StarHub Ltd (CC3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good evening, everyone. I hope you can all hear us. Thank you for joining us this evening for StarHub's 1Q 2025 Business Update Call. My name is Amelia, and I take care of StarHub's Investor Relations. This evening, we have with us our senior management led by our CEO, Nikhil Eapen; CFO, Jacky Lo; our Head of Enterprise, Tan Kit Yong; and our new Chief of Consumer, Matthew Williams or Matt, as we like to call him. As usual, Nikhil and our senior management will bring you through a very quick presentation, and then we'll open the floor to questions thereafter. Nikhil, over to you.

Yes. Thank you very much, Amelia. So good evening, and welcome to all of you for our first quarter 2025 performance -- business performance review. So first of all, I'd like to double up on the welcome to Matt Williams. Now Matt, as you guys may have read, most recently led the consumer business at Optus, which is a $5 billion business, and before that, had a number of senior roles at Vodafone. Matt has extensive experience in mature markets in ways that are relevant to us, multi-brand, multi-market segment strategies, which is something that we're driving to new adjacencies, really applying data analytics to focus on brand quality and many other things. So with that, I'd like to welcome Matt. Now it is actually Matt's fifth day in the office. So I will continue as my head of CBG role as far as running the consumer section of this presentation and for some of the Q&A. But if there are things you'd like to hear from Matt, do let us know. Now first of all, moving on to the presentation, I would like to talk about our results. But as I've done in the last couple of quarters, I'd also like to talk about our results in the context of the sectors that we operate in and tie this in, in relation to our strategy. So I'd like to start off by covering our key financial highlights for the quarter. Now first, starting with service revenue. We closed the quarter with $464 million, so marginally down year-on-year. The primary reason here for the deviation from growth is our cybersecurity business, Ensign, which was really only due to timing of projects and revenue recognition. We continue to expect strong growth in Ensign for the rest of the year with a catch-up. Now with the rest of the numbers, we had lower revenue contributions in Q1 versus the prior year from Mobile and Entertainment, but we also had higher revenue contribution on the other hand from Regional Enterprise, which was up 10%, as you can see on the page, as well as Broadband, which is up 5% year-on-year. Now on EBITDA, we closed the quarter at $100 million year-on-year. Now this was due to reduced gross profit primarily from Mobile, which included, as you can tell from the market with some material roaming decline. And this was offset to some degree by growth businesses like Enterprise plus some savings on staff cost and R&M. And our cost reductions, I would say, are really in early days, at least for this phase. Now the last point on our EBITDA is we continue to have some investments, albeit investments which are really at the tail end of our transformation affecting both OpEx and CapEx. So therefore, with that, we ended our net income -- ended the quarter with our net income for the quarter at $32 million or down 18% year-on-year. This was due to the revenue and EBITDA declines in the segments that I've outlined, in addition to which we had a little bit of a higher depreciation due to spending on our network with some of our transformation initiatives, primarily around our 10G-XGS-PON network. And now last, but not on this page, I would like to touch on our cash flow and our balance sheet strength, which Jacky will double-click on, on the page that he runs through. Our cash flow in Q1 was strong, but a timing of our CapEx investments. And again, we ended the quarter with a leverage level, which was quite low, a net debt to EBITDA of 1.26x, again, less than half of the regional telco average. And as I always say, this is important, this kind of financial firepower and balance sheet is important because it positions us well to finish up our transformation, to fund our growth, whether organic or inorganic via acquisitions. So in totality, just ending off this page, for the rest of 2025, our go-forward strategy and plans are to reduce our erosion in eroding sectors like Mobile with above-market performance as we have done in this quarter, which I'll outline for you to harvest our transformation. And with that transformation and in addition to that transformation to drive cost reduction in both direct and indirect costs attached to our businesses and to scale growth businesses like ours, like our Enterprise business, but with efficiency and good margins. As we talk about our business segments, at the outset, I would like to point out some changes and reclassifications in our business update. So first of all, in Consumer, we've done two things. We now combine prepaid and postpaid into a single reporting entity. There are two reasons for this. Number one, as we are completing our cloud transformation, both prepaid and postpaid sit on the same platform. Second, the distinction between prepaid and postpaid in this market and the way in which we operate the business is less about payment and other modalities. And there are actually greater distinctions between our various brand and other offerings, more around channel and distribution. Second, we have aligned our disclosure to industry standards, particularly in reference to the incumbent operator. So while we've kept our disclosable metrics the same for Mobile and Broadband, for Entertainment, we no longer report churn and ARPU, primarily because we have so many multiple offerings within the Entertainment segment, IPTV, OTT, sports, Premier League, with quite different dynamics. So our blended reporting is less relevant, but we do provide the headline metrics, as you can see here. Now on Enterprise, what we have done, and we will