StarHub Ltd (CC3) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Welcome to our 3Q, 9 months results. As I was saying and as we talked about in Q2, this is obviously a very interesting time. Consolidation has been announced. We're waiting for it to close, right, and there's a lot of dynamic flux in the sector, not just from consolidation, but also cyber issues, cost pressures, et cetera, across the board. So before we start and go through this page, I just wanted to thank you for your attention to StarHub and this journey. Now, as I did in 2Q, I wanted to go through this page again because of the dynamic flux in the sector. And what we want to do, to be clear on our goals, is to build a stronger, healthier sector, but with, of course, StarHub the best positioned telco across both consumer and enterprise. And ultimately, this is how we intend to build long term value. So with this goal, as before as I talked about in 2Q, our short-to-mid term strategy is built around four pillars. Where we invest -- intend to invest in each of these four pillars as we talked about in 2Q. But what I wanted to do today was to update you along these four pillars as we do have some updates, as well as some tweaks, as we go down this strategy. So pillar-by-pillar. So, first of all, we want to continue to be aggressive in consumer and at our 2Q results, we signaled our focus on taking market share, competing aggressively to retain and take market share despite an eroding market. We talked about how being aggressive and forceful was the best way to stabilize the market by shutting down price destructive pathways to market share by others. Now I do want to reiterate the same, but with a bit of a shift in focus. We will remain aggressive but are increasingly focused on quality and value. And in fact, when we say value, as Matt will talk about, redefining value beyond price. So not being a price leader. Now when you look at our moves over the past few months, particularly up to yesterday, I should say, it's about action, not talk. So with those moves, this focus on value beyond price is true with everything we have done. So, I'll list a few things. So, first of all, many of you would have seen we announced our JV with Mediacorp, where we're bringing new, attractive product to a much broader consumer base as well as opening up new opportunities for advertisers to monetize, and as we will, correspondingly. So, that's point number one in terms of moves. Point number two, you would have seen that we launched eight broadband last week, and this is very targeted, penetrating what is now a very large base of eight customers on mobile. It's not a price leader strategy. Number three, on eight mobile itself, you have seen us actively and methodically shifting our base to higher value plans. And then just yesterday, as you would have seen, we launched 5G Unlimited+ and we think this is frankly redefining for the market what the market should believe are real value propositions beyond price. And we think this will change the game and redefine value at what is obviously a very interesting time for the sector, and really, StarHub taking the lead on that front. So Matt will elaborate on this strategy, which, as I said, is already translating into action. But in a nutshell, while the market remains highly competitive, we believe the market will stabilize and start recovering at the back end of 2026. And therefore, we intend to use in the consumer sector this period of dynamic flux to invest, to retain and stabilize our consumer business and grow value again beyond price. Now the second pillar, as we also talked about, at our 2Q results was doubling down on enterprise, and a couple of key points here. Number one, we want to scale modern digital infrastructure and Managed Services. We are growing our order book in this area by over 20% a year. So despite some deceleration this quarter due to fall off of in-year revenue, our order book is accelerating, and our revenues should accelerate consequently. Number two, and very important, when we look at the sector, we see government spend environment very strong but actually shifting away from IT and app development and app modernization, and really aggressively in-sourcing that part of the spend. And we believe that while this reduces the amount of business available for traditional IT, it actually favors our infrastructure platform model with embedded tech and tools, and is a strategy, therefore, we will continue to position -- reposition and drive very hard. So what do we intend to do in terms of tweaks and enhancements? We intend to accelerate our hiring in a way that is very ROI accretive, building capacity to drive our order book growth even faster as well as to improve our margin by also in-sourcing ourselves more than we do. Number two, we intend to evaluate and execute M&A. I know a lot of you are a little bit impatient for us to do more enterprise M&A, but we want to do it very well. And frankly, while there are large needle-moving opportunities we are looking at, more recently, there are also new opportunities to add resources and capabilities as weaker players fall by the wayside. So we have more choice, and we want to do it right. So do bear with us. So here we intend to invest in the enterprise segment organically as well as inorganically, to accelerate our growth in modern digital Infrastructure and Managed Services. Now moving on to cybersecurity, we talked about this pillar as well at 2Q, and cybersecurity is a national security agenda, but it is also a very core StarHub agenda. All of you have heard about the national security threats, as alluded to by Minister Shanmugam, which unfortunately continue to be there, and continue to evolve and escalate. So we intend to continue to invest and build our cyber posture for ourselves, and through ourselves, also our government and enterprise customers. Now, importantly, we believe, as part of consolidation and otherwise, that others will have to get to the same level as us, but we do have a material head start in terms of technology and platforms by virtue of all the spend we have done on Cloud Infinity and DARE+ transforming our network platforms to cloud and virtualized. So we intend to continue to invest, both because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is the smart thing to do. Now last and importantly, on cyber, I am sure many of us continue to be curious as to the timing and the outcome of the partial Temasek call option on our stake in Ensign or part of our stake in Ensign. We are in discussions with Temasek, and we do expect to have an update for you in the new year. And as you know, if this exercise happens, you should expect to see material proceeds and a net profit gain that I know you are waiting for. Now, our last pillar is cost optimization, leveraging the DARE+ transformation build which has been completed, really centered around automation and cloud. So between our 2Q earnings and now, we do now have our strategic cost management plan in place, where we have $60 million of run rate per annum cost savings identified along the four areas that we have earmarked here. So we are not stopping with $60 million. We intend to increase this funnel. And overall, we will share more details when we release our full year results in February. Now, the distinction on our cost reduction now versus before is that the cost reduction we affected as part of DARE+, unfortunately, those savings were quickly eaten up by the consumer market erosion. But for our current phase of cost optimization we intend, and of course, hope for these savings to take place in a increasingly stabilized consumer marketplace, and hopefully, therefore with these savings, unlike the last time around, flowing to our bottom line without the negative offsets of market erosion that we had before. Now if you look at the boxes at the bottom, all of these priorities and pillars, I have to repeat, are supported by free cash flow that continues to remain quite strong in this intermediate period of dynamic flux, despite the net profit downdraft. Our strong balance sheet and strong credit, as you saw, allowed us to raise perpetual capital at very attractive rates about a few weeks ago. So this strong free cash flow, balance sheet and funding allows us not just to fund our investment priorities, but very clearly allows us to deliver on our dividend commitment to shareholders as well as retain a sizeable war chest for M&A, despite these times of dynamic flux. So now over to our financials for 3Q and 9 months year to date. So for good or for bad, our financials for 3Q and 9 months reflect a continuation of 2Q trends in this difficult marketplace in consumer. On the revenue front, we held our service revenue flat, despite consumer market erosion. Now on the consumer side, the erosion in mobile was very slightly offset by broadband ticking up slightly, although this segment has become incredibly competitively intense as well. Now, the larger offset was from our enterprise business, where cyber grew strongly year-on-year, albeit as we have all noted in the past, not with material profitability contribution. Our managed services grew, albeit more muted, with some timing issues and also some in-year low margin revenue in Malaysia falling out of pipeline. But overall, we should say this segment remains quite strong for us with very strong order book growth. Now with the erosion in consumer impacting revenue, we see the flow through impacts on profitability. And where we are today, of course, we have negative operating leverage per the telco model, where high fixed costs and a large capital base means that small changes in revenue are magnified to material changes in EBITDA and quite substantial changes in net profit. So the telco operating leverage model, unfortunately, works both ways. So hence we saw our EBITDA track down year-on-year by about 7.5% to 8.5%, and our net profit was down about 25% normalizing for the 700 megahertz spectrum penalty. So again, kind of in continuation of our 2Q trends. And again, last, I would stress our strong free cash flow and balance sheet, which allows us to maintain our dividend commitments to shareholders, as well as to preserve our war chest for growth. So with that, I will pass on to Jacky, our esteemed CFO, as always.

