Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to XL Axiata's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. I am Christopher, investor relations for XL Axiata, and I will be your coordinator today. During the presentation, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be question and answer session. The Q&A session will be in hybrid mode to ensure we can accommodate to everyone. To ask questions, please kindly type it in the Q&A box with your full name and company name. If we have time, we will circle back for follow-up question. As a reminder, this session is being recorded for replay purposes. With me today are Ibu Dian, our Chief Executive Officer; Pak Feiruz, our Chief Financial Officer; Pak David, our Chief Commercial Officer, Consumer; Pak Didit, our Chief Commercial Officer, Home and Convergence.
Ibu Dian will share the highlights for first quarter 2023, which will then be followed by Q&A session. I will now hand over the call to Ibu Dian.
Thank you, Chris. Good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for attending today's earnings call. I'm pleased with our business performance in this first quarter, which illustrates how we are meeting our commitment to deliver our vision as the leading converged operator in Indonesia. We started 2023 on a strong note, whereby XL has successfully outperformed the industry, building on the strong momentum powered by both revenue and subscriber growth. Let's move to the next slide that is showing the first few 2023 key highlights. Our revenue grew by double digits at 12% year-over-year due to continued product traction, supported by our network excellence. Data and digital revenue grew 11% year-over-year, outperforming the industry. Topline growth in addition to efforts on operational excellence gave positive impact to our EBITDA, which grew even faster at 13% year-over-year, with margin recorded at 47%.
XL Axiata also recorded a jump in PAT as it grew 47% year-on-year, showing our ability to be more profitable. We continue to make progress on our convergence vision to date, in line with our commitment to deliver complete converged proposition. XL SATU continues its strong uptrend trajectory, with 44% of our FTTH subscriber base are converted to converged subscribers. This represents 7 percentage points increase compared to 37% in fourth quarter 2022. On the digital transformation front, we now recorded more than 26 million monthly active subscribers for our myXL and AXISNet application. This represents 45% of our mobile subscriber base. More and more users' transaction and spend are being captured via this channel, in line with efforts to drive this channel to be the major customer's touch point.
Our focus in providing the best-in-class customer experience, powered by personalization and dynamic offering, is affirmed further as our subscriber base grew to 57.9 million loyal subscribers. This represents a 400,000 subscribers growth quarter-on-quarter compared to end of 2022. We move to the next slide for first quarter 2023 industry update. In the first quarter 2023, Indonesia telco industry remains rational, with more opportunities for further price liberation. XL is very supportive for this move, which will benefit the industry as a whole. Riding on the strong market momentum, we have made the decision to increase prices across our XL and AXIS offerings. Price increase was done across our traditional and digital channels towards the end of the quarter. We also observed that most telco operators have now launched their convergence proposition as their new growth driver.
The industry is heading towards more efficiency as telco operators are now transforming themselves into tech hubs, focusing on execution and better asset utilization. Our investment in network infrastructure, digitalization, and optimization of spectrum have increased our customer experience immensely. Strong network infrastructure has created a foundation for our fixed mobile converged proposition. As I have mentioned previously, the opportunity for digital transformation is rising as most of the population have access to smartphones. We will leverage on this opportunity with our data-focused customers by further enhancing the digital experience via myXL and also AXISNet apps. This effort has enabled us to optimize sales and marketing costs. Furthermore, our internal business processes are also being digitalized and automated, which allow XL to be more agile in responding to market needs. Huge opportunity arises from the low penetration of fixed broadband across households in Indonesia.
The low penetration rate will provide growth potential for fixed broadband providers and fixed mobile convergence. On the risk side, potential global economic slowdown due to high interest rate environments remains, while risk on competition may move beyond mobile. Let's move on the performance in first quarter 2023. This slide elaborate further our financial and operational performance. We delivered strong set of financials in first quarter 2023, outperforming the industry as shown in this slide. Double-digit growth in revenue and EBITDA, with subscribers growing to 57.9 million happy customer that supported us, thus enabling XL to retain the ARPU of IDR 40,000. This validates our strategy to focus on providing best-in-class customer experience for high-value subscriber amidst competition and inflation. We will see how those performance was achieved.
Smart investment in focus of growth and the investment on digitalization have increased the number of active users and their usage. Our digital driven operation through granular data analytics have enabled us to invest our network in high value areas and buildings to meet demand from both residential and non-residential areas. This intelligent data analytics also allow us to evaluate KPIs across customer engagement, campaigns, and customer loyalty, so we can devise the right strategies to address the challenges and opportunities at the right time. Our network investment was still focused on 4G deployment, especially in East Java, that increased our 3G BTS count close to 95,000 with 12% growth year-over-year. We continue to deliver excellent network experience with higher usage as data traffic grew 19% year-over-year in the first quarter.