discuss it, we have combined our Malaysia and Singapore Managed Services business into one reporting entity. This actually mirrors operationally how we drive the business. We have completed the business integration of Malaysia and Singapore, which now operates as one entity. And we are doing this classification in order for all of us to shine a spotlight on how we are driving modern digital infrastructure to drive our Managed Services growth at scale as a platform model, not a systems integrator model with high margins, not SI margins, hence, the classification. So therefore, turning our attention to our business segments, starting with Consumer. Now our overall Consumer business was $254 million for the quarter, reducing 2.8% year-on-year, which has to be put in context of the hypercompetitive conditions and eroding pricing across all segments. Now within Consumer, first talking about Mobile, the Singapore mobile sector experienced, as you know, overall contraction from a decline in roaming as well as base pricing erosion. As I've said in a number of forums, measured on a number of metrics, it's the most hypercompetitive market in the world. So let me talk a little bit about that. Now in the context of an eroding sector, I would say our execution was pretty strong, and we solidified our strong #2 position. Just by way of comparison, we added 46,000 subs in the quarter, where, as you may have noted in the last week, the #3 operator shrank by over 114,000 subs. So our RMS lead to the #3 operator, we believe, is now close to 600 basis points, while our subscriber market share is now 200 basis points. So while the market is eroding, we are and we continue to drive, as you know, a multi-brand, multi-market strategy with leading brands in every segment, I would like to reiterate that the premium segment with StarHub, where we really only compete with the incumbent, is very important for us. We are committed to and we believe the premium segment is critical, will always be a large segment with a natural base that will always want quality, great customer experience, good device plans, service, et cetera. So we're committed to the premium segment. Digital is a crowded space where we have giga! as a leading market player and value where our MVNO, eight, operates, in fact, is the highest growth brand in the Singapore market ever, I believe, and outcompetes others. So the overall strategy that we deploy here for Mobile is, first, to drive our multi-brand, multi-market strategy to continue to outpace others and outperform the market and reduce our revenue erosion in Mobile. And number two, to harness our transformation in parallel to drive cost down and to compete effectively. Staying on Consumer. Now our other segment here in Consumer is Broadband, where we have had some amount of continued success kind of outperforming in an increasingly, again, hypercompetitive market. Here, as you know, we are the #1 player. And the other market distinction here is that in this segment between us and the incumbent, which is the #2 in this case, we actually have a combined market share of almost about 85% revenue market share. Now coming back to our results, we were able to grow our Broadband business by about 5% year-on-year. So we believe our revenue market share lead to the #2 operator has expanded. Important, we were able to do this financially by steadily increasing our ARPU every quarter, continuing in the first quarter. And we were able to do so by continuing to drive the conversion of our subs to ultra-speed plans, defined as 3 gigabit, 5 gigabit and 10 gigabit, very important, running off our 10 gigabit XGS-PON network, on which all of our subs, not just our ultra-speed subs, now sit. So this network allows for superior customer experience, but also for improved cost efficiencies and margins. Now we -- in terms of ultra-speed plans, we have a very material proportion of our subs already converted, but we still have a lot of room to run in terms of converting 2 gigabit and 1 gigabit subs to ultra-speed plans. So to round up with our Broadband business, what we want to do going forward, as we have done, is to continue to drive ARPU by continuing to upgrade our base to ultra-speed plans, bringing our customers new value while delivering growth and profitable growth for ourselves. The other point with our strategy, like with our Mobile business, is that we intend to continue driving a multi-brand, multi-segment strategy. So again, here, we have the StarHub brand, which is a premium brand with superior customer experience, serving bundled subs with Entertainment embedded. We have MyRepublic, which important to note is also a premium brand, serving what is a pretty savvy digital base with a highly demanding gaming or geek base that's willing to pay. But in the value segment, we do not intend to operate, and we will leave that to the #3 and the #4 operator, which have relatively small-scale businesses in the segment. So what you will see us do is increasingly drive synergies between the two brands in terms of platform cost efficiencies as well as bundling and cross-sell and through that drive continued top line as well as gross profit growth. Now last, our Entertainment business, where we continue to experience secular decline because IPTV declines are not wholly offset by the growth we are driving in OTT sports packages and et cetera. But the two things I would like to add is that the impact of these revenue declines on profitability is minimal due to our cost efficiency measures around content and otherwise. And then number two, despite the fact that this is a segment that's in secular decline, Entertainment for us remains strong as a value add for the bundling, which is really always has been at the core of the StarHub proposition. And the attach rates, I would see of Entertainment to other segments are quite strong and frankly, quite countercyclical with the decline of Entertainment as a secular trend overall. So with that, I will pass on to Kit Yong, our esteemed Chief of Enterprise.

