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

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

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining the PCCW 2024 Annual Results Analyst Briefing. If we can start with the first slide. During the year, we continued to focus on strengthening our integrated ecosystem of talent, content and platforms. We grew and nurtured our talents and created new opportunities for them across our various media formats in Hong Kong as well as overseas. Content-wise, we produce in-house as well as acquired content that resonate with local and regional audiences. And such content is delivered across our integrated platform of linear TV channels, online platforms and OTT services to enhance viewer accessibility and experience. We also supported the government's efforts to establish Hong Kong as Asia's premier events capital by leveraging our platform's resource and production capabilities, which we believe will be important in stimulating tourism and economic growth. I'm now pleased to report that PCCW posted solid results for the year 2024 with revenue growing by 3% to over USD 4.8 billion, and EBITDA remaining very stable, edging up slightly to USD 1.647 billion. If we look at the key growth drivers of the revenue, you can see here from the slide that subscription and advertising revenue from Viu OTT delivered a very strong 15% and 17% growth in revenue, respectively, while the Free TV business enjoyed an 11% growth in top line, primarily fueled by a notable success in our artiste management and events business, despite a relatively subdued retail backdrop in Hong Kong. More importantly, PCCW benefits from the stable dividend upstream from HKT. We announced HKT's results yesterday, and HKT recorded a 1% growth in terms of revenue and 3% growth in EBITDA and more importantly, a 3% growth in AFF and distributions, which, of course, translates into a total dividend income of approximately USD 400 million for PCCW. On the back of this performance, I'm very pleased to share that the Board has declared a final dividend of HKD 0.2848 per share, resulting in a full year dividend of HKD 0.3825. Whilst PCCW continues, of course, to benefit from HKT's very steady growth and stable distribution upstream, PCCW will continue to adopt a prudent dividend policy, basically to prioritize financial strength for sustainable growth, while at the same time, striving to provide attractive total return for shareholders. Turning to the operation itself. Our OTT business remains the #1 Asian operated platform just after the global platform Netflix in terms of the viewership share and revenue share in the Greater Southeast Asia region. We continue to operate a dual revenue stream model and continue to grow our core subscription and advertising business. Looking at the SVOD side, the subscription side, we took a number of steps to expand our revenue base, and this included expanding partners beyond telcos to focus on leading regional digital players, such as Grab, Trip.com and Zalora, who can provide access to a large base of active and digitally savvy users. To further uplift the ARPU, we also launched a premium plus subscription tier direct-to-consumers in selected markets, such as Hong Kong and Indonesia, to offer subscribers earlier access to popular dramas as well as selected movies, and we expect to increase the penetration of this premium layer going forward. As a result, our subscriber base grew by 17% to 15.5 million, which is ahead of the market growth of 12% per the recent industry report released today. And subscription revenue expanded by 15% as well. On the ad-supported tier, with our strong engagement with viewers, as Viu continue to maintain our position as one of the top OTT players in terms of MAU and streaming minutes, we are one of the preferred platforms that acclaimed brands such as Unilever and UOB across the region would be collaborating. Title sponsorships for popular content across the region also contributed to revenue growth. In addition to premium ad solutions, launch of AVOD tier on connected TV expand the advertising inventory and will become a growth driver going forward. As a result, our Viu is also able to command a higher ad rates as compared to other Asian and regional player. Our AVOD revenue grew by 17% during the year. And added together, including the subscription revenue, we continue to outpace the industry growth in the Southeast Asian market. Obviously, central to our market leadership is the quality and relevance of our content. With our large user base and audience analytics, we can quickly identify content genres and curate a relevant selection that resonate most with our audience. Given the increasing popularity of Chinese content in the Southeast Asian market, capturing a growing share of freemium viewership in particular and new subscription acquisition, we significantly expanded our offering of the Chinese titles by 52% and more program hours by 17% available during the year as well as increasing simulcast titles by 50%. We also continue to offer a diverse range of Viu originals with cross-market regional appeal, while, of course, maintaining a strong selection of the high-performing Korean titles, which continue to prove very popular. But of course, our refreshed focus on the content will be more on return potentials. Turning to our domestic markets, Hong Kong. Our proposition basically is a complete media ecosystem, starting with artiste representation, concert and events, content creation, production, social media engagement and media planning, so that we can have access to reach consumers through multiple distribution channels, including live events, including social media, including Free TV, including OTT and recently, including print as well in Hong Kong as well as increasingly across the region. We have the capabilities to offer comprehensive advertising solutions for brands who are trying to target not just the mass audience, but also specific demographics. Turning to this slide, basically make a view with demand for live events coming back, our artiste management and event business made remarkable progress during the year. With a stable of almost 70 talents of artiste and groups that we manage, we organized 31 sold-out concerts during the year 2024 in Hong Kong, driving a doubling of our concert revenues and increased the media exposure of our talents beyond Hong Kong across Asia and even North America, resulting in our artistes receiving a lot of awards locally and from overseas. At the same time, we are also expanding our geographic presence, organizing for our talents to participate in concerts overseas, debuting one of our flagship shows, the Chill Club in Thailand as well, promoting our concerts outside of Hong Kong that feature international performance as well as licensing and distributing our locally produced content to over 40 markets across the region. On our ViuTV, on the advertising front, the whole ad spend in Hong Kong, I must say, was relatively softer because of the sluggish economy backdrop. But for ViuTV, we have developed a very strong digital engagement with our viewers, especially the highly digital aged younger audience group and which can be evidenced by our 6% increase to over 3 million registered members across the ViuTV's online platforms. We will, of course, continue to look forward to monetizing the new digital ad format in order to expand the digital revenue at the same time. Secondly, we have a very strong share of the younger audience, which is underpinned by our content targeted to this demographic as well as leveraging our artiste-driven campaigns, we are, therefore, of very strong appeal to our advertisers in certain strategic categories, such as F&B, fast food delivery, banking, credit card and insurance. In addition, we also proactively collaborate with our advertisers to expand sponsorship revenue by curating content integrated solutions, high-value special events and campaigns and also, of course, prime sort optimization. And with this, I will pass to Marco to discuss the financial section. Marco?