As mentioned earlier during the presentation, our own apps now have more than 26 million subs on the platform. More and more revenues and transactions are being recorded on the apps. Our fiberized sites as of March 2023 is at 55%, an increase of 13 percentage point year-on-year. Pairing this with our spectrum refarming and new technology adoption has put XL Axiata ahead of the curve. We move to the next slide. We show the structural transformation that we just announced. Earlier today, we have issued joint press release together with Link Net and Axiata on the structural transformation that is aimed to capture the under-penetrated fixed broadband and FMC market in Indonesia. XL will forge a stronger partnership with Link Net to accelerate rollout and supply of around 8 million new homes passed over the next five years.
In order to capture market opportunity, speed of execution is key with partnership with LinkNet to accelerate rollout and deliver home passes. That will strongly fuel XL's growth strategy in fixed broadband and also fixed mobile convergence. The exercise has commenced and is expected to ramp up immediately. Next slide. The structural transformation of delayering LinkNet into FiberCo and XL as ServeCo for fixed broadband will allow for greater focus to capture market growth by leveraging on XL's go-to-market capabilities. This will allow accelerated scalability as XL will now access to larger scale of fiber footprint with minimal investments. The creation of two strong assets will drive synergy and help fuel XL's vision to become the leading converged mobile, fixed and content service provider.
This exercise will be subject to compliance from the prevailing laws and regulations and applicable shareholder's approval, with intention to complete by end of the year. I will conclude the speech with our full year guidance. In line with our strong first quarter performance, we continue to reiterate the full year guidance whereby our revenue will grow in line with the industry at mid to high single digit or even faster. EBITDA margin guidance remains at approximately 49%, and our CapEx guidance this year will be at IDR 8 trillion, with 70% of CapEx to be allocated to strengthen network quality and improve digitalization. With that, I conclude the presentation. Thank you and back to you, Chris.
Thank you, Ibu Dian, for the excellent walk through on the XL Axiata performance and strategy. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now proceed to the Q&A session. As a reminder, the Q&A session will be hybrid mode. To ask a question, you can type it in the Q&A box. Please ensure to use your full name and company name or we will not be able to read your question. After your question is answered, if you'd like further clarification, kindly use the Raise Hand button and we will call your name and you may proceed to unmute your mic. The first question come from Sachin Mittal. Question is, "Can you please disclose normalized profit for the quarter excluding Forex?" Second question, "LinkNet has started to make losses despite it being highly profitable in the past.
Why so, and what is required to change it?" For this one, I would like to ask, Pak Farukh to answer the first question, and later on we'll have Pak Abhijit to answer the second one.
Hi, Chris. Thank you for the question. If I recall, the question was, can you please disclose, right, the normalized profit for the quarter excluding forex. In the first quarter of this year, we actually recorded a gain of about IDR 25 billion related to forex. That's the amount that you can actually normalize from our profits. That number I'm quoting is actually before tax.
Hi, Sachin, this is Abhijit. In response to your second question. Yes, we as 20% shareholders of Link Net, we recognize that they have been facing some headwinds. There are two components to this. The reasons can be multifold, like increased competition in their footprint, and other factors as well. More importantly, there are two things. One is Link Net itself is doing a transformation at its end to rectify these headwinds. More importantly, in Ibu Dian,s presentation, you saw the structural transformation. This is fundamentally going to change the business model, where Link Net will convert itself into a full-fledged FiberCo, and XL will take over the responsibility of being the ServCo. Hope that addresses the point you have raised.
Okay. Thank you, Abhijit. I would like now to open the mic for Sachin, if you have further questions. Go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the clarification. Just to understand that now you're expanding your fixed broadband also. I mean, this is very significant part of your business. Could you explain, you know, it's not a CapEx-based business. I think you are incurring OpEx for extension of line. First of all, is there a portion of CapEx which is incurred for your fixed broadband business? Number one. Number two, first few years we will expect it to have some losses. I don't know because there is some, I think there's some OpEx component to it. There's no CapEx to it. Just some light on that will be very useful.
This is Sachin. Yeah. Hi, hi, Sachin. Okay, thanks for the follow-up question. Yeah, you are right. Fundamentally, if you look at structural separations across markets, there are a number of business models. On the ServeCo side, for XL, it is essentially a 0, let's call it a 0 CapEx model. Some partner comes in and deploys the fiber network for us. It will be definitely a 0 CapEx model. What was the second part of your question?
It's more on the, since it's a 0 CapEx and all OpEx model, could we expect, you know, losses for a few years? How will it go on? Because I think you have to pay some minimum, at least for the OpEx also, right?
Correct. Correct. The short answer to it is no. Typically in this business, if you look at the upfront costs, they are in the range of commissions you pay, so on and so forth. This is not, definitely not a model which will incur losses for.
Okay.
For in the beginning or a long period of time.
You're expecting it will be either, you know, either very minimal losses or not sizable losses at all.
Correct.