All right. Thank you, Nikhil. Since Nikhil has already covered most of the key points, I'll just touch on a few things to round it out. First, just a quick reminder, the 2024 numbers we showed earlier include two months of contribution from D'Crypt, which add about $8.4 million in revenue. So that business was sold back in February 2024. Now let's look at some of the key financial metrics for the quarter. Total operating expenditure has remained relatively stable thanks to continued discipline in cost management. Other income was up by around $6 million this quarter, mainly due to higher grants income. As mentioned earlier, we are staying focused on our cost transformation efforts. We have expanded this through a multi-year program anchored on four strategic cost pillars, and we are already seeing some early progress. And I'll speak more about the $60 million potential impact in a moment. Now, EBITDA for 3Q was lower, primarily due to weaker gross profits in segments where revenue declined. This was partly offset by lower operating expenses and the increase in other income. For the year-to-date, EBITDA stands at $309 million, keeping us on track with the revised 2025 outlook range of 88% to 92% of our 2024 EBITDA, excluding the one-off provisions that we talked about previously. Net profit attributable to shareholders for Q3 came in at $26.2 million. That's lower year-on-year mainly due to the softer EBITDA and higher depreciation and amortization expenses. This translates to earnings per share of $0.014. On free cash flow, we generated $123.6 million this quarter. But, as expected, we do anticipate full year free cash flow to be temporarily lower due to the spectrum payment made last quarter. That said, we are on track to return to positive free cash flow in 2026. We have also been actively managing our financing costs and liquidity. We have completed the refinancing of borrowings due this year and prepaid one of our floating rate loans using more cost effective funding. So this helps us extend our debt maturity profile and reduce exposure to rate volatility. As of now, our net debt to EBITDA ratio stands at 1.88x, including the spectrum loan, and our interest coverage ratio remains healthy at 10.1x. This reflects our continual commitment to disciplined capital management. With that, I'll pass the time to Matt to take you through the consumer business update.

Good morning, everybody. Can you hear me okay? I'll take that as a yes. Good morning. So great to be able to share with you an update on our consumer business this morning. So as Nikhil has mentioned, the consumer market remained intensely competitive. We have seen through the quarter continued price competition particularly at the lower end of the market, and then increasing price competition in the broadband part of the market. We have through that period maintained our strong #2 market position in mobile, and so, there we have seen a couple of dynamics. The first is, you'll note that the ARPU has increased quarter-on-quarter, which is the flow through effect of the reduction in prepaid subscribers as we have then rationalized our platforms that we talked about in the last quarterly results. So that's really a mechanical effect. During the quarter we've also seen a significant impact on our roaming revenues as a result of the intense price competition, which has seen roaming included into many of the packages available in the market. But despite that, we have continued to grow our customer base, particularly with our eight business which continues to compete very strongly in the market. In broadband, we have maintained our #1 market position. In that market, we've seen a significant step up in price competition, which has put our ARPU under pressure, as you can see there, but we have continued to fight strongly through our different brands, both StarHub and also, of course, MyRepublic. Maybe if I turn to the next page, I'll give you a sense of some of the things that we have been doing through the quarter. So despite the very challenging market conditions and the intense price competition that I've referenced, we have really stepped up, taking strong actions to build our market position, and we're seeing good momentum emerging as a result of that. The first is around StarHub Mobile. Hopefully, you have seen that yesterday we launched a very significant new value proposition. This is really to meet the needs of the majority of Singaporeans. They have been very clear to us in saying that they actually want great quality mobile, they want a worry free service where they don't have to think about what the allowances are, and they want to be able to use their phone no matter where they travel. So that's what we launched yesterday, and already we're seeing very positive consumer reaction around those plans. But the idea there is not to compete at the bottom end of the market, but it's really to give the majority of Singaporeans the product and experience that they are looking for at price points that are also positive for our business. In eight, we have taken a couple of actions during the quarter. So in particular, we launched 5G. And of significance there, we see very strong uptake selling our 5G plan at a higher price point than our typical 4G plans. We've seen a very strong natural demand towards that. So even eight consumers are looking for better quality, which I think is a very encouraging sign for the industry as it's clear all consumers are looking for those better experiences and are prepared to pay a bit more to be able to get those. We've also launched eight broadband which is a significant step for the business, as it gives us the ability to expand our leadership in broadband and really make sure that we are serving our large and quickly growing eight customer base with a complete set of services, both mobile and broadband. Also during the quarter, we completed the acquisition of MyRepublic, and that's now well underway in terms of integration. And our strategy there is really a best of both approach where we are continuing to have the MyRepublic brand, it appeals very strongly to a certain part of the market, but of course, also now looking at leveraging that business with the broader StarHub business where we can. And then finally, around StarHub Entertainment, we announced a couple of weeks ago a very significant partnership with Mediacorp, which, as Nikhil has referenced, is really about three things. It's about expanding the reach of the significant and market leading entertainment portfolio that we have, so getting it to many more Singaporean households. It's about leveraging the capabilities of Mediacorp for ad sales, which is already proving to be a pretty good opportunity. And then over time, also looking at how do we rationalize the platforms so that we are getting the most efficient TV service in the market. So all in all, we are really stepping up taking strong actions across our portfolio of consumer businesses and stepping up to take a lead in the market. So, with that, I'll hand to Kit Yong to talk about enterprise.

