Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to PT Indosat Tbk Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one, one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Indar Dhaliwal, VP Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, Amber. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. With us on the call today, we have Pak Vikram Sinha, our Chief Executive Officer, Pak Nicky Lee, our Chief Financial Officer, and Pak Ritesh Kumar, our Chief Commercial Officer. I will now hand over the call to Pak Vikram for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.
Thanks, Indar, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me start my presentation by sharing with you the highlight of our financial performance in 2024. Despite a challenging year in 2024, we managed to record strong growth across all financial metrics. Our revenue, EBITDA, and net profit grew strongly by 9%, 10%, and 38%, respectively. This is reflected in a strong absolute growth as well. We have also managed to deliver $462 million of recurring synergy, which is well ahead of the promise between $300-$400 million which we gave pre-merger. If you look at the next slide, the key building blocks to our strong performance in 2024 are our core mobile business, which is on the back of world-class network experience that we continue to deliver to our customer across Indonesia.
Strong growth in ICT service, with our enterprise contribution growing rapidly, and our AI platform which we have built, which continues to solidify our business efficiency and expand our enterprise suite of services, are also key contributions to the strong performance in 2024. If you look at the next slide, since the merger, we have invested significantly in our network experience to bring a world-class network experience to all our customers. We have invested more than $2.2 billion, adding more than 9,000 tower sites, which have meant an additional 10 million plus new population covered and more than 16,000 new villages covered. This investment will continue as we aim to continue to deliver the best to all our customers across Indonesia. If you go to the next slide, our AI innovation engine is moving from a vision to reality, where we had made progress guided by our North Star.
We have embedded AI into our core telco business with contextual offering and improved experience, and it is the core part of our new postpaid offering, which Ritesh will talk more about in his presentation. Finally, we are optimizing our network rollout using AI. Our GPU as a Service continued to gain traction as we continued to build partnerships to expand our services stack. Finally, on the role as an AI Nation Shaper, we had our first AI Day in Q4, which was well attended by the Indonesian government official as well as NVIDIA CEO. We look to continue to play an active role in shaping AI for Indonesia and establishing it as a key growth driver for the country. I think if you look at the next slide, this is an important slide.
As part of our partnership with NVIDIA, where we are the national cloud partner for Indonesia, we are leading this advancement of AI infrastructure and capabilities in the country. I am pleased to announce that as part of this business, we have secured significant milestones with contracts up to $30 million multi-year GPU as a Service, confirming strong market demand in the first, and meaningful step towards our journey in this business. If you go to the next slide, we are seeing that compared to 2024, the macroeconomic indicators are starting to look better in 2025. The government is now in place with ministers ready to drive Indonesia's growth agenda. Further consolidation in the market is expected to happen, which will drive healthier behavior, and we are also seeing signs of improvement of consumer confidence as an uptick to the index of December, which was particularly positive.
Finally, I would like to end my presentation with the guidance for 2025. We are targeting to grow revenue better than the market. For us, the most important thing is absolute EBITDA growth, which we are giving a guidance of better than 10%, and CapEx is expected to be around IDR 13 trillion for 2025. That ends my introduction, and I'll hand over to Nicky for more detail on the financial presentation. Over to you, Nicky.
Thank you, Pak Vikram, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm delighted if we go to the next slide. I'm delighted to report strong results, financial results for FY 2024. Revenue grew 9.1% from 2023, IDR 51.2 trillion to IDR 55.9 trillion. This growth was underpinned by higher demand for data and connectivity services across B2B and B2C. We've been consistently delivering higher growth at EBITDA level than that of the top line. There is no exception in 2024, as the expansion in EBITDA was up to 10.2%, adding IDR 2.4 trillion year-on-year to IDR 26.4 trillion. Our continual efficiency drive helped to raise EBITDA margin further by 0.5 percentage points from last year to 47.2%. Below EBITDA, our net normalized profit was up by 38% from IDR 3.6 trillion to IDR 4.9 trillion. This improvement was driven by both top-line growth and cost efficiency realization.
