Today. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison FY 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in the listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one one on your telephone. We'd like to advise that today's conference is being recorded. I'd like to turn the call over to your first speaker today, Pak Indar Dhaliwal . Thank you. Please go ahead, Pak.
Thank you, Desmond. Good afternoon, everyone, welcome to Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison's earnings conference call for the financial year 2022. My name is Indar, I'm the Head of Investor Relations for Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison. With us on the call this afternoon, we have Pav Vikram Sinha, our CEO, and Pak Nicky Lee, our CFO. I will now hand over the call to Pav Vikram for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.
Thanks, Indar. Hi, everyone, thank you for joining the call today. Allow me to take you through some of the highlights for 2022 and our quarter four performance. We had a great first year of operation post-merger in 2022, exceeding all expectations, and it has been one of the most successful telecom mergers so far. Our integration progress is well ahead of schedule. Both our brands are performing well, and we have recorded a strong normalized net profit of close to 1.5 trillion rupiah. This is around 76% year-on-year, and I'm talking about normalized organic net profit. Allow me to take you through a bit more detail on post-merger progress. With support from our network partner, specifically Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia, we have delivered our network integration much ahead of schedule.
At the end of the year, we have completed MOCN activation on more than 31,000 sites, and our site shutdown is going well, with around 13,000 sites progressively being shut down. We aim to complete the network integration by end of this quarter. Our customer base continues to grow as we continue to deliver the maximum customer experience, both on the network side and our growth mindset to ensure that we help deliver to our customers. In September 2021, in my first presentation when we announced the merger, we talked about delivering pre-tax annualized synergy of between $300 million-$400 million, and a timeline of between 3 to 5 years. Given our fantastic progress this year, we expect to deliver closer to $400 million in synergy in closer to 3-year timeframe.
Drilling down to fourth quarter, we are pleased to show the third consecutive quarter of operational and financial improvement. Our revenue grew 1.8% quarter-on-quarter, with cellular revenue growing close to 1%. This was coupled with EBITDA rising 5.5% quarter-on-quarter, and we recorded IDR 835 billion of normalized net profit in the quarter. Positively, we added 3.6 million subscriber, of which majority were 4G customer, indicating the quality of our acquisitions. In December, we welcome our 100 million customer, another milestone for IOH that we are very pleased with our achievement year till date. I want to highlight an important move that we made in January 2022, where we raised the benchmark price for starter pack to IDR 25,000.
This is to encourage healthy behavior. We hope that the rest of the industry follow us on this minimum pricing for starter pack. Finally, I just want to talk about the growth potential of Indonesia. If you look at the digital economy metrics, this is a huge growth opportunity for Indonesia, as it will increase from 8% of GDP today to 14% of GDP by 2027. Indosat stands steady to play its part in empowering Indonesia. There is a clear opportunity from the level of cellular revenue spent Indonesia relative to rest of the region. I will end my opening remarks there and pass on to Nikki for financial performance update. Over to you, Nicky.
Thank you, Pak Vikram. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm delighted to report our financial performance for Q4 2022 continues to shine. Overall revenue grew 1.8% or IDR 0.2 trillion quarter-on-quarter to IDR 12.2 trillion. This growth was underpinned by the enlarged customer base as well as strong uptick of data services. EBITDA after normalization improved by 5.5%. The normalized EBITDA margin is up by 1.5%, resulting from revenue growth and savings in cost of services. I will take you through more details later on. Normalized net profit lifted by 76%, from IDR 475 billion to IDR 835 billion, thanks to higher EBITDA as well as higher other income in Q4. Generation of positive cash flow also helped to lower our net debt.
