Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of HKBN Limited, thank you for joining the GRIPS 2024 Interim Results Investor Presentation. Today's presentation and question-and-answer session will be conducted in English. The management will present the business and financial performance of the GRIP, followed by the question-and-answer session. Now, without further ado, may I invite co-owner, Executive Vice-chairman, and GRIP CEO William to walk us through the GRIP's overall performance. William, please. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for joining us. And again, before the sharing, I'd like to thank all our talents in Hong Kong and beyond Hong Kong to help us to deliver a very solid performance. So revenue, half and half, increased by 70%. And the EBITDA over the last six months improved by 5%. And if we look at the service revenue only, excluding the products, it actually increased by 9%. AFF, as you know, we need to pay a higher interest. That's why it's lower, -60+% . And the dividend will be HKD 0.15, which is like 10% yield. Or if we look at the full-year AFF perspective, it will be something like over 90% of AFF. Look at enterprise. Green, green, green, green. Revenue, year-on-year, increased by 3%. And then our order booking increased by 20%. Our revenue backlog is HKD 4.47 billion.
If we look at this backlog, backlog meaning those secure orders that we still need to deliver and then convert it into revenue and then EBITDA and then cash, it is something close to 2.6 or 2.7 times of our half-year revenue. So it is a big sum. I believe this number will go up again. Enterprise customers, 97,000. 97,000, in fact, it is like 3,000 less than before. Why? Because we do have very small companies that they just terminate their business. Even having a little bit better to us. But overall, we have bigger customers, higher ARPU, helping our overall revenue increase. So we always have different solutions of ICT. When I say ICT, it's telecom plus IT combined together. We tailor-made within our kitchens.
We have a product team who will tailor-made different products to cater for SMEs, mid-market, and also large enterprise. So far, the momentum is very good that it's really helping our revenue and then EBITDA. This is a closer look of our products like IT. Simplified. As you look at last PowerPoint, it is talking about 97,000 enterprise customers. So basically, two-year contracts. That means every six months, we will approach about 1/4 of them. It is like 24,000. And all of these 24,000, we have more than 20,000 customers that are taking the IT. Simplified or AegisConnect, which is, I would say, enhanced broadband speed plus some tailor-made IT solutions, like even tokens for managed service, something like this, which will help the SME and large enterprise a lot. So their ARPU is sort of like two times of their previous ARPU.
But as I said, we are calling the customers, approaching them like five or six months before contract expiry. So this number won't happen in this financial year. You'll see it like five or six months later. So we are not standing still to do just one or two services. If you look at Multicloud solutions, ESG, or AI Network Management, look at the timetable. First half, we have AegisConnect. Then second half, we have more. Our team, we are overall, we will stream our headcount number. But here on our kitchens, our product team, we are increasing resources, increasing manpowers to help us to deliver more ICT transcendent products or solutions such that we will reach more large enterprise and then get a bigger share of their wallets on their ICT span.
Residential solutions, as I said, this is a cash cow contributing 48% of our EBITDA. Year-on-year revenue sort of -1%. Then subscription also -1%. ARPU increased 1%. Subscription -1%. Last time, we were talking about having 920,000 subscribers. But to share with you, we intentionally let go of some of the very low ARPU customers. These customers, they will like to join HKD 48 or HKD 78, 1 Gb with poor quality provided by the distant number three, four, or five providers. But we would rather let go of them such that we can reserve more capacities with our additional CapEx to get more customers with higher value. Our ARPU, I would say, or the acquisition ARPU, we would like 1.8x-1.9 x of the distant number three, four, or five in terms of their selling price. So overall, we are seeing very healthy price increase.
If today, in our residential markets, there are different messages to you, just remember this page. It's very important. You look at financial year 2022, every six months, it's the movement of the ARPU. Two years ago, we saw price increase the market share. Like one year ago, we are happy. We share with you that we are increasing price. And then we believe this price increase is sustainable because in the markets, even our arch-rival together with us are occupying more than 80% of the market share. And I will see both of us, although we are competitors, but on this area, we are quite aligned. So they always want to catch up the percentage increase of our ARPU on us. So you look at this blue one, it is 198 is the average ARPU of new acquisition and retention of the customers over the last six months.