Gearing level continues to be low, and we feel very comfortable with net debt over EBITDA at 0.4 times. Let's move on to the next slide. Comparing our fourth-quarter performance against that of the third quarter, revenue grew 1.7%, propelled by B2C and B2B, as mentioned earlier. EBITDA contracted by 3% in Q4, due mostly to higher spending on cost of sales and marketing expenses. For cost of sale, we spent more on installation costs and wholesale business expenses to support the revenue growth in this segment. The higher marketing expense is really a seasonal phenomenon, as we have seen more marketing activities in the festive season. These are also the reasons leading to lower EBITDA margin percentage and net profit quarter on quarter. If we can move to the next slide, more details on the cost. I mentioned about the details on a quarter-on-quarter basis.
So let's look at our year-on-year numbers. Our overall cost of sales and OpEx on a year-on-year basis has grown 8%. I have explained the key movement already on quarter-on-quarter. So for FY 2024, the year-on-year movement for cost of services is due to changes in revenue mix as non-mobile revenue outgrew that of mobile. Reported marketing expense has gone up by 19%, but that is all to do with our contractual arrangement changes and therefore how we account for it. We mentioned this in previous quarters, so I'm not going to elaborate on this, but what I can point out is on a normalized basis, we actually spent less by 5% year-on-year.
Below cost of sales and OpEx, we got significant one-off gain on power and data center sales in 2023, amounting to IDR 1.3 trillion in total, and these helped to reduce total expenses to IDR 41 trillion in 2023 against IDR 45 trillion in 2024. So if we strip out that, actually we're doing pretty well. Let's move on and take a look at CapEx. CapEx spending is below our guidance of IDR 13 trillion and compared to IDR 12.8 trillion in 2023. What I have to tell you is that contrary to the numbers shown, we have actually not slowed down on our CapEx spending. Thankfully, we have managed to save around IDR 1.8 trillion from pricing and our efficiency program. There is also around IDR 800 billion POs issued in 2024, but the booking for those is deferred to 2025. We can move on to our net debt and balance sheet.
Net debt edged up by around IDR 0.8 trillion year-on-year. This is attributable to the timing of tax payments with higher taxable income and also tax on gain from our data center sale. The data center sale was completed at the tail end of 2023, but the corresponding tax of around IDR 800 billion was settled in 2024. There is also some working capital movement, mostly to do with CapEx scheduled to be paid in 2023 but deferred into 2024. On a quarter-on-quarter, net debt is up, and the ratio of net debt to EBITDA also rose from 0.37 times to 0.4 times. This trend is pretty much the same every Q4, as payment is much heavier in Q4 seasonally.
Okay, moving on, this is a new slide we added, so very happy to report that we have finalized our first dividend policy, and the company, this IOH, has decided on a progressive dividend policy to improve dividend payout from around 48% for 2023, and gradually we look to improve it to 70% on our net profit in 2026. The precise dividend amount will be reviewed every year, and we will still need to go through the regular process, being proposed by BOD and approval by BOC and further approval by shareholders in the AGM. That's the end of my presentation. I will pass the time to Pak Ritesh.
Thanks a lot, Nicky. From 2023, on a 90-day basis, we are reporting 4.1 million lesser subscribers. Primarily, we are getting rid of no-value customers. Our ARPU we have seen increase of around 6.6%, and as we promised, we continue to focus on our own app for giving better services to consumers at the same time increasing our ARPU. There is a 21.2% growth year-on-year on our own app, and our data traffic is also growing 12.2% year-on-year. Next slide, please. As Vikram talked about the AI journey, we have launched a product which is going to be talking to the larger A-class of society, premium customers and platinum customers, wherein we have got a significant jump in our postpaid acquisition in Q4, and our own app myIM3 is also reaching up to 45.7 million.