When you start this business. Okay. Got it. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Sachin. Let's move on to the next question. The second question comes from Fong from CGS-CIMB. Question is, "What was the average increase in prices carried out in the end of first quarter 2023? Now XL is in the IDR 40,000 club for ARPU. Where do you see this heading to considering the affordability factor?" For this question, I will ask our rep, David, to answer the question.
Hi, Fong. The average price increase that we did the 10th of March was in the high single digit, more or less at 7.5%. It was in both portfolios, AXIS and XL. I have to say that in the short validities or low prices in AXIS, we did even higher than that. We did even double-digit increase in the prices. I think that's regarding the price increases. To your second question, yes, we are happy to be in the 40K club. These price increases so far have played well for us. What we have seen in the traffic after the price increases, it's been very positive. We remain confident in our strategy of optimizing the prices and moving in this direction.
Hopefully we'll also see ARPU improvements in the future. Hope that answered the question.
All right. Thank you, David. Now I shall let Fong... To check with Fong. If there is any question, Fong, we will unmute your line. Go ahead.
Yeah. Just a follow-up question on the price increase. After you did that, the traffic, as you mentioned, was still quite good. On the competitor side, did you see any sort of, you know, any of your competitors following as well your move to increase prices?
Unfortunately not. We didn't see our competitors moving. I have to say, as I was mentioning, still our traffic grew very healthily. Even if the competition didn't follow, I know that for us, the price movement was still very positive. That keeps us with the confidence on going in the correct direction. Our strategy and our willingness is still to move and do additional price increases in the rest of the year. Of course, we will keep an eye to the competitive environment. Sorry, because I didn't answer. You were also mentioning, Fong, about the affordability of the customer, right?
Yes. Yes. That's right.
Correct. From what we see, the share of wallet that we are getting from our customers, it's still far from other countries in the world, from any other country in the world. We believe that there is still room to improve. Again, this last price change also supports our thoughts. Yeah, reassures us a little bit in that idea.
David, I mean, given the tone from the other players, which, you know, all seems to be quite positive, right? All thinking about further optimizing prices. The competition, the dynamics still look very positive at this point. As you said, the spending right, as a part of wallet is still quite low. Over the next one or two years, do you think this IDR 40,000 ARPU could go to IDR 45,000 or IDR 50,000? I mean, any thoughts there?
Yeah. again, we are positive on the ARPU's gonna increase. Yes, we are positive on that, and we are positive on market is gonna repair further. we keep with our plan of doing additional price increases during this year. Correct.
Okay. Okay. Noted.
All right. Thank you, Fong. Okay, let's move on to the next question. Next question comes from Henry Tedja from Mandiri Sekuritas. There are two questions. The first one is, could you elaborate more on the higher infrastructure expenses related to rental expenses and repair maintenance will drive to higher expert costs? Will it normalize in the coming quarters? Second question is, what are the key drivers of stronger revenue growth in first quarter 2023? Is it more on the price increase impact, or is there any other factors? Okay, for the first question, I'll still let Pak Feiruz answer, and then second question will for Pak David. All right, go ahead, Pak Feiruz.
Hi, Henry Tedja. Thank you for the question. Certainly if you look on a quarter-to-quarter basis, you will see a lot of movement, right, on the network costs in particular. Allow me to recap back from XL's disclosure in fourth quarter. Because of the renegotiation, right, of the operating and maintenance contract with the tower providers, there's actually an impact on the network costs. If you normalize that, you would have to add back IDR 400 billion, about IDR 400 billion to the network costs, right? If you look at the first quarter of 2023, we have taken the initiative to actually front load some of the costs, to capture the momentum, right, for the Lebaran. Because we've seen some also have very healthy growth in subscribers and takeup in traffic.
Couple that with the digitization efforts that we're continuously doing. To the question of moving ahead, I think network cost as a percentage of revenue will be around circa 14%-15%. I hope that answers the question. Allow me to pass the next question to David on what drove stronger revenue in first quarter 2023.
Yeah. The revenue growth in first quarter hardly came from the price increases, because as I was mentioning before, we increased our prices the 10th of March. By the time it hits the retail outlets and our customers, et cetera, only in a small part of that price increase could be already filled in the first quarter. The drivers are a little bit different. Of well, let me say that, of course, the price increases that we did during last year, everything affects, right? But if you remember, it was like during March and during June, et cetera. There are other drivers, and mainly it's two things, right? Number one, we have more customers than what we owned.
We see our daily active users in our network has increased significantly in the last year and even in quarter-on-quarter. I think that's number 1 reason we have more customers, we have a higher market share. Number 2, each of these customers is increasing their usage. We see that the gigabytes per subscriber usage keeps increasing very healthy. Very healthy. The third factor is that the price per gigabyte, because of these price increases that we did in the past, not so much because of the quarter 1, because it came very late. We have been able to manage the price per gigabyte, or the gig. Hence, more subscribers using more data and the data prices being much more stable that brought the additional revenue.