All right. Thank you, Matt. Now let me go through enterprise itself. If you look at the overall regional price business revenue, this is a combined view of Singapore and Malaysia, right? The Managed Services for the quarter, right, it seems to be dipped 11.8%. Yes, it is due to the lower project contribution, and also we are shifting our focus on higher margin services and with a focus on the low margin fulfillment will take a second seat while we transform the business as an integrated business together. Now overall, if you look at 9 months, we are still growing our Managed Services, right. And you can see the Singapore market actually contributing to the growth while we are rehashing the whole Malaysia business into a more services-rich, multi-year contracts business as we integrate and sell the portfolio that we have in Singapore. And we are seeing green shoots. Actually, we won some deals. We have a joint synergy in FSI that we bring our clients from Singapore and now they do business with us in Malaysia. We have Malaysia FSI clients using the technology and services we do in Singapore and implement in Malaysia. And also, in the RTS, we won a contract due to the synergy we have within Singapore and Malaysia to build RTS for Singapore-Johor line. So we are making good progress as we integrate the business, adding more value, increasing the services elements of our services. And gradually, well, we are going into a new growth path through this integration. Now for Enterprise Connectivity itself, you can see a 3.7% decline. Overall, it's minus 1.9% for the year, right? This is all due to the one-off projects that we have last year that's not replicated this year. But overall business is stable for us due to -- anything else, I think that's nothing to worry about. We will continue to grow new products and services as we're evolving over time through our modern digital infrastructure. Carrier & Voice, we got some benefits, right? You can see that it's growing for the 9 months, right, due to better SMS thanks to the local activities generated by general election and all these other activities going on. So we're seeing a better contribution of revenue and margins. Now I move to cybersecurity. Very strong growth, 17%, high top line growth for us, the projects start to realize. Let me move to the next slide. Now, overall, for enterprise, what are building blocks for growth? We are very, very focused in prioritizing our investment into clients in cybersecurity, because as CII and the industry that is critical to many enterprises, and cybersecurity is now the main stage for us due to APTs. And we are working with regulators, with clients, to strengthen the overall cybersecurity posture, leveraging on what we are building, because we're the front line. If we do a better job at the frontline, enterprise will benefit, and through that, they get more network services through us, because we will embed our cybersecurity in our network services. And don't forget cloud and AI. So cloud and AI have evolved many, many folds, and we are not really focusing on selling hardware of a GPU, but really solving a business problem with the client. And we are seeing traction, and we got industry recognition. This year, we got recognized by Asia Tech X and Business Review and AWS for innovation in AI use cases, not consuming or selling GPU, but actually solving problem by co-creation for our clients. And when it comes to regional integration, we are very much on track. We are seeing that with this integration since, we are seeing tractions in order book, building new pipelines, meeting clients, and listening to what we do here in Singapore. And the clients are very, very -- feedback is very positive, that they can see that the portfolio we have is more diverse versus when we operate as a silo, right? And that's if we look at the engine of growth, overall Enterprise, we're still growing at 1.5% year-on-year, Managed Services 3.2%. If you look at order book itself, overall Regional Enterprise will still grow at 5.7% and Managed Services at 15%. What does that mean? Our traditional business that we have, high gross margin deals, products and services are still growing as we speak, while Managed Services is really propelling the high growth for us and maintaining and -- in fact, the new cross solutions pipelines that we are seeing will definitely move on to the right position for our Managed Services. With that, let me move over back to our esteemed CFO, Jacky, to talk about cost structure.

All right. Thank you, Kit Yong. As we shared at the half year results, we have expanded our cost management efforts for a multi-year program aimed at achieving minimum efficient scale. So the objective remains clear, to operate with the right balance of efficiency, scalability and profitability. So not just for today, but for the sustainable growth ahead. This program is not just about cutting costs. It's about strengthening the foundation of StarHub for the long term. So, we are building this transformation around four strategic cost pillars: legacy decommissioning to retire obsolete systems and reduce technical debt; network automation to digitize and streamline core network operations; systems re-architecture to simplify our IT environment and consolidate fragmented systems; and business simplification to rationalize products, brands and operating models for greater focus. So we have made tangible progress, especially on business simplification and systems re-architecture, which have already started helping to bring our cost base down gradually through 2028. We expect to realize around $60 million in savings in the next 3 years with more opportunities being identified within each of the four pillars. This quarter, we have pinpointed key areas of structural inefficiency, places where past complexity and under-investment have dragged down returns or service levels. This gives us clear roadmap for the next phase of implementation. Again, this is not just a cost out exercise. It's about building a more agile, efficient and customer-focused StarHub, one that's fit to grow profitably and deliver long term value to our shareholders. Now, I'll hand it back to Nikhil to close the presentation.

So in closing off, I wanted to repeat our strategic imperatives and the four pillars that we are focused on. Number one, we intend to continue to be aggressive in the consumer marketplace, but a little bit of a different definition of aggressive, which is we intend to defend and grow our market share, but really focused on quality and value, but really redefining value beyond just price to bring new value to the marketplace in a marketplace and consumer that we believe to stabilize in the back end of 2026 and recover. Now, on enterprise, we intend to double down, intend to continue scaling our business, intend to continue growing and accelerating the growth of our order book. We intend to do this by increasing the resources platform that we have to magnify the order book, but also to improve our margins through increased in-sourcing. And number two, we intend to look at M&A, of course, not just large, but also small, as players fall by the wayside in a shifting -- a strong but shifting spend environment, I would say, for government and enterprises. Number three, cyber is really important, and we intend to continue to invest for ourselves but both ourselves -- also through ourselves, our government and enterprise customers, in a way where we believe that we have a head start through the investments that we've made to date in cloud and virtualization as a result of DARE+ and Cloud Infinity, and we intend to leverage that advantage. And number four, you've heard from Jacky, on our cost reduction platform and our cost reduction initiatives, where we are targeting run rate savings of $60 million over a few years. And as I mentioned at the beginning, we intend to increase that funnel, and we intend to execute on it in a methodical way, where we will come back to you quarter-on-quarter. And all of this -- with all of this in mind, we are supported by strong free cash flow, strong balance sheet, strong funding capacity that is a little bit different from the current net profit trends. And with that, we intend to support our commitment to our shareholders in terms of our dividend and to drive long term total shareholder returns, as well as to retain our war chest to drive growth, both organic as well as inorganic. So with that, I will close off and hand it back to Crystal to open up for Q&A.