That means that 45.7 million customers can be cross—we can do cross-selling of digital services and FTTH through the application as well. Next slide, please. As you see, we have talked about there is a 17.2 thousand increase in 4G base stations and 2G base stations, 3.5 thousand increase to provide better customer service, and we, as Vikram talked about, 16,000 villages. We continue to focus on voice traffic. That is why we see some addition on 2G base stations in deep rural Indonesia. So that's all from my side. I'll give it back to Indar.
Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Amber, can we have the first question from the Q&A queue, please?
Certainly. So as a reminder to ask a question now, please press star one, one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one, one again. We will now take our first question from the line of Piyush Choudhary from HSBC. Please ask your question, Piyush.
Yeah, hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for the call. Three questions, please. Firstly, the mobile revenue growth was very slow at only 2% year-on-year in Q4. Can you talk about the competitive landscape? What is the outlook for mobile industry revenue growth, ARPU growth? Your subscribers are still declining, so if you can touch—like you're expanding the coverage, but subs' decline is continuing, so if you can talk about that also. Second question is on the EBITDA margin, which is down sequentially. Any one-off cost over here, particularly in the cost of services, which has grown sequentially? And thirdly, on the dividend payout ratio, you did mention 70% by 2026, but can you share something how you are thinking about 2024? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, Piyush, for the question. On mobile revenue growth, we see this market is primarily focused on acquisition, so we see lots of competition around that, and customers are getting the option of buying SIM cards rather than buying recharges in the market. So we have seen Q4 has been tough on the acquisition point of view. However, if you look at our subscriber base, VLR base, our 30-day base, and data pack purchase is at the same level, and in fact, year-on-year, it is increasing. So that gives us a very healthy sign that our underlying business conditions are good. As I said in my earlier conversation during my presentation, that we have lost basically no-value customers who are actually just receiving incoming SMSs and all. So just to give you confidence, VLR, data unique user, and 30-day base, which are the real numbers, are better than 2024.
That's how you see the growth in revenue as well. Hi, Piyush. This is Ritesh Kumar.
But has there been any, thanks, Ritesh, but has there been any kind of change since Q4 because you have raised tariffs also, and Telkomsel was also talking about raising tariffs, or is the competitive environment still very intense on the acquisition side? And I appreciate that your VLR base is same, but you have been expanding coverage, right? So it's not yielding any kind of improvement in your subscriber growth. So how are these investments being viewed by the board?
Yeah, we see that our outside Java is doing much better in terms of VLR addition and gross addition. So the challenge which we are facing here is we see lots of SIM consolidation happening, Piyush. And in fact, the industry was operating at IDR 25,000 as an acquisition product, which has gone down to IDR 10,000 in Q4. And that's where we see lots of SIM consolidation happening in the Java area. However, wherever we are investing in distribution, we have seen significant growth, in fact, two to three times more growth than the national growth in the areas where we are expanding our distribution. And that is how we have been able to grow the fastest in the first nine months of the year. And of course, when all the company announces the result, we'll see we are at a good place here.
Hi, Piyush. This is Nicky. Let me take care of your second and third question. On one-off cost for Q4, mostly the impact is coming from cost of sale, which is to do with installation cost and wholesale business. While we generate more revenue from these areas, the margin from these businesses is much lower than mobile. 2024 dividend, as I mentioned earlier, we will look at making progressive improvement in payout, more dividend. But the quantum precise amount, we will need to go through our process to make recommendation and go through the approval. I don't think I will be able to share the amount at this stage yet. Sorry about that.
Sure. Thanks, Nicky, but just getting back to the industry side, could you share how you are thinking the industry can grow for the mobile in 2025? What's the expectation for the industry growth?
Hi, Piyush. This is Vikram. I think 2024, from an industry point of view, was a challenging year. The industry growth, the way it looks like, will be around 2%-3%, and what we see for 2025, that it will get better because with consolidation happening, we have seen all over the world, especially, it is what we see both from a consumer sentiment, and that is what I was talking about. If you look at December, and we are done with January now, I think the government is also coming in place. They are also making sure that the projects and all those things are all kicking in. So overall, our expectation is that the industry growth for 2025 will be better than 2024. It will be around 4%-5%, and we want to play an active role on making sure we grow the industry.