I didn't mention in the previous question, not only we increased prices the 10th of March, but we did also something else that it's, we reduced a lot, additional bonuses and et cetera, that we do in the CVM activity. That's another way of increasing prices, that it's by reducing the benefits that we are giving to our customers, right? That also helped a little bit in quarter one, but again, that came mainly at the end of quarter one. The other two factors are the ones that helped more.
All right. Thank you, Pak David for the explanation. Do you have any more questions, Henry? Any follow-up?
Yes. Okay. Thank you. Perhaps, just one or two follow-up questions on that. First, Pak Fariz, you mentioned that, you know, the network costs in the following quarters will be around like 14%-15% of the total revenue. Could you elaborate more or share what will be the, you know, the total amount that you front loaded in the fourth quarter, in the first quarter, for the network costs?
Yeah, I think you can work out, right? On a steady state is about 14%-15%. The uplift right in the network cost as a % of revenue is the amount we front loaded in the first quarter of 2023.
Sure, sorry, perhaps one more follow-up question, but it's perhaps not related to network costs, but perhaps on the structural transformation that Budi also mentioned. Would you mind to elaborate more about this structural transformation between XL and also Link Net? Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Henry Tedja. I think I'll tie it to the next question, which has been sent in by Hussein as well, right? Both of you are asking.
More details. The structural transformation entails the following. First of all, Linknet will convert itself into what we call as a FibreCo. They will build homes passed. The plan is not only to build homes passed for XL, but eventually for the whole industry, so they will follow a multi-tenant model. XL will focus on what we call as a ServeCo, where we actually run the retail business and offer fixed mobile convergence to our customers. These are the fundamental principles underpinning the structural separation. Hussein has also asked, "Will XL pay to Linknet to acquire the OpCo?" The answer is no. We are not acquiring any OpCo. Two things are happening. The customer base of Linknet will move into XL, and XL is also looking at carving out its fiber asset and move it into Linknet.
Both these things will, of course, invite some financial consideration to both the parties. The process is still ongoing. Nevertheless, we are doing this at an arm's length and following all the regulations that govern the Indonesian telco market, right? Hussein, he has another question. "What will be the wholesale pricing which XL will pay to Link Net?" This is a confidential data, right? Obviously I cannot disclose it. Nevertheless, again, this transaction is at an arm's length and follows the follows the regulation that governs the industry between related parties.
Hi, Pak. Sorry, can I just, you know, you know, ask one more final question, Pak? You mentioned that there'll be some kind of exchange that the customer of Link Net will go to the XL and, you know, some assets of XL will also go to the Link Net. Can I reconfirm that there will be, you know, like, cash payment or cash transaction from Link Net to XL and vice versa, Pak, for this, you know, potential transaction?
All I can confirm is there will be a transaction, okay? It will be done at an arm's length, given that we are related parties and follow, you know, the governance process, in Indonesia and the telco industry and of course, shareholder approvals.
Okay. Noted, Pak. Thanks so much, Pak.
Thank you, Henry. Thank you, Pak Bijit, for answering the question. Now let's move on to the next question. The next question comes from Fong. On the digitalization initiative, 45% of the subs are on app, are they also reloading digitally? Second question, how much sales distribution channels has been digitalized versus the target? I believe this question will be better answered by Pak David.
Out of the more or less half of our customers are already using the, our digital applications. Yes, most of them are doing the digital reload. Most importantly, they are generating. It's, I mean, it's a usage that is generating revenue in the application, right? Independent whether you reload directly from the app or in a e-commerce channel or a traditional channel, most of them are already generating the revenue there. That's the, one of our main goals, right? To move people from buying in other channels to spending, creating the revenue in our own applications, and I think that's happening. We are seeing also a very healthy growth of the revenue that we get from those applications.
Answering your question, yes, in order to buy that or to spend that revenue, a lot of that reload is also coming from digital sources. I think that's number one. Regarding the digitalization of the traditional channel, I cannot give a number, but I think we are moving in very good trajectory. We already have a large amount of the retail outlets that are using our digital application, which is allowing us to have a more direct relationship with the customer. It's allowing us to decrease the stock outs, et cetera, and it's also allowing us to have a more direct distribution channel. I think that's going in the correct direction. You will see it, right?
In the marketing and sales cost, I think we are also starting to feel that the cost of the product is going down. I guess that question came from that angle as well.
Okay. Thank you, Pak David. Now, I would like to ask if there, Fong have follow-up questions to Pak David.
Yeah. Pak David, just wanted to ask, right? Since 45% of your subs are on the app, and you said they are also, you know, reloading digitally, right? I guess my, you know, for me, the interest really is on the savings on the dealer comms. Are you seeing as much dealer comm savings as per what the percentage of subs on the app is, or is it gonna take time for that dealer commission savings to come through?
