fHi, and a very good afternoon. Take this off. First of all, thank you for joining us in our annual ritual, the Analysts and Investors Day. I am heartened to hear that there are so many participants who have registered to join us this afternoon. We do have a very good program to showcase the various companies. For the first time, we're going to showcase the two digital businesses, Boost Holdings as well as ADA. And I'm sure that that's a topical business that some of you may be very, very keen to listen to. For this afternoon, and so far as the introductory session is concerned, I'm just going to touch a bit on our aspirations and where we are in terms of achieving the vision of 5.0, Axiata 5.0, which we articulated last year.
We believe we are very much on track to attain the big highlights that we've showcased last year. As you can see, the big numbers, 5-10-20-20, based on this nine-month results we've announced recently, where reported revenues grown by 5.9%, reported PATAMI has gone up by 13.9%. We think we are very much on track to attain the big numbers of 5-10-20-20 by 2024. Thus far, all is good insofar as the numbers are concerned. Now, just very briefly, yeah, insofar as dividends concern, as we presented last year, we are repositioning ourselves to be a high dividend company. Of course, for 2021, so far, we've paid a MYR 0.04 dividend, and that's a clear line of sight towards the MYR 0.20 that we're targeting by 2024. Now, insofar as the actual business are concerned, maybe we'll take a bit of time trying to explain this chart, yeah.
In terms of in line with our dividend commitments and for long-term sustainability and value creation of our businesses, we are continuing to expand into the adjacencies. Mobile business, as we all know today, is at the very core foundation of the business. It has been commoditized, but we like to believe that we are well positioned for organic and inorganic growth opportunities in the fixed business infrastructure, as well as enterprise and digital businesses. From our perspective, these other businesses will provide the uptake, if you like, in the valuation given the multiples that are accorded to these businesses in the infrastructure space, the enterprise business, as well as the digital businesses, yeah, and of course, at the end of the day, the proof in the pudding is always in the eating, yeah, and we are very much focused on growing the infrastructure business.
You've read about the Touch Mindscape acquisition that we announced on 30th November. Adlan, the CEO of EDOTCO, will give a bit more insights into that particular acquisition. We have entered into a Heads of Agreement to jointly acquire, jointly with XL Axiata, acquire a 66% stake in Link Net, a fixed broadband business in Indonesia. And yes, thus far, we are completing the due diligence successfully, wrapping up most of the work that's needed. Hopefully, we'll sign the agreement before year-end. And insofar as the enterprise business is concerned, you would read also Celcom has made inroads into acquisitions, Bridgenet and Infront. This will complement and provide the capabilities that Celcom has been in search for several years, yeah. So, and again, if you look at the multiples that's been ascribed to these businesses, we are very much encouraged by our progress thus far.
Insofar as the digital business is concerned, we understand we've been shortlisted from the 24 submissions that Bank Negara Malaysia have received. We've been shortlisted, and hopefully, the announcement will come out by the first quarter as to the successful applicants for the digital bank license in Malaysia. We believe, again, this will add on to the valuation of the digital businesses that we have in the form of Boost Holdings. Of course, ADA has made tremendous progress. You would have heard during our nine-month results presentation, ADA has recorded a profit of MYR 27 million for the nine months. Kind of a bit of a strange, if you like, because digital businesses are supposed to rack up losses, but ADA has done pretty well. You will hear from the CEO, Srinivas, later this afternoon.
Now, for today's agenda, as you can see on this slide, I'll cover the easy parts section or key focus areas within the 10 key focus areas. I'll focus on topic seven, stakeholder management, Organization 5.0, what we're doing internally. I've always believed that people make or break organizations. There's a lot of emphasis that I am putting insofar as the human capital aspect of the business is concerned. It's important that we have the right culture. We already have the right two core values, uncompromising integrity and exceptional performance. And the challenge for us is to build on those two core values to grow the organization. Of course, I'll touch a bit on industry consolidation as well as portfolio optimization, value elimination. Whereas the other CEOs will cover in Agenda 6 and 7, as well as we'll identify new growth areas in the next Agenda 2, 3, and 4.
Now, insofar as stakeholder management is concerned, we have rather taken a holistic view to ensure the sustainable business practices. We believe that this is also part of us trying to future-proof the business, as it will create a long-term value for all our stakeholders. Our four P pillars that have guided us towards sustainability management driven through the ESG aspects, and this is underpinned by our vision of becoming the next generation digital champion by 2024. And insofar as the environment is concerned, there is a conscious effort insofar as climate action that's needed for the environment. Insofar as social vertical, if you like, there are a few material matters that we are focusing on.
