Good evening, and welcome to the PCCW 2021 annual results webcast. In attendance today we have BG Srinivas, Group MD, and Susanna Hui, Group CFO. We'll start with the presentation, followed by Q&A. With that, let me turn it to BG.
Thank you, Marco. Good evening to all of you, and welcome. I'm very pleased to share that we have had a very robust performance across all our business lines. We have seen double-digit growth rate Solutions. The Viu OTT business reflected a 37% growth, and the ViuTV more than doubled its revenues for the year 2021. The results for HKT were put out just earlier in the day, so overall the group has reflected robust performance and top-line growth. At the same time, we also are happy to share the fact that ViuTV has turned EBITDA positive, while the OTT business is also trending towards EBITDA break even. At the same time, we will continue to focus on ensuring we increase our market share in Hong Kong and also focus on regional expansion.
As the business narratives continue, including the financials, there are two major transactions which happened during 2021. One was the fact that the data center business was divested, and also the fact that the PCPD, the property business, has been deconsolidated. That is the part you will hear in the narratives, both on financials as well as on the business front. With this, I would like to pause and invite Susanna to walk us through the financials. I will come back and give more color on both the media and the Solutions business. Thank you.
Sure. Thank you, BG. Let me share the financial review. Against the backdrop of a gradual rebound in the local economy, especially in the second half of 2021, we are very pleased to report that PCCW registered robust performance across all the lines of business. If you look at the first slide here, you can see that our revenue posted a gain of 7%, from $4.6 billion to $4.9 billion. EBITDA also was lifted up by 6% from $1.5 billion to $1.58 billion. Including the gain from our data center sale, we concluded the year very strongly with a net profit after tax of $133 million.
As you can see from the tables below on the same slide, basically all the lines of business, including the HKT, media, Solutions business, registered growth in both revenue and EBITDA. Let me dive into the segment details immediately. On the HKT side, we have also just announced results. In terms of revenue, it was up by 5% from HKD 4.15 billion to HKD 4.345 billion, mainly driven by the continued strong demand for our broadband on the consumer side, and also on the local data services on our enterprise side. Altogether posting a 4% growth year-on-year.
On the mobile side as well, in terms of the 5G adoption, it was accelerated and reported a growth in terms of the local mobile service revenue, and also boosted by the robust 5G handset sales. We see revenue for the year 2021 grow very strongly by 13%. This set of results has also included the full year of the Pay TV results. Of course, there is headwind. The headwind is the overhang of the roaming drop due to the prolonged travel and quarantine restrictions and also the slightly slower international voice business, which in fact carried a very thin margin anyway. Now, despite the headwind, HKT EBITDA increased by 2% to HKD 1.632 billion, due to the focus on various operational efficiencies.
Bearing in mind the fact that the year 2020 actually included some of the government subsidies in terms of the ESS, the employment subsidy scheme. If we are to normalize that in 2020, the EBITDA improvement for HKT , in fact, would have been 5%. Both TSS and mobile also reported EBITDA growth, and Pay TV EBITDA on a pro forma basis also registered 6% growth, reflecting the early signs of cross-platform synergies and content cost rationalization. For HKT, for the year 2021, we have reported adjusted funds flow distribution of 2% growth to HKD 707 million.
As we have presented before, it was contributed by higher EBITDA, disciplined CapEx, as well as lower interest costs and tax payment, partially offset by higher mobile spectrum license payment due to the overlapping of the timing of payment for the old spectrum and the new spectrum come into play. PCCW holding a 50% stake in HKT is due to receive a dividend of a total of HKD 367 million for the full year 2021. Now, turning to our OTT business, it continued to report very strong growth momentum, with revenue increasing by 25% year-on-year from $152 million to $190 million. In particular, our video streaming service posted a very strong 37% growth in top line to $142 million.
As our strategic investment in Viu Originals in partnership with a lot of local production talents across the entire region , proved to be very successful in creating the content differentiation. This really has resulted in higher conversion into paid subscribers, which posted a 58% jump from 5.3 million to 8.4 million during the year. Our viewer base continued to expand, experiencing a 30% growth in the MAUs, from 45 million to 58.6 million, boosting the digital advertising revenue from $35 million to $43 million, which is up by an impressive 21% year-on-year. With the growing scale of the business, the EBITDA loss was narrowed very significantly from HKD 20 million to HKD 3 million loss.