Hi, thank you, Nikhil. Now let me run through the Enterprise segment. With the reclassification, we're looking at Regional Enterprise business now comprise of including JOS Malaysia and Strateq together with Enterprise business and then a separate segment just for cybersecurity which is Ensign. Now let's focus on the Regional Enterprise business revenue. So you can see that overall, we are having a 10% year-on-year growth in terms of revenue, right? And you can see that if you double click, look at the green shade itself, Managed Services, right, itself registered 10% year-on-year growth for us. And this is our engine of growth for Enterprise business. Managed Services that bundle our enterprise connectivity. Managed Services that we position as a modern digital platform service provider using the platform that we built through Cloud Infinity as a backbone and value-add layer with services, applications and use cases to make us relevant to our Enterprise clients' digital transformation. That's how we're going to stack the business for Enterprise business. And integration of JOS and Strateq Malaysia will enhance the Malaysia's business portfolio with a platform-based business, value proposition that is no longer pure just SI, but Managed Services platform base with connectivity embedded from Malaysia to Singapore, leveraging on the hyperscalers, capabilities of platforms based in Singapore to have agility, the flexibility and innovation to help enterprise customers to grow and together with us coming together to co-create new use cases leveraging our modern digital infrastructure. Now when it comes to the cybersecurity services, right, earlier, Nikhil has mentioned, right, the decline of the revenue is due to project because it's about project basis, right? So it's a timing, right? We have a good order book in the backlog, and you need time to deliver these projects. So that's where we are at for the cybersecurity services. Right. Next, I hand it back to our esteemed CFO.

Thank you, Kit Yong. Since Nikhil has covered some of the numbers already, so I will just highlight a couple of items. So first, to put things into context, the Q1 2024 numbers, we've shown here and in the earlier slides, they are all inclusive of 2 months of D'Crypt contribution, which amounts to approximately $8.4 million in revenue, and the sale of D'Crypt was actually completed in February 2024. So moving to some of the key financial metrics. First, on the total operating expenditure, it's actually declined in line with the lower revenue. So excluding the variable cost of sales, we saw an increase in other OpEx, partly elevated by our remaining transformational investments and also higher depreciation and amortization expense. So we are taking a very disciplined approach to cost management and are actively looking into leveraging key platforms that we have invested in over the last few years to harvest cost efficiencies and to reduce our fixed costs. And in terms of net profit attributable to shareholders, for the first quarter, it was lower at $31.8 million, in line with the EBITDA decline, coupled with the higher depreciation and amortization expense. This translates to an EPS of $0.017 per share. And overall for the quarter, our balance sheet remains resilient. So zooming into our free cash flow for the quarter, it was $32 million or $0.0186 on a per share basis. The year-on-year decline was primarily due to higher CapEx payments and working capital movements from the settlement of outstanding payables during the quarter. We expect free cash flow to remain positive for 2025 despite the upcoming spectrum payments and our last 10% of the transformation-related investment that is on track to be completed by the first half of 2025. Net debt to trailing 12 months EBITDA improved to 1.26x from 1.29x as at December 31, 2024. So this positions us well with enough financial flexibility to pursue acquisitive growth. So with that, I'll pass the time back to Nikhil to wrap up the presentation.