The dealer commissions, to be honest, the dealer commissions currently are not that much coming from the reload amount, but from other, from other KPIs that they have, right? The reloads was something strong a few years back, but not so much now. Having said that, we are seeing an improvement in the dealer commissions due to the digitalization projects that we are doing. Not as much of moving the pools, et cetera, but on getting direct to retail outlet relationship with our digital application. That is what is helping us on reducing the dealer or the intermediation cost of the distribution channel. We are, we have been working on it and preparing it. We already have moved in a few clusters, in a few areas in Indonesia, and it's looking good.
We'll keep moving during this year, and we'll accelerate that.
Okay. Thank you so much, Pak David. If I can also just add in a question for Pak Abhijit since I'm already on the line. With regards to the deal with LinkNet, right? I noted what you mentioned just now about the operating model and all that. But as the anchor tenant, right, on the FibreCo, do you see sort of flexibility being baked in in terms of the wholesale cost, given, you know, that we are seeing some ARPU pressures in the broadband market because of competition now, you know, flexibility being embedded into those agreements so that XL could yield some earnings accretion from this deal? Even in the event of more competition.
The last part of How did you end your question? XL could?
Yeah. Whether, you know, XL could have a bit more flexibility, right? Or embed in flexibility into the wholesale agreement with Link Net, such that even if, you know, we see broadband competition continue to be, you know, fairly intense and there's ARPU pressure, right, that this deal would be earnings accretive for XL.
You know, there's no flexibility, right? We are approaching this as at an arm's length kind of an arrangement, given that we are related party transactions. You know, this is going to be an outcome of negotiations as XL would do with any other fiber provider, to be honest.
Right. Okay. I'm just wondering because as an anchor tenant, do you like have to sign a very long-term, or at least you envision signing a very long-term?
Oh.
wholesale agreement
Oh.
Whether there's flexibility to the wholesale rates. Yeah.
Yeah. Got it. Got it. Yes. Obviously, as an anchor tenant, we will seek to, you know, have certain benefits for ourselves. Those benefits could be in the form of, let's say, exclusivity or longer term arrangements or even pricing as well, right? Obviously as an anchor tenant, we will definitely seek to have those benefits. Let me re-emphasize, this is approach we take to any other partner, right? If we are partnering with any other provider, these are exactly the kind of benefits we would be seeking as well.
Okay. Just to reclarify here again, it will be net profit accretive from year one, you think, this deal?
I think I'm pretty, you know, that's the beauty of these kind of deals, right? Given that there is no CapEx required from our side, we are fairly confident about profitability. Yeah, we are very confident about achieving profitability quickly.
Okay. Understood. Thank you so much, Pak Abhijit, yeah, and Pak David.
Okay. Thank you, Pak Abhijit. Let's move on to the next question. Comes from Hussein Saidi from UBS. The question, I think this is also for Pak Abhijit.
Mm-hmm.
Are the 8 million homes passed on top of the infrastructure being built by the tower, which is Sarana Menara?
I didn't understand the question.
Okay.
The question is, are the 8 million homes passed on top of?
Built by a company called, Sarana Menara. I think.
No, I still don't understand the question.
No, no.
let me
This is by Link Net.
Yeah. I think this is just a clarity that the build will be by LinkNet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let me clarify the 8 million that was presented. These are new home passed that will be built by LinkNet over the next 5 years. I hope that answers your question, Hussein.
Let me just open the line for Hussein to check if he has any other question. Go ahead, Hussein.
Thanks, Pak Abhijit, and thanks everyone. My question was that Sarana Menara is also building homes passed for XL. So my question was that, is the 8 million on top of that?
Yes. The 8 million is being built by LinkNet. These are new home passes that they will build over the next 5 years.
Yeah. Understood. Pak Abhijit, going back to my earlier question is that XL will transfer its infrastructure or fixed broadband infrastructure to LinkNet, and LinkNet will transfer its subscribers onto XL, and there will be a cash transaction linked to that. My question is that including the cash transaction, you think that the deal will be accretive, earnings accretive from year one?
I did not say cash transaction. I said there will be a transaction. We are in the process currently of evaluating what that financial consideration is including the impact on both the companies.
Understood. Then maybe just one follow-up for Pak David. Given the IT transformation and the scale you issued, is there more investments required to continue to expand this? Or are we done with the peak investments on the IT transformation and digitalization?
I guess that we are all in the IT transformation as we speak, right? The BSS system, et cetera, et cetera. Maybe I'm not the correct person to ask about the investment that is still required there. Maybe William.
Okay. The biggest part of the IT transformation is just completed, which is covering the BSS part. This BSS part will actually allow us to do for instance, like single bill for the convergence offer. Not only convergence bill between mobile and fixed, but also mobile, fixed and other digital service that we can put on top of that. The other part of this transformation also in building our apps into the latest technology. For this, the application evolutions, actually the investment will not stop because the technology evolving so much in this front. There will be always in annual basis investment that we will put for enhancing our touch point, like MyXL and AXISNet.