Got it. Thanks, Vikram. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Arthur Pineda from Citi. Please ask your question, Arthur.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Firstly, just to go back to the cost issue on what drove down the margins of Q4, you've mentioned cost of sales and marketing spend. I'm just wondering, what % of this would actually be recurring? Do we see that as actually declining into Q1 and receiving normalized margins again? Second question I had is with regard to CapEx. It seems to be a bit higher year-on-year. What's driving this, and does this include any 5G assumptions, assuming that spectrum auctions are done? Thank you.
Hi, Arthur. This is Nicky, so obviously there are two components relating to the cost movement from Q3 to Q4. In respect of the business mix changes, these will be driven by business demand, right? So as long as we continue to have more wholesale, more like a one-time revenue project, installing connectivity services, right, so such expenses will need to be incurred, and the margin for these businesses would be lower, and then in respect of.
Is that a timing issue?
No, if you look at the way, if you look at the way the business is doing, right, the mix has been shifting towards more to B2B, towards more towards B2B. So if you look at our 2023 versus 2024 business growth, B2B has grown something like 12%, right? So a much higher growth in B2B, and we can see a lot of opportunities also. And these businesses, while it could result in a lower EBITDA margin percentage, but what we feel we should focus on is the absolute EBITDA growth. So while we are able to get EBITDA-accretive project, we should press ahead to do that.
I think just to add to what Nicky said, especially on B2B, the EBITDA percentage margin is less, but what flows to net profit is very high. So on B2C, some of these revenue comes with 55% EBITDA, but what flows to net profit is 10%, 11%, sometimes 8% because of very high CapEx intensity. But on B2B, the flow to net profit is much higher. So what we are looking at is absolute growth on EBITDA, and then that is where, if you look at the guidance, we are talking about more than 10% on the absolute EBITDA growth.
And if I may continue on, yes, Arthur, if I may continue with your question, for the seasonal spending, then when it comes to Q1, a portion of such spending will not be required. But no need to worry about our marketing spend. As I mentioned earlier, the underlying spend actually contracted by 5% year-on-year. So we have a good control over marketing spending. We work very closely with Ritesh and team on making sure all the marketing expenses will be giving us good value.
Yeah. On CapEx, I think what is important to note is, on one side, with our AI initiative giving us very good yield because we are able to map our capacity projection very well. So the spend on CapEx is very much linked on the capacity portion, and we have seen very good efficiency in the last six months from the time we have implemented some of these AI-led use cases. On the other side, as I highlighted on my presentation on our NVIDIA AI Factory, generally, our contracts are multi-year contracts. So what we have now is H100, and we have till end of January, we have been able to close contract worth $30 million, which is, again, these contracts are three-year, four-year.
You will see revenue flowing from quarter two because customers are, there are some elements of work which are needed at customer's end that is in progress. So Q2 onwards, you'll start seeing revenue on a monthly basis. But we are also looking at going live on GB200 Blackwell. We are seeing good customer contracts getting close. So that is why overall, the CapEx envelope for this year will be at IDR 13 trillion. We will be able to fund some of the customer contracts we'll have on GB200, and this comes with very good margins, and these are multi-year contracts.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one, one on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from the line of Ranjan Sharma from J.P. Morgan. Please ask your question.
Hi. Good afternoon, and thank you for the presentation. Three questions from my side. With the tariff improvements that you delivered in the Q4 and the changes that you've seen in the market, can you help us with a sense of how ARPU is trending in the Q1 so far? The second is that we have seen softness in revenues and EBITDA, but we are talking about 10% plus growth in EBITDA in 2025. So what would be the drivers of that? And last question is, if you can give some clarity on your comments on this GPU as a Service, this $30 million revenue, is it for the multi-year period, or it's an annual revenue that you expect? And what is the cost associated or the CapEx associated to deliver that kind of revenue? Thank you.
