Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the company's management, I would like to welcome all of you to our 2023 Annual R esults presentation. Please keep your phone in silent mode during the briefing. First, please allow me to introduce the company's directors and management attending today's meeting. Mr. Ke Ruiwen, Executive Director, Chairman, and CEO. Mr. Liu Guiqing, Executive Director and Executive Vice President. Mr. Tang Ke, Executive Director and Executive Vice President; and Mr. Li Yinghui, Executive Director, Executive Vice President, CFO, and Secretary of the Board. Thank you for joining us, and hope you will find this presentation helpful. Now, please welcome Chairman Ke to give us an overview of the company's 2023 Annual Results.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our 2023 Annual Results presentation, and thank you for your long-term attention and support. The presentation has two sections.
I'll provide an overview first, Mr. Liu Guiqing will go through the business review and financial performance. There are six development highlights in 2023. One, operating results maintained favorable trajectory and fully fulfilled the commitment during A-share issuance. Two, sci-tech innovation achieved breakthroughs and formation of new quality productive forces accelerated. Three, strategic emerging businesses deployment fully completed with integration and mutual promotion of fundamental business and industrial digitalization. Four, deepen cloud network integration and propel intelligent upgrades of digital information infrastructure. Five, fully deepen reforms and open up and create value to reward shareholders. Six, implement cloudification and digital transformation deeply and fully and promote high-quality development. In 2023, the company firmly and fully implemented the cloudification and digital transformation strategy. With a customer-oriented approach, the company actively expanded the informatization services for individual families, government, and enterprises, and achieved steady growth in operating results.
The table shows the key financial data in 2023. Revenue, EBITDA, net profit, and ROE all achieved favorable growth. It's been three years since the company's A-share listing, and the company has fully fulfilled various commitments during offering and advanced high-quality development to a new level. Service revenues increased to 6.9% YoY and maintained growth for 11 consecutive years, with three-year CAGR above industry average. Net profit increased 10.3% YoY, maintaining double-digit growth for three consecutive years. Dividend payout ratio increased to over 70%, and the three-year CAGR of DPS was 31% and is industry highest. Market capitalization management achieved remarkable results as the market capitalization of the company has soared to 3.2x to that at end 2020. Adhering to the route technology plan of network, cloud, AI, security, and quantum, the company continued to optimize the R&D innovation layout for the five-year period since 2021.
The input of new elements made a breakthrough in the past three years, with R&D expense increasing by nearly 1.8 x, leading talents increasing by nearly 4x , and R&D engineers increasing by 1.7 x. The company has also created new digital tools in R&D operation and marketing with remarkable results. The company has established a technology-driven and industry-leading new digital information infrastructure for cloud network integration in the fields of cloud computing, network, AI, security, and quantum. The national cloud framework was fully formed, and the aerial ground integration framework is taking shape, providing the whole society with a large platform of digital economy development.
The company continued to strengthen capabilities, improved products and services, and fully completed the deployment of seven strategic emerging businesses, namely cloud and computing power, AI, big data, security, quantum, new generation information and communication and digital platform, forming powerful engines for market expansion and propelling the formation of new quality productive forces. Among them, China Telecom Cloud has built a high-quality source of original cloud computing technology, maintaining the leading position of global operator cloud. The company's big data pool is over 500 PB in scale, and 1.6 PB of data is collected daily on average. Quantum communication enjoys industry-leading commercialization progress as well as market share. Satellite communication launched the world's first consumer-grade handset direct to satellite voice and SMS service. In 2023, the revenue of China Telecom Cloud was CNY 97.2 billion, with a growth of 67.9%.
China Telecom Cloud maintained its leading position in the market, such as number one in government administration, public cloud infrastructure, top three in IaaS and IaaS Plus in PRC, number one in PaaS in PRC. China Telecom Cloud's competitive edge is further strengthened based on its full-stack proprietary technology system, industry-leading products and services, and secure and trustworthy operation capabilities. Without AI, there is no future for cloud. Focusing on the new requirements for cloud service providers in the era of AI models, China Telecom Cloud has accelerated the upgrade to intelligent cloud at all fronts and built the ubiquitous computing infrastructure integrating cloud, intelligent computing, and supercomputing by establishing three fully linked intelligent computing platforms, namely HuiZhu, Yunxiao, and Xirang. The company has become a leading computing power service provider for large models in PRC.
The company actively planned for AI and big data businesses and accelerated empowering thousands of industries, and a series of benchmark projects in education, cultural tourism, customer service, finance, and other industries were formed. The company continued to strengthen its fundamental capabilities with 1+N+M large model product system with a general-purpose large foundation model covering language, speech, visual, and multimodal capabilities, as well as 12 large vertical models for government administration, education, transportation, and other fields. Meanwhile, the company launched nine models for own use in internal production and operation. Backed by the Xinghe AI platform foundation, we have developed more than 10,000 algorithms for different use cases, with 410 million times of access daily on average. Relying on its own data resources, the company launched over 50 Xinghai big data products and launched the Lingze data element platform that provides full-process data training services.
