PT Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison Tbk (ISAT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the PT Indosat Tbk First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Indar. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. With us on the call, we have Pak Vikram Sinha, our Chief Executive Officer; Pak Nicky Lee, our Chief Financial Officer; and Pak Ritesh Kumar, our Chief Commercial Officer. I will now hand the call over to Pak Vikram for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.

Thanks, Indar. Good afternoon, everyone. Before I start my presentation, I would like to invite all of you to Jakarta on the 14th of June for our first Capital Market Day. We will share more insights into our business and our new growth areas as well as updates on our long-term strategy. Please mark it into your calendar and more detail on the event will be shared closer to the date. Let me start my presentation with few highlights for quarter 1, 2024. As a reminder, in our last quarter, we shared our strategic objective for 2024, which was to double down on our core business, scale up home broadband and enterprise business and also aim to grow agency revenues. I am pleased to share that so far we have made good progress in all the 3. Our core cellular revenue grew strongly by more than double digits, increasing by 14% year-on-year in a quarter where we saw our net add increase by a little more than 2 million, and our ARPU remain stable at around IDR 38,000. At home broadband, this is our first full quarter post the MNC acquisition, where the integration has been smoothly completed. Now our home broadband revenue is around IDR [ 25 ] (sic) [ 250 ] billion for this quarter, and we now have 339,000 customers. Growing our adjacent revenue is a priority for us. And while this is a longer-term project, we have started laying the foundation this quarter by signing strategic agreement with key partners including NVIDIA, Mastercard, Cisco and Google. This will be the key for us to grow together and deliver on the promise to increase our adjacent revenue. There are 2 key focus area when we talk about adjacent revenue, which is AI cloud and security. I am pleased to report that we have started 2024 on a strong foot. Our revenue increased by 16% year-on-year to IDR 13.8 trillion, while EBITDA increased faster than revenue, growing 22% year-on-year to IDR 6.5 trillion as we continue to see double-digit growth momentum in our businesses. We recorded a net profit of IDR 1.3 trillion for this quarter, and we seek to continue our profitability grow. We are blessed to be in Indonesia where we still see a tremendous opportunity for Indonesia and IOH. Indonesia remains under-indexed relatively to other nations. As you can see from this slide, on both ARPU and cellular spend, it's among the lowest in the region. As customers increasingly focus on reliability and experience, we aim to deliver that world-class experience and take advantage of this monetization opportunity. On this slide, you can also see that usage relative to other country is also low in Indonesia. However, we increasingly see that Indonesians are using Internet and data service, not just for entertainment, but for lot of productive purpose. And so we believe that this digital lifestyle will become a bigger part of every Indonesian life. Customers will choose experience over price, and this is what we aim to deliver. Finally, I want to share that at MWC 2024 in Barcelona, we signed a historic agreement with NVIDIA, where IOH will be the first NVIDIA cloud partner provider in Indonesia to bring sovereign AI to the nation. This strategic alliance to offer access to NVIDIA cutting-edge technologies and enable sovereign AI infrastructure in Indonesia, through this agreement, IOH will offer AI cloud services. Our subsidiary, Lintasarta, will be the platform to our enterprise and SMEs, both public and private sector in Indonesia. The good news is all the work is progressing well. End of quarter 2, around June, July, we will have the first batch of GPUs and you will see live customers in Indonesia. This is a pivotal agreement, and we will put IOH at the forefront of AI implementation for the country, especially in Indonesia. We are excited to work with NVIDIA, the leader in AI infrastructure, to make this dream a reality and to empower Indonesia become an AI nation. That ends my introduction, and I'll now hand over to Nicky for financial presentations.