The biggest one is done for the BSS part. I hope that answers your question.
understood. thanks. Just see if I can have one last question. It's on the mobile side. You noted that on 10th of March you increased pricing, which to an extent competitors have not followed. Just wanted to understand how had been the momentum, revenue momentum in the first 2 months, and then in March and April when you increased pricing but your competitors didn't follow. Yeah.
When we planned the price increase for March 10th, we were already thinking that Hari Raya Lebaran was coming. That is the moment that is a very positive moment for monetization. Now, usually we take a look to a couple of drivers after we do the price increase. Might the competition follow or not follow? I mean, in the end, we take a look to some internal numbers, right? The main one is traffic. If we see that the amount of gigabytes goes down or that, then we need to start calculating elasticities and see whether it's positive or not. I think that's number one. Number two is number of subscribers. Our number of subscribers, whether it keeps improving, or we see that It will be related, right, with the traffic.
Again, one is total traffic, the other is like number of subscribers, and we can talk about market share, right? Those are like the two plus one things that we take a look at. Again, this is quarter one results, so I don't want to give news about the quarter two because this is not the correct forum. Just I will just give a hint. All the three drivers look very, very positive to us. The traffic, despite competition did not follow on our price increases, our traffic grew significantly. Grew significantly during end of March that it's already Ramadan, during the whole month of April that it's Lebaran. Even post Lebaran we are seeing very, very good traffic, very good traffic in our network. Number two is the number of subscribers.
Again, same thing, right? We are seeing that the number of subscribers who have been in positive trend already more than, I mean, yeah, in the last year for sure, and it has continued. We have not lost subscribers. We see that our daily active users in the network keeps increasing, this is looking good, right? That's why we... Even if our competitors did not follow, this encourages us to affirm or to reassure that we are in the correct strategy. Of course, we will have to see the competitive dynamics be very granular in our next steps. We are positive in moving in the same direction.
Understood. This is very clear. Thanks, and congratulations on the good set of results.
Right. Thank you, Pak David. Thank you, Syed, for your question. Let's move on. Next question comes from Richard Suherman from Sinarmas Sekuritas. Richard has three question. First question on Link Net I think has already been answered by Pak Wijey. Second question is on the guidance on potential costs rising from XL to achieve the desired structure. Third question is on the blended EBITDA. Do you expect XL blended EBITDA to fall after the structure is completed, given the potential leaseback to Link Net? I think for the second question, I'll let Pak Heru first answer. Pak Heru.
Let me answer the second question. First, I have already answered, Richard. Do I address him as Richard?
Yeah.
I think Richard, yeah. First, I have already answered. Linknet customer base to move to XL Fiber to move to Linknet, and also Linknet to build a fiber footprint for XL. On the cost side, I think this was part of my response on the lease cost mentioned before, right? The good thing about such kind of business models is there will be minimum cost on the XL side because we do not inject any CapEx. The obvious costs arising would be, of course, sales commissions and marketing costs, basically. I hope that addresses the question.
Yeah. Now we'd like to open the line for Richard to answer if there is any follow-up question.
no, Pak. Thank you, Pak. Thank you, and congrats for the good set of result.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
For the EBITDA margin, Pak, do you expect your EBITDA margin should be rather than declining but improving after the new structure has been completed next year?
Yeah. I think, if you look at the guidance, right? I think we're still keeping to our guidance at 49%. Certainly we will look at. You should not look solely at the growth business. I mean, XL is beyond that as well, right? There's also the mobile and other parts of the business. We're really treating it as a portfolio. As a portfolio, the margin guidance still stands right at 49%.
Okay.
Yeah. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Pak.
Thank you, Pak Richard. Let's move on to the next question comes from Aurelius Barus from BNI Sekuritas. First, can you please elaborate on the strong growth on the infra expenses? I think this one will be answered by Fariz. Second one is on the LinkNet subscriber under First Media will be transferred to XL. This one I think has. Later on, I'll let Abhijit answer again. Can you please share the ARPU for XL Satu? Yeah. I think these are the three questions. I'll let Fariz to answer first.
Aurelia.
Aurelia Barus from BN.
Thank you, Aurelia, for the question. You're absolutely right. If you're looking at the trends, right? Of the network cost in the year-on-year and the Q-on-Q. As I said earlier to the question to some of your other colleagues, I think first quarter there's a front-loading of the network OpEx cost. That's simply because we are also anticipating the strong growth, right? For the Lebaran momentum. In fourth quarter, in 2022, there was a one-off of about IDR 400 billion that impacted the fourth quarter of 2022 network cost, which appears lower.
If you normalize that impact that I've just suggested, as a percentage of revenue, first quarter 2022 would have been 15%, and first quarter 2023 would have been 14% of revenue. I hope that gives you a color of the underlying performance, Q-on-Q as well as year-on-year.