Thank you, Nikhil. We'll now open the floor to Q&A. [Operator Instructions] I think first we have Sachin.

Thanks for the presentation. Three questions for me, one by one. On the mobile side, the $7 to $8 kind of plans are less of a focus in the market now, but we have seen a large increase for you. Are these coming? Again, it seems like in the lower end of the plans, $10 to $12. So what's the rationale here to go for such lower end ARPU customers? And how far are we in your thinking? Are we, like, one, two quarters or few quarters away from stabilization of mobile revenue? That's my first question.

Sachin, Matt, here. Look, I'm not sure I understood exactly the question around the $7 or $8 plans, but I guess what I would say is, around our eight business, which is the part of the business that plays in that area of the market, we are very actively shifting our focus to the $11.80, which is really the $12 plan, but also our $14.80 5G plan, which is sort of essentially $15. And what we're seeing is consumers seeking out those better plans, more inclusive plans, and particularly the 5G network experience. And so we think this is very encouraging for the sector because even amongst those consumers buying very low price plans, they are absolutely seeking out better experiences, more complete packages. So we're seeing a pretty encouraging early sign of that sort of process in the market that, I think over time we'll see us shift away from the $7, $8 plans.

So, I mean, the question is, why are we like so aggressive in those below $20 kind of plans? I mean, is the rationale, or are we seeing there's a tactical opportunity here? That's why we are going after it?

Well, I would describe it as the opposite. So, we are, in fact, shifting our focus away from the more aggressive $8 price plan. But what we're doing is we are serving two segments in the market. So, we serve a set of consumers who are looking for a sort of no frills-like offer, which is what we provide through the eight product. We're also serving consumers who are seeking a complete service with the service support, distinctive features, inclusions like cyber protection with our StarHub business. And those two things actually fit together pretty well. Those are a characteristic of many markets like this. And I guess what we're thinking about doing is, how do we make sure that we maximize the value of both parts of the market, both those consumers looking for a more basic experience, where we are seeing that successful shift towards spending slightly more, and then also in the StarHub, sort of more complete experience part of the market, where, with our plans that we launched yesterday, we're also expecting to see consumers start to shift towards buying those more complete packages.

Maybe second question is on broadband, which was stable so far, but there seems to be some 5% around sequential drop in the revenue. Is it also partly because of accounting treatment, or is purely coming from sudden spike in competition in broadband? I think you're mute, Matt, I think.

So I'll answer that, but Jacky may wish to add. The change in the quarter was because of an accounting treatment shift. So, we are very successful in the market selling a combination of broadband and Netflix services and other content services, and essentially we've shifted the accounting treatment. So there's no change to the overall StarHub revenue outcomes. It's really just a shift between the broadband category and the entertainment category.

But it is a competitive marketplace.

Yes, it's very competitive.

Got it, got it. And the last question, or maybe on this savings, so good to see a number actually, good to see a number which you have put for the first time in over the next 2026 to 2028 kind of savings. How do we think of these savings? I mean, again, looks like 3-year plan, not 1 or 2 year plan. So how do we think of what is more immediate? Is it the legacy commissioning, decommissioning? And is that going to be something, you know, how to make it more front-end loaded than back-end loaded? Which part of -- what are the some of the complexities here?

So, I think we mentioned, I think there's some savings carried forward from the DARE+. So that's mainly the legacy decommissioning part. So that's -- we always talk about that most of that will be realized in 2026, so that's contribute to the 2026 savings. But as I mentioned, like all these four pillars, they are making structural changes to the business, so gradually picked up over the next few years. Yes. So to speak, I think we will just continue to update, but as I mentioned, we make great progress on the business simplification and the systems re-architecture part. So that's going to start helping us to realize savings. But since it's structural changes, it's going to gradually take time to pick up.

Sachin, I would add with two points. First of all, you know, a lot of these savings, for instance, are enabled by what we've done so far in terms of the new platforms, right? So, for instance, on IS where we're re-architecting how we do IS, it's really a DevOps model. A DevOps model would not have been possible under legacy, you know, on-prem architecture. So now that we're fully cloud, that's a change we can make. So it's kind of consequent to DARE+. So enablement of what we've done is the first piece of it. The second piece I wanted to emphasize is, please do bear with us, what we want to move away from is kind of cherry picking sort of smaller items. The funnel that we have is a very large multiple of the legacy DARE+ decommissioning. So items will get executed. We will add new items, and we will execute methodically, and we'll come back to you. But all of those items are important.

Next we have Zhiwei.

Thanks for the presentation. I have two questions. First one is a bit more housekeeping. For your Mobile ARPU of $22, could I check whether the stated ARPUs for the prior periods have been adjusted for this one-time consolidation of inactive prepaid subscribers?

I'm not sure we have an answer to that, so obviously we've adjusted it for this quarter but maybe...

I think that contributes to the increase in APRU in 3Q.

Yes, that's right.

Understood. Will wait for your reply. Then the second question is, appreciate that you are in a competitive environment, things are basically in flux, right? But considering the circumstances, your cost savings, your earnings are actually trending towards the 2022 levels. Now you've said that you have a commitment to maintain your dividend, but if let's say this entire situation continues to be in flux, unstable, going into 2026, right, how would you think about your current dividend policy if things worsen?

