Hello, and welcome to the HKT 2025 annual results webcast. Presenting today, we have Susanna Hui, Group Managing Director, and Mr. Patrick Poon, Chief Financial Officer. We'll start with the presentation, followed by Q&A. With that, let me turn it to Susanna.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining our HKT 2025 results announcement. I think for 2025, throughout the year, basically, we witnessed a lot of shifting geopolitics, geopolitics, volatile trade conditions, and sluggish domestic demand, which contributed to a very cautious approach from enterprises in investment and spending. However, despite all of these headwinds, HKT delivered a very solid and resilient performance for the year, anchored by our business scale, our unrivaled network infrastructure, and our continuous innovation. Total revenue grew by 5% to almost $4.686 billion. EBITDA reached $1.825 billion, representing a four, a four percent increase, and most importantly, AFF growth is at 4% to $795 million.
As a result, today, our board of directors declared a final distribution of HKD 0.4797, bringing the total distribution for the full year to HKD 0.8177 for the full year. With economic conditions showing signs of stabilization and the government implementing a lot of supporting policy, we are confident of achieving an even better performance in 2026. This next slide shows our payout and the dividend yield. This year's payout represents a yield of around 6.9% and a steady growth with CAGR of around 3% in our distribution over the past five years, although at a period where Hong Kong witnessed COVID and also GDP shrinkage, especially in the year 2021 and 2022.
Now, this demonstrates our resilience on our unparalleled infrastructure, our leading market share in both consumer and enterprise markets, as well as capturing the industry tailwinds and growth opportunities from the recent AI data center and 5G development. Turning to the next slide, this is basically sharing with you in terms of our fixed network. We have achieved, during the year, very significant infrastructure enhancements to meet the increasing bandwidth requirements, especially on the backhaul area and also in intra data center fabric, which is required, of course, by the exponential growth in the AI-generated traffic.
In the emerging Northern Metropolis area, for example, we have added a new AI exchange at the Lok Ma Chau Loop, which has been connected by dedicated fiber paths to the other key nodes in the area, facilitating interconnectivity between all data center locations in Hong Kong, as well as increased cross-boundary connections across the GBA. Early on, we have introduced our unique 800G AI Superhighway, and we have, in addition, embedded quantum-resistant encryption features to defend critical infrastructures and customer data, and to enable AI brokers, quant traders, agentic architecture, et cetera, to achieve real-time, secure, and low-latency coordination. We have also extended our fiber network in rural and remote areas to improve services, as well as to upgrade our mobile backhaul coverage, particularly in the high-traffic locations.
Our unmatched fiber coverage will also, of course, enable us to facilitate the smart city initiative set out by the government, as well as to cater to the increasing adoption of AI applications and services of the general mass. Turning to our wireless network, during the year, we have been continually adopting the latest technologies. We are, in fact, the first operator in Hong Kong to deploy 25 Gbps mobile backhaul, which will help ensure scalability, particularly to support mega events at high-traffic locations such as the Kai Tak Sports Park. And in this context, a lot of the other competitors are still using 10 gig and 1 gig. We have also adopted the latest generation of dynamic spectrum sharing technology, the DSS technology, to continuously optimize efficiency on the cross-band 4G/5G resource pooling.
Also, in network management, we have already deployed AI monitoring tools to enable rapid troubleshooting and root cause analysis for quick resolution of customer complaints regarding the network, as well as AI agents to automate network performance protection, particularly during major events where there might be sudden surge in traffic loading. Meanwhile, during the year, we continued to elevate network performance by expanding capacity and coverage with an additional 94 new sites, both indoor and outdoor, bringing total site numbers to 3,500. Looking at our customer base, important part, of course, is our premium segment, who value our trusted brand and quality of services.
With our rich data set and enhanced analytics on the back of our 1O1O mobile customers, we have launched the 1O1O home service as well, to cross-sell and upsell our other HKT services to the premium segment, with average ARPU of over HKD 900. And this particular solution has been especially successful with the customer base growing by 32% year-on-year and uplifting the overall spend across this segment by 5%. Turning to our mobile business, we have, during the year, added 35,000 net customers despite competition, with ARPU expanding to HKD 195. Our core 1O1O and csl segments continue to grow, with 2% expansion in terms of subscribers and sustained low churn rates of 0.7%.