As a result, our net debt to EBITDA ratio fell once again quarter-over-quarter to 0.61x. Moving on to our financial indicators. As mentioned earlier, our quarter-over-quarter EBITDA grew 5.5% on normalized basis. Reported EBITDA, which includes the gain on restructuring of an associated company, achieved 9.6%. The better EBITDA would bring the EBITDA margin for Q4 to be similar to the level before merger at around 44%. For net profit, you may notice there is a drop of 30% year-over-year, full year. This is because of one-time profit from tower sale in 2021. There was also some one-off profit recognized in full year 2022, but not as significant as the one-off tower sale gain.
However, if you look at our normalized profit, you will see the full year actually underlying profit improved by 76%. On quarter-on-quarter basis, also, rise by similar percentage, 76%. In terms of our revenue growth, it is powered by cellular revenue for quarter-on-quarter basis, 0.9% growth for cellular business. Media, with the help of additional revenue consolidated from Artajasa, quarter-on-quarter improved by 10.3%. Fixed telecom revenue reduced by 15%, but the revenue decrease was related to low margin wholesale business, so it doesn't really hurt us. Moving on to cost. We continue to exercise cautious cost control, and overall you can see our total expenses condensed by 7% on a quarter-on-quarter basis from Q3 to Q4.
Cost of services reduced by 7% also, driven mostly by booking of credit notes received, accrual reversals at the end of the year, and also to a lesser extent, lower rental expenses following site integrations. Personnel expense returned back to the normal level after we booked the one-off restructuring cost in Q3. We spent a little bit more on marketing and general administration in Q4 for seasonal reasons, as well as on World Cup promotion. We managed to finalize the purchase price allocation for the merger with Hutchison 3 Indonesia. Following the valuation results assessed by the independent KJPP, we are required to book additional depreciation and amortization. As a result, quarter-on-quarter basis, there is a one-off increase in such expense from IDR 3.3 trillion-3.7 trillion quarter-on-quarter.
For other operating expenses, it has increased significantly in Q4. During this quarter, we restructured the ownership of our associated company, Artajasa, which involves the sale of an equity stake in this company, as well as IOH regaining control, triggering consolidation and revaluation of Artajasa. Based on the sale value, IOH pick up a gain of around IDR 1 trillion, or IDR 541 billion after deducting minority interest and tax. In addition, Artajasa also paid around IDR 220 billion of dividend before the ownership restructuring. Both the IDR 1 trillion and the dividend of IDR 220 billion were captured as other operating income in Q4, that explained the movement quarter-on-quarter. For Q3, there was also a one-off provision reversal relating to IM2 receivable amounting to IDR 390 billion, which I reported in the last meeting.
Going into our CapEx, we continue to catch up on our CapEx booking. For Q4, it went up to IDR 5 trillion from IDR 3 trillion in Q3, that took our overall CapEx to revenue ratio for full year 2022 to 25.6%. The catch-up is within our expectation and will be helpful for our network expansion. As I mentioned earlier, our net debt has dropped. In terms of IDR, it dropped from IDR 13 trillion to IDR 11.8 trillion, 10% drop quarter-on-quarter. That helps to lower our net debt to EBITDA ratio from 0.75 to 0.61 times. That's a quick summary. I'll end my financial section here. I'll pass the time back to Vikram.
Thanks, Nicky. Moving on to operational performance. As you can see, numbers continue to trend in the right direction. 4G customer data traffic continues to increase. Our ARPU is slightly down this quarter, but that is due to the timing of customer acquisition, meaning that we did not have the full quarter of ARPU contribution from these customers. We expect in subsequent quarters the number to move up. ARPU upside is a great opportunity for us. Our network footprint continue to grow, with BTS count now at 180,000, and our 4G BTS is at 137,000. We have completed our Jabotabek integration. This is a very critical one, which was most complex in December.
Look forward to delivering even more improving customer experience there and across Indonesia as we commit to empowering every Indonesian and continue to deliver world-class experience. Our guidance for 2023. We expect the revenue to grow in line or better than the market, EBITDA margin in the mid-forties, and CapEx spend to be around 13 trillion rupiah. With this, I like to again thank all of you for joining, and in that, let's move for Q&A session.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. If you'd like to cancel, you can press star one one. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. One moment for the first question. The first question will come from the line of Piyush Choudhary from HSBC. Please proceed.