Yes, thanks, Zhiwei, it's obviously an excellent question. So we can assure you that our -- for 2025 we can assure you our dividend policy stays in place, so no question around that. Now looking forward to 2026, obviously, I don't want to preview our 2026 guidance and our dividend commitments, which we'll make in February 2026. But all I can say is, to repeat, I think, the statements that I made about twice before at the beginning, which is when you look at our financial situation now against an eroding consumer marketplace, operating leverage in the telco sector works both ways. And we're seeing the negative side of that now, right? But having said that, as I said, our free cash flow is still pretty good. Our free cash flow is still pretty good. Our leverage is still low relative to telco norms. And the third thing I would say is, of course, our funding capacity remains very strong. So, we have tools and we have a very big, strong cash balance. So financially very -- from a credit and a cash flow standpoint, from a cash standpoint, we're very strong. So do bear with us. We will come back to you in February 2026, but we're very cognizant of the question. I don't want to jump the gun on our 2026 guidance, but all I can do is stress the focus on our free cash flow, on our balance sheet, rather than just our profitability. And we consider all these factors as we set our dividend policy, which we will come back to in February 2026.

Arthur?

Just wanted to clarify several items. Firstly, on the mobile side, I do see that it's down Q-on-Q, but I'm trying to reconcile it with the subs and ARPU trends, which are reportedly up. How do we see this as translating? I'm not sure if there's an accounting issue there. Second question I had is with regard to the glide-pack to the additional $60 million in cost savings. Is this mainly OpEx? Or are there any CapEx component to this? How do we see this as being phased out over the next 3 years? And last question I had is with regard to consumer competition. How do you characterize competition on the pricing side? I know that you've been pushing up to $12 and $15. Are you seeing your competitors reciprocate to similar stance, and should we start to see better ARPU trends into the next few quarters? Or is there some risk that someone backslides and tries to get market share?

Arthur, it's Matt here. So I might take the first and the third question, and probably Jacky, I think, will take the second one around costs. So, look, in terms of the dynamics in our business, reconciling those different metrics, of course, we have quite a diverse mobile business across the StarHub postpaid and prepaid, the eight business, the Giga! business. So there are a few different dynamics going on in there. But the way I would characterize it is the StarHub business continues to be under significant ARPU pressure given the level of price competition. And in particular, we have seen a significant erosion of roaming revenues. And this is really as consumers not only shift to some of the lower cost providers, but also as they take things like travel SIMs instead of the packaged roaming services, which is one of the reasons why we launched the plans we launched yesterday, just to really make it very simple and easy for consumers to continue using their StarHub connection when they travel. So, that's sort of one dynamic. And then the other dynamic is we see in our eight business continuing very strong customer growth, which is very encouraging. So the eight business is more than just price. It's actually out there in the market building brand recognition and doing pretty well. And of course, then the other thing which I referenced is, as we shift the focus in what we sell to the $12 and $15 packages, what we're able to do now is to improve monetization of that strong market position around eight. So, that's really around your question number one. On question number three, look, we are doing what we're doing. We're taking a lead in the market. As I referenced, we are taking now bold and strong actions, because we know those are right for our business. And look, we'll have to see what happens in the market. But as Nikhil has been very clear, we are here to compete aggressively, and so we will continue to do that, and we will adapt and adjust to market dynamics. But certainly, it's clear to us that consumers want better experiences, and that's what we're focused on delivering.

Thank you, Matt. So, Arthur, on your second question, in terms of the cost savings. So first of all, the $60 million, as we mentioned, is an initial cost savings. So, and as Nikhil Mentioned, we'll continue to assess and add to the funnel. But with that said, to answer your questions, as mentioned, these are like structural changes. So we are talking about the IT environment, the architecture of our IT, the network, and also like the way we operate our business. So these are like structural changes which will take time to scale up. So this is going to be a phased process to the savings. But for 2026 mostly that will be coming from the legacy decommissioning. And I believe we mentioned that it's roughly about $10 million left from the DARE+ savings, which from all this decommissioning which will happen mostly in 2026. So, that will be realized. But as all these structural changes take place, it will gradually realize in '27, '28 and so forth.

Understood. Sorry, if I can just reclarify my first question. I was trying to reconcile why your mobile is down 10% Q-on-Q as your ARPUs and subs were actually up Q-on-Q. Is there an accounting issue there?

It's one that -- it's the one that I referenced, Arthur, which is in the previous quarter, if you recall, as a result of our shift on the platforms linked to the DARE+ strategy. We have moved our prepaid customers from the legacy platforms onto the new ITX platform. With that, we have then removed the inactive customers. And so that in the last quarter's results, we shared that we had then removed those customers from the base. So mechanically, when you divide the revenue by the number of customers with that removal, you get to the higher ARPU outcome. So I think the change in ARPU shouldn't be read as being significant in terms of market or business performance. It's really a result of that mechanical adjustment because of the change in the platforms.

And I think we have a question from Abhishek.

Two questions from me. We saw an announcement yesterday from StarHub regarding unlimited 5G and no roaming plan. So can you please explain us the rationale behind this plan? Why was this launched? What was the backdrop of this launch? And second question, how much is the contribution of roaming revenues to your overall mobile revenues? And how do you see this plan impacting -- potentially diluting your roaming revenues in the future?

Hi Abhishek. Matt here again. Look, I'll take a lead on that one. So the plans we launched yesterday, the 5G Unlimited Plus plans are really about StarHub, under the StarHub brand, getting back into market, taking market leadership and really setting the pace. But in a very particular way, as Nikhil referenced, we are continuing to be very assertive and bold in the market, but in a way that is also value accretive for our business. And that's really about giving the majority of consumers something that they have asked for. So we spent a lot of time understanding what Singaporean consumers want. And the majority of them are actually seeking connectivity services, mobile services where they can use without worrying about it. And so that's why we have introduced unlimited in the context of a market that already has very large gigabyte allowances. That's why we've included roaming into the packages. So our StarHub customers now can just use as they want. And what we've seen from a lot of very careful testing is that Singaporeans, not everybody, but the majority of Singaporeans are very happy to pay for plans because they want that high-quality connection and they want the confidence of just being able to use. And of course, that's against the backdrop of everybody, everyone everywhere in the world, living their lives through their mobile and their mobile connection. And so what we're really doing there is we are getting back into the market to regain the market leadership around StarHub and also doing it in a way where the sort of the underlying mechanics are, we are encouraging our customers to take better quality packages at slightly higher prices because we see that that's the trade-off that many consumers are willing to make. Hopefully, that answers your question, but tell me if you have a follow-on.