To meet our mobile customers' demand for travel connectivity, we have also introduced many innovative and easy-to-use roaming plans. To further differentiate ourselves, during 2025, a golden roaming service was launched in partnership with the leading telcos in popular travel destinations of the Hong Kong people to ensure access to the respective premium 5G spectrum for our roamers. We have also introduced a global 5G service plan with additional privileges such as travel insurance and so on. These solutions have increased the proportion of our active roamers in our base to 71%, which is an increase of 6 percentage points, helping to spur further 8% growth in our roaming revenue for 2025, and also our consumer outbound roaming revenue notably increased by 18%.
The trend of 5G upgrade continues during the year, with 5G customers now reaching almost 2.1 million, representing an increase of 20% year-on-year and penetration rate of 60%. To further spur this upgrade process, we are offering a wide array of AI devices and applications, which also has the added benefit of driving increased data usage. Obviously, we continue to see demand for our high bandwidth, high speed broadband services. We saw 2,500 Mbps subscriber base grow by over 90% during the year, and together with the rental of the Wi-Fi 7 routers, we witnessed an ARPU uplift of around HKD 100-HKD 150.
Overall fiber users increased by 4% to almost 1.1 million, representing a 73% penetration on our consumer broadband users of 1.5 million. Also, the quality of our Netvigator broadband has been well-attested by our winning 6 awards from Ookla, a globally recognized industry leader in terms of connectivity intelligence, as the best fixed network in Hong Kong, as well as in East Asia, surpassing operators in Japan and South Korea. As for our pay TV, Now TV continues our journey of transformation from just an IPTV to be a super content aggregator platform, offering the widest selection of live sports as well as movie and dramas.
In September 2025, we added back Disney+ to our platform, which significantly beef up the local and Asian movie libraries, as well as Western and Korean movies and dramas, complementing our video streaming services of our region, of our Viu OTT, our Netflix, and HBO that are already available on our Now TV platform. Further recognizing the shift in terms of viewing habits and also the growing affordability of smart and connected TVs, we have focused on promoting the Now OTT service, leading to this segment of our Now TV customer base increasing significantly by 16% during the year, with total Now TV base expanding to 1.464 million.
We have also recently launched an infinite entertainment 5G plan, which is Hong Kong's first unlimited speed 5G plan, bundled with entertainment and world-class sports content and so on, to further boost adoption of the Now OTT service, which can be sold as a VAS to our mobile customer base. Following on this line is to show that we are not just being recognized as the home of sports, we are also the home for movies. To address specific interests of viewers, we have created a range of content packs, including Now Cinema, Asia Signature Pack, Western Signature Pack, so that it is easier for us to, again, tap into our mobile base and cross-sell these OTT content packs.
Moving to our key enterprise segment, which has delivered a very solid and stellar result for the year 2025, despite the fact that enterprises in Hong Kong remain cautious with their investment and spending, and at the same time, SME, retail, and FMB sector still evidencing consolidation of lines or even shrinkage of lines. This is made available due to the fact that HKT, the enterprise team, has delivered over 320 large-scale projects across diverse industries, leading to local data revenue increasing by 8% during 2025. As at end of 2025, a total pipeline of new project wins of around HKD 5 billion was secured.
The following few slides are some of the projects undertaken by our team during 2025, showing how we have expanded services beyond connectivity and move up the value chain by offering AI-managed services. For example, we deployed 5G private network for a logistic company, and as well as a waste management company, to support their automated operations and AI-enabled security applications. In addition, we have delivered an AI-driven drone inspection solution for a construction materials company, for example. In terms of smart city offerings, we have leveraged our unique position of the network to deliver IoT-enabled smart lampposts and also water meter monitoring services, as well as a food safety temperature monitoring solution for a very established retail chain across the territory.
Meanwhile, in terms of the AI side, the main theme for 2025 is the AI-powered IoT intelligent operation centers behind a number of mega projects across the electricity, public utility companies, banking, as well as the transportation sectors. While autonomous robot platforms were also deployed in certain industries, including hospital and university campuses. In addition, AI-powered contact center solutions have become well sought after to elevate the customer experience, especially important for banks and finance and insurance companies. In view of geopolitical tensions, both public and private sectors enterprises have been busy diversifying the supply chain for resilience. We see a trend of more and more Chinese vendors being used, incorporating dual-brand designs and solutions for better resilience.