Thank you very much, Jacky. Next page, please. So this is per our annual report, we've called our slogan for the year as Making it Count. And the reason why we call it Making it Count is because our transformation is being completed this year and in fact, within the first half. And that allows us to leverage our transformation and all that we've done to really drive some of our priorities. So first of all, as we've been talking about with our multi-brand, multi-segment strategy in Consumer, that is something we will continue to drive very hard and very aggressively. Our objective is either revenue retention in the case of Mobile, or revenue growth in the case of Broadband. Alongside this multi-brand, multi-market segment strategy and revenue retention, we intend to drive costs down aggressively, both direct and indirect cost. And putting our revenue as well as our cost initiatives together, we intend to position for the time -- at the point in time in the future when there is market stability to have maximum market share and most upside. Now related to that, on the Consumer segment and again, leveraging the investments that we've made in cloud and data lake, which, in fact, are done and complete, we intend to continue to drive the customer journeys that are most hyper-personalized, most digital delightful, most intuitive and most digital, I would say, to deliver these kinds of customer experiences, we believe and strongly believe that will manifest in kind of improved customer NPS, improved retention and help to retain revenue and solidify, in particular, the premium base. We intend to do this in a way that's digital, AI embedded, really driving automation and cost efficiencies and really getting to that business model that I talked about. Number three, the big priority for us, as you've heard from myself and Kit Yong is to scale our Regional Enterprise business to continue the strong growth that we have seen so far and to really scale our modern digital infrastructure as a platform within Enterprise and within Managed Services, not as a systems integrator model, but really our commitment to do this as a platform model with high margins and to drive our order book with large deals and to do it not just in Singapore, but increasingly in Malaysia and potentially in other markets on an integrated basis. Number four, we intend to drive towards minimum efficient scale, again, harvesting our investments in cloud, in digital, in automation to reduce cost from front to back, whether it's customer engagement, network and IT systems. And to do this with no compromise to customer and employee experience. In fact, we intend to drive measurable improvements in both, but we do intend to take cost down, albeit with some time to decommission legacy systems to drive the migrations that we need to do as we harvest. We intend to pursue acquisitive growth. So we do have a commitment to M&A, both domestic consolidation, if and when it becomes available, as well as enterprise expansion. And the principles are the same, acquisition, merger, full integration to maximize both market presence as well as the synergies from cost, CapEx and otherwise. And we have the capabilities to do so, both in terms of low leverage, funding firepower and execution track record. And all of this comes together as an overriding principle to drive long-term total shareholder returns. So we stand by certainly our dividend commitment that we posted with our financial guidance at the beginning of the year. We are reiterating our guidance for the year at this point. And our objective through both yield and profitability growth is to sustainably drive long-term shareholder returns. So with that, I will hand it back to Amelia.

Thanks, Nikhil. We'll now open the floor to Q&A. [Operator Instructions] First off, we have Hussaini.

So I have two questions. First is on the Mobile revenue side. I understand that the market remains hyper-competitive and StarHub is responding to that. My question is like, StarHub being the second largest player or operator, what it can do to help rationalize the competition or to move competition in a direct towards a more sustainable kind of growth. That's question #1. The second is on guidance. Like I understand that you reiterated the guidance, but given where we are in the first quarter and where the guidance for the full year is, how we should expect things to materialize in the next 3 quarters for us to hit the guidance?

Okay. So let me take the first question. Yes, very good and astute questions, Hussaini. So hyper-competition is definitely there. And hyper-competition manifests in two ways, as we've been talking about. Number one, roaming revenue decline; and number two, really the shift between kind of segments, right, premium to digital and value and then digital to value. And the value segment overall is growing. Now, us, and to some degree, the incumbent, unlike the other operators in the market, we're very focused on playing in each and every segment, as you know. So as the market shifts happen, we want to be able to benefit from those market shifts. We want to be able to do it in a way, which we have done, not to cannibalize anything more than minimally. And through that, to your question on how to rationalize competition, we do not want to allow others to free ride in any particular segment as the market moves to that segment. So we want to make sure that we derive a financial return from playing in each and every segment, including the value segment. We want to make sure that as we play in every segment, we will do it in a leadership way, we outperform in every segment. And we want to reduce the financial returns to others from focusing only in the value segment. So that's our objective. We do have a large platform. We do have the ability to drive in the value segment in a way that doesn't cannibalize. But also at the end of the day, it leverages the same core platform, making good incremental margin. And we have the way to do it. We have an ability to do this in a way that kind of leverages all the investments in tech and tools that we've been making, which I won't elaborate on too much. But that's what we want to do. We want to make sure we're in every segment, no free ride for anyone by focusing only in the value segment. We want to be able to do it in a way that's financially accretive and financially dilutive for others. And we believe, ultimately, the market will stabilize. The market will stabilize organically as one of the smaller operators effectively find themselves unable to compete or it will stabilize inorganically or a combination of both. But that's the long game we are playing. But we do that alongside really reducing our cost base quite aggressively, leveraging the tools and tech that we have and really playing for that long game. Now to your point and question on reiterating guidance, again, we're a full-fledged business. We don't operate in only one product, we don't operate in only one segment. So within the Consumer segment, we obviously have three different subsegments. Within Mobile, which is obviously the largest segment, we will continue playing multi-brand, multi-segment strategy. I will point you to Q4, where we were able to really stabilize and increase, in fact, revenue by about 0.8% quarter-on-quarter when others were declining. It was the same for Q3. So we intend to do what we do and leverage what we have to drive a degree of outperformance that really results in a superior revenue retention versus others. And that's what we intend to continue to do to reiterate and maintain our guidance. The second piece of it, within the Consumer business, is we do have a growing Broadband business, and we intend to continue growing that Broadband business. That's something that's within our control because it's really about converting our base to ultra-speed and escalating and increasing ARPU along the way while again, we drive cost and efficiencies from new platforms. And then outside of Consumer, we intend to continue scaling the Enterprise business. And we intend to do that as we have done in a way that's not resell, not SI in the way that others are doing, but a platform-based model with attractive margins, which are already in our financial results. So we intend to scale that to drive some of the offsets that will help us in declines in other areas. And then last but not least, in a manner that's kind of overarching across our business, whether it's leveraging our transformation or otherwise, we have identified cost efficiencies that scale out -- that have already been put in place that scale out over the rest of the year, where we hope to, again, compensate for attritions where they take place. So all of that, as we bring together, we put it all together, and we intend -- we are reiterating our guidance for the full year and our commitment to our dividend.