Yes. On your roaming revenues.

Sorry, sorry, yes, the question on roaming, sorry. So on roaming, we haven't disclosed the specific percentage of that. But look, it's fair to say that it is a material part of our StarHub mobile business. And unfortunately, it's been under tremendous pressure, as I said, through a combination of customers shifting to some of the lower-cost providers who also include roaming, but also from customers taking travel SIMs, second SIMs to use for the roaming service. But as I indicated around our 5G Unlimited Plus plans, what we also see very clearly is consumers don't really want to go through the hassle of having to get another SIM. They'd actually much rather just use the connection they already have. And so that's the need that we are meeting in our new plans.

Maybe a question from Paul.

Probably a few questions. It's just on the other income, can I just clarify, is it part of the service EBITDA? And also what is the nature of this grant income?

Yes, Paul, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, there's a $6 million grant we received in Q3 2025.

Out of total EBITDA?

It is, yes.

Okay. My second question is just on mobile. Post consolidation, obviously, there will be a larger difference in market share. I'm just wondering how critical is it to narrow this difference in terms of scaling purposes, economies of scale and so forth.

Yes. Paul, maybe I'll start off, and I'll hand off to Matt. I think one of the things that we've really been consistent about is we really don't focus on subscriber market share, right? We've, I think, since 2021, really focused on revenue market share. And in revenue market share, I think in 2021, we were roughly at parity with M1. And then I think we've moved to a position where we're about 600 basis points above in terms of revenue market share. So now post consolidation, we don't really, again, focus on the subscriber market share. We focused on revenue market share. And post consolidation, I think it's roughly like a 50-25-25 market, which is actually a reasonably healthy market structure. So the revenue market share is what we'll be more focused on. But really, what we're primarily focused on is all of the things that Matt has said and I have said, which is bringing value to our customers, focusing quality, redefining value, value beyond price and really moving the market up and helping to stabilize the market with ourselves at the forefront.

Sorry, just one last one for me.

Sorry, Paul, the other thing I'd like to add is, obviously, mobile is really, really important, but we look at consumer in totality because we've always led with the hubbing proposition. And we're #1 in broadband. We're #1 in entertainment. So market share may -- on mobile may blip down or up a little bit. We're focused on revenue market share. But overall, in consumer, we're still by far a leading #2 player.

Yes. Just one last one. Regarding the Ensign stake, just to clarify, this is the 20% stake where you may or may not sell based on valuation or that 6% kind of compounding, if I'm not mistaken.

Yes. So the way it works is we have roughly 60%. Temasek has an option based on a certain formula and process to acquire 20% from us. So I think it's about 58%, and we go down to about 38% to be.

No, 39%.

Yes, the 39% to be exact. So yes, it's roughly that 20%. It doesn't apply to the whole stake. It's roughly that 20%. That option is -- there is a process around it. We're kind of in discussions and in the midst of that process. And you kind of know roughly where the valuations are relative to our investment value. So we'll have some news for you in the new year. And I think we're all kind of waiting for the same thing, right, which is proceeds and a gain if and when it happens.

Hi Hussaini.

Two questions from me. First is on the mobile side. Now I understand that StarHub is moving more towards $12, $15 plan from sub-$10 plan. So just trying to understand that in the previous quarter, you were discussing about squeezing out the MVNOs and try to take advantage of the consolidating entity as they go through the merger discussion. So you are trying to take the advantage of that situation. So how this higher more than $10 plan fit into that midterm strategy? And the related question is, is this $12, $15 plans or more complete kind of packages with more add-on services like customer support? What's the risk that your higher-end customers shift down to those sub-$20 plans?

Maybe I'll take those ones, Hussaini, it's Matt here. So look, on the MVNOs, I think the observation in the last quarterly conversation was it's clear the MVNOs are increasingly squeezed. We see that across the market also with the StarHub MVNOs. And so I think the comment really from last quarter was it's likely in this market context, they will be squeezed. They will find it increasingly difficult to sustain their businesses, which is definitely the case. We see that quite clearly. So I think that's probably something to watch. I think that will continue to be a significant dynamic in the market. And in terms of how these plans fit and the risk of trade down around those sort of $12 and $15 plans. Look, I don't think we should anticipate there's going to be a significant shift around that because, of course, the proposition from a business like 8 or some of its competitors has been in market for a long time. It's been there at lower price points. And across the market, there has been a shift of some consumers to those lower price points, but by far, not everybody. And so really, the way to think about it is relative to those customers who are spending sort of $8 or $10 potentially, the opportunity is to offer them proportionately better packages, but with the same sort of sense of no frills as we offer in the 8 brand and have them spend a bit more. Likewise, for those customers who are very much part of the full service, full experience offerings like we have with StarHub, we are also making or we have launched better packages for them and encouraging them to spend a bit more with us as well. But it's not about shifting the positioning of those 2 parts of the market. It's about sharpening that positioning. But then it's also then within each of those offering proportionately better packages to encourage those customers to spend more with us. And as I said, so far around our 5G launch and also hopefully, around what we launched yesterday, we're starting to see those dynamics play out. But it's early, so watch this space.

Understood. And the second question is on the managed services. So the commentary over here is that the StarHub is shifting focus away from very low-margin kind of projects. Just trying to understand how -- where are we in that journey? Should we expect to see more compression in revenues, maybe not on the EBITDA level, but on the revenue side as startup shifts from those low-margin projects?