Yeah, hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for the call. Two questions for me. Firstly, can you share the progress of network integration? Like, is it on track to complete by first quarter of 2023? In terms of site relocation exercise, how much is completed and the timeline to remaining the total relocation? Secondly, on the CapEx, what is driving an increase in CapEx to IDR 13 trillion for 2023? Yeah. Thanks a lot.
Hi, Piyush, this is Vikram. In terms of network integration, we are very happy to update that, if you look at my presentation deck also, I tried doing a recap. In September 2021, first time when we met all of you, we had given a guidance of, we will take 24 month and the synergy value which we had said was anything between $300 million-$400 million, and the timing was 3-4 year, 3-5 year. We are heading towards $400 million, and the timing is 3 year. We are very happy to share that, as we speak, we have completed close to 85% of our overall. Important market like Jabotabek is all done 100%. By March, we'll be able...
March this quarter, we'll be able to complete 100% across Indonesia. Coming on to the next question on CapEx. You know, I think this is a very important point to highlight. We are looking at this merger with a growth mindset. We see a lot of important areas. One of the specific area is Nusra, you know. After merger also, our network is under index. Those are the pockets where we are investing to ensure that our customers get a good network experience across Indonesia, whether they travel to Nusra or they travel to ex-Java. Step by step, we are putting more focus on ensuring that there is no compromise on customer experience. That is why it is not increasing.
What Nicky said, this year we have spent 12, guidance is 13, it will be in the same range. We are working with a growth mindset.
Understood, Vikram. Thanks a lot. Again, congratulations for the results. If I may just ask on the integration side, on your site relocation, which was, you know, the duplicate sites which were, which you were about to relocate, could you also share what is the progress of that, and when do you expect that to complete, the relocation of all the sites?
I think the important point to highlight here is that all the tower company, you know, whether it is Protelindo, whether it is Tower Bersama, whether it is Centratama, whether it is Mitratel, you know, we had different kind of contracts with all of them, now all of them have given us 100% relocation rights. That gives us a lot of flexibility to work with all of them, in terms of, you know, how we are taking it forward. Our overall number for dismantling is around 17,500. 13,000 sites we have already dismantled. This flexibility coming from all the tower company gives us, helps us on making sure that we have full flexibility in terms of, you know, how we want to take it forward.
Got it. Thanks a lot.
Thank you for the question. As a reminder to ask question, please press star one one on your telephone. One moment for the next question. The next question comes from the line of Husaini Faisal from UBS. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon, and congratulations on the good set of results. I hope you can hear me okay. Multiple questions from me. First is on the outlook, and Vikram, you say that in line or better than market. Want to understand, you know, what is your expectations for the industry revenue growth, particularly on the mobile side. Second question is again on the guidance, which is mid-40s on the EBITDA margin. If I see your exit, fourth quarter margins at around 44%, which I hope that the exit margins for the 2022, which in the month of December must be even better than that. Just wanted to understand, like you know, why it's still a mid-single digit revenue, sorry, EBITDA margin guidance.
On the guidance, which is on CapEx, IDR 13 trillion, is some CapEx being brought forward given that Indosat is tracking ahead on the merger process? Those are my questions. I have some follow-ups, but maybe starting with this.
Yeah. No, I think it's a good homework for me. Let's start with 3 question you have. I think the good news is that industry, if you look at this year, industry is heading towards a 5%-6% growth, which is very positive news. Last 5 year industry was flat 1%. We believe very strongly that industry in 2023 and next 3 year CAGR will continue to be in the same range of 6-7, if not more. Our expectation is that, you know, we will be at least minimum in line. With the scale and the network quality which we have, we can grow faster. We are very mindful of growing the industry. This is one.
