Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today, to discuss the Company's Financial and Operating Results for Nine Months of 2023. Copy of today's presentation is posted on our website. For those who have not been able to do so, you may download the presentation from www.pldt.com, under the Investor Relations section. Kindly note that this briefing is being recorded. A podcast of this event will be available on our website after the call. QR code for the presentation is on the screen, and the MD&A, FS and podcast will be made available after the call. For today's presentation, we have with us Mr. Al Panlilio, President and CEO of PLDT and Smart; Mr. Danny Yu, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Risk Officer; Marilyn Victorio-Aquino, our Corporate Secretary and Chief Legal Counsel; Mr. Shailesh Baidwan, President of Maya Philippines and Co-Founder of Maya Bank, as well as other members of the PLDT management team. At this point, let me turn the floor over to Mr. Panlilio to begin the presentation.

Thank you, Melissa. And good afternoon to all, and thank you for joining us this afternoon. And I'd like to start off the presentation with a few highlights of the business, and then I'll pass it on to Danny, for more detailed financial highlights report, and then to SB for Maya. Happy to report the first nine months performance for PLDT-Smart. Growth was made possible in nine months, 2023 performance. To start with, we have ₱142.3 billion or 1% growth in revenues, which are nine month high revenues for PLDT. We also had an all-time nine-month high for our EBITDA, of ₱78.4 billion, which counts for the same period of last year, able to maintain margin at 52%, EBITDA margin. Telco core have shown growth also, plus 2%, ₱26.1 billion for the period. And also want to share the CapEx being managed down ₱55.3 billion versus ₱67.3 billion, of same period last year. So because of that, the Cap intensity gone down to 37% from a high of 46%. That's clear. And Page 2 next page. So, we are continuing to expand the network, countrywide. We improved - we increased our fiber footprint -- our domestic fiber footprint by 4%, and that's now up to almost 894,000 kilometers. And if you add the fiber optic of backbone of - in terms of our subsea it's about 1.1 million kilometer of fiber. Homes passed is ₱17.31 million, up from ₱16.78 million, last year. I'm also happy to report that there are no more device latched on to our network, passive return 74% growth. Now we have 3.64 million who are latched on to 5G devices environment network. Jupiter Cable Systems, which we launched last year, and was also got certification for IS0 22301 BCMS. And just an update on the tower…

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll be presenting the financial and operating highlights for the first nine months of 2023. Service revenues of ₱142.3 billion for the first nine months of 2023, were higher by 1% compared to the same period last year. On gross basis, service revenues of ₱149.8 billion were up 3% from ₱145.7 billion in 2022. Operating expenses decreased by 3% or ₱1.7 billion to ₱63.9 billion. Consolidated EBITDA rose by 4% to ₱78.4 billion, an all-time 9-month high with EBITDA margin at 52%. Telco core income, excluding the impact of asset sales and Maya, grew to ₱26.1 billion, up 2% year-on-year. Next page. On a segment basis, revenue growth was broad-based. Individual revenues representing about 43% of consolidated revenues rose 1% to ₱60.6 billion. Record highs were adjusted in the Home and Enterprise segments. Home revenues rose 2% to ₱45.3 billion, with Fiber Only revenues having risen 10% to ₱39.3 billion. Home revenues -- our Enterprise business grew by 1% to ₱34.8 billion. Let me now go through the segments in greater detail. Next, please. Home Broadband revenues grew by 2%, Fiber Only revenues, which now account for 87 total Home revenues, were higher by 10% or ₱3.6 billion compared to the same period last year. As a result, across our installation plus migration and low churn, Fiber net adds re-accelerated in the third quarter with 88,000, compared to 42,000 in the second quarter, bringing the total net adds for the year to 210,000. The gross of our Fiber Only revenues and the sequential albeit modest improvement of revenues from our fixed wireless broadband business, underscore our view that the home broadband market remains underpenetrated, we can serve demand more at the lower market segments that's more sensitive to price. Unique to PLDT is the ability…