Hi, Aurelia. I'll tackle your second and third question. Will all of Link Net subscribers under First Media be transferred to XL? The answer is yes, as I have elaborated before. Can you please share the ARPU for XL SATU? At this stage, we are not breaking out individual product ARPUs. Let me try and answer your question a little bit differently. As you saw in the presentation given by Budi, we have managed to reach 44% penetration of our base with our conversion. This is extremely encouraging. That means the market is accepting it. The other parameters we look at because of our analytics is, for example, the customer lifetime value. Such parameters are also showing a very healthy trend for us.
In a nutshell, we remain extremely confident about, conversions as a whole, and especially the performance of XL SATU, to be specific.
Okay. Thank you, Abhijit. I still check with people, with Aurelia if there is any questions. Aurelia, please unmute your mic.
Yeah. Thank you so much, Pak. Yeah. I noticed that my questions were also asked by other analysts before, so thank you so much for clarification. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. All right. Let's move on to the next question, comes from Luis Hilado from Citi. Can we get more colors on the Link Net losses, please? Was it driven by revenue or OpEx factors or both? Is there any write-offs within the quarters?
Luis, I don't think we are going to answer that question. This call is more about XL's performance. I think later on, you know, through Chris, we can guide you.
Yeah. To the Link Net.
... to the Link Net management.
Yeah.
even Axiata as the...
Okay. Thank you, Pak. All right, let's move on. The next question comes from Endo T. Takahashi from BGA.
I'll take it.
this is also going to be on LinkNet. Link is going to be fiber and XL being the core. Should we expect any ownership changes on Link going forward? as XL still owns 20%.
At this stage, Hi, Endo. This is Abhijit. At this stage, we do not envisage any ownership changes in Link Net. XL continues to hold 20% and Axiata 80%. Nevertheless, Axiata as a company, you know, keeps on evaluating its portfolio. In the specific case of Link Net, we don't see any changes right now.
If I may add further to that question, add to that question. That certainly doesn't stop us, right, from trying to accelerate our home pass.
Yeah.
Trying to scale up the business as well to reap synergies, right? From Creation of these two strong assets.
Okay. Thank you, Fariz. I'd like to check with Endo if there is any follow-up question.
Hi. Thanks, Pak. Just want to check again on the timeline of this transaction. When do we expect this to be done?
As presented, in the CEO presentation, we envisage the whole process to be done by the end of the year.
Okay. Got it. Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Endo. Thank you, Abhijit. Let's move on to the next question. Come from Niko Margaronis from BRI Danareksa. 2 question. First one, given the tiering of your customer base, is the price increases applied to all your customer profiles? Second question. Oh, yeah. Yep, go ahead. I think the first one is for David.
Yeah. It has been applied to both brands and to the brand portfolio from short validity, low prices to the high prices thing. Products, sorry. Also, as I was mentioned before, we have touched our digital products and we have even reduced the benefits that we were giving through our CVM initiatives, et cetera. It has been quite a 360 pricing piece. I think as you mentioned, from what we see regarding the customer base, and most importantly the traffic, I think we can conclude that for the time being, customers are willing to pay or see that the value for money of XL is still good. Are still willing to pay for what the quality of the services that they are receiving.
Yes.
Thank you, David. Yep. I think the second question on Link Net, This one, I think this question is more directed to Link Net, so I'll direct Nico directly to the Link Net counterpart. All right? Now I would like to open the mic for Nico. If you have any questions, go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, David. Can I follow up? The take-up of your services. Can we say that this is also driven by the improvement in your network? In the previous earnings call, you emphasized also on the improvements on your network, on the Opensignal. Yeah. Is your position in terms of network API still as good as in the previous quarters? Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Hello? What happened, man? Yeah. Hello? Can you hear me? I think the team has disconnected. I hear from other participants that you can only hear my voice. The management has Tapas disconnected.
Can you hear us?
Yeah. I can hear you now. Is this the team?
Yes. Yes. This is the team.
Okay. Yeah. Basically, if I may repeat the question, is about the improvement in your revenues and the traffic and, yeah, this traffic is because of, can we attribute this to the network positioning, to the good network APIs that you showed in the last couple of quarters? If yes, is this, is this leadership in network APIs, is this still as it was? I mean, you still have performing well in terms of network? That's the question. Thank you.
Yeah, correct. I think you are correct. In the end, when we increase prices, if people respond positively, it's because they have willingness to pay for the value that we are offering. They see that the value for money is still good. Of course, the value for money, that value, part of it comes from the network experience that they are receiving, right? We track our customer experience, I mean, we track the customer experience from the network, from the customer journeys, et cetera. We see that we are in a positive trend. In the last few months, our customer experience has improved. That of course is like the basic that you need in order to be able to monetize the customers, right?
If the customer experience would have gone down or satisfaction would have gone down, then it would have been more difficult. Yes, that customer satisfaction, customer experience has improved, partially because of the investments that we have been doing and this smart pocket of growth that we are getting and investing on in the last few months together with of course many other customer experience initiatives. Yeah.