Thank you, Pak Vikram, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm delighted to report strong financial results for the first quarter in 2024. Overall, revenue for Q1 grew 15.8% from IDR 11.9 trillion last year to IDR 13.8 trillion. This growth is underpinned by robust demand for data and connectivity services across cellular and MIDI. More details will come later. We have been consistently raising EBITDA by over 20% per year, and there is no exception for the first quarter. On the back of strong revenue momentum, realization of synergies and optimal cost management, EBITDA is up by 22.1% from IDR 5.3 trillion to IDR 6.5 trillion year-on-year. Following that, our EBITDA margin is up by 2.4 percentage points from last year to 47%. The EBITDA growth, positive growth normalized net profit to jump 3.4x from last year to IDR 1.3 trillion. This massive improvement was driven by both top line growth and cost synergies realization from merger. Our net debt-to-EBITDA was trimmed further from 0.33x to just 0.27x, reflecting strong cash flows we're able to generate from operations. Just quickly on our first quarter performance against that of last quarter. We were able to deliver growth at both revenue and EBITDA levels from Q4. This is despite Q4 is the best quarter for the industry normally. Normalized net profit in Q1 was slightly below last quarter, all due to nonrecurring charges booked. Next slide, please. Good growth is generated for both cellular and MIDI, which has included our FTTH business. Cellular achieved a year-on-year growth of 13.6%, while MIDIs revenue was up by 35.5%. The growth achieved by MIDI has included the FTTH expansion, both organically and inorganic. Due to the cyclical movement in IDD revenue, fixed telecom revenue, revenue dropped in Q1 compared to last year and last quarter. Despite this, it has minimal impact on our EBITDA and net profit. Moving on to costs. Our cost of services and OpEx is flat quarter-on-quarter and up by 11% year-on-year due to our investment in the new distribution and also adoption of the way of accounting for lease payments. In 2024, the earlier Ramadan also led to more marketing activities in the quarter. G&A this quarter is somewhat lower than last quarter, but higher than last year. This is to do more with the timing of our projects and booking of the related expenses. The current quarter actually is more representative of the regular level of spending on this area. In terms of other operating income expenses, we booked a one-off gain on tower sale and data center amounting to IDR 652 billion and IDR 441 billion, respectively, in first quarter last year and fourth quarter of last year. We didn't have any such one-off gain in the quarter, and that's why you see a much smaller number for other operating income expense. Moving on to CapEx. We tend to be a bit slow in CapEx booking in the early part of this year, and it shows again in Q1 this year with a CapEx capitalization of IDR 2.1 trillion. That said, we will catch up in subsequent quarters like what we have done in previous years. On net debt, as mentioned earlier, we do not have any [ issue and so ] our net debt has come down from last year's IDR 9.6 trillion coming down to IDR 6.7 trillion this year, and this is representing 0.27x of our EBITDA. This low level of net debt not only helps us to shrink the gearing level, but also capped the interest expense, which is particularly useful in this kind of uncertain interest rate environment. That's a quick summary of our finance section presentation. I'll pass the time to Pak Ritesh.

Good morning, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks a lot, Nicky and Vikram. Going back to commercial numbers. All the key indicators for future business growth and sustainable business growth are in place. Mobile customer base, we have added around 2.3 million subscribers in quarter 1. Our ARPU continues to increase year-on-year by around 14%. And the most important thing, our own application monthly active users are going up significantly. It's grown around 25.7% year-on-year. And that gives us lots of flexibility around bringing more customer -- better customer experience, more flexibility for us to launch many digital services and attract new partners who can provide digital services and that can realize our dream of being the most preferred digital partner for every Indonesian apart from giving the power in the hand of consumers. Our data traffic growth continues to grow at 14%. So if you look at here, I think we have been able to do a good job on pricing and data growth. That's a sign of being much better sustainable business going forward. Coming back to home broadband and [Technical Difficulty] last time, we have been talking about home broadband focus of Indosat. I'm happy to announce that we have added around 327,000 new customers that is coming on the back of organic plus inorganic growth, both. And I'm happy to announce the integration between 2 companies has been going very smooth, and we have already integrated commercial activity on ground. Sales team, marketing team and product team has already been aligned, and we have announced the new structure, which is going to take forward the new business in 2024. And we continue to give much better customer experience and Opensignal has also recognized this and from third-party data, it has been seen that IOH network quality is continuously improving, and it is regarded as one of the most stable operator of Indonesia. That's all from commercial side. I'll give it back to Vikram on quarter 1 2024 achievements.

Thanks, Ritesh. On guidance, we still stay committed to coming close to 50%. Also, we stay committed to getting to IDR 40,000 ARPU in quarter 2. Over to you, Indar.

Thanks. I think now let's proceed to the Q&A question. If we can have the first question, please.

[Operator Instructions] And now we're going to take our first question, and it comes from line of Piyush Choudhary from HSBC.

Congrats, team, for great results. Three questions for me. Firstly, on mobile ARPU, we saw some bit of decline quarter-on-quarter. Is it due to a change in subs mix? Or is it seasonality? Or is it a reflection of some increased competition? If you can throw some light there? Secondly, for Nicky, EBITDA margin has been hovering around 47% for the last 4 quarters now. What opportunities are there in the next 6 months, which is leading to the guidance of EBITDA margin to improve to close to 50% in 2024? And third question is, could you also update us on your network expansion plan and rural expansion plans through your own distribution points? How much is the target this year and how much have been achieved in the first quarter?