Thank you, Danny. So in 2023, we continue to push the boundaries of our FinTech ecosystem with Maya Digital Bank at the heart of it, and continue to launch new products and growing all our businesses. So in the Philippines, we are the #1 digital bank in terms of number of depositors and the deposit balance, and we continue to see very good growth across our loans portfolio, and I'll touch upon that. On the merchant acquiring business, which is where we process Visa, Mastercard to our PH domestic debit. Again, we are the leaders in number of transactions processed in the Philippines across all these various fund sources, and continue to see that market share expand. And we are the number one finance app in the Philippines, which is our Maya consumer app. So let me give a little more color across each of these. So if we look at, on the Maya consumer app, which was largely a payment-centric app and now has gone on and evolved into an all-in-one full financial service app for consumers. We introduced a high-engagement saving product, last year. Customers look forward at the start of the month to pay the electricity bill, to pay various utility bills, to do their various purchases, which then helps them to earn higher interest rate. And the bulk of that information that we are able to collect on customers, we are able to create better profiles and deeper understanding of the behavior, which then goes into our credit scoring models and allows us to provide them with our credit products as and when they need those. Very pleased, we have launched our first credit product last year, Maya Credit. And last month, we expanded that with a longer tenure product, Maya Personal Loans. And we've seen…

Thank you, S.B. And this on nine months.

I just wanted to give the outlook guidance for 2023. Service revenue growth, low-single-digit growth for the group. EBITDA will also be low-single-digit growth. The core income will be at least ₱24 billion. CapEx will then it will be ₱25 billion operated nine months last year. And we will try to, we will continue, obviously, in dividends -- sorry, in this year. And then for dividend, we will obviously try to maintain a 60% dividend payout. MVP, if you might want to add a few things?

No, I'm good, Al. Thank you. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] The first set of questions comes from Stephen Olivero of China Bank Securities. The first one, how does TEL plan to sustain its top line momentum in 2024, given projected period of elevated interest rates and inflation?

I can just start, but I think, we haven't signed a term budgets for next year, but obviously, we're going to target growth for revenue line. Some of the initiatives that will be on stream next year will be our 11th data center, which will be on stream by June of next year. So we will have the six-month benefit of that, and hopefully full year in the following year. I think we're showing a positive momentum on mobile and we continue to grow that. There's still some growth areas still in -- that we are also pursuing. Although Danny did say that, it's starting to get to maybe a financially-challenged market -- segment of the market. That's why I think the ability of Home, to offer both fiber and fixed wireless solutions, will be helpful in that push. And I know that Enterprise continues to push digital transformation across the Enterprise space of customers. Do you want to add a few things? Melissa.

The next question, how does Maya Bank plan to strike a balance between funding costs and interest income, given the attractive deposit rates your currently offering?

Yes, we absolutely are trying to strike a balance, in fact, what we have managed and seen as a deliberate effort on our part, is making sure that the customers where it's high engagement banking, see a growth in both the customers and all the balances over there, which is where we get a lot of rich information on the customers, and these are customers who, for certain periods of time -- positive balances, but also over a period of time, need access to credit. And by virtue of seeing the transaction behavior, we are able to score them and provide them with Maya Credit and that piece has worked really well. What we did see was that we had balances in our personal loans product, which was a time deposit-equivalent product. And in that, we had some customers with high balances because of the interest rate. What we have done is we are reworking that product. And as a result of that, we have seen some reduction in the balances on that product. So if you look at our performance quarter-on-quarter, the number of customers that we have in Maya Bank has actually gone up, but the number of -- the amount of deposit balance has actually stayed pretty much flat, but that's helped us. And the second is, of course, growing the loan book. At this stage, as I mentioned, we have disbursed over ₱16 million - ₱16 billion of loan. These are largely short tenure loans. So as a result, of course, our outstanding loan book is modest. But as we expand into longer tenure rules, as I mentioned, personal loans, SME loans, we will also start seeing our loan-to-deposit ratio go up. So we've had a deliberate strategy of making sure that we're growing the number of customers that we have. We are getting the transaction behavior and payment behaviors, which is helping us. And that helps us with high engagement banking, but we're very conscious of making sure that we're not -- at this stage, getting encumbered with high balance deposits at high interest rates, and that's what we have pretty much worked on over the course of the last couple of quarters and we continue to refine that.