If you look at some of the action which we have taken, especially, you know, any genuine customer who want to come and buy SIM, you know, they will be very happy to pay at least $1.5. I think the move which we have taken of IDR 25,000 for a starter pack and the quota also we have kept it intact. This is also a step towards helping industry move in the right direction and helping industry grow. We don't want, you know, customer to come in the market who want to buy data pack, and we don't want to encourage them buying SIM because it is waste of money for everyone. All these action we are taking to ensure that the industry is in the right direction. The second one...
Second question was on EBITDA margin. Your observation is right. We just want to stay humble. What we are telling is the minimum where we are heading towards. Rest all, you know, you can do your work, but your observation is absolutely right. We are already at a level of, you know, last quarter of 44%. We see a lot of opportunity with synergy value, you know, ahead of the time and on all those things, and revenue at least 6%-7%. We see more upside, but our guidance are generally more humble so that, you know, this is the number we have given. On CapEx also, your observation is very much right.
You know, we are fast-tracking our integration, and that is what is leading to fast-tracking and putting some of our money up front. We are making sure, especially on ex-Java, if there are pockets where our network is under index, we invest on it so that, you know, people get a good coverage across Indonesia.
Yeah. Great. Thanks, Vikram. Maybe if I can move on to my next set of questions. First is that to Piyush's question, you said that, you know, Indosat is going ahead with a growth mindset. Just wanted to understand from where that growth will come. Means if the target is to gain market share, which probably is not a good news because it may come at a cost of some pricing competition or Means the outlook is to go into under indexed areas and try to gain market share over there, and possibly try to monetize in the areas like Java where you have a better coverage. That's question number 1. The second question is on the fixed broadband, means Indosat did.
That fixed broadband aspiration which you discussed last quarter, in the third quarter results. Any update on that side will be helpful. What portion of the CapEx will go into growing that business? Thank you.
I think it is important to highlight my point on growth mindset. Our learning has been most of the merger struggle because we focus too much on synergy values. Synergy value is important, but what the organization enjoys is, you know, the ability to maximize all our resources. You know, when I say growth mindset, it's a very important guiding principle for us to maximize. While doing that, we are making sure we put all our money. Just to give you an example, we already have a scale of 100 million. We have a lot of growth opportunity on ARPU opportunity. We have a lot of growth opportunity on, you know, covering areas and then giving better indoor experience. I think these are the things which defines our growth mindset.
Pricing, historically, Indonesia market had also seen by cutting price you don't grow, you know? It has not helped anyone. Look at my slide, you know, which I have put on my deck. The cellular spend as a percent of GDP in Indonesia is only 1.3%. Thailand is 2.3%, Philippines is 1.6%. I'm not even looking at Malaysia and Singapore. I think we see a great opportunity to drive consumption, drive ARPU, and at the same time, you know, it is very important that we deliver a very good customer experience. These are the things which defines our growth mindset. Hope I'm clear to you now.
Thanks, Vikram. This is very clear. Just a follow-up and, you know, apologies if I'm hijacking the call, is that, there are macro factors which we, you know, which telcos in other markets are facing challenges on the back of that. High inflation is one of them. Are those an issue in Indonesia in your...
I think two thing is important here. Yes, these are real things around us, and we have seen a bit of a challenge on inflation, on, you know, customer optimizing their data packs. The good thing is, our, you know, telecom services is more consumption than, you know, primary. The need of these products to drive the overall, you know, GDP, I think. This has been our biggest learning, you know. At a point where we see some of the challenges, and the good thing is Indonesia is better off than some of the other countries or in the region. Overall things are looking quite positive for us from a overall industry outlook also. I think you had another question on FTTX.
FTTX is a very important initiative, you know. We launched it last year in September. We have got a good start. We are now looking at scaling it up, but it is a very core part of our strategy and we are looking at doing it as a Indosat as an opco, we have a satellite opportunity, but we have strong group like Ooredoo and CK Hutchison, and there are a lot of interest from other private equity companies to partner with us on the fiber play. We want to do this in partnership, but at an IOH level, we want to be a satellite.