So once this going up, then when the contract is renewed upon the expiry day, then it's going up. But again, we share with you before, it will go to take like two years. You will see the full impact. But my point is very simple because we do not sell broadband only. We are talking about infinite-play. We will bundle with OTT contents. We will even bundle with some VAS or sometimes we bundle with the roaming offer for an additional SIM card, something like that. That will help us to enhance the total offering instead of a plain vanilla broadband line. So in our base, talking about roughly 900,000, 2/3, 1 Gb or above. We have another 1/3 that we will further approach them to upgrade them to 1 Gb or above. It is helping our ARPU. And this is, in fact, very effective.
Nowadays, people have more bandwidth at home to share with family members because they stay at home for more time. I'd like to go back to this page first. This is the number from regulator OFCA about the broadband users in Hong Kong. For the residential customers, 2.6 million, 2/3 of them being 1 Gb. So you are seeing that 1 Gb or above is growing. That means people are hungry for higher bandwidth. Even in the enterprise markets, we are talking about having 13% over 1 Gb. That means we have 87% customers. There are opportunities for us to grow our ARPU through selling high-speed broadband to them. So apart from the fixed broadband, we are talking about mobile broadband as well. N Mobile is our own brand. We are MVNO of three service providers. And we also got very good roaming offer from overseas mobile operators to support us.
So that's why we tap into this opportunity of growing outgoing roamers right now. And then this is a tailor-made offer that we look at us. It's 138 versus others like 200+ or 400+ offer. When you look at the color or you look at the name, you'll see which ones we are referring to. Compare with them, we are talking about having the roaming offer for APAC, including China. So it is a very compelling mobile offer that will sort of focus as another revenue generation stream. Our company's name, HKBN, is Hong Kong Broadband Network. So network enhancement is always our core and our edge over the others. Share with you a little bit history about HKBN. 2004, we were the first one to launch 100M. And then we were the first one to launch 1,000M or 1G.
In June, like 1.5 months later, we were the first one to install service of 25 Gb high-speed broadband to companies and also to households. This is our, I would say, edge. The 25 Gb, let me go through this one, is something that I believe only we, HKBN, can provide for the coming 12 months, I guess. Why? Because 25 Gb is provided by Nokia. We have our Nokia partners here. Thank you for your support. So the difference is that Hong Kong Broadband Network, after the acquisition of other companies, we have the fiber network of HKBN. We have the fiber network of New World. We have the fiber network of Wharf T&T. So three networks together as the core layer. But over this network, we have two platforms, one from Huawei, one from Nokia.
I tell you this because I want to let you know that our arch-rival doesn't have Nokia. That's why we should be, although I cannot call exclusive, but virtually in the coming 12-18 months, I believe we are the only one delivering 20 Gb speed. So imagine if we are mobile operators. When others are selling 4G or 5G, we are having 4G, 5G, 6G, 7G now. When I say now, it's going, we are talking about start preselling, getting orders today, and then start the installation or delivery from June, like 1.5 months later. So this is an edge. Our core service, 70% margin that helps us to outperform the others.
For my coming months or years of service in HKBN, I will say in the coming 12 or 18 months, successful launch of 25G to get more customers, to retain more customers, to acquire more customers, to upgrade the bandwidth, and then get higher ARPU will consume like 75% of my working time or resources. This is the top of the top task that we are going to beat our competitors. So with our Nokia friends here, we need to show something from Nokia and also their customer, Google Fiber from the US.
Nokia is excited to partner with Hong Kong Broadband Network to deliver the very first 25G PON broadband in Asia. The demand for more bandwidth is definitely there, and fiber is the best technology out there to meet this demand. Our technology will ensure that Hong Kong remains one of the best connected places on the planet.
Just like we empowered Google Fiber, we are bringing cutting-edge technology to HKBN to deliver multi-Gigabit not only towards businesses but also towards consumers.
20 Gb allows us to break that 10 Gb speed barrier, which is super critical for us. Very thankful for Nokia's 25G PON technology to enable us to do that.
Hong Kong Broadband Network is setting up a new standard for excellence in broadband. They are delivering higher speeds, lower latency, and greater energy efficiency, and all this on top of their existing assets. By combining Hong Kong Broadband's countrywide coverage with Nokia's technology innovation, we are leading consumers truly into a new era of seamless connectivity. Together, we are shaping the future of broadband.
Thank you. So Derek, over to you.