Use the Raise Hand, Arthur.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Several questions, please. Firstly, on Mobile. I'm just wondering what can be done to address the revenue growth caps versus your competitor? Now it's -- PLDT has had the benefit of network upgrades for quite a while now with the network advantages being claimed. What are the challenges in taking the premium users away from your competitor? Second question I had is with regard to the data center. Can you get some idea on the expected contributions from this, you've mentioned contribution or commercialization by early 2024. How much can this generate into the year? And is this immediately profitable? Or is there a ramp-up phase needed with utilization? And final question comes back to Mobile. I'm just wondering what does it take to get industry revenue growth tracking alongside broader GDP growth. When you look at other markets in Asia, it seems to be tracking well. Philippines seems to be an outlier, as I'm just wondering what can be done so that you're back to mid-single digits?

I'll let Alex answer the Mobile question now, exactly.

Yes, we're looking at our growth for 2024, riding on the restart of our network expansion, as well as the delivery of platform capabilities that will allow us to deploy targeted, customized and very timely offers, that are indeed relevant and value part. Obviously, there's a SKU for our customers on postpaid business. We realize that we have work to do there in order to not just upsell, but also to encourage even greater acquisition. Of course, we'll have to bank on the strength of the network. We have been looking at improvements in terms of speed as well as quality. And we also continue to work on our indoor coverage where most of the mobile consumption has shifted even as increased mobility has already been seen for the first few quarters this year.

Yes, so for -- if you look at the sub numbers were ahead based on this third quarter report, we're at 55.2 global, but said yesterday it's 4.7. So our task is how do we... If we're not going to be able to use this, we have to work on moving forward.

Revenue growth on the Fiber Homes from the revenue growth?

Well, the programs that we have lined up are geared towards accelerating mobile data burn. A number of our customers have continued to enjoy the better offers, but I think we have to see velocity. That's why the emphasis on asset burn, as well as understanding the segments which require a higher bandwidth allocations. And at the same time, the related offers that might be interesting for this target market, whether it involves fintech solution, entertainment and the like.

Thank you, Alex. I'll ask Biboy [ph] to answer the data center question.

Thank you for the question on data centers. I think the advantage of the PLDT platform is, we have available capacity. And secondly, we will be the first to market, to actually have a hyperscale data center in the country. This is very advantageous for us because as companies in the public sector transform digitally, they're looking for colocation services to meet their digital infrastructure requirements. And we will be in the best position to capture most of this, given those two factors of available capacity, and the first to market with a hyperscaler data center by the middle of next year.

Also, can you monetize on both businesses?

Yes. So if you look at the data center, obviously, it is like building a house that you need tenants. So we would need to find the tenants to fill it up. There will be a ramp-up phase. We are looking for an anchor tenant to fill up the space that we have, and the anchor tenants will come in the form of hyperscalers -- Eastern or Western hyperscalers. And as soon as they ramp up, then it will be easier for us to monetize the colocation space that they've taken in our data center.

We did -- we have started serving the space and we think -- very warm on a few big engagements with hyperscalers, one from the West, one from the East, so maybe two from the West. And that's something that we'll really be working hard on. So we want to make sure that we can get it as soon as possible. And in part -- we're looking -- at what's available by June next year, is 10 megawatts, the third portion for not by November, in early part of 2024, would be the balance 16 megawatt. So the teams are pushing very hard to get contracted, or even prior to the completion of the biggest revenue. I hope Arthur, we've answered your questions.

Just maybe to clarify, are there any plans to find any strategic partner which would help you accelerate take-up levels on your data centers?

We're undergoing a process now, in fact, we shared it with the Board. And we actually have a very short list, and we're expecting some binding offers, hopefully by the latter part of November. Just precise -- exactly which time, we're looking for a strategic partner that will grow the business and operate it more efficiently, because of the experience of the partner that we are bringing.

The next question is on Mobile. Have you seen any impact from DITO after it received fresh funding?

Alex?

There has been on ground, as well as online action from the challenger. So obviously, they will have to ride on marketing offers that will go with the expansion of the network. We understand that a number of customers either from our side or from the other competitor, might be if I may say, frankly, trying to experiment and understand the impact, merit being second scene, inside of devices. But we have seen from the marketplace that a number of the customers have actually gone back to their primary service providers after understanding that the service is more reliable, more consistent and more predictable.

Thank you, Alex. Next, here's a question. What are your views on prepaid home broadband?

Jeremiah take that?