Yeah. So I'll take the first question, Ranjan. So the market is very dynamic, and 2024 has been very tough for when it comes to competition. So what we have decided is that we follow our strategy, and we'll have an AI-led customer value management wherein we are actually not discounting customers who are actually our fans. And what we have done, major changes which we have done is the monthly packs we have reduced from 30 days to 28 days, reason being most of the customers were using their quota before 30 days are getting over. So we're still giving value, but eventually, there is an increase in the price from our side. And also, on some of the recharges, we are absorbing 10%, 11% as a value-added tax, which we have passed it on to the consumers. So we are following our strategy.
We are not looking at market for sale, and we'll double down on execution, and as we say that we keep on expanding our rural area distribution areas, and we expect our majority of growth is coming from there, and that will be the major enabler for our EBITDA improvement for 2025 as well. Third question, I will. Arthur, quarter one, we cannot give forward-looking statement as of now. So quarter one 2025, maybe when we have a next call, we can talk about quarter one revenues there. Yeah.
Yeah. On the second question, in terms of guidance, let me share. And if Ritesh or Vikram, you want to elaborate, please feel free to do that. So we are expecting an improving macro environment will help the business to do better in the current year, 2025. And this should help us to get better output and improving subscriber number as well, seeing growth we are getting in many regions within Indonesia. And there are also opportunities for us to optimize cost further. So that's why we, based on the projection we have prepared, we feel that double-digit growth in EBITDA is still achievable for us in 2025.
Yeah. Just to add on, Nicky. Ranjan, on 10% plus EBITDA growth, we are confident, number one, because of our core business, which is B2C. Our underlying fundamental gives us a lot of confidence that we will be able to continue to grow our pool, and with all our hyper-personalization and all now getting scale, and also our expansion on the new coverage area will help us do that. On GPU as a Service, these are multi-year contracts, minimum three. Some of them are three plus one, four. If you remember last year, what we had invested was around $60-$65 million on H100. I think that is the investment which we have done this year.
And what you see for this year, what I said in my last call also, that we are expecting an incremental revenue of anywhere between $35-$45 million this year coming from these investments. In terms of margin and profitability, maybe Nicky can add to this.
Yeah. We are looking at around 60% EBITDA margin for this GPU service.
Okay. So the $30 million is an annual revenue, is it?
Yes, and you will start seeing this flowing on a monthly basis from Q2 because customers are getting ready. We have signed the contract. As of January end, we have signed a $30 million multi-year contract. And the revenue on these contracts, basically, will start flowing from Q2 because at customer end, also, they need to do some work, and we are working with them.
Got it. And maybe if I just take a quick follow-up on the EBITDA growth guidance, is that in any way affected by the planned fiber restructuring?
No, no, no. I think it is not affected. We stand true to what we said in our Capital Market Day, in our bigger ambition of doubling EBITDA. I think we are very mindful that we have to grow EBITDA closer to 15% year-on-year. So I think we are just building on that, and that is why we are focusing on absolute EBITDA growth of more than 10%.
Got it. So if you were to restructure the fiber business and capitalize some costs, so the EBITDA number could be higher. Is that the correct understanding?
I think I'll not be able to comment on anything on fiber. It is a process, and things, decisions will be taken at a shareholder level. So this has nothing to do with fiber plan, which is under progress. Whenever something happens, we'll update you.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sukriti Bansal from Bank of America. Please ask your question.
Hey, hi management. Thank you for the call and the presentation. First question on GPU as a Service. So you mentioned you spent about $60 million last year. What kind of a CapEx are you looking at for 2025? And of the multi-year contract customers that you have, anything you can share on the nature of these customers, which sectors, etc., do they come from? Second, on the broadband side, we've also seen some very cheap offerings come in the market from the incumbents. And also, the competition, I think, from the free airwaves continues. So what is your strategy on this business, and how are you seeing competition evolve? And thirdly, on the competition on the cellular side, you said that you mentioned that acquisition competitiveness has increased, especially in Java. So that was true for Q4. Has anything changed in Q1 so far? That's all from my side right now.
Ritesh, you want to start with cellular?