As a result, the company ranked number one among data element economic service providers. The company actively promotes the integration of AI and big data into internal digital operations and took multiple measures to save costs and increase efficiency. In 2023, selling expense to revenue ratio, electricity cost per 4 /5G base station, the cost of 10,000 hotline, and AI-assisted network task processing duration continued to decrease. AI empowered intelligent customer service and automatic cloud network operation and maintenance with remarkable results. Percentage of fundamental businesses subs developed online, FTTH port utilization rate, and tower sharing ratio continued to increase. Focusing on high-speed and ubiquitous cloud intelligence integrated secure and green, intelligent and agile, the company accelerated the upgrade of digital information infrastructure.
In 2023, the company's intelligent computing and general computing reached 11.0 EFLOPS and 4.1 EFLOPS respectively, and promoted the upgrade of data centers to AIDC, accelerated the deployment of a new generation large-scale intelligent computing cluster, maintained leadership in security capabilities with quantum metropolitan network debuted in Hefei, Anhui Province, and the launch of Qiming, the first large model in the field of information and communications. Overall level of automation intelligence of cloud network operation reached L3 and even L4 in 5G core and other scenes. The company and China Unicom continued to deepen co-build and co-share and had over 1.21 million 5G base stations in use, over 2 million 4G mid-spectrum co-shared base stations, and 250,000 4/5G integrated 800 MHz base stations. The urban residential gigabit coverage rate exceeded 90% with industry-leading scale.
The company actively seizes the opportunities in the aviation internet market and continue to promote the construction of the aerial ground integrated information network capability. In 2023, the company's CapEx was CNY 98.8 billion, of which the proportion of industrial digitalization reached 36.0%, along with an optimized CapEx structure. The company's 2023 CapEx budget is CNY 96 billion, down 2.9% YoY, and estimated percentage to service revenues will decrease to under 20%. CapEx for cloud and computing power is CNY 18 billion, and the intelligent computing capacity will increase by over 10 EFLOPS to reach over 21 EFLOPS. The company will also build a flexible, elastic, and green AIDC. Mobile network CapEx decreases by 4.5 percentage point YoY. The company fully deepened the reforms and opened up and vitality of high-quality development continuously unleashed.
The company continued to enhance the building of organization system, accelerated the digital transformation, deepened the reform of the market-oriented system and mechanism, and create comprehensive advantage of system integration, aggregating professional capabilities, industrial capabilities, ecological capabilities, and sales and service capabilities. The company will accelerate the promotion of high-level open up and cooperation and build a win-win ecological landscape in terms of industrial development, technological research, talent nurturing, business and channel of cooperation. I would like to thank all shareholders, investors, and analysts for their support and attention to the development of the company. The company will continue to work with you to share the fruits of development. The board proposed a final dividend of CNY 0.09 per share at the end of 2023.
Hence, the full-year dividend for 2023 will be CNY 0.2352 per share, with the dividend payout ratio over 70%, fully fulfilling the profit distribution commitment during A-share issuance. The company actively implements green development principles and promotes green transformation and development on all fronts. The company defends and researches key green and low-carbon technologies and conversion of proprietary products accelerates the green upgrade of cloud network by creating an efficient, intelligent, green and low-carbon network that is end-to-end dynamic, adjustable, and capable of independent energy saving, and remarkable results in energy saving and emission reduction were achieved. The company also enhances the green product and service system, promotes the formation of a green and low-carbon lifestyle, and empower the green and low-carbon transformation of the economy and society.
The company continued to actively fulfill social responsibility and actively integrate green elements into energy use, products operations, and other aspects, resulting in further decline in greenhouse gas emissions. The company fully accomplished the communication assurance task of major events, as well as flood and disaster relief, promoted the construction of digital village, held social welfare activities, and created an all-rounded employee care system. Adhering to the excellent, stable, and effective corporate governance philosophy, the company continued to improve its corporate governance.
The company will firmly seize opportunities by leveraging the technological and industry trends and its own competitive edges, continue to deeply implement the cloudification and digital transformation strategy, adhere to the principle of network as the foundation and cloud as the core, grasp the direction of AI development, and innovate products and service offerings, accelerate the formation of new quality productive forces, and the construction of a world-class enterprise. In the coming three years, the company expects service revenues to maintain favorable growth, net profit growth to be higher than revenue growth, CapEx to sales ratio to further decrease. The company will endeavor to create corporate value and share fruits of development with shareholders. Within three years from 2024, the dividend payout ratio will gradually increase to about 75%. My introduction ends here, and Mr. Liu Guiqing will continue with company's business and financial performance.