Thanks, Susanna. As was announced yesterday, HKT reported a solid financial performance, with services revenue increasing by 2% to USD 4.11 billion and total revenue edging up by 1% to USD 4.46 billion, with the key growth drivers being robust demand from enterprises for HKT's unique digital transformation solutions, sustained demand for our high-speed and reliable fiber connectivity as well as growth in mobile services revenue from roaming recovery as well as further 5G upgrade momentum. As you see on the chart on the right, mobile exhibited 5% EBITDA growth and TSS EBITDA reported 2% growth, resulting in an overall 3% growth to USD 1.76 billion. The margin improved to 40%, reflecting enhanced operating efficiency across the group. Most importantly, AFF registered a further 3% growth, reaching USD 766 million, contributed by higher EBITDA, disciplined CapEx post our 5G network rollout, lower tax payment, and these positive factors more than offset the impact of higher finance costs. As a result, the total distribution per SSU for the year will be HKD 0.7880. If we look at the individual Media businesses, Viu revenue grew 5%, reaching USD 274 million, driven by the strong 15% and 17% growth in subscription and advertising revenue, respectively. However, this core growth was diluted by lower content syndication and event revenues during the second half of the year. Overall, OTT revenue was stable at USD 315 million, impacted by fewer music events organized by our music streaming service, MOOV. Viu grew paid subscribers by 17% year-on-year to 15.5 million, which forms a solid base to drive further growth. With fresh content in the pipeline for 2025, this will support the next cycle of syndication revenues. In terms of EBITDA, this hit USD 51 million for the full year with a margin of 16% as we increased investments in high potential markets, particularly Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, which will help to enhance penetration in non-metro areas, expanding our addressable markets. On the Free TV and entertainment business, this achieved 11% revenue growth, reaching $136 million, underpinned by the strong performance in our artiste and event management business, including sold-out concerts featuring a number of our talented in-house artistes. This helped overcome softer advertising revenue arising from the subdued retail market in Hong Kong. We developed a strong digital engagement with viewers, especially the younger audience group, evidenced by our 6% increase to over 3.2 million registered members across ViuTV's online platforms. In terms of EBITDA, ViuTV reported a stable and resilient EBITDA of USD 25 million, with the margin edging down mildly to 18%, reflecting the revenue mix shift during the year. On the OpEx side, this increased by 3% to USD 716 million, which was in line with higher revenue growth, which resulted in a stable OpEx to revenue ratio of 15%. The increase in OpEx was primarily driven by higher publicity and promotion expenses in the OTT business, which is aimed at driving advertising revenue growth as well as the uptake of subscriptions in the high potential markets that I just previously mentioned. Although these higher expenses were alleviated by HKT OpEx savings of 5% year-on-year, reflecting HKT's continued focus on operating efficiency, cost optimization initiatives through enhancing business processes, including the adoption of AI automation, consolidating business operations and rationalizing IT platforms. In terms of CapEx, we improved the CapEx to revenue ratio to 6.2% from 6.4% in the previous year. Mobile CapEx declined 5% year-on-year, reflecting efficiency gains from capacity upgrades and network maintenance following the completion of HKT's territory-wide 5G network coverage. On the TSS side, this also declined by 4%, reflecting our already extensive geographic fiber coverage and the phased timing of subsea cable investments. While savings were achieved at HKT, these were offset by higher media CapEx on a one-off relocation, renovation equipment setup for new production studio facilities. As a result, total core CapEx remained stable at around USD 300 million. If we shift our focus to the capital structure, the top chart illustrates the Hong Kong T debt maturity profile. As mentioned in yesterday's announcement, the proceeds from the partial disposal of the passive network business were used to pay down bank loans. As a result, gross as well as net debt dropped significantly to USD 5.3 billion and USD 5.1 billion, respectively. With the bond maturing in April, we plan to repay by drawing down banking facilities. At the bottom of the chart, you see the PCCW debt profile. As you can see, there is no debt due in 2025. Across the group, we maintained a balanced mix of short-term as well as long maturity borrowings and bonds. The current ratio of the group's fixed to floating rate debt was kept at approximately 60-40, with the effective interest rate of 4.4%, and the average bond maturity will be around 4.2 years after we repaid HKT's bond, which is due in April. In terms of liquidity, you'll see that the group's cash as well as undrawn facilities is very healthy at approximately USD 3.5 billion, which comprises USD 2.7 billion for HKT and USD 850 million for PCCW. Gross debt decreased to USD 6.7 billion after the successful HKT deleveraging. As a result, the leverage ratio improved with core net debt to EBITDA dropping significantly to below 4x at 3.88x from 4.2x. And with that ends the presentation. Thank you.

That's the end of today's analyst briefing. Thank you very much.