Understood. This is very, very clear. Thanks, Vikram and everyone. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. One moment for the next question. Next questions we have the line from Sachin Mittal from DBS. Please proceed.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Can you hear me?
[crosstalk]Yes, Sachin, please go ahead.
Yeah. Two questions. Firstly, when I look at your return on invested capital, actually it is still below the cost of capital, which is WACC. How much time or how long do you anticipate that, you know, ROIC can exceed WACC? That's question number one. Especially, I think you talked about on one hand, cost cutting, on the other hand, we are talking of a little bit of high CapEx. I think both factors kind of counterbalance each other. Just to have some light on that would be very interesting. ROIC versus targets on anything we have a mission. Number two, on the 5G spectrum, I think Omnibus clearly says that it's allowed, sharing of spectrum is allowed on new technologies.
To be clear, if, do you think there's some hindrance in case of any 5G spectrum coming up and any anticipated timeline for that? Would Indosat be a keen to share the spectrum cost and network rollout with another partner? Thank you.
Can we start from you, Nicky?
Hi, Sachin. This is Nicky. On the ROIC question is really a function of how quickly we can ramp up our profit, right? It wouldn't be in conflict with the cost movement. As Vikram mentioned earlier, it is important for us to realize the synergy we set out to achieve from the very beginning of $400 million. This is a per end new saving we are talking about, right? We are confident that we will be able to achieve the high end of this range. At the time when we gave this indication, we talked about $300 million and $400 million. Now we are confident we are able to achieve high end of it.
A lot of these savings are coming from efficiency gain from the merger, particularly from the network area, and there wouldn't be any chances of us compromising the performance of our network system experience, et cetera. It's not something that will be able to come in a single quarter or two, but gradually over time, as you can see from the improvement in the EBITDA margin quarter-on-quarter 1.5%. The margin improvement will flow through to our NPAT also. If you look at the quarter-on-quarter or like, from Q1 to Q4, our net profit improves from IDR 44 million... sorry, IDR 44 billion, on a normalized basis to over IDR 800 billion in Q4. That is a very significant improvement just within the year of 2022.
Of course, looking forward, we are giving a guidance of for EBITDA margin of mid-40s%, and there is a chance we will go higher than that. We don't want to give further guidance or details on this yet. This is very much the focus we are working on for 2023. That will also, as more and more progress is made, we will report and then you'll get a much better idea on our progress. What you ask is very much in line with what you are seeing and what we are focusing on doing.
To your next question on 5G. I think 5G spectrum we are very supportive of, these are resources which is need to be utilized. We are very open for looking at all those options, and we have already started working on it. When it will happen, it will be difficult for me to say, but whenever it happens, we are getting ready for it.
Okay, thank you.
As a reminder, to ask question, please press star 1. Next up we have the follow-up questions from Piyush Choudhary from HSBC.
Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, Piyush, go ahead. Yeah. You mentioned about the new starter pack, right? The minimum starter pack of IDR 25,000. Can you share what has been the response from the industry, you know, after you have launched that kind of pack? Secondly, you know, in the region, like in India, in Thailand, we are seeing, you know, industry taking significant initiatives for subscribers to move from prepaid to postpaid, and that's in the process driving stickiness and leading to a higher ARPU. How does, you know, Indosat Ooredoo thinks about that, and can it be done in Indonesia? That is second. Thirdly, can I confirm, when you mentioned 13,000 sites have been dismantled, is the cost savings already achieved in the fourth quarter or only part of it is realized? Thank you.
Hi, Piyush, this is Vikram. I think, 25,000, starter pack and then keeping the GBs intact is a reason, you know, which we took to ensure that the industry move in the right direction. We felt that, you know, it is important. In Indonesia, you know, if you look at all operators put together, and if I put a thumb rule, annually, there is a gross add of 260 million. You know, it doesn't make sense. There are set of people who come in the market to buy cheap data packs. You know, I think this is not helping the industry.