Yeah, yeah. So thanks, Sukriti, for the question. On cellular side, yes, to answer you what you said, yes, quarter four, we have seen the minimum acquisition product used to be at IDR 25,000 level, which has gone down to IDR 10,000 levels. So that's the change which we have seen in quarter four, and it's not only in Java. It's across Indonesia. However, Java, since we have got the highest market share, we see more impact coming in there. So that's on question number three.
Sorry, anything [crosstalk]
Yeah. So quarter four, as I said, from 25,000 acquisition product, it has gone down to 10,000. And from cheap and illegal Wi-Fi, yes, it is impacting basically East Java and Central Java areas, wherein we have seen some traffic movement happening towards Wi-Fi. And that is actually impacting us in terms of traffic growth. However, we have launched a product which is actually giving customers a better service. We see this as an opportunity because the quality of internet is not as great. So we can probably sell the customers the mobile data at a very competitive price. So home zoning kind of tariffing is part of our plan, which we've already started. And we have seen some results also, wherein we have been able to win back some traffic back to mobility from illegal Wi-Fi, Sukriti. On GPU?
Yeah. So on GPU as a Service, I think for this year, we have got an allocation for GB200. We are in the process of locking the contract of customer first, and that will define our CapEx spend. So maybe you'll have to wait for one more quarter for the exact number. But our approach is to close the customer first, and these are multi-year contracts, and then put on the investment needed to serve that. The good thing is our factory is ready. Our data center is also ready from a liquid cooling point of view. We are seeing very good traction from three sectors. One is banking. Second is oil and gas. And then we are having some customers, global customers also, who are on airlines. And also, some of the global data training need from Middle East also, we are getting some good attention.
Thanks. And sorry, going back to the previous question from Piyush on dividend outlook, can you share anything on 2024, 2025, how you're looking at the gradual improvement from 48% to 70%?
So on dividend, we feel we will work on paying more dividend on a year-on-year basis. But we will need to make a proposal and then get approval. So we'll announce this at an appropriate time and have it approved in the AGM later on in the year. Right now, we don't have any number to share.
But if you look at our net profit, if you look at our net profit, it has been growing in a very healthy manner from the first year of merger. And then we have been able to deliver progressive dividend. So directionally, you have the policy. I think we will follow that in terms of being progressive.
Got it. Thank you. Very clear. Just one follow-up. Ritesh, you mentioned, sorry, I think I wasn't clear, in Q1 2025, has competitiveness improved, or has the competition remained as it was in Q4 2024?
As of now, it is same, Sukriti. I think they have continued in quarter one, 2025 as well.
Got it. That's all. Thank you. Thank you so much, management.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Niko Margaronis from BRI Danareksa . Please go ahead, Niko.
Hi. Good evening. Sorry, good afternoon. I would like to ask the management about currently the outlook for the fixed broadband, yeah? And we were told in previous earnings call that we will see some improvement on this space. And if you could inform us about what is the subscribers currently in the fixed broadband? Thank you.
Hi, Niko. Thanks a lot for the question. Fixed broadband is a very integral part of our strategy, and we want to be taking a significant amount of market share in the next 10 years' time. So we're working towards that, and to do that, we are actually building our capability on ground that we should be the fastest one to install fixed broadband when customer needs. And first of all, there should not be any outage. If any, we should be the fastest one to correct the issues. So that's the principle which we are working on, and we have seen some improvement happening on our net addition on fiber to the home business. So we have been able to deliver our number, and starting of this year also, we have seen one of the highest gross adds happening on fiber to the home. So we are learning.
We are trying to develop our payment system. We are trying to develop our IT system, our application. And one thing which we have done is, since it is part of our key strategy, we have integrated fiber-to-the-home organization with our core organization so as to get the better benefit of the entire brand image what we have as an Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison.
Thank you, Ritesh. So if I can follow up, how many home passes and customers do you currently have in Q4 ? And if you talked about fixed broadband, do you have any intentions of rolling out fixed wireless? And if you can give us maybe some view if you're going to participate in this fixed wireless spectrum, they're going to auction very soon. Thank you.