Thanks, William. Good afternoon, everyone. Now is a very exciting time for Hong Kong Broadband Network. For the revenue performances, our top-line performances, the core business continues to strengthen. The core business continues to strengthen. Firstly, on our enterprise solution, it grew like 3% year-over-year growth. And within that 3%, our ICT businesses or the system integration businesses deliver a very strong double-digit growth. Our enterprise solution, Hong Kong Broadband Network, is accelerating the ICT leadership. And on our residential businesses, it's very stable performances, slight decline. Our Infinite-play not only sustains our price increases but also contributes a very strong profitability to the bottom line, to the company, and also to the operations. There are some headwinds against our non-core businesses throughout the first half. First, on our international telecom businesses, it decreased slightly because of the voice traffic dropdown, less voice calls into China.
So this is an industry regulation change. But that is our non-core businesses, not a very big impact on our profitability. And also, on our product side, the global demand in our handset is weaker than expected. So that also impacts our non-core business. In terms of our EBITDA performances, it slightly decreases. But again, the core businesses actually remain very strong. When we look at our year-over-year slightly decrease, primarily because of our handset. But when we look at our core businesses, excluding some of these products on our core business, in fact, it's actually very strong from a year-over-year and also from a half-on-half perspective. So it's a very good trajectory for the half-on-half, a very impressive growth of 5% increases. And we are also seeing a very good improvement in our network costs as well, both in our year-over-year and also at a half-on-half.
We will continue to be very rigorous looking at our cost structure, looking at our different hubs, working on our vendor relationship, and continue to optimize and improve our network costs. Finally, Hong Kong Broadband Network is with a very strong discipline in terms of our executions. When we look at our OpEx, it's improving the efficiency both year-on-year and half-on-half. We are seeing the same improvement trend on our CapEx efficiency as well. In terms of the cash from operation conversions, there's a slight decrease because this first half, we have less leverage on our handheld sale. So that is a slight decline on our conversions. But in the end, we still managed to generate more than HKD 1 billion in our first half.
So it's still a very good cash flow engine, managed to help us to run a lot of cash, supporting the businesses, paying off some of the high interest. So in summary, we feel very good about the second half. We will continue to focus on our core business growth. We will be very disciplined in our executions, driving an OpEx efficiency, CapEx efficiency. And we feel really good about our second half. And we expect to see good outcome results.
Thank you. So going forward, we are very upbeat on our future, on the outlook. Basically, we believe revenue, EBITDA, and AFF will all improve because of the strong fundamental basis. First one, as I mentioned about the 25 Gb, it is going to help both enterprise and the residential markets in terms of lower customer turn rate. That means a higher retention rate in terms of higher acquisition because all the other customers, all the other competitors, they don't have this in the coming 12 or 18 months. And then it is going to help us to increase price by offering higher broadband speed to both residential and enterprise customers. And in the enterprise areas, as I mentioned, our consultants are very busy offering different solutions. That is really ICT combined solutions that we are going to share bigger parts of their spend in ICT.
So it's going to help. And on the mobile, not talking about only the better local and overseas data usage, but we will also have some online medical service or some insurance service that will be bundled together when we launch in a couple of weeks. So everything is green, green, green. It's up to our execution speed. And I believe, and I believe competitors can match. So I guess it's now Q&A.
Yes. Thank you, William. And Derek, please. We now move on to the question-and-answer session. For investors joining us in person today or through webcast, you're welcome to raise your question. We will take one question from the floor first, followed by another question online, and vice versa. For investors on the floor, please raise your hand, and my colleague will pass you the mic. While for investors joining through webcast, please type your question in the question-and-answer box, and I will read out your questions accordingly. We now proceed to take the first question. Gentlemen.
Hi there. Two questions, please. And before, I think there was a discussion about the enterprise solutions, the legacy contracts winding down or running off. Could you give any comment as to where you are in that process or if that's already happened and the main decline from here is the voice contracts? That's the first question. The second one.
Sorry. Voice contracts?
It's a question about the enterprise solutions part and the mix. So I think before there was some contracts.
Oh, you're talking about the IDD?
Also IDD, yeah.
The second one is on any dividend outlook for the full year, please?
Okay.
So in terms of the wholesale IDD you were talking about, let me explain a little bit. Right now, China is actually putting a policy. The policy actually has been in place for a while, but they're actually effective. So basically, all the voice calls into China are heavily regulated and monitored, and then they put together a white list to control that. This is primarily to stop the scam on that one. And again, this is not our core businesses. This is not a very strong margin businesses. So it's a business that we manage primarily to serve the traffic for our customers, but it's not somewhere that we intended to grow from a long-term basis.