You know, it's a reason which will help us make sure that it has a positive impact on us in our P&L because SIM prices were going up and we don't want it to, you know, participate in that area. It doesn't make sense because these are rotational customer who comes and buy the data pack. While buying data pack, you know, they get an option to do it because sometime the reload is cheaper or the data pack is cheaper than reload. The response for us, yes, there is we have seen that the gross add has come down, but that is what we will see a better, you know, gross add to net add ratio, and we will see a positive impact of it at an EBITDA level.
Sorry, Piyush, what was your next question?
Next was on the prepaid to postpaid.
Yes. I think prepaid to postpaid, you are absolutely right. We are also focusing on ensuring that we have revamped our postpaid portfolio. With our network scale going to a very different level, we are focusing on growing our base. The strategy is not to move prepaid to postpaid, but we are focusing on acquiring more postpaid customer and more corporates, more SME postpaid. That work has already started. I think it'll take little bit of time. Yes, it is very much possible in Indonesia. There is no reason. It's an opportunity which we see for us. The other one was on 13,000 site dismantling. Not 100% cost is realized, but, you know, the moment we dismantle any site, there are few which we realize immediately and few other comes later.
Partial cost benefit has been realized, but it is important for us to complete that, so that over the period of time, we can realize the full benefit.
Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Vikram.
Thank you for the questions. Our next question comes from the line of Nico Margaronis from Prima Reksa Sekuritas. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thank you for the results and congratulations for the strong net profit. My question is about if you could describe us what was the market in the fourth quarter. Perhaps my observation is that the top line is relatively softer given the high seasonality in the fourth quarter. That's the first part of my question. The second part, I see that the subscriber base. Maybe I missed the first part of the presentation. You might have covered this already, but I missed it. Basically, I wanna check about the subscriber base.
It has grown again in the fourth quarter. Do you see more room to grow again in the coming months? Yeah, that's the question. Thank you.
Hi, Panico, this is Vikram. I think Q4, if you look at our quarter-on-quarter growth and cellular growth, you know, both have moved in the right direction. Overall, quarter-on-quarter revenue was close to 2%. The cellular revenue was 1%. Yes, you know, there was a bit of inflation and we have seen, but in spite of all those things, you know, we see data traffic going up quite nicely. That gives us confidence that, you know, the industry growth, what I spoke about this year, 5%-6%, and then moving on to 2023, minimum at that level, that gives us a lot of assurance.
Also, if you look at the slide which I had put on the cellular spend as percentage of, you know, the cellular spend as percentage of GDP, I think that's also a very important indicator. Then why I'm so bullish, because, you know, this will have a positive impact on the overall Indonesia digital economy. All these things are talking to each other, and that gives us a lot of confidence that in spite of all these inflation challenge and all, we will see a very good industry, you know, in coming quarters.
Thank you.
Your next question was on subscriber. I think, yes, we added around 3.6 million subscriber. What is important for us is that, you know, we don't participate on a space where people are coming to buy cheap data pack and they buy with starter pack. From January onwards, you know, we want to make sure that we completely discourage that area. That is why, you know, we have made this 25,000 3 GB. With that, we are looking at ensuring that we have more serious customer coming our way. We believe that, you know, there is a lot of opportunity. We released a report, you know, last month, as part of our commitment to empowering Indonesia.
One of the thing which that report says that in next 3 years, there are close to 21 million new customers coming on to. These are first time users, you know. These are the kind of opportunity which you see in Indonesia. For sure, we are focusing on making sure that we have a good network in rural areas so that we can get our fair share on those new customers who will be coming onto the, you know, internet.
noted, Vikram. When you say rural areas, you're referring to Nusra and maybe, like, Kalimantan or, some other island? That's my follow-up, actually. Yeah, maybe one more I can squeeze in after this.