Insofar as governance is concerned, we like to think that we have progressed very far insofar as ensuring that we have the highest business ethics and compliance insofar as data privacy is concerned, anti-bribery and anti-corruption, as well as managing the regulatory and political risks. Insofar as the Axiata Net Zero Carbon Roadmap, it's a rather busy slide trying to map out what we have done and what we're going to do. Essentially, we have completed the 2020 baseline to take into account the greenhouse emissions. We've done an inventory of that. We are currently mapping out the Net Zero Carbon Roadmap. As you would have read in the papers as well, we've signed the commitment under the Science Based Targets initiative , SBTi, recently.
So for the first half of next year, we plan to announce the Net Zero Carbon Roadmap, and this will be captured in our integrated annual report that we'll publish next year. Essentially, the commitment is for the OPCOs to meet the 2030 target. We're going to set 2024 targets as well. And then we are also going to, and this covers Scope One and Scope Two, yeah, by the way. Yeah, Scope Three baseline will also be done next year because Scope Three will be much, much more encompassing to cover suppliers and so on. Yeah, and that's the commitment that we are going to make, or we have made, and we're going to make and announce that by first half of next year. And of course, this TCFD framework, I've always struggled with this particular acronym.
I thought accountants are a bit more imaginative and could come up with a better acronym instead of TCFD, Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. So that's also in the works in terms of our adoption. Insofar as business ethics and compliance are concerned, I wouldn't go through this slide. I wouldn't do a line read of this particular slide. But what I'd like to mention today is that we have standardized the enterprise risk management framework across the organization. We have strengthened risk governance and management.
We have, with the evolution, if you like, of the Board Risk Management Committee into the Board Risk and Compliance Committee, and alongside with the establishment of the Group Risk and Compliance Department, together with the appointment of the Group Chief Risk and Compliance Officer, we have adopted the anti-bribery, anti-corruption procedures to make sure that we comply with the ABAC policy under Section 17A of the MACC Act. We have enhanced the speak-up channel to accommodate or to operationalize the whistle-blowing policy. And that's managed by an independent third party under the administration of the Group Chief Internal Audit. So you can see that the governance structure is pretty extensive. But what I'd like to also remind the team always is that we must not shackle ourselves so that people are too worried to do business. Business must go on.
Risk management, compliance management is meant to protect the organization against any possible misadventures or misdeeds. Now, in terms of people, organizationally, as I've said, I've always focused on developing the right culture. Now, the good news is Axiata has a strong foundation when it comes to core values, yeah, the uncompromising integrity and exceptional performance. What we have done, or what we need to do, is to imbue and embed the culture that we want to develop. Now, culture is a journey by itself. Of course, COVID-19 has changed some of these things. The ways of working will be different moving forward.
It's all about creating and building on and embedding the various characteristics, if you like, yeah, or aspects into the organization, whether it's being innovative, whether it's being, you know, the compliance culture, risk culture, yeah, as well as making sure that the ESG practices are also embedded into the culture and the organization. Now, the D&A, you've heard this before, modern, agile, and digital, that also has been recalibrated as part of the ways of working. It's about winning, but winning not compromising on the integrity as well as the values that we adhere to. Insofar as the initiatives, insofar as people are concerned, last year, or rather this year thus far, yeah, we have introduced many initiatives, amongst others, introducing flexible working arrangements. We have recalibrated our performance management system called Ignite.
The People Quality Framework has been elevated to ensure that the culture fit and leadership covers strategic accountability, agility, customer centricity. Now, that's very, very important, as we all know in this business. It's about customers and, again, emphasizing on the people-first value that we have. Fast Forward, now, I'm not sure if you're familiar with this, but to Fast Forward, it's our virtual university. We have introduced, by year-end, we would have introduced seven academies to curate learnings based on competencies and tracking career growth, yeah. So this is for the employees across the group, and this is done virtually. The idea here is to cultivate the digital and data savviness in the wider workforce, regardless of roles, position, and responsibility.