In addition, for data sovereignty compliance, different hybrid clouds, including public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise cloud, have to be used, which involve a lot of data migration, and this also help contribute to our cloud-related revenue. In terms of our China business, we recorded a revenue increase of 13% during the year, as we help Chinese enterprises expand their business locally as well as overseas. For instance, last year, we assisted a very giant online gaming company in mainland to link up its data centers and POPs to facilitate its global expansion. We also completed a project of providing SD-WAN for a mainland insurance company, connecting its branches in China and overseas.
Turning to our PCCW Global, our international business, we continue to see both international voice and data traffic, especially across Asia area, increase significantly, reflecting the shift in economic activities as enterprises look to mitigate the impact of global trade tensions. To meet this demand, we have continuously invested in different subsea cables. In addition to the Juno trans-Pacific subsea cable in 2024, we have also committed to invest in two new cables that connect Asia, Africa, Europe, and also expanding into different European, African markets to support the various Belt and Road initiatives. At the same time, our software-defined network platform, Console Connect, continue to connect over 1,000 data centers with 240 cloud on-ramps and over 140 POPs in over 50 such cities around the world.
Recently, we have also launched a private label service integrated with Edge SIM on our platform, which provides a fully automated SIM provisioning services that ensure a secure, reliable, and scalable IoT network. Turning to our local customer loyalty program, The Club, during the year, membership base reached over 4.1 million, and it continued to deepen membership engagement through personalized content and exclusive lifestyle offers. Recently, we have launched a campaign together with a number of our PCCW Group artists in terms of targeting different lifestyle interests of our vast member base. Important is that, with a certain portion of our member base being non-HKT customers, we will be able to have good opportunities to cross-sell our HKT services to the non-HKT customer base. It also demonstrates group synergy, leveraging on the group's artists, programs, and concepts.
We are pleased to see the number of customers subscribing to three of our services and above, increasing by 14% during the year, thereby substantially strengthen the customer stickiness. As a key technology enabler in Hong Kong, we are focused on supporting the government's initiative to empower innovation and technology development. As mentioned earlier, we are extending our infrastructure in the emerging Northern Metropolis area. At the same time, we are working with S3 to co-develop AI-enabled solutions to help SMEs, as well as establishing R&D and innovation offices in the area, and support university incubation programs to foster and accelerate collaboration with tech startups. Through these efforts, we have been recognized as a research leader by the Innovation and Technology Commissions of the government since 2019. Turning to the slide of sustainability.
During the year, we have doubled down our efforts to support a broader range of community projects, including students with special needs, people with disabilities, elderly, and so on. Our 40% increase in terms of volunteering hours also demonstrate our greater dedication to community engagement. Ongoing educational initiatives to digital literacy continue to drive digital inclusion while reinforcing measures to prevent digital fraud and extending anti-fraud education to the wider community. As part of our ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship, we have established new environmental targets for 2030. Our efforts in terms of combating climate change is also reflected in our launch of new energy efficient initiatives, the expansion of smart charge EV base throughout the city, and the raising of over $1 billion in terms of sustainability-linked loans in 2025.
Entering the year 2026, we continue to play a critical role in the AI ecosystem in Hong Kong, underpinned by our investment in the future-proof AI-ready network infrastructure, and helping to empower Hong Kong's development as a technology hub, and obviously contributing to the smart city development overall. Further enjoying the industry tailwinds of AI and vendor cloud diversification of the enterprises into Hong Kong, we believe that our different lines of business will continue to grow, and it will continue to drive strong performance across all of our key financial metrics. Having said that, we will continue to be very vigilant in terms of strengthening our capital structure and continue to reduce leverage as and when necessary.
In this context, last in the year 2024, we have divested 40% of our fiber co to our investor, being China Merchants Capital. We are pleased to share today that we have also received a non-binding offer from China Merchants Capital to increase stake by another 9% in our fiber co. Proceeds of which we will use to reduce leverage further, and details will be in separate announcement as soon as when it is ready. On that note, I will pass to Patrick to walk us through the financials.
Thank you, Susanna.
Thank you, Patrick.
Okay, let me first recap our key financial lines for the year 2025. Our AFF increased notably by 4% year-on-year to HKD 795 million. Revenue grew remarkably by 5% to HKD 4.69 billion, and service revenue reported an encouraging 3% growth to HKD 4.23 billion. The service revenue growth was driven by the robust demand for our local data services in the enterprise segment, as well as the sustained growth in mobile service revenue from higher roaming revenue and 5G penetration, coupled with the expansion of customer base. Our EBITDA for the year was up by 4% to HKD 1.83 billion, with service EBITDA margin edged up to 43.1%, and our NPAT also grew by 4% to HKD 678 million. Now, let's look into the segment details.