Yes, Nusra and Papua and Kalimantan, these are example. Across Indonesia, please look at it this way, there are how many countries in the world which have an opportunity that close to 21 million new customers coming onto the fold. It's like new Australia getting added in Indonesia. That is the size of the opportunity. It is across Indonesia, but more so coming from rural Indonesia.
Right, Vikram. I see that your 3G BTS is minimized very aggressively. When you think that you can switch off the 3G network and maybe the 2G network can follow, what will be the catalyst for you to start switching off the 2G network? Thank you.
3G is all done. You know, we have reformed all our spectrum, 3G. 2G, we don't see anything like that because it is driven by the device ecosystem. Most of the device now also which comes in the market has two slots, and one of them is 2G. It's more of a device ecosystem and the slot play. The good news is, 3G is all done, and that we have seen a lot of benefit when we have reformed all the spectrum to 4G, and we have seen very good customer experience.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you for the question. One moment for the next question. Next question comes from Arthur Pineda from Citi.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Several questions. Firstly, on the balance sheet, net debt to EBITDA obviously declining, what are your thoughts on capital returns? Should we see more money being paid back to shareholders, or do you think you need to reinvest more onto 5G? Second question I had is again, with costs, relating to the tower cancellations. I understand that you mentioned that there are still residual costs from the prior tower cancellations. Just wondering, should we see these as eventually falling away altogether, or should we view this as a reallocation towards new sites? I'm just wondering from an absolute cost basis, should we see this declining or this is merely cost avoidance because you're just reallocating it to new orders? Thank you.
Hi, Arthur. This is Nicky. For the first question, yes, our debt level has come down. You're absolutely correct. I think we also alluded to it. When we get our cost base come down, strengthening our balance sheet, there is an opportunity for us to improve our investment, increase our CapEx a bit to strengthen our network and customer experience. This is really our focus for 2023, 2024. Our intention also, you mentioned correctly that there is a need to invest in 5G, there is no current plan to do more payout of dividend. On your second question, yes, I think the overall integration project is hugely complicated.
There are different milestones at which we'll be able to save costs like managed services, power, microwave fee, power lease rental, et cetera. As we progress along, then more and more savings will be realized and get booked in our P&L. What you're looking at from a net cost basis, net OpEx basis, is really a function of the scale of our network versus... Eventually we will get all the costs associated with the eliminated sites to be booked in our P&L, right? Of course, if when we roll out new sites, whether we are relocating the leases to one location or we sign up new lease contracts, we will still need to pay extra expenses, right?
It is really a function of that, the two, whether we're adding more than what we're eliminating. Definitely we will get the benefit of the synergy effect into the network OpEx as well as the amortization of our ROU asset.
Understood. Thank you very much.
Thank you for the question.
Thank you.
Once again, to ask question, please press star one one and wait for it to be announced. Once again, to ask question, please press star one one and wait for your name to be announced. We have a follow-up question. One moment, please.
Sorry, follow-up.
One moment for the next question. Follow-up question's from Nico Margaronis with 40.
Yes. Thank you. I see that the cash position has improved significantly. I join you. Is there an update about more tower sales in the first quarter 2023 or first half? Can I confirm again from earlier questions that will there be any dividends being distributed for the 2022 financial year? Thank you.
Hi, Hi, Nico. This is Panico. This is Vikram. Yes, on tower sale, you know, you will hear something important very soon. We are very close. We had a last batch, and then we are in a good place for that. You will get to hear that. You know, with all these things, dividend, while Nicky spoke about it, dividend will also depend upon the 5G spectrum timing, it is too early, to decide or comment on that.
Another one, Vikram. Can I ask what is the average price of the per tower that you are divesting?
That you have to wait for the result when we do it. You know, I'm sorry, I cannot tell you that.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. No more further questions. I would like to hand the call back to the management for closing.
Okay. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call today. If you have any other questions or follow-ups, please reach out to myself. Otherwise we'll speak to you next quarter. Stay safe, everyone. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.