Yeah. So we have got around 2 million home passes, and we have got 300,000 plus customers currently as of now. And as you said, we have got very key strategic ambition towards this business because we are focusing on data market share. Whether it's coming through FTTH or FWA or mobility is irrelevant. But important is that we should be able to get the data market share out of market. And again, we are preparing for FWA. And for that, we have launched our FWA services in some of the locations, and we have seen some great success coming in there. We are going to build up a distribution model for FWA under 4G. And as and when our strategy allows us to participate in spectrum auction, definitely we'll do that.
Great. Okay. Okay. Thanks . And maybe one more last question. Aside from the competition and starter pack from 25K to 10K, how do you assess, evaluate the current purchasing power, the consumer purchasing power? Has it improved, or you think it's going to be the same sentiment in going to Ramadan and Lebaran? Thanks.
Yeah. So if you refer to Vikram's first slide where he talked about improving our purchasing power, so we have seen some improvement happening in December. And however, we are very clear, Pak Niko. We want to keep on getting customer market share and data market share. So we'll do everything possible to make sure that we continue to grow better than the market like we have done in previous years. And next year, guidance is also to do better than market.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next, we have a follow-up question from the line of Ranjan Sharma from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead, Ranjan.
Hi. One quick follow-up. I mean, if I look at all the telcos, rather all the major telcos that they've been communicating to investors and analysts about tariff hikes in third and Q4, inclination to raise more tariffs in the coming periods. But then you're also talking about competition for starter packs and acquisition products. How do you square that? Why would telcos or the industry be raising tariffs and cutting them at the same time? And what does it mean for the industry?
So what we can say, Ranjan, is a very good question. We'll focus on our strategy. We will stay true to our ambition of getting customer market share and revenue market share. In Indonesia, there are three, four operators. We cannot comment on that, but we'll follow our strategy, Ranjan.
Okay. Is this happening more? Are there cheap starter packs? Yeah. Sorry.
As it said, we have increased our prices in November. We are following our strategy. That is the ambition towards bringing industry to the right direction. We keep on giving some indication based on our strategies so that we are forward-looking and trying to make sure that industry is in the right direction because we are also part of the industry, right?
Yeah. Can I just check? So is the cheap starter packs happening mainly in Java region? Or are you seeing that across, I mean, outside of Java as well?
It's across the nation. This 10,000 starter pack has been released across Indonesia, all islands.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take our next follow-up question from the line of Piyush Choudhary from HSBC. Please go ahead, Piyush.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks a lot for the opportunity again. A few follow-ups. Firstly, in the mobile segment, Ritesh, you mentioned you have reduced the validity from 30 to 28, and VAT is passed on to customers. So may I check when has this kind of begun? And what is the expectation of blended ARPU improvement by these initiatives?
Yeah. Towards the end of November, we implemented this. So we'll start getting impact in quarter one. And yeah. So basically, because there are some stocks already in the market, Piyush, right? Generally, there are market stocks for 45-60 days. And third week of November, we implemented this. So quarter one, we'll get some results on this.
Got it. Got it. Second question was if you can share some views on the upcoming spectrum auction. What is the latest? Which bands are going to come? Any discussion on the pricing side? And what is your strategy? It looks like after XL Smartfren mergers, they would likely have 2.3 gigahertz, which can be used for 5G. But what's kind of your strategy for 5G? And last question, Nicky, you mentioned about cost of sales going up, but we are not seeing a similar increase in your non-mobile revenue. So I'm just puzzled why the cost base has increased while there is no commensurate. It can be a low-margin business, but there is no revenue increase on the non-mobile services. Or I'm missing something. Thank you.
Piyush, let me start with the spectrum strategy and 5G. I think today, if you look at Indosat, we are in quite a good position in terms of our spectrum holding, and our strength is mid-band, and we'll be more focused on 5G spectrum when it comes, and we are getting ready for that. That is what our focus has been, but in terms of creating the right use case for 5G, I think we are preparing ourselves, and with AI happening, AI plus 5G, I think will be much more meaningful in terms of monetizing all our investment, so overall, things are progressing well. We'll wait for the government, and when 5G spectrum comes, we'll focus on that.