TSS segment first. From the chart on the right-hand side, you can see our local TSS revenue grew by 3% year-on-year to HKD 2.28 billion, underpinned by the continued growth in local data and broadband revenues. Local data revenue achieved a robust 8% growth year-on-year, driven by the continued growing demand for our unique digital transformation solutions utilizing AI technologies, cloud computing, and data analytics across diverse industry in our enterprise segment. It also coupled with a 13% year-on-year growth in the China mainland business. Our broadband service revenue continued to grow by 3% for another year, driven by the sustained demand for our high-speed, high bandwidth, ultra-low latency, reliable fiber services.
Our 2,500 Mbps broadband customer base surged 93% year-on-year, spurred by the acceleration adoption of home smart devices and escalating bandwidth requirement from data-intensive activities. Local data services overall report a solid 6% growth for the year. Pay TV service remain resilient, with Now OTT customers growing by 16% year-on-year. Overall, local TSS revenue expand by 3%. Our international business revenue grew steadily by 3% year-on-year, primarily driven by increased wholesale global voice revenue and growing demand for our Console Connect services. Overall, total TSS revenue increased by 3% to HKD 3.22 billion. TSS EBITDA grew 2% to HKD 1.25 billion, fueled by further operating efficiency improvement. As such, EBITDA margin was stable at 39%.
Now, let's turn to our mobile business. So going on the chart, you will see, the mobile service revenue rose 5% year-on-year to HKD 1.17 billion, underpinned by an 8% increase in roaming revenue, mainly contributed by an 18% growth in consumer outbound roaming. Secondly, further expansion of our postpaid customer base to about 3.49 million, with a net gain of 35,000 year-on-year. Of which, the 5G adoption momentum continue, with 5G customer base growing by 20% to almost 2.1 billion, representing 60% of total postpaid customer base, and the growing demand for enterprise solutions deploying 5G as well. Postpaid exit ARPU was up by 1%, that is, to HKD 195.
Product sales grew by 30%, steered by the launch of flagship handset in the second half this year, and further support by The Club, which provide a convenient digital shopping experience to the customers. As a result, total revenue grew 11% to HKD 1.63 billion. Total EBITDA for the mobile grew 5% year-on-year to HKD 714 million, with mobile service EBITDA margin remaining stable at 61%. Let's have a closer look at our operating efficiency achieved for the year. We attained an overall 4% OpEx savings, down from HKD 423 million to HKD 407 million, with the OpEx to revenue ratio improving from 9.5% to 8.7%, reflecting our continuous efforts in streamlining business structures as well as workforce and IT platform optimization.
The deployment of AI-led initiative also helped boost productivity and deliver significant cost savings for the company. Apart from OpEx, we also keep on exercising cautious control over our CapEx spend. Our total CapEx for the year was lower to HKD 270 million, representing a 5% year-on-year saving. CapEx to revenue ratio further improved from 6.5% to 5.8%. Mobile CapEx registered a 4% saving to HKD 85 million, reflecting the efficiency gain from capacity upgrade and network maintenance following the completion of our territory-wide 5G coverage. TSS CapEx was also lower by 2% to HKD 168 million, with the investment largely to support the growing demand for our for our unique integrated fixed mobile solutions for enterprise customers and also the investment in subsea cables. Next is the AFF.
Yeah, EBITDA and CapEx I have been covered just now. CAC and license fee increased by 7% to HKD 232 million, mainly due to higher license payment from the newly assigned mobile spectrum and also the higher CAC in line with the revenue growth. Payment for right of use asset, being the rental payment, lower by 5%. These savings were partly offset by the higher fulfillment costs to support our growing base of consumer and enterprise customers. Operating AFF before tax finance costs grew notably by 6% year-on-year to HKD 1.08 billion. Benefited from the lower cost of finance linked to HIBOR and the successful deleveraging last year, the payment for finance costs decreased by 14% to HKD 202 million.
Tax payments were slightly lower to HKD 29 million, together with the change in working capital requirement to mainly finance the enterprise project delivery and also the investment in subsea cables, which will bring positive net cash flow upon completion. The overall AFF for the year grew 4% to HKD 795 million, translating into a full year distribution of HKD 0.8177 per SSU. Income statement. For the P&L, we have covered from revenue to EBITDA lines. Depreciation and amortization slightly increased to HKD 748 million, of which depreciation decreased, reflecting our continuous effort in managing CapEx spending in the recent years. But the amortization increase, driven by our investment in intangible assets as part of the group's R&D effort for enterprise projects.