Thank you, Chairman Ke.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will now go through our business and financial performance in 2023. In 2023, the company's fundamental businesses developed healthily with mobile communications service revenue increasing by 2.4%, and wireline and smart family service revenue by 3.8% respectively. The structure of mobile and broadband subs continued to be optimized, with the 5G package penetration rate increasing to 78.1% and the gigabit subs penetration rate increasing to 24.6%. The company continued to enrich high-quality digital products and scene-based services, driving growth of mobile and broadband blended ARPU for three consecutive years. The company accelerated 5G renewal and upgrading, vigorously promoted 5G applications with the contribution of mobile value-added and applications to mobile ARPU, reaching CNY 5.4, up 8% YoY.
The company also accelerated smart family renewal and upgraded applications and services such as Whole -Home Intelligence and e-Surfing Webcam, and smart family contributed to broadband blended ARPU by CNY 8.5, up 6.3% YoY. The scale of smart communities and digital villages increased significantly while promoting integration and mutual promotion, which effectively boost the scale and value of fundamental businesses. In 2023, industrial digitalization contributed 70.4% of incremental service revenues, up 11.8 percentage points YoY, and enterprise customers increased by 11.3%. The company proprietary digital platforms had 7,450 fundamental capabilities for sale and 27.2 billion of access cumulative. ICT projects development was benefited as well, with over 5,000 projects driven and contract amount grew over 300% YoY. The company's digital government administrative platforms and services cover multiple segments. Digital industrial solutions include network connection, intelligent transformation, digital transformation, and others.
Digital livelihood platforms are also widely used in healthcare, education, culture, and publicity, and other areas. For cloud and computing power, in 2023, the company's ToG and ToB customers increased 35.3% and secured 84 computing power projects, providing foundation support for customers' large model training and formed PRCs first computing power vehicle solution. For AI, there were around 30 million subscribers of AI-enabled communications assistance, IoVT, and color ringback tones with video. AI also empowered over 600 projects in use cases such as grassroots governance, intelligent customer service, and smart city. For big data, the company accelerated the market layout of data elements and has built over 100 data service platforms and over 40 products such as government services, urban governance, and convenient services for people and enterprises.
The company's revenue from security business in 2023 increased by 23.5% YoY, of which the anti-DDoS product, Cloud Dam, ranked first in market share. The company was selected Gartner's list of global top service providers as well. Revenue of security nearly doubled. The company comprehensively upgraded quantum product capabilities, pioneered the quantum security 5G CPE product in the industry, launched the DICT+ quantum holistic product portfolio, and provided industry customers with quantum security access, data transmission, encryption, and other services. 5G customized network expanded in scale, and benchmark cases in many industries such as manufacturing, mining, smart city, and education were widely replicated. Industry application projects increased by 106.3% YoY, and 31,000 projects cumulative.
For satellite communication, the company pioneered consumer-grade handset direct to satellite voice and text services for environmental monitoring, industrial remote monitoring, and other use cases with data collection and interactive control services, as well as basic communication assurance for disaster relief. IoT revenue increased by 48.3%, with the number of users exceeded 520 million. The company's industry-leading proprietary IoT connection cloud platform products empower over 100 urban governance and applications and has been launched in over 10 provinces and cities across the country. IoVT revenue increased by 29.7%, and the number of users exceeded 77 million. The global layout of the company's international business has steadily enhanced, with 53 branches established, over 2,000 employees, and over CNY 13.7 billion of revenue. The company continued to strengthen overseas cloud network infrastructure, and the capacity of international transmission network backbone increased to 150 Tbps.
The company strengthened overseas establishment of strategic emerging businesses by continuing to promote overseas development of China Telecom Cloud, and 15 global CDN networks were added. The company was also the first telco in PRC. to obtain global satellite code resources, and the number of overseas IoT connections exceeded 300,000. Through precise and effective cost control, the company realized resource efficiency uplift to support high-quality development. OpEx grew by 6.3%, and such growth rate was the lowest since 2020. In order to seize the development opportunities of the digital economy, the company moderately increased the initiatives in high-growth areas such as industrial digitalization and smart family, step up the introduction of sci-tech and innovative talents, and moderately increased the incentives for frontline employees and high-performance teams. In addition, the company maintained necessary marketing initiatives, strengthened online and offline coordination, and AI precision marketing for efficiency uplift of sales expense.
The company's financial strength continued to enhance, with EBITDA increasing by 5.0% YoY to CNY 136.8 billion. Total debt decreased by 12.8%, and asset liability ratio at 46.5%. The capital structure remained stable, and the corporate credit remained at the highest level of AAA. Our introduction is here. Thanks, everyone.