Thanks, Piyush, for the question. If you look at, historically, telecom industry in Indonesia, quarter 4 is always the best quarter for 2 reasons. One is people spend more and people also go for travel and there's the festive season. And quarter 1 has always been slow. That's one reason. However, this year, we have been able to manage our ARPUs better. And we have seen our customers buying higher-value recharges, #1. And #2, in quarter 4 also we have some revenues getting booked on loyalty program. So every year quarter 4, we do that. But if you normalize that, we'll see this a little bit increase only, Piyush. So that's nothing to worry, competition is okay. Network expansion in rural and distribution point, I think we are in line with our plan, and we are actually making sure that -- last time also I spoke about that every customer should not be able to walk more than 10 minutes or more than 15 minutes -- [ puts in time ] for getting his SIM replaced and also every site should have proper distribution for selling our SIM cards and recharges. So we are in line with our projection and will continue to do in coming quarters as well. For point #2, if -- yes.

Piyush, on EBITDA margin, yes, our EBITDA margin stayed at the same level in Q1 versus Q4 last year. And as I mentioned earlier, Q4 is a high season for us, right? So actually getting the EBITDA margin to be in line give us the encouragement that we would be able to do better in the subsequent quarters in the year to bring it closer to 50% with what we have guided. We are working on different initiatives to bring more efficiency to our OpEx. So we will share more in the coming quarters.

So Piyush, just to add to what Nicky said, another point to look at now that our home broadband business is getting to sizable scale, this business comes at an EBITDA margin of around 24%, 25%. But the beauty of it is the flow-through to net profit is very high. So still with the mix of revenue, enterprise, home broadband and core business, we are confident of our guidance of getting close to 50%. But the better way to look at it: absolute EBITDA growth and also net profit. If you look at our net profit, look at the flow-through, if you look at Q1 last year and Q1 this year, organic net profit growth is close to 340%. So we are very mindful that how we are doing things, which is sustainable and not only at EBITDA is flowing through at a net profit level.

And the next question comes from the line of Henry Tedja from Mandiri Sekuritas.

Congrats management for the strong results. Perhaps 2 questions from my end here. First, would you mind to share about the mobile competition dynamics, especially after the Telkomsel launched Telkom satellite? I mean, can we expect IOH to continue increasing the product pricing and also healthy market conduct? And my second question, perhaps to Pak Vikram, would you mind to elaborate more on the collaboration and agreement with NVIDIA? I mean what kind of business opportunity that we look for with NVIDIA and how this agreement can improve IOH growth and return profile? And perhaps if you can also share some color on the CapEx for developing this new business with NVIDIA?

Yes. Thanks, Henry, for this question. I'll take the first one. Indosat always believes in giving value for money for IM3 brands. And we also like to be the preferred partner of every gamers to 3 brand. So that strategy will continue and whatever products and services will help us achieving our dream, we'll do that. And I would like to comment on what actions we are taking. I think Vikram had clearly said that we want to get to IDR 40,000 ARPU level. So we will continue to have our journey towards that, and we'll be quite mindful about the fact that around 96% of the revenues come from our existing base. If we can provide a better customer service through better network and innovative products clubbed with some digital services product, I'm quite sure that we will be able to realize our dream. So we'll continue doing so. And with rural distribution, we still believe there is a huge opportunity for us to get subscribers from rural Indonesia wherein we are expanding our network rapidly. And we always say that wherever our network is, our distribution and commercial activity should follow. So we will continue doing that while making sure that industry is moving towards the right direction through our pricing. However, our commercial strategy is, as a strategy, we don't want to lose customer market share and data market share. And we are keeping a very, very close eye on that, and we are managing as of now, and we'll make sure that we'll continue to gain data market share and customer market share in quarter 2 as well.

Yes. Just to add to what Ritesh said, I think we have put 2 slides if you look at our deck, I think it is very important for all of us to pay attention on this. First, if you look at ARPU by country also, Indonesia, and I'm talking here industry ARPU, is among the bottom 3 in the region, in the world among the bottom 5, it is at USD 2.7. If you look at cellular spend as a percentage of GDP, in fact, it is lowest compared to Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, it is at 1.2%. So clearly, Indonesia, the country is under-indexed. And what is important is that we deliver world-class experience. And then we help people not only in urban, but even in rural pocket, even in villages, help them do productive work. The other slide, if you look at, mobile data usage per GB per month, again, we have put countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, India, China, Indonesia is still at 12 GB per customer per month. So again, when it comes to mobile data usage, we see clear opportunity. See, the key important thing is that customers are not looking for cheap price. They are looking for good experience, value for money and simple and transparent product. And this is where what Ritesh spoke about, we are building on it. And we clearly see opportunity of even price-up in the market. Coming back to the NVIDIA question, I think it's a very exciting journey for us. First, we wanted Indonesia not to be left behind on the AI transformation wave, which is coming to Asia. So our first batch of GPU is coming in June. And we have been seeing lot of good interest from the customers especially coming from some of the big enterprise bank and even from some of the government sector. So when you come -- that is why I said I want to invite all of you on the Capital Market Day. So more detail on this. I want to make sure that I don't explain you online. There is so much of noise on AI. We want to make sure AI is real, and we are delivering value. And AI as a -- Indosat is a very iconic brand for Indonesia. And we want to make sure that this opportunity, which we have got with Indonesia, we make it good for Indonesia, and we make it good for IOH. And we'll be able to explain you in June when you come for Capital Market Day in terms of the use cases, we'll be able to give you more color how it will have a positive impact on our P&L going forward.