Yes. Thanks, Al. So first, before I answer the question on prepaid home broadband, particularly prepaid fiber. I just want to remind everybody that PLDT is in a great position to be able to leverage two very, very strong networks. Our mobile network actually rated extremely high, in fact, performing both 5G as well as 4G, which enables us to be able to sell fixed wireless as an offering to customers to be able to service not only areas that we don't have fiber, but to also service a different demographic and customer that may be looking for more of a sachet-based sort of infrequent usage for various reasons. The second one is our fiber network, which we have actually had quite an extensive rollout and we currently do enjoy about 60% utilization, right? So we actually have about 60% of all of our ports with tolling customers. So we have two weapons that we're able to leverage, but because of the situation that we're in, I guess we're approaching the market a little bit differently from our competition. We've lent our push into the prepaid space with fixed wireless, so we've actually seen fixed wireless as a category has been challenged in the market for the last 9 months. But what we are very pleased to be able to report back, is we've seen two consecutive quarters of growth in our fixed-wireless space. So we've actually seen a 5% quarter-on-quarter growth in terms of fixed wireless revenues. Now whilst that may still be somewhat small compared to, let's say, for example, fiber revenues, it does show that there is a role for fixed wireless to play in being able to service the different customer needs for the different segments. From a fiber perspective, we are actually -- as we…

The next question is you mentioned about the launch of a sovereign cloud, what are the potentials of this business? And what is the traction so far?

Thank you for that question. When we built the sovereign cloud, we really had target markets in mind. One was the government services and the other one is the private sector. We felt that as part of our role to help digitalize the economy and help the administration also digitalize most of its public services, building a sovereign cloud in the Philippines was a first step for us in being able to offer that solution. This is a service that is similarly implemented or rolled out in other markets. We are actually the sixth or the seventh market in Asia to be able to roll out a sovereign cloud. So we feel that there's going to be usage and traction for this. We cannot obviously say who the government agencies are given the sensitivity of data that we will be hosting. But it has been a welcome solution for a need that government agencies have been looking for quite some time.

There's a question on Maya. Are there any plans for fund raising?

Yes, we are very much, as I mentioned, a couple of quick pointers to that. The business -- actually all the business became segment EBITDA positive in the third quarter of this year, and we continue to push towards the overall company becoming cash positive towards the end of 2024. In the interim, while we are funded on a lot of the operating side as we expand our loan book, we do need access to capital for some of the regulatory capital and to grow the loan book. So we are concluding external funding round with our existing shareholders, to fund for the requirements that we have until 2024, we should be able to conclude that over the coming days and should be able to share details.

I just wanted to add to that, that PLDT will actually participate in a round in fact, we've increased its equity, and also increase equity in Maya.

There's a question on CapEx intensity. You've reduced your CapEx intensity significantly. How much lower can that go? And when do you expect it to get to the 25% level similar to other telcos in the region?

I'm not sure whether 25% is possible for us, Philippines, that hasn't been done. Initially what we would like to do is, bring it down to 30% CapEx intensity. That's a target maybe for next year or so.

There's a question on whether we're planning to do any more tower sales?

Right now, we want to just complete first, what we have sold. There's still quite a bit of -- since we've done a lot in my summary, as I said that we have 5,900 towers, I think that we're ready. I think for that we already closed in -- so it's only 79% to 80%. So there's a bit -- there's still 20% that we continue to close, that we think is a big part of the chunk that we gave to you.

Are there any other questions? There's nothing in the queue. [Operator Instructions] And would you like to share some comments? There are no other questions in the queue.

[Foreign Language], nothing significant. So better stay quiet, which I didn't, in the media, right?

You will not quote your own way. I think there's a question from Herman Dela Paz.

Let me see. Herman, please unmute your mic.

I'm okay. Yes. I have unmuted. Can you hear me?

Yes. Yes, we can. Okay. There's a question from Herman Dela Paz. Herman? If there are no further questions, I turn the floor over to our Chairman, Mr. Pangilinan, for any final words.

Nothing really special by way of closing, except to thank you for joining us this afternoon for the for the third quarter briefing. And we look forward to seeing you again perhaps sometime in February or March next year. So in the meantime, on behalf of all of us, we wish all of you a very merry Christmas.

And that concludes today's briefing. As always, should you have any further questions and clarifications. Please reach out to PLDT Investor Relations. Thank you for your participation. Good afternoon.

Thank you.

Thank you.