We are on course to achieve our EBITDA breakeven in the year 2022. Well, turning to our domestic Free TV business. Obviously, for those of you who are in Hong Kong, definitely you'll be very familiar with our early success, especially with our artists and the boy band, and so on. We saw a landmark year with robust revenue growth of 152% from $41 million to $103 million for the year. In particular, with its growing audience and attractive viewer demographics, advertising revenue more than doubled to $79 million on the back of relevant and appealing scripted dramas and reality shows.
Now, riding on the success of our boy band, MIRROR, as well as up-and-coming artists, our talent management and event business has also posted an exceptional growth, with revenue increasing almost tenfold. We shall continue to invest in quality content and talent creation to sustain the growth momentum, as evident from our recent debut of the girls group, COLLAR. Now, with the scale and the diversified revenue base, and after 6 years since launch, ViuTV achieved breakeven, concluding the year with a strong $12 million EBITDA. Turning to our IT Solutions business, as BG just now shared, we have concluded the sale of our data center business in the year 2021. This set of numbers actually included only the IT Solutions service business.
We are able to report a very impressive growth of 20% in terms of top line, with revenue growing from $524 million to $627 million. This growth reflected the successful completion of various mission-critical long-term projects in both Hong Kong and overseas, including one for a local banking client and those for numerous government agencies in Singapore as well. Secured orders continue to be very strong, and it was at $3.1 billion, with new wins, including large-scale technical projects from the Airport Authority Hong Kong, and also other IT managed services in Asia as well.
We shall of course, as BG said, continue to leverage our developed IP to expand regionally and also refine our go-to-market strategy to focus on core industry verticals. Overall , EBITDA improved by 31% from $64 million to $84 million, basically contributed by further enhancing efficiencies through improved staff utilization and also optimizing the balance between local talent and offshore delivery centers. Overall margin expanded to 13%, of which recurring EBITDA margin also improved to 14%. Now, looking at the next slide, the OpEx, we see OpEx spending edged down marginally by 1% from $658 million to $651 million, with OpEx revenue ratio improving to 13%. I again point to the fact that last year, the OpEx benefited from the government subsidies in terms of the employment subsidy scheme.
If we are to normalize and adjust that, actually, OpEx savings for the group achieved 10% savings rather than the 1%. Now, turning to the next slide, the CapEx investment. We see here that there is a CapEx savings of 4% for the whole of PCCW group. In terms of the HKT side, it was kept stable despite the fact that it has included the Now TV CapEx as well. The relatively CapEx -intensive data center was gone. You see that for the Solutions side, it was very little CapEx required. Altogether, CapEx revenue ratio was down from 7.3% to 6.5%. Turning to the next slide, debt maturity profile.
We have split it into HKT level and PCCW level. If you can see here, in terms of HKT debt maturity profile has been very well spread out, and 50% in fixed rate, 50% in floating rate. Actually , early last month, we have on the HKT side, issued a new bond as well. This has further increased basically the fixed rate portion to 60%. On the PCCW side, because we have completed the data center business and we have received indeed the proceeds, which were all used to pay down the revolving bank facility. You can see here that there is no more bank loans on the PCCW side.
The remaining is actually the $300 million bond done 10 years ago, and it will be repaid as due later on using the liquidity. Talking about liquidity, we would then turn to the liquidity slide. Overall gross debt improved to HKD 6 billion as a whole. We have the consolidated PCPD. Cash balance remained strong with HKD 646 million, with HKD 370 million on HKT side, HKD 276 million on PCCW side. Undrawn facilities were kept at HKD 2.6 billion, half with on the HKT side and half on the PCCW side. Gross debt to EBITDA ratio and net debt to EBITDA ratio improved from 4 x to 3.8x and from 3.8 x to 3.4x,, respectively.
Finally, a bit of good news on the dividend side. The Board today has recommended a final dividend of HKD 0.2769 per share, which, together with the interim dividend of HKD 0.0639 per share, will amount to a full -year dividend of HKD 0.3705 in total. This represents actually an increase in terms of pass-through ratio of HKT dividends to 100%. In the past, if you look at the slide, we have kept to around 90% for the past three, four years. This year, because of the completion of the data center and also the increased liquidity, we have increased the pass-through ratio to 100%.
