Alex Sinaga
Analyst · HSBC
Thank you, Andy. Good morning -- excuse me, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our conference call for 9 months 2015 results ended September 30, 2015. We sincerely appreciate your participation in this call. I would like also to update you on the progress of our cellular and fixed line businesses development as well as other business portfolio. Ladies and gentlemen, we are very proud that in the current macroeconomic situation, we continue or even improve our excellent performance both in term of financial and operational result. Telkom's consolidated revenue grew by 15% year-on-year to IDR 75.73 with contribution from cellular business at around 70%. EBITDA and income margins remain strong at 49% and 15.3%, respectively. In terms of operational aspect, Telkomsel continue its expansion in network infrastructure with almost 15,000 new BTS installed during 9 month of 2015 in an effort to maintain leading network supply to strengthen customer experience. Telkomsel gained almost 8 million net additional customers during the period, brought total customers base to 148.6 million as of September 2015. Mobile data payload jumped significantly to 341.7 petabytes or increased 119% year-on-year, mainly supported by fast-growing 3G and 4G-capable device adoption, which grew by 57% to 55.6 million users. It represented around 57% of our customer base. In the next part, in the fixed line business, total fixed-line broadband users increased 15% year-on-year to 3.7 million customers, supported by our yearly loans in the home triple play, while our fixed-line phone subscribers increased to 10 million from 9.6 million last year. Ladies and gentlemen, our data Internet and IT services segment became the growth driver, with 54.7% year-on-year to IDR 23.5 trillion, mainly contributed by our mobile digital businesses which jumped 41.6% year-on-year. At the same time, we successfully exploited legacy business with mobile voice grew 9.5% year-on-year and SMS increased 8.1 year-on-year. Nevertheless, our business expansion has some impact to our operating expenses, which increased by 17.9 year-on-year to IDR 51.7 trillion. Operation and maintenance expenses grew by 27% year-over-year, in line with the acceleration of network deployments both in our cellular and fixed-line businesses, and particularly to grow digital business. Personnel expenses grew by 24.5%, which was mainly due to early retirement program for Telkom group employees as well as incentive aligned with company's strong performance. General and administrative expenses increased to 57.1%, as we set aside allowance for doubtful account as well as higher collection fees in line with popularity of modern channel -- excuse me, modern sales channels. In the meantime, depreciation and amortization increased by 12.2% to IDR 8.8 trillion, in line with continued network infrastructure development and partly due to impairment of Flexi assets. Ladies and gentlemen, Telkomsel continues its remarkable results for 9 months of 2015. We successfully maintained triple double-digit revenue growth for revenue, EBITDA and net income, which grew by 14.9%, 16.5% and 19.5% year-on-year, respectively. Revenue increased to IDR 55.6 trillion, which was driven by strong growth in digital business revenue that grew by 41.6% year-on-year, with revenue from mobile data grew by 41.9% year-on-year, while digital service revenue increased by 59% year-on-year. Digital businesses revenue contribution to total revenue of Telkomsel reached 28.3%, significantly increased from 23% last year. At the same time, Telkomsel successfully continue to exploit legacy business, which increased 7% year-on-year, despite popularity of instant messaging application. The adjustment is attributable to the successful execution of smart micro cost of base pricing and market segmentation. EBITDA and net income margin remained superior at 60 -- excuse me, 56.1% and 29.7%, respectively. During the 9 months of 2015, we deployed 14,962 new BTSs, of which 88.4 were 3G and 4G BTSs, which reflects our capital expenditure strategy to focus on and grow digital business. As a result, data traffic sharply increased by 119% to 341.8 (sic) [341.7] petabytes, mainly grew by high growth in 3G and 4G handset users that reached 55.6 million or grew 57.3% year-on-year and represent around 57% of our customer base. As of September 2015, total BTS on air exceeds 100,000 units and 20.4% increase year-on-year, of which 52% were 3G and 4G BTSs. We continue to increase our footprint in 4G LTE service, and now it's available in 8 cities: Jakarta, Bali, Bandung, Surabaya, Medan, Makassar, Lombok, as well as Manado, that was launched in October 2015. As the spectrum we're forming in 1,800 megahertz will be completed in November. We expect to roll out 4G as the end service in more cities in the near future. Ladies and gentlemen, in the home triple play, our flagship product in fixed-line businesses saw an encouraging progress with 678,000 subscribers only 9 months after the product was launched in early this year. We believe that demand for IndiHome is huge, given the fact that Indonesia has more than 60 million household with growing middle-class segment and very low fixed broadband penetration of only around 6%. However, we have to be frank that we faced some challenges in the field to absorb the strong demand. We are now working very hard to strengthen our capacity and capability in terms of human resources, especially Indonesia as well as business process to accelerate the deployment of last mile fiber network to the premises of the customer. Hence, we are confident to achieve at least 1 million in the home subscribers by end of this year, and we expect further acceleration in the coming years. Ladies and gentlemen, we continue to do development of Fiber Backbone to provide high quality broadband infrastructure nationwide. Last month, we officially connected Merauke and Papua through a submarine broadband highway, we call it SMPCS, that drastically elevates connectivity in eastern part of Indonesia. Now let me say share with you about Mitratel deal. The plan to submit Mitratel's sell with Tower Bersama has been canceled off since the terms and conditions of product change agreement could not be fulfilled. We are now evaluating a number of option to unlock value of our Tower asset. We believe that we can come up with a scheme that will bring the best value for the company as well as for the shareholders. Ladies and gentlemen, in terms of guidance, if we look at our 9 months result, we're optimistic that our revenue will grow better than market rate in full year 2015 by continued effort to grow digital businesses. EBITDA and the income margin were slightly decline, in line with continued broadband infrastructure development, both in mobile and fixed line businesses. That concludes my remarks. Thank you.