Also, in our contract, in our waterfall that we talk about, the backlog, we never include this because this is not on a regular subscription basis, just more on a one-time basis on that one. Dividend outlook?
Dividend. If you look at the dividend today, our dividend is talking about, as I mentioned, 10% yield, or it is 95% of our annual AFF forecast. So what we can say is that our outlook in revenue, EBITDA, and cash flow in the second half should be, we are very confident, should be better than first half. But overall, by five or six months later, when we need to discuss or define, then we still need to look at the situation by then. But now, as you know, in our telecom industries, it's very clear. Today is the end of April. We already know 90% of the number by the end of August. So we just need some more time to really see some invoices from POs, and then we will know what's next. But overall, it's upbeat.
Same as always, the priority is always to grow the businesses. We will continue to evaluate our dividend policy, our capital structure, and then the return to the stakeholders. Number one priority is to make sure we invest to grow the businesses and to drive good cash to support the businesses.
So I think just to refresh you guys' memory, as a co-owner, I owned 2.5% of company shares. So I think my shares ownership is even bigger than some of your investors behind you. And this is my family money. Yep. Andy?
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Here. Yeah.
Yeah. Hi. Andy from Morgan Stanley here. Three questions, please. First is on residential. It's good to see that your output grew 1% year-on-year. I remember a year ago, you set a 10% three-year output growth target. Are you still confident in achieving that? And if so, does that mean we will see output growth acceleration in the two years ahead? Second question on enterprise. You have a strong backlog, and I assume you work closely with your customers on those. So do you have good visibility into when those will kick into your revenue? So any guidance on your enterprise revenue growth? Finally, on CapEx, could you share what the factors that drove the decline in CapEx, and are those factors sustainable going forward? Thank you.
So I get the first two, and then you get the last one. Residential markets, three years, 10% increase. To me, it is still within our, I would say, on track. Why? Because we are the only one having 25 Gb. And we are not talking about 25 Gb. We are working. We are going to have installation starting from June. So it is going to help us a lot in the coming 12 or 18 months. So we are upbeat, and we believe we can do so. And for the enterprise markets, I will say the delivery or conversion of those backlogs in revenue and EBITDA, we believe the time or the actual conversion rate in the coming 6 or 12 months, we will be better than the past 6-12 months. So I will say some customers, their problem, they defer.
Their UAT, they defer their acceptance of our work. They still need to make it happen sooner or later. And I believe the worst time of our customers is behind. So it will be shorter. CapEx?
We are more selective on our CapEx investment. We are more prudent to make such decisions. But at the same time, we want to continue to invest in the businesses. You saw some of our initiative. I think it's important that we will continue to invest this business or reshuffle some of the investment, not necessarily significant amount of increases, but reshuffle some of our investment. For example, working with our partners to ensure that our capability, our speed, we are ahead of our competitors on that one. So we are reprioritize, rejuggle some of the way that we spend the money. But we will continue to invest in the businesses.
Thank you, management. We have got several questions online, so I'll read them out accordingly. So the next question is from the investor joining online called Leon from LF Capital. Will the group share the future development, any new opportunities such as data center?
Okay. I don't think we will spend too much time or resources on data center standalone as a business. But it will be one of our offers to our customers.
Okay. We have got another question from Sarah from UBS. May I ask why residential revenue declined despite continued output increase?
You mean decrease in?
In revenue, residential revenue declined. But output has gotten increased.
Okay. Revenue declined because you have customers leaving us, right? But when we say the output is increasing, it is for the contracts that we signed. It is going to take at least five or six months later.
One other point is actually very important that I spoke about is on the residential profitability has delivered a very strong growth. We don't usually disclose to that level, but I can share with you on the residential businesses, the profitability on a year-over-year has demonstrated a very strong growth.
Thank you, management. And is there any other question from the floor? If not, I will read out another question received online. It's the follow-up question from Leon from LF Capital. What caused the net profit to drop by 90%?
If we look at the net profit, primarily, it's related to interest. The interest cost, basically, the interest is a global challenge for all industries, even more in some of the industries than the other industries. It's a very global challenge on that one. So that has a pretty significant impact on the net income. Speaking of that, though, we are proactive managing that. If we look at comparing to last year performances, our full last year performances is actually a negative income, negative P&L, negative income. We have an impairment. So even though excluding the impairment, we actually have a negative income for the full year. So this year, we are seeing things improving. It will take a little bit more time. Second half will get better. So in the first half, basically, we are seeing a positive net income from last year, entire year negative income.