Okay. Thanks, David. My second question earlier about the Link Net. maybe if I can connect this with some articles, local articles about XL Axiata striking some sort of agreement partnership with Icon Plus. I was wondering whether there is a larger framework you working with Icon Plus or maybe also Link Net is part of this framework agreement with Icon Plus slash PLN. The one other reason why I'm asking this question is it maybe, is it Link Net also charge more currently from Icon Plus or is it less? That sort of update I'm looking for. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you for the question. Yes, you are right. Actually, in the past, Linknet has engagement with PLN Icon Plus. They are leasing, they lease pole, PLN pole, from PLN Icon Plus. That agreement has terminated. Linknet has managed to actually move their FTTH from PLN poles. The engagement that we are having currently with PLN Icon Plus is not for the poles for the FTTH. Our agreement with PLN Icon Plus is more mainly for the backbone. For backbone. Actually, it's not only us using their backbone, but also vice versa. The backbone and also for the fiber to the sites. It is not related with the FTTH business.
Oh, thank you, Budi. Thank you. Yeah. Can I just follow up with Abhijit? Maybe can you give us some color how the subscribers of Link Net will move to XL? What is the mechanics here? Yeah, thank you.
Good question. Is it Nico? Nico, right? Yeah.
Yes. Yes, thank you.
You know, that's a very good question. We are ourselves developing the answer right now as we speak. As I mentioned before, the truth, one is how do we do the transaction, is being evaluated by both parties. We'll follow the afterwards. Then how do we actually migrate the customers to XL? That plan is under development as we speak.
Okay, Abhijit. Thank you.
Let's move on to the next question in the benefit of time. I'll get back to question from Lonnie about the strategy to bring EBITDA to 49%. I'll let Fahrus to answer.
Yeah. I think, Lonnie, I realized that we got disconnected, right? Allow me to answer the question again. If the question is how do we bring up the EBITDA to the 49% level? The answer I gave before I was cut off was we look at it in a blended basis. Certainly improvements in price preparation as well as personalization helps. Experience, right? Helps the top line growth. On the cost side of things, we alluded to sales and marketing, particularly distribution costs, that we'll look into, as well as notwithstanding all the other cost items, that we'll look to for the end of the year. Throughout the year, that will lead the EBITDA margin to the 49% guidance till the end of the year. Thank you.
Okay. I shall open the mic for anny to ask any follow-up question.
Yes. Thank you. What if the competition come back in the second half of the year, then you can't really cut much on the sales and marketing? Have we assumed this guidance including the potential 5G spectrum auction? Because this will bring another expenses. What are the assumption for the 49%?
Well, certainly 5G is not baked into the guidance, right? Because they're still uncertain to the timing of the spectrum being available to all players. To the other question on how competition heats up. Certainly that's something that we have to look at from time to time and how we respond to things. Certainly, we have multiple distribution channels that we can also move and be agile in terms of how we react to how competitors actually play in each way. At this point in time, and the outlook that we have up to the end of 2023 and the market condition that we see now, we're still confident of a 49% EBITDA margin. Thank you.
Okay, one last question. It has included potential transaction between Linknet, FiberCore and you guys, right? What if Linknet remaining losses in the remaining years?
Well, at the moment, Linknet is captured as a share of profit and loss.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Certainly, this transaction, as Abhijit has highlighted early on, will not have a major impact on the EBITDA, right? Margins. Certainly this transaction is supposed to be closed, expected to be closed subject to approvals by the end of the year, right? At this point in time, with the structure and transformation that we're able to share to the market, we envisage that we're able to hold at 49%, simply because we're looking that as a blended portfolio, right, for XL. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
I think we still have one time for one more question. The last one comes from Piyush Chaudhary from HSBC. I think the question will be, with EBITDA too much fiber being built and it can lead to oversupply to industry, which region are you and Link Net targeting to deploy fiber? Are these same region are covered by peers? Right. Go ahead. I think this question will be best for Abhijit.
Hi, Piyush. This is Abhijit. I think we are talking about a market with an overall penetration of 15% with fiber broadband. While I recognize an increased interest from many parties in capturing this market growth, I think it's a bit too soon to think about oversupply, simply because the headroom for growth and the demand is pretty high. Regions and XL, and XL and Link Net targeted to deploy fiber. You know, we have an excellent analytics team in-house. The way we have approached this business, and I think I mentioned it in our, in our conversations previously in the calls. We actually identify places to go with pinpoint precision. Obviously, we do not want to enter into cities or clusters which competitive intensity is very high.
As we speak, we are in the process of identifying which areas to go. Once we crystallize that, we can share this information.
Right. Thank you, Abhijit. Hope that answers the question. All right. Due to the time constraint, I think that will be the last question for this call. Thank you for everyone for participation in today's call. As always, do get back to us if you have any further information, if you need any questions. Please stay safe and healthy. We will see you again next quarter. Thank you.