Thanks, Nikhil. Hussaini, we hope that answers your questions?

Yes, very clear.

Next in the line is Paul.

Just three questions for me. Sorry, I think there is a bit of background noise. The first one is just could you maybe just give us a flavor of the so-called hyper-competition that you're experiencing, maybe some of the maybe price trends that you've been seeing, just to understand if the intensity is accelerating or is it at least stabilizing? That's my first question for Mobile. The second question is on the Entertainment part, the secular decline that you mentioned. I'm just wondering, the customers that are churning out, do they -- are they -- do they include those that also have EPL? So it's not immune to only certain segments and then like every other category is also churning out, just to get some sense. And yes, sorry, my last one is the cost levers. So I know you mentioned legacy systems. I presume that would be the area that has the biggest avenue for you to get down costs. So maybe you can give us some color like when can we see the benefit of the cost -- sorry, the cost profile improving, yes.

Nikhil, you can take the first two questions and then we can hand over to Jacky.

Yes, absolutely. And maybe I'll preview a little bit of the third before I hand over to Jacky. So thanks, Paul, as always, for your questions, and thanks for the engagement. So to give you a flavor for the hyper-competition, the hyper-competition really primarily, as you correctly point out, comes from the plans that the market focused at the value end. So when you look at $8, for instance, $8 is not the cheapest plan in the market, right? There are others. You have the #3 operator, which has $7.90 plans. The #3 operator at various points in time allows very, very friction-free port from its main brand to its second brand. You have some of the MVNOs also with a high degree of price competition, again, really sub-$8, as you have seen. And then you have the senior plans in the market, right, from the fourth operator, which are at about $5. So part of it is around the fact that these plans are there. And the second part of it is we have seen that there is an ongoing addition of the size of data bundles, the amount of free roaming, the free roaming destination that are available in these plans. So that's what I talk about in terms of hyper-competition. We see similar trends on the Broadband side, maybe not as exacerbated, but similar. And Broadband, of course, is a very different cost model. It's not an overly -- it's not entirely and almost a fixed cost model. It's also -- it's a much more variable cost model with NLT and otherwise. So the trends are not quite as exacerbated, but that's kind of the flavor I would give you as hyper-competition. So I think the thesis that we are really driving and the way in which we differentiate is not just throwing in more and more and more for the same in less price. It's really differentiating around things like quality, customer experience, good device plans at the high end to really try and -- and really are focused on high decile customers and bundled product to really retain at the premium segment layer, which, again, at the end of the day, one of the silver linings in this market is that premium segment is really only has two operators present now, ourselves and the incumbent. But that's to give you a flavor of the hyper-competition. Now in terms of Entertainment, really, the churn in the Entertainment segment is really only pretty much around IPTV. So it's the old product. And that churn is not a new thing. It's actually something that has been happening for a while. And it's a very natural thing for customers to be coming off IPTV because at the end of the day, it's a sunset product. Frankly, it's a product that we intend to sunset at some point once we get the customer base down to a certain level, and we will get good cost efficiencies and savings out of that sunset. But in the past, what we saw is we were able to kind of overcompensate for that IPTV decline by driving our TV+ product pretty hard, by driving Premier League pretty hard. And both of those continue to grow, and I'll come back to TV+. And then the other thing that continues to grow are our Sports+ packages because what we've seen, which is actually a nice positive, is customers have come in on Premier League and then they upgrade to broader Sports+ packages where it's obviously higher pricing, bigger bundles, better margins, et cetera, and et cetera. But what's happened really, again, going back to TV+ is as we have seen kind of the increased dominance of Netflix versus the other OTT providers, which again is nothing about us or Singapore, it's kind of a global trend, the value of OTT bundles are not strong enough to drive growth in the way that they did, where you really wanted to have kind of four to five OTT platforms. And therefore, the offset to the IPTV decline has gone from being kind of an overcompensating offset to a less than compensating offset. So that's what's causing kind of the secular decline of the Entertainment business. It's really around the IPTV decline that's not overcompensated for as it was in the past. Now just to reiterate what I said earlier, what is the plan and what are we doing, the impacts on profitability from the revenue decline are minimal because we continue to take cost out. And we are looking at some other kind of platform initiatives very closely. So let's see where we get to. And then on -- to your question on cost, I'll hand off to Jacky, but yes, you're correct, legacy decommissioning across a number of areas is one aspect. But there are also new areas that we're focused on. There are also relatively standard and prosaic areas that we're focused on. And we're also putting in place a whole slew of new automation initiatives. Jacky, please.