This represents a 15% growth as compared to last year and representing a yield of almost 9% based on the current share price. I think this also reflects the management confidence and the board's confidence that we have in our resilient set of the businesses. This ends my presentation on the financials. I will now pass the floor back to BG for the operational review. BG.
Thank you. Thank you, Susanna. On the back of the good news, let me continue to give the update on the media business. To begin with, we will run through the OTT business. As was mentioned, we have had a fantastic growth last year. In spite of the fact that there is increased competition in the Southeast Asian market, we have demonstrated consistently for the eight quarters in a row that we remain number one in terms of the monthly active user base. The growth rate has been also consistent in the last three years, 36% growth. At the same time, when we look at the accelerated growth rate of 43%, outpacing the average growth rate of the market. Overall, the team has demonstrated consistent performance across several quarters, and we continue to maintain leadership.
We're happy to also share that we have been ranked in the top two with respect to some of the key KPIs, monthly active user base. Our subscription base has also accelerated. We are in the top two. The engagement continues to be very good given the quality of content we have been able to broadcast in these regions. Couple of key numbers again, 30% jump in MAUs. This was driven by some of our large markets within Southeast Asia, which includes Thailand and Indonesia. We also saw accelerated growth rate in Philippines. Together, we have been able to capitalize on both local and regional content to drive both MAUs as well as the subscription base.
Subscription base has also accelerated, given the fact that we have been able to launch several Viu Originals and also leverage our partnership in the Southeast Asian markets. Here you can see a sample of award-winning quality originals, which has helped us drive both subscriber base as well as viewership. At the same time, these originals we have been able to monetize on other platforms, both Free TV and Pay TV in the markets we operate. On other platforms outside of our markets, over 20 platforms use our originals beyond monetization on the Viu Originals platform itself. Switching over to the Free TV, as was mentioned, we saw more than 100% jump in the revenue. This was primarily driven by significant ad spend on our platform.
As you can see, we have over 680 clients, added 350 in the last year, and several of them are exclusively spending their ad spend on ViuTV. We also had a significant growth on the rating. The average prime rating shot up 23% year-on-year. We have also seen that we have been able to attract ad spend across diverse set of industry verticals. We will continue to invest into scripted and unscripted content to continue to drive this as we invest into 2022. We've also seen that our active management of artists, and some of them have really become award-winning artists, been promoting brands. We see 13 of the top 50 brands in Q3 alone. We have also been able to leverage this attractiveness to our platform.
We see the brands increase three times during the year to jump up to 240. We will continue to make sure we make prudent investments in this content, and they continue to develop talent, as was mentioned. Apart from MIRROR, we are now promoting COLLAR, an all-girls brand, which we hope will also become successful. We have also been able to leverage some of our content with international distribution, and this is something we will continue to do to monetize our content beyond Hong Kong market. Moving to the Solutions business. As was mentioned, we saw 20% growth rate on top line. This was broad-based across several industry verticals. At the same time, we also saw increased traction in both digital and cloud and application development as far as the service mix is concerned.
These numbers do not reflect the data center, which has been deconsolidated. We do have a secure order backlog, a very healthy secure order backlog of $3.1 billion as of December 31st. As Business Solutions is clearly focused on some of the key parameters, the strategic focus, we will continue to focus on the key verticals where we have strengths, where we have built digital transformation capabilities, and also where we have built Solutions, our IP, which we are able to reuse for these key industry verticals. We will continue to sharpen our client focus in terms of addressing some of the key clients' challenges, as most of our enterprise clients are embarking on digital transformation within their own businesses.
As far as the regional expansion is concerned, we'll continue to stay focused on Southeast Asia, Singapore being the hub, and we will continue to leverage talent pool across Southeast Asia, PRC, as well as Hong Kong. These are some of the successful execution of digital transformation case studies. The first one is a digital portal which was built for a financial regulator here in Hong Kong, which actually helps digitize their licensing process. This was an end-to-end engagement, end-to-end by PCCW Solutions, which has been successfully put in place. We also used our talent to implement SAP SuccessFactors, which has gone live across all our businesses globally. This has helped automate and digitize our own HR processes. The other example you see there is for a leading insurance platform provider in Taiwan, where we have helped them to digitize their claims process.
