flow side, this grew by 3%, reaching USD 320 million, which was contributed by higher EBITDA, disciplined CapEx post our 5G rollout, lower tax payment, which were effective in countering the impact of higher interest rates. With PCCW holding 52.5% interest in HKT, it will receive an interim distribution of roughly $168 million. In terms of the OTT business, this continued to deliver double-digit revenue growth of 12%, hitting $140 million for the first 6 months of 2024. This was particularly underpinned by an impressive 16% growth in Viu to $122 million, which was driven by a robust increase in subscription revenue as well as greater advertising sponsorship and event-related revenues, which reflected the strategic focus on a diversified web content portfolio, including content tale for local audiences, strong online-offline engagement with viewers such as fan meet events as well as the expansion of our distribution ecosystem. With the paid subscribers growing to 11.7 million and a focus on optimizing our content portfolio, OTT EBITDA achieved a significant increase of 39% to USD 29 million, lifting the EBITDA margin to 21% from 17%. As OTT business continues to expand its scale and optimize its content portfolio, we are targeting cash flow breakeven and sustainable growth in the near to medium term. On the Free TV side, revenue achieved a substantial 23% growth, reaching $62 million. This was driven particularly by our strong performance in the artist and event management, which contribute -- was contributed from solar concerts in the first half. On the back of the expanded and diversified revenue base, EBITDA grew 10% to USD 12 million, with margin at 19%, reflecting the revenue mix shift during the period. Turning to OpEx. Total OpEx increased by 5% to $396 million, which led to a stable OpEx to revenue ratio of 17.4%. The increase in OpEx was primarily driven by higher publicity and promotion expenses at OTT, which helped to drive market penetration as well as increasing paid subscription across the region. These higher expenses were partially offset by savings at HKT, which reflected its continued focus on cost optimization initiatives. On the CapEx side, the CapEx to revenue ratio improved to 6.5% from 6.8%. This was driven by savings in mobile CapEx, which declined by 5% at HKT, reflecting efficiency gains from capacity upgrades and network maintenance following the completion of the 5G rollout. TSS CapEx was slightly lower by 1% with the majority of spending allocated to support the growing demand for its unique fixed mobile solutions. Now while there were savings achieved at HKT, this was slightly offset by higher media CapEx in view of the reallocation, renovation and equipment setup for its new production studio facilities. As a result, total CapEx remained stable at $146 million. On the financial structure side, the top chart illustrates HKT debt. As I mentioned yesterday in the results announcement, there is no imminent refinancing need in 2024. And although that we have a bond maturing in 2025, you will see that there is sufficient undrawn banking facilities for refinancing purposes. And as we also announced, upon completion of the passive network deal, the proceeds from that will -- can be used to pay down both the bond as well as bank loans. At the bottom of the chart, you can see PCCW, similarly to HKT, there is no imminent nor significant debt due in 2024 or 2025. Across the group, we maintain a balanced mix of short term as well as longer-term borrowings and bonds with the ratio of fixed to floating kept roughly 50:50 insulating us from interest rate fluctuations. Debt maturity is around 3.4 years, and the effective interest rate was approximately 4.4%. In terms of liquidity, it's in a healthy state at $2.6 billion, with $1.8 billion at HKT and $800 million at PCCW. Although you saw gross debt increase at both HKT and PCCW, this was largely due to working capital requirements for our large-scale enterprise projects undertaken in the first half. On the right-hand side, you'll see a pro forma balance in terms of debt as well as debt ratio. And this is assuming the full paydown or the use of the $870 million proceeds, pay down debt from the partial sale of the passive network business. As you can see, as a result of that pay down, the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio will improve significantly from 4.2x to just under 3.7x. And with that, that ends my presentation.

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