Thank you, Hussaini. Thanks for the good question. Now when we shift the portfolio, we also need to make sure that we have staff optimization. So that is where we want to redirect the sales focus from low-margin deals to higher services margin deals for us and based on the standard portfolio that we have. Now the progress we are seeing here is that we do see -- despite the decline in revenue, we will see our gross margin has improved despite that we are having a lower revenue due to its fulfillment deals. And as we evolve, as we progress with our new order book that we have, right, are more managed services focused, hardware just, by the way, and moving propelling to the proposal that we're going to submit in the months to come, even with managed service, not just professional services, it's embedded with our connectivity services as well and creating a cross solution and it will be large deals as we walk into the journey. So you can see that in terms of journey, we have progressed from a very low base and resale business, evolved to #1, #2 players with the vendors in terms of their technology resale. And then we wrap around with our managed services, wrap around with our connectivity, wrap around our cybersecurity, embedded into our network connectivity services. And that's how we're evolving ourselves into a platform-based operator. Well, the fulfillment deals are the foot in the door to enter the enterprise space where they hardly see StarHub as an enterprise play in the past. But now with the complex managed services with more sophisticated future proofing solution that we have, they are giving us low-hanging fruit as a [indiscernible] into the organization on large-scale projects, but traditional as we evolve with them, co-created with them into the managed services where the tech tools that we built for modern digital structure is part of a standardized architecture. So that is the journey that we've been through. And we are seeing large enterprise local big brand names working with us closely, co-creating solutions that is unique in the industry as we cross the pathway of connectivity, enterprise IT, cloud and AI and digital services. So that's the journey we've been now. I hope I answered your question.

Yes. And then just a related question is that as we see your order book expanding by 20%. Just wanted to understand how long it will take to get translated into revenues? Are those long-term 3, 4 years kind of projects or maybe 12 months, 18 months kind of project?

Right. So today, if you look at our traditional business, our contract is 1 to 2 years, right? And as we move to managed services, our contract duration moves to 3 to 5 years. And if you take on larger projects, it's 5 plus 5, right? So it depends on the stickiness and the longevity of the projects. So with that, you see the order book improvement is not because of 1 to 2 years contract because it can stretch to 3 to 5 years and even 7 years at times, right? And we are very focusing on the government projects that is more long term and it has requires strategic partnership. There is a CII very focused on cybersecurity, very strong in network possibility and the platform that we built that is fully integrated, interoperable becomes the future criteria for multiyear contract because these are things that is very different from a down pipe. It's become a services layer and there's a platform layer. And then subsequently in the future, we'll also be venturing into the services layer, the user services layer that will be the new phase of growth for the future for us. But now at our stage, we are focused on the platform base, putting the platform, making interoperable, making it cyber resilient, making it possibility that is end-to-end. And these are the things that excites the client to sign a longer-term contract, and they know these are long-term contracts. This is not a transaction, and that's where we're heading towards.

The point that I would add is you've seen for many quarters that this order book growth of 20-plus percent is not a new thing. We've had this kind of order book growth for many quarters. And we've also had for many quarters, managed services growth kind of around the 15% plus level, right? So that's kind of the trend, a good growth rate and with the order book acceleration of that growth rate. And notwithstanding this quarter, we hope and intend for that to continue because we're pulling down deals from many prior quarters where we have been growing our order book quite well. So what Kyong is really talking about is an ongoing reshaping and an improvement and a continuous improvement in the quality of that order book, particularly on the Malaysian side of our business actually as we move away from fulfillment towards managed services -- recurring services, yes.

I think we can take a final question from Michael.

So I do have 3 questions. But in lieu of time, I keep them a bit short. So I think, Nikhil, last quarter, you did have to answer quite a bit given your aggressive stance in your strategy. So now it's become a bit more value focused. And one of the call was that you can't dictate the actions of your peers, especially with the consolidation. So this shift to value, is it due to your peers actually moving in that direction that is more positive and therefore, that's where you're moving towards that direction?

Yes. I would say we -- our intent is always to be proactive. And I would say the change in emphasis from last quarter where the consolidation was just announced -- and frankly, it was an addition of our emphasis from the few quarters before that, where we were quite aggressive to where we stand now is primarily us being proactive and us assessing the wants and the needs of our marketplace. And as Matt has gone through ad nauseam with a lot of work done on our consumer base, a tremendous amount of analysis, taking advantage of the data lakes and the tools that we have and frankly, working with our consumers and subsets of our consumers, we believe that despite all the noise in the marketplace around pure price and the shift to that segment that there is really a pent-up need for consumers who really want more from their telco. They want quality, and they don't want a one-dimensional kind of aspect of value. They want a multidimensional aspect of value, which services all their needs, fulfills a broader set of needs. And that's what we've tried to drive both in the no-frill segment, where we bring increased quality, but as quid pro quo that higher price, but at price points where there is still value as well as with our StarHub main brand, which is really focused on premium. But now we have our 5G unlimited plans, which are value accretive, as Matt talked about. But of course, there is a quid pro quo for customers as well, where we're bringing them a whole new set of kind of attractive features and inclusions. So yes, it's proactive. Now having said all of that, to your point on the external marketplace, I won't -- I obviously won't comment on what our competitors are thinking on what our competitors are doing. But clearly, no surprises, right? With consolidation underway, the timing is actually quite fortuitous. I think the #3 operator has been for a while in a very difficult space, kind of caught between the big telcos and a very aggressive, very focused #4 operator. And I think the market moving from 4 to 3 is clearly a good move that would bring more logic and more of an economic mindset to where the market goes from here. Acquisitions don't come for free. They have financial consequences. And I'm sure that in and of itself will also shape the strategies that the various players embark on. And as we've talked about, the market is in an unhealthy state. And it's an unhealthy state because we have the dubious distinction of having the lowest prices as a percentage of GDP per capita in the world. That's not a medal anyone wants. So they need to reset to a more sustainable level. And the second piece of it is as us and others have been talking about, the focus isn't just on price. More important, it has to be on resilience and cybersecurity. And those things don't come for free. And when people start spending money on them, they have to generate ROI in other areas. So I don't think the -- the logic of the marketplace going forward, broadly speaking, beyond just ourselves is going to be very conducive to pure price action and short-term strategies as it was in the past, particularly in the absence of a very vulnerable third operator.

So just moving to my second question. This proactiveness because now the strategy for broadband is shaping a bit similar to what you see in mobile. So do you see that as the next upcoming battlefield that you're seeing? And then there's going to be this -- and just to clarify the strategy there because now you have 8, you also have MyRepublic and StarHub definitely being in that premium space. And how is that strategy shaping out for the broadband side.