This is an area where we will continue to improve our capabilities and actually tap into the market opportunities across the key industry verticals, which we are focused on. Here are some of the other case studies, some key wins in the last six months. We won a large deal at public sector across 22 government agencies in Singapore. We also won the second phase of SMRT Trains in Singapore. On the back of this win, now we have a joint go-to-market proposition for similar opportunities in Southeast Asia beyond Singapore. Here are a couple of other key wins. As Hong Kong continues to invest in expanding the third runway, and there are new projects emerging as a consequence of that investment, and we are winning these deals.
The other win is on the Hong Kong Housing Authority, where we have implemented Oracle HRMS Suite for automating and digitizing the HR process. Lastly, we do believe that our reputation in the market with respect to delivery performance, consistency in our delivery on the back of several key quality initiatives within the group. This is something very consistent across all our delivery centers, including Hong Kong. We also see some of these certifications which primarily focus on security management and data privacy, which has become the key, or certain prerequisites even to participate in some of sensitive client opportunities. This is something which we believe helps us differentiate and win opportunities in the markets. To summarize, if you look at the past years, we have clearly engaged with very focused strategies, leveraging technology in all these businesses on the back of highly secure connectivity.
Our digital OTT platforms, our digital capabilities and Solutions, and also key markets in Southeast Asia to expand footprint outside of Hong Kong. We will continue to seek investments into new products and services, and we will continue to stay prudent as we see the COVID challenges continue to impact not only Hong Kong, across Southeast Asia, but we clearly see as a group, we have demonstrated resilience in the last couple of years in terms of engaging and driving our customers, in terms of revenue growth, and we will continue to stay focused. With that, I would like to pause here, and I'm happy to take questions.
The first question is: Do you think you can record similar levels of revenue and EBITDA growth in Solutions in 2022?
As was mentioned earlier, you saw that we have a very healthy order backlog of HKD 3.1 billion, which spans over several years. We continue to stay focused on winning large multi-year deals. We do have a robust pipeline, and more importantly, we have a secure order backlog which we have to deliver this year. With also increased focus on increasing our market share in Southeast Asia, we do believe we will continue to show growth rates in Solutions, and we are confident that we can sustain.
The next question is: How does the Viu Originals help drive growth in the OTT business?
As I mentioned earlier, we have clearly seen the traction Viu Originals have happened in Southeast Asia. Not only the fact that we have been able to increase our subscription base through Viu Originals, we have also been able to, as a hybrid approach, also attract advertisers onto our platform. This not only helps differentiate, but it's also very cost-effective in terms of our content spend. This, we do believe, will continue to be the key driver for our growth in the markets we are operating in.
The next question is. How does PCCW Solutions cooperate with HKT on enterprise digital transformation projects?
We clearly see a benefit of having capabilities across different businesses, particularly HKT, which has also a strong enterprise customer base, providing highly secure connectivity and other services related to the telecom. When it comes to large key engagements, our customers expect us to be a system integrator which brings capabilities beyond just providing IT services. We have seen in the past, including the eMPF win, our combined capabilities actually made a difference in terms of making sure that a customer gets not only the IT services part but the full digital capabilities across HKT as well as PCCW Solutions. We will continue to make sure, even in Southeast Asia, some of these capabilities can come to bear when it comes to helping us differentiate, because these kind of combined capabilities do not exist with some of our competition.
Next, question is: What will be the key drivers for future growth in the Free TV business?
It is clear that the quality of content, whether it is scripted or non-scripted, we clearly believe the quality of content is the key. We have not only developed local talent pool, but even when we put out new programs, we make sure that there's enough analytics which is spent in terms of understanding our customer behavior, customer demand, and thereby tailoring our content to these customers. We also are ensuring that there is consistency in terms of the key programs. As you saw, the prime rating has gone up significantly in the last year, so this will be the key focus. We do believe that our partnership with several brands who are advertising on ViuTV will continue, and those relationships will help us drive future growth.
That was the final question. Thank you for joining our webcast today.
Thank you.
Thank you.