Yes. I think Nikhil touched on this already. So I think when we started the transformation journey like a few years ago, I think we -- the objective is to actually drive cost efficiency and mainly through automation and digitalization. And so we have started to streamline operations across the different businesses, and we have reduced complexity by implementing automation, AI, et cetera. And just as a matter of cost discipline, we'll continue to review our cost structure. So -- and we will try to optimize our operations as well as our resources so just tailored towards this everyday changing operation environment. So I think all the platform that we have built over the years, yes, it give us a lot of opportunities to actually maximize efficiency and reduce costs. Specifically, I think on the IT transformation, shutting down the legacy systems, that will create some meaningful savings, but we expect that will be coming more from 2026 because it takes time to gradually reduce all these legacy systems. And I think we'll start -- once we complete all this IT transformation towards the later part of this year, then we'll start that reduction or decommissioning process. But I would expect a more meaningful part will be coming from 2026. But with that said, we will continue to just review our cost structure and identify areas we can streamline operations and leverage the technology we have invested in.

Thanks, Jacky. Paul, go ahead, if you have more follow up questions.

Yes. So sorry, yes, just one very quick follow-up for you, Nikhil. In terms of the premium segment, do they still exhibit lack of price elasticity, I mean? Is that something that is still holding well at least for the premium segment?

I wouldn't answer you definitively whether yes or no. But what I will say is that is much greater price inelasticity and there is much lower churn with the premium segment for a number of reasons. Number one, the way we look at this premium segment is partially about Mobile, but it is really about multiproduct. So a lot of these customers have two services to three services with us, but they also have add-ons, right, like cybersecurity, et cetera, et cetera. The second thing that they do is they really operate not just as a single customer, but as a household. So you will find in the premium segment, customers that have multiple lines. And they value -- device plans have fallen over time as a percentage of total, but they're still important, they're still in demand. And again, there are only two players in this market who offer compelling device plans and know how to do it well, right, that have the right relationships with the vendors that know how to run this business. And then also customer experience, customer service, network quality, those are all things that I think in aggregate, whether it's bundling, multiproduct, multiple lines, focus on the household, network quality, customer experience, service, device plans that kind of come together. It's not an absolute yes or no, but the inelasticity is greater. Having said that, we took a determinative decision to play in digital some years ago, and premium is becoming digital, too. We also took a deterministic decision last year to drive value aggressively. So we will play across all three, but we are very committed for all the reasons that I've just talked to you about and before around the premium segment. And we don't believe the premium segment can be easily entered into because it involves a degree of experience, nous, spelled N-O-U-S, and complexity, which can't be learned overnight. And once you've left it, like one or two operators have, there's no coming back because your brand is degraded, your quality is degraded.

I think something wrong with my ARPU. I think my ARPUs are 5, 6x the number you shared...

Your ARPU?

Don't worry about that, Paul...

No, no, my personal ARPU, I'm just kidding.

Your personal ARPU. I think you are all customed...

Keep going, Paul, keep going. I hope you are as inelastic as I think you are -- I hope you are.

Yes, something wrong with me. Yes, okay.

Nothing is wrong with you. You are making good decisions.

Thanks, Paul. Arthur, hang in there. Just before we get to you, let's go back to Sachin.