So let me start with 1 or 2 comments, and then I'll hand off to Matt. But in a sense, the competition in broadband is obviously a lag from mobile, where we saw the new entrant come in many years into the broadband segment after it went into mobile. So in a sense, it's a little bit of a replication of that same path. But having said that, as we have always said, there are a few distinctive features. Number one, the broadband marketplaces and the consumer behavior is a little bit different. It's a very essential product. I don't think you can be as transactional around broadband as you can in mobile, point number one. Point number two, the market structure is quite different. When you look at ourselves as #1 and the #2 player. I think we have somewhere between 85% and 90% revenue market share. Number three, there are a whole set of other things, but I believe there is an ability to be distinctive and differentiate around broadband in many different areas as both StarHub and MyRepublic guys have -- the MyRepublic brand has shown where you really are focused on different segments that have very critical wants and needs that are important to them. So a little bit sort of the same with a lag, but really not the same. and more of an opportunity to differentiate, I think, but it has to play out. So Matt?

Yes. And maybe to build on those thoughts. Look, I think the focus that we have, as Nikhil has said, is really on customers and meeting their needs. And so if you think about the way that we're doing that across our 3 now broadband businesses, on StarHub, we're very focused on providing that complete service, which includes things like our hub troopers, which provide an amazing experience for our customers in getting the installation in your home Wi-Fi set up and very often combined with our unique entertainment offering, both the combination of the StarHub TV as well as the streaming services. And so that's really a complete package, which still sells very well. It's very popular. It gives us a real point of difference in the market. The second is around MyRepublic, where their broadband offering is targeted at more tech savvy sort of more digital and sort of gamer type of audiences. And they also do a whole lot of things which are sort of optimized around the needs of those consumers. And what we've seen, particularly over the last quarter as price competition in broadband has stepped up, they have been very resilient because they offer something that is a bit different and differentiated to those customers. And then finally, around the 8 broadband, the broadband is really targeted at the large and quickly growing base of 8 mobile customers who also have homes and also have a need for broadband. But look, when you look at the specific offers that we have -- the pricing there is not particularly aggressive. In fact, it's designed carefully to meet the needs of those consumers, but it is not the same as the way that we approach the market around 8 mobile because actually, what we're trying to do here is meet the complete needs of those customers as opposed to bring down the broadband market. So interestingly, 8 is not the most price aggressive in the challenger space. It is a very balanced and well-considered proposition to meet the needs of those 8 customers.

Yeah, that helps a bit. Just to my final question is just regarding this DARE+ and now this cost savings. So just to clarify, how does that really mix? Because original DARE+, we were expecting the harvesting period of around $80 million per year. And now we're looking at like $60 million in terms of cost savings. Are those 2 separate? Or are they more working in tandem with one another for the same objective? So wanted to just gain a bit more clarification on that?

Yes, they're quite mutually exclusive. I would see them as sequential and separate. So apart from the legacy decommissioning, which is really a small -- which is really a fraction of the overall $60 million, the rest is quite mutually exclusive, and it builds on the DARE+ transformation having been completed. Obviously, there was quite an amount of DARE+. As I mentioned earlier, there's quite an amount of savings achieved as a result of DARE+. But unfortunately, those savings were more than offset by the consumer market erosion. So this is mutually exclusive, apart from, as Jacky says, about $10 million, which is the tail end of the DARE+ savings. The rest is new. We hope to add to it, and it's something we'll be kind of rolling out over the next 3 years quarter-by-quarter, which, of course, we will execute quite carefully, monitor and report on as well. So yes, that's where we are. It's separate and different. Jacky anything to add?

No, I think, Nikhil, you captured the key points. So these are new initiatives -- yes these are new initiatives to add on to the DARE+ savings we already achieved in the past.

Chris, do you have a question in the chat?

Just a couple there. Could you maybe clarify where we stand on the cybersecurity segment in terms of profitability? I understand that it's still unprofitable at this time. But can we get a sense as to is there some signs of improvement or any expectation in terms of how that's going to contribute on the earnings side over the long term? And also when it comes to the full integration of MyRepublic, can you probably clarify how that is going to change from what the positioning we had before the full integration as to what is the tactical strategy around this? How can that drive more on the earnings side in comparison?

Yes. So I'll take the first, and I'll leave it to Matt to take the question on MyRepublic. But on cyber, there are really 2 parts to cyber, right? There's cyber that's really embedded within the StarHub regional enterprise group. And there is cyber that's really embedded as part of all of our infrastructure and modern digital infrastructure platforms, which we make available to enterprises kind of day 1, embedded to secure the infrastructure and the platforms that they get from us. So that's point number one. The second part of our cyber is obviously our joint venture with Temasek, which is Ensign, which is, I think, what you're alluding to. And there, in terms of profitability, Ensign has actually grown quite well. The profitability hasn't grown in tandem because it's continuously with full approval and backing from its 2 shareholders been reinvesting into the business to build platforms, to hire more people. There are a lot of tailwinds in that segment, not for good reasons, obviously, because the geopolitical landscape is very complex and state-sponsored threat activity is very intense. So the competitive -- so the buyer spend environment is very strong. And Ensign with the full backing of its shareholders has responded to those opportunities to reinvest in the business and to continue to grow, rather than harvest profitability prematurely. So I think with that strategy, Ensign has created good value and certainly is valued materially higher than our investment cost. And we obviously -- our co-shareholder, Temasek, obviously has an option to acquire 20% from us, which we will have an update on in the new year, which will hopefully have the outcomes that we're all waiting for.

Chris, I’ll pick up your question around MyRepublic. So obviously, we've completed the acquisition. We have a post-merger integration process underway. But as we said at the time, the focus with MyRepublic is to maintain the performance of the business. The business is growing quite nicely. It serves a distinctive group of consumers in a distinctive way. So we want to make sure that, that stays in place. But then in and around that, both on the customer side as well as on the cost side, we are taking various actions. So for example, MyRepublic has no entertainment-related services. And so we've already started taking some steps to make the most of the entertainment that StarHub has. We have already offered Premier League as an example, to the MyRepublic customers. And over time, we'll look to offer those customers more things from the StarHub world. Likewise, we also are looking at the opportunities for where we can bring together different parts of the businesses where there are efficiencies, one of those key areas is around the platform. So we will be looking to streamline tech platforms. But this is part of what Jacky has referred to in the supply -- strategic cost management program. So where you'll see that flowing into is into the numbers that Jacky has talked about. Hopefully, that helps.

So I think we have gone a bit over time. So if we have any further questions, please do reach out. Otherwise, thank you for spending your Friday morning with us, and have a great day and weekend ahead.

Thank you. Thanks, guys.