As explained, our P&L net finance costs decreased significantly by 23% to HKD 221 million, driven by lower market interest rate, coupled with the reduction in borrowings. Income tax expense was stable at HKD 116 billion level, with a slightly lower effective tax rate from the utilization of deferred tax assets. Profit for the year notched up by 13% to HKD 737 million. The NPAT attributable to the SSU holders grew by 4% to HKD 678 million. Turning to our gearing position, our total net debt at the end of December 2025 increased slightly to HKD 5.43 billion, as compared to HKD 5.32 billion at the end of June.
The higher debt level was due to cash spent on inventory, especially for the new flagship handsets and also the working capital to support various large-scale enterprise projects. Corresponding net debt to EBITDA ratio remained at the same at 2.97 times, underpinned by the strong EBITDA growth.... assuming the proceeds from the sale of additional interest in the passive network business just mentioned by Anna are fully utilized for debt repayment, our performance debt, net debt balance will be lower to HKD 5.22 billion. And the corresponding net debt to EBITDA ratio would be improved to 2.66 times. As of today, we have around HKD 2.8 billion total liquidity, including undrawn banking facilities of around HKD 2.5 billion and over HKD 300 million cash on hand.
We continue to carry an investment-grade rating at BBB or Baa2. Our current proportion of fixed to floating rate debt is about 55-45. Slightly more debt on fixed interest rate to counteract the adverse impact from the interest rate fluctuation. Our effective interest rate dropped to 3.85%. We will keep monitoring the market situation and minimize the interest cost. The average debt maturity is now approximately 3 years. There is a $750 million US dollar bonds due in July 2026, but as just mentioned, we have around $2.8 billion liquidity on hand, sufficient enough to redeem the bond when they become mature. This is rather important. It give us flexibility to find the best window to tap the fixed income market. This ends my presentation. Thank you.
Okay, let's now open up to questions. The first question is: Have you noticed any change in the industry competition following China Mobile's acquisition of Hong Kong Broadband?
Thank you for your question. I think we trust that all players now have to be very rational, and I think all of us have to preserve cash, especially in view of telcos' nature in long-term CapEx in terms of the network rollout and spectrum, and so on. So we haven't noticed any sudden change in terms of competition, in terms of the mobile broadband side. But obviously, we would continue to focus on our strength in the enterprise side and also in terms of serving the high ARPU segment as well. Thank you.
The next question is: Do you expect your roaming revenue to continue to grow at a high single-digit %?
In the year 2025, we recorded an 8% increase in terms of roaming. Judging from the fact that there are a lot more Hong Kong people going outbound, we do think that the current penetration rate of active roamers being 75% will still represent some room for growth. We are expecting that similar growth rate can also be achieved for 2026, especially with our launch of the different differentiation in terms of roaming package, including travel insurance, including also the... Basically, having partnership with other telcos in the popular destination of quality access, premium access to the 5G spectrum.
So all of these will mean that we'll be able to convert more silent roamers into active roamers, and thereby contributing to the outbound roaming revenue. Especially for the enterprise, I mean, for the corporate segments, we are still seeing only around 70% recovery as compared to the pre-COVID period. And obviously, with the increased activities in the capital market, we do think that outbound roaming from the corporate segment might also be able to increase and contribute to the future roaming revenue. Thank you.
The next question is: As market conditions improve, do you expect that you can exceed the 8% growth that you achieved in enterprise-related revenues?
Enterprise revenue, I think we are, last year, we have 8% growth rate. We are hopeful that with all the initiatives that we talk about in terms of all the AI industry tailwind, the AI IOC for the various sectors, the different enterprises, public or private, in terms of the need to diversify their vendor base, the need to migrate their data onto different cloud platform and so on, will continue to increase and contribute to the enterprise revenue. But of course, that also depends on the timing, on the completion of the various projects and so on. But we are hopeful that the same growth rate, if not higher, will be able to be achieved.
The next question is: Do you have any update on your correspondence with the FCC regarding your 2.4 license in the US?
Regrettably, I don't have much to update in terms of this area. I think suffices to say that we will continue to maintain different channels of dialogue with FCC in order for compliance, while in the meantime, we would be obviously focusing on expanding elsewhere, including other parts of Asia, Latin America, and European markets, in order to sustain the growth of our PCCW International business.
That was our final question. Thank you for joining today.
Thank you.