So my question is simple. Have we seen almost half of the transformation cost in the 1Q because I think we are at the end of transformation cost? So wondering half of that has been incurred -- almost half has been incurred in 1Q? And I also saw that outsourcing cost has gone up and all those. So just if you can throw a little bit of color on the cost side of the equation. I mean we can control as a company the cost side. So why are the outsourcing costs going up? And why are the depreciation and amortization rising because the 3G network was shut down in the 4Q of '24. So just trying to understand some of the cost levers here. That's question #1. And question #2 is on the cybersecurity business. Of course, it's a project-based business. Are we seeing -- and in second Q, we will have a bit of costs, but are you seeing some -- a little bit of strength in the cybersecurity business or no, it's very difficult to predict this business given the project-based nature and it can be any quarter of the year?

Thanks, Sachin. Jacky, would you like to take the question on the progress of our DARE+ cost and also additional color on our costs?

Sure. So I think, Sachin, we mentioned roughly like we have 10% left on the DARE+ and we are on track to finish that by the first half of the year. So, so far, we are still on track. And I think you can look at it more or less around $30 million left for investment this year and it's equally spread between Q1 and Q2. So that's the way to look at it. And your question on cost is like...

Sachin, you wanted additional color on costs...

Depreciation...

So I think depreciation, we talk about -- yes, we expect once we actually roll out the 700 megahertz spectrum, that's going to go up. So right now, it's on pace to be awarded on, I think, July 1. So you should expect like the second half depreciation expense will go up. And yes, but I think in Q1, we also mentioned during the prepared remarks, depreciation expense went up year-on-year. So it went up mostly because of some hardware depreciation. And also, we have all this like IT transformation cost we capitalized before, so it's amortization in the quarter.

Sachin, does that answer your question -- question one?

Yes. So just a follow-up. Are you saying that all the 3G network shut down and everything, all those costs we have already seen the benefits? Or are we expected to see some benefits, some cost related benefits in the upcoming quarters? Or have you seen most of the cost benefits already, whether from 3G network shut down or anything like that?

Yes. So I think for the 3G network, we already have some savings, we shut that down already. So that's savings achieved. But I think, as I mentioned, the IT systems, that's going to take some time to gradually shut that down. So -- and most of that should be coming in 2026. But I also want to point out like for the DARE+ investment that we make, it's not like that's cost like once we stopped like in 2025 first half, then it will be gone because there will be ongoing like cost -- recurring costs going forward as well. But the savings will be coming from shutting down the legacy systems.

There are also shutdown of other systems coming up, Sachin. I mean I won't go into the details, but we've talked about some sunsettings coming up. There are some other areas. So it's not just 3G. There's some other forms of infrastructure and network that will be shut down.

Okay. That is in 2025 or 2026 we'll see those benefits?

Back half '25, moving into '26. But there was also some migrations before we can pull the trigger on sunset and shut down. The sunset, but shut down. And then on cyber, to your question, Sachin, we have a little bit of this every year where like any kind of large-scale lumpy project, Enterprise business, and here, it's actually quite lumpy and the contracts are actually very large. They're generally back-ended over the year. So it's tough to predict kind of one quarter, two quarter, but what I can say is generally they're back-ended. Generally, the growth in the business is decent as it has been. We expect it to continue to be decent. And then the last thing I would say is when you look at the threat landscape and when you look at the demand side for cybersecurity services, it's extremely strong, and it continues to increase, in fact, not decrease. And I think that's the case with all government agencies, all enterprises, everyone is spending more on cyber. There's much greater awareness. There's a regulatory push. So the prospects of the business are still quite strong. And if anything, the demand side is stronger. I would also say the business has built good partnerships, again, with government agencies, et cetera, et cetera. So it does have a little bit of a, I think, unique position in Singapore and is growing quite well in some international markets. So certainly, from where we sit and as we look at the first quarter, I think nothing really to read too much from that other than it's a little bit choppy, but expect the same full year outcomes as you've seen year after year.

Thanks, Sachin. Thanks for waiting, Arthur.

Yes, two questions for me. Firstly, can you just clarify what percent of your base would be on SIM-only plans now versus a year ago? I'm just wondering what percentage of the contraction is linked to migration on SIM-only? And second question I had is with regard to what needs to happen in the market so that you can actually go back to growth. Now I think presumably some of the pressures are, of course, coming from these MVNOs. But the MVNOs are also partly an own goal by the telcos, right? Because you're leasing out capacity to them probably on the cheap, which allows them to undercut your own rates. What can be done to address that? Are you seeing any moves to raise the wholesale pricing on these segments?