The trend and the trajectory of improvement has been seen.
Thank you, management. Any other question from the floor?
Yeah. Yeah. Another question, please. Since you have added so many more new product offerings, how should we think about the margin profile, the trend going forward?
Can't tell. Yeah. Can't tell. Can't tell is that it all depends on what the customer is asking for. So really can't tell. The SI-related areas is going to be 20%-30%, but the maintenance can be 45%. But I can't do the combination of this. But having said that, I can also share with you that over the last 18 months, our focus is on expanding the market share, having more footprints to more large enterprises, including the MNCs, such that now it is 18 months later, we are starting to get the orders from their FTNS, which is 70% margin because they are going to renew their contracts with our competitors. Now we are going to convert this into our revenue. And having said that, because last 18 months, we are focusing on market share, so in certain cases, we will sacrifice the margin, even thinner.
Now, coming 18 months, the margin will be higher because we now have the power to be more disciplined.
Okay. We now move on to the next question online. It's from Crystal from iSquared Capital. How do you see the investment in 25 Gb and advanced products with reduced CapEx spending?
As we mentioned, we do have very good support from our partner. We don't see any cash flow burden. In fact, we will see much cash inflow because of these 25 Gb customers. You want to add anything?
We have a very good partnership with our vendors. And I want to make sure I'm not getting them into trouble, right? So they have a very good program that is supporting us. So I'm going to stop there, right?
Can you come up with Mr. Kang in front of them?
Thank you.
Ricky.
Thank you. [Shing Fai]. Thank you. All the way fly from Beijing to attend our events and also this investor sharing.
Due to the time constraints, we will take the last question from the floor and also online. Gentlemen on?
Hello. This is Raymond from OCBC. So can you guide on the medium-term target leverage ratio of this company? This is my first question. And my second question is, given the new Nokia 25 Gb business, do you see CapEx coming up substantially from what you have incurred earlier? And my third question is, now Hong Kong has a trend of SMEs potentially struggling to survive. So maybe there's a reduction in the number of SMEs in Hong Kong, which is one of your target segments. So can you let us know what is your strategy in this megatrend? Thank you.
I'll take the first two questions.
Yeah. Yeah.
In terms of our net leverage, we targeted in terms of a medium-term or a long-term to below. Basically, I would say, I think, for ease for everyone, for the audience to understand, I think two years ago, with the business structure, with our net leverage, I think that is a very good comparison. And that's where I want to get it to be. So it's roughly about 10% reduction. I would like to get to over a long term. I would like to at least get the best structure, 10% improvement or reduction on that one. So that is the plan that we're working on. And the second question is, we just spoke about on CapEx. We want to continue to invest in the businesses to grow the businesses, to beat our competitors on the capability and on the capacity and everything.
But at the same time, we are selectively invest. There are some areas that we will decide to invest less. On some of the older technology, we decided we may not want to invest that much. And at the same time, we are getting strong support from our key partners. So some of these would give us good terms, good payment terms. So it's something that definitely would help our capital structure management. SME?
For the SME, I believe the situation or the unfavorable situation has been stabilized. So I believe in the coming months or years won't be worse than before. But having said that, I will see the upside from some other medium-sized corporations, particularly the retail chain that cover both GBA and Hong Kong. That will be another growth engine for us because we are helping many of our retailers in Hong Kong to support their service in their outlets in GBA area. But there are also many Chinese companies, Chinese organizations that they have their footprints in GBA, and they want to come to Hong Kong, they come to us first because we do have a very good partnership with a Chinese carrier that we sort of like sharing our resources in Hong Kong and China to serve our customers in both areas.
I will say the growth in GBA area will far, far cover the slight downside in the SMEs. But having said that, SMEs, worst case is already stabilized.
Thank you, management. Here comes the last question from online. It's from George of Blackfinch. His question is, given the current share price, would you consider that the company will be better valued within a private equity context?
I won't answer this question. Sorry. We, as management, we only have two targets. One is EBITDA. Second is cash flow. That will consume 24 hours. Even when we sleep, we are still thinking this. Other things leave to others.
Thank you, William and Derek. This is the end of the presentation. Thank you all for joining us today. The company has also prepared some refreshment at the back. Please enjoy and have a nice evening. Thank you.
Thank you.