Okay. Perhaps if I can add one more question to Pak Nicky. Can you elaborate more on the accounting changes for the lease payment that you mentioned before? How big is the impact for the cost of service and OpEx in first quarter?

Henry, yes, I mentioned this actually also in the call last quarter. So essentially, without going into too much technical details, we have looked at investing more in the rural distribution and, along with it, new arrangement. As a result, this has an impact on how we should apply the accounting principles. And we're booking some of these costs on gross basis starting from Q4. So as a result, you can see the marketing cost has gone up a bit, right? So in terms of the quantum of the change, if you look at this on a year-on-year basis, around -- a bit less than half of it, incremental cost would be coming from this accounting change.

[Operator Instructions] And now we're going to take our next question and the question comes from the line of Marissa Putri from UBS.

So I have 2 questions. Firstly, can I get some sense on your fixed data revenue? I think last quarter, you booked 1.5 months of the new home broadband revenue. But if you look at the connectivity revenue, it's actually down Q-on-Q despite you actually adding new subs. So is it implying that there is a steep decline on the other part of the business? And I guess, secondly, can you perhaps give us some color on your 2 million new subscribers? Where is it coming from mostly in terms of region or maybe brands, perhaps? And especially given that your recent strategy was to actually increase price of SIM card, so I was wondering like where it is coming from.

Yes. Thanks, Marissa. I think most of our subscriber growth out of 2.2 million plus subscribers are coming from rural and deep rural areas from -- basically from non-Java area, wherein we have been improving our distribution infrastructure and also net -- we are trying to monetize our network. So I think that answers your question on 2.1 million customers.

Yes. On question 1, I think when you look at fixed telecom revenue, that segment doesn't include our FTTH business. So as I mentioned in the call earlier, that actually helped to propel our MIDI revenue to grow by 35.5% year-on-year.

Yes, Marissa, if you look at our deck also, FTTH revenue is on MIDI, not on fixed. Fixed is more of fixed connectivity, and it has a seasonality impact. Generally, all the government order and all, because of the annual budget closing, and this is historical, comes more on Q4 and then Q1. So this is very normal. This is not a drop or anything. This is just how some of these -- especially driven by government and state-owned business, we always see a spike on Q4 and then it gets normalized to [ Q1 ].

Yes. But as Nicky said, our FTTH business is under MIDI. That's where we see growth, 35%.

Yes, I was actually referring to -- sorry, I was actually referring to the MIDI under the connectivity revenue, but, yes, actually, you already answered the question.

[Operator Instructions] And the next question comes from the line of Piyush Choudhary from HSBC.

I had 1 follow-up question for Vikram and Nicky. Given the balance sheet is becoming much lighter and lighter, your leverage ratio is coming down and your CapEx is also manageable, how should we think about incremental shareholder return? Is there some light which you can throw on how you are thinking of dividends going forward?

So Piyush, this is Nicky. Thank you for your question. Yes, we will -- we intend to continue paying dividend. You will get to know the details in the upcoming AGM in May. So we will also work on formulating a dividend policy. So we will share more details on this later. But definitely, the intention is to reward shareholders with the right dividend amount moving forward, and we want to be progressive in this aspect.

Would it be part of the Capital Market Day like...

Yes, we will -- so we -- our AGM is coming on, I think, 21 May. But on Capital Market Day, we want to also come up with a clear dividend policy so that we are -- in terms of policy also, we'll be more predictive. But overall, Piyush, you are absolutely right. Our balance sheet, our P&L is getting stronger and stronger.

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. And I would like to hand over the conference back to our management team for any closing remarks.

Okay. Thanks, everyone. As always, if you need any information, do feel free to reach out. If not, please mark 14th of June into your calendars, we will see you at our Capital Markets Day here in Indonesia. Thanks, everyone.

That concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.