Okay. On the first question, percentage of SIM-only, that's probably not a percentage I can share with you, Arthur. I know you asked that question, and we always give you an inadequate response. What I will say is that the rate of movement from device to SIM-only, I believe, has slowed down. So I think it goes to a little bit of the, call it, I don't know whether -- I don't want to use the word bottoming out. It's not really bottoming out, but that's what I would say. Now the second thing is in terms of what needs to happen for ARPU to start rising again in the market. I think we'd be quite happy if it were to stop falling. But I think you have -- I think you mentioned yourself some of the clues in the market. So the way I talk about it, right, is it's not just inorganic consolidation, it's organic consolidation. You mentioned the MVNOs. And as you correctly point out, the revenue share being paid by the MVNOs to the MNOs is not insubstantial. It is very, very material. So therefore, the economics that the MVNOs make is very, very poor. Frankly, what we're seeing in the current market is the MVNOs, particularly on the digital side, I think who aren't really flanker brands kind of owned by the operators, they're really being squeezed. So we do expect that their ability to compete will be -- is already being materially degraded and will continue to be even more so as the quarters come and go. So that's point number one on the MVNOs. Point number two on the MNOs, I think it's ahead of consolidation, I think it's probably -- this will be a little bit of a longer game, but it's probably two things. Number one, when you look at the two MNOs that are really price degraders, one has a model that, by definition, was built from ground up with a blank sheet of paper and is therefore a low-cost model. But the other does not because the other has -- while the transformation has happened, is effectively kind of a monoline provider with a materially legacy cost structure. So the ability to continue to kind of drive a business with ultra-low pricing with that kind of cost structure is not the same as a #4 operator. So I think that, not today, but over time, will create financial consequences. And perhaps we don't know when that will be. That will promote a more economically rational decision set, but we'll have to see. And then, of course, there's always consolidation out there, and it's kind of interlinked, right? I think MVNOs are not hard to buy, and that may or may not happen sooner. And then in terms of the smaller MNOs that are monoline in one segment and pretty much all Consumer, I think those -- one that has a cost structure that is very low, they continue to drive a decision set that's different from one that doesn't. And then at some point, I think the returns to raising prices are better than the returns to just continuing to drive subscriber growth because at the end of the day, they're also the incumbent and ourselves that are not sitting on our hands. We can play it quite aggressively as we have shown. And that will, I think, exert a force for the better. So don't pin me down on time lines. Time lines are equally hard to predict as consolidation. But we know -- I mean, you're an experienced guy. You've been in the market for a long time, I think inexorably and ultimately, these forces come to play.

Yes. I guess my concern is even if there's consolidation within the market, if you have still a subscale player such as Simba, assuming they've got the balance sheet to sustain that, you may see an extended period where even if there is consolidation, you may not see price repair.

Yes. Again, it's really hard to speculate. But if I was to -- I won't talk about Simba, but if I was to put myself in the shoes of a new entrant with a low-cost structure that can continue to add subs in a way that's kind of financially accretive, you still, at the end of the day, have to weigh the benefits of continuing down that strategy versus raising pricing. And at some point, raising pricing with a drop down to bottom line becomes more attractive, particularly when others have consolidated around you and particularly when they play on your field as well with firepower and tools that are greater than yours. And that is a different situation from when you have four operators.

Thanks, Arthur. Okay. Before we get to the next question, we have a question from [ Amanda ] in the chat for Jacky. Amanda is asking how much of the remainder transformation CapEx has been captured this quarter? And what are our expectations for free cash flow to trend year-on-year for the coming quarters?

Yes. So I think I answered earlier in terms of the transformation costs, like we mentioned DARE+ is roughly about like half of that 10% remaining. But I think the way to look at free cash flow, as you know, is a combination of our cash flow from operations and also CapEx, right? So I think we will be -- you see like the way we manage working capital, yes, so that's how we're going to take care of the cash flow from operation part. The second part is on CapEx. And I think on the last earnings call, we actually provided outlook for the full year is between 9% and 11% of our revenue. So I think that gives you an idea like in terms of the CapEx range. But keep in mind, in Q2, there will be the 700 megahertz spectrum payment. So that's going to impact our free cash flow in Q2. But for the full year, I think we are still expecting positive free cash flow after the payment for the spectrum.

Thanks, Jacky. Amanda, I hope that answers your question. We have time for maybe one more question if anybody wants to raise their virtual hands. I'll just give you a bit of time. I'll do a countdown, three, two, one, okay, I think we are standing in between you and your long weekend. So we won't hold you up any longer. Thank you very much for joining us this evening. And as always, if you have more questions, you know how to get us, you can reach us at [email protected]. Thanks very much, and have a good long weekend.

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