Overall, government have been very supportive. They understand the importance of the sector, and they are also looking at it in terms of the prices and all. We'll have to wait for more detail on that.
Hi, Piyush. On your question on the cost of services, actually, year-on-year growth for non-mobile is 18%, not 12% I mentioned earlier. So the growth in relation to non-mobile is much higher.
No, I appreciate the year-on-year. Sorry, I was not clear earlier. I'm seeing quarter on quarter, this expense item has increased a lot while there is no commensurate increase in revenue. That is where I was a little puzzled.
Yeah. Within the B2B, there are many different kinds of services like what I mentioned on wholesale, right? So the EBITDA margin profile for different services within B2B also vary quite a bit compared to mobile, right? If we get extra revenue from mobile, we pretty much know what incremental EBITDA margin we're going to get. And that's not the case for B2B. And sometimes this kind of revenue also comes in not as predictable as mobile. But overall, that's why I tend to look at the numbers on a full year versus full year that will give you a clearer picture of where we're heading, right, and how the cost will be moving when we get more business contracts.
Got it. Got it. And Vikram, if I may ask on the spectrum side, is there any certainty on what bands are likely to come in 2025, or still it's in discussion phases right now?
I think what we know is 1.4, which is more on the rural Wi-Fi, which we are expecting to happen in Q1. For other, we don't have absolute clarity.
Got it. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our next follow-up question comes from the line of Arthur Pineda from Citi. Please ask your question, Arthur.
Hi. I actually have two questions as follow-up, but I'll do it one by one. Firstly, on the comment on the IDR 10,000 starter pack, just wondering which operators are driving this and when was it launched? Are you seeing overall that the industry is moving back to a scratch card mentality where people just buy these starter packs and throw it away? I'll post that question first before the second question.
Yeah. So it started by a certain operator, and now everyone has got the same starter pack, almost similar. Yeah. But it started by someone, and we all have all operators in Indonesia have got 10,000 starter packs now. In terms of. [crosstalk] We're still.
Go ahead, please.
Yeah. So basically, it's not a threat always to my view. And we are trying to make sure that this is reaching to the segment wherein we can follow our strategy wherein people can try this starter pack. For example, we are going to deep rural Indonesia wherein customers are having some SIM cards. So this smaller marginal customer in deep rural Indonesia, they will be able to try this SIM card. And if the network is good, if the services are good, they will continue to recharge this one. So it's not that everyone is using it as a scratch card thing. Yes, there are certain parts of it, but we see this as an opportunity that if you are doing in the right area, then we can get some customers from those areas, Arthur. Yeah.
Was this started with the Telkomsel Lite program? Maybe that's another way to ask it.
They have one more brand, so primarily from there.
Okay. Then it goes to the second question. If the larger operator is the one driving this lower price point, how would you be optimistic that you'd have a better competitive dynamics with consolidation if it's a market leader who's actually driving this?
With better customer service, better distribution, and better adoption of application, I think we'll be able to match some of the things for betterment of the consumers. As I said, if you see our app users, it has gone up significantly in the last one year, and that continues to grow every month. So if somebody is downloading my app, that means our ability to extract more value for that customer goes up. As I said, we have dropped customer base, but despite that, we are growing fastest in the market in terms of revenues. It's primarily because we have been able to weed out the customer who are actually traditional channels, and we are trying to focus on the customer who are actually being more valuable, and for that, we are targeting to increase our app-based penetration onto our base as much as possible, Arthur.
Understood. Thank you very much.
We have now reached the end of the question and answer session. Thank you all very much for your questions. I'll now turn the conference back to Pak Indar for closing comments.
Okay. Thanks, everyone, for your participation on the call today. And if you need any further information, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Thank you very much, and we'll speak to you next quarter.
Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.