Of course, given COVID over the last, well, two years, nearly two years, we have introduced Axiata Cares, and that is simply to reflect the employer value proposition of our care for our employees for their total well-being, health, and safety, and also career as well as personal growth, yeah. This all jives into the initiative to try to develop the right culture across the organization. Insofar as the industry consolidation or structural changes are concerned, key focus area number nine, I don't have to go through all this. You've read about the announcement on the merger between Celcom and Digi. It's taken a bit of time, work in progress. You would have read that the regulator, MCMC, has acknowledged our submission. Now there's work in progress to work towards getting a decision from the regulator.
So barring unforeseen circumstances, we think that the decision will come in the first quarter of next year. ADA, Srinivas will talk about this. During the year, they've acquired Awake Asia to boost the digital e-commerce capabilities of ADA. So ADA has transformed, morphed into a complete door-to-door digital advertising from analytics, preparing the creative work and so on, and towards the e-commerce delivery part of the spectrum. And again, the Link Net Heads of Agreement that was signed on 30th of July, hopefully will close, sign the SPA before year-end. And of course, I've mentioned the acquisition 100% stake in Touch Mindscape for valuation of about MYR 1.7 billion. Again, Adlan will provide some insights into that particular acquisition.
Very, very briefly, just to round up the 10 focus area, the 10th key focus area in terms of portfolio optimization and value elimination, we have disposed 5% stake in XL Axiata to an Indonesian investor called Ferrymount Investments. That's a JV between Provident Capital and Tiga Investments to rather establish private equity funds that's involved in the digital ecosystem in Indonesia. We believe that they will bring a lot of value to the plans we have in Indonesia. Insofar as Robi is concerned, IPO was done on December 25th, if I'm not mistaken, last year, yeah, sorry, December 24th. The value there has increased significantly. Of course, it was listed at a par value of 10 BDT, and I think now it's hovering at about 40 BDT, yeah. Of course, the digital business is gained.
We are rather fortunate to have this collection of, I call, luminary investors, SoftBank Corp, Great Eastern, Sumitomo, Mitsui as well, yeah, so in the various parts of the organization, and the good news is the interest from investors are continuing. It's a good problem to have, actually, and lastly, so far as EDOTCO is concerned, this was completed in 2017, but that's part of the portfolio. If you like the value elimination that was done in 2017, you would have heard that INCJ is looking to exit their stake in EDOTCO. Unfortunately, there's a bit of challenge, I suppose, because of the situation in Myanmar. Business-wise, it has not affected the day-to-day operations of our business in Myanmar.
We continue to monitor the situation over there, but I guess it will pose a bit of a challenge to INCJ if they were to dispose of this particular stake in current market conditions. So that's the short presentation from me, just to open up the session. There'll be, again, Idham, Datuk Idham, who will present about Celcom, the ambidextrous organization focusing on convergence as well as enterprise. Dian, the President Director of XL, will talk about the challenges that XL is facing in light of the merger between Indosat and Tri, as well as the convergence proposition with the acquisition of Link Net. And of course, Boost Holdings, Sheyantha, the CEO, will talk about the plans that we have for Boost Holdings. And Srinivas will touch on the plans that ADA has in the coming years. So thank you again for joining us this afternoon.
really appreciate your attendance and your attention. I'm happy to take questions at the end of the session. I now pass back the session to Claire. Thank you.
Thanks, Claire. I was expecting lots of claps. Thank you, Dato'. It's difficult to follow that. I know this is the first time ADA is debuting in more detail in front of the analyst community. Today, I thought I'll have three sections. Who is ADA? Let's talk a little bit about some of our kind of key revenue drivers and the market landscape around us and our vision for the next three years. In a nutshell, COVID really accelerated us. I say this because what happened is enterprises became more digital, lots of digital transformation. They started demanding more services to, as they spend more on digital media, they put in more e-commerce solutions.
They also invest more in data and analytics. We see this across all companies, including Axiata Group companies. That's what's really enabled ADA. But having said that, ADA started in 2018 with that view. It's COVID that has probably accelerated us by two years in terms of where we have been. In the midst of the pandemic last year, we expanded our capabilities. In fact, SoftBank invested in us after the pandemic started. In fact, they met us after the pandemic started. They closed the deal during the pandemic completely virtually. I think it's to do with the bigger picture of what's going on essentially digitally at large, and it will continue to, of course. I mean, many of you would have seen the announcements that Facebook has made in terms of Meta and what the metaverse means.
Of course, we feel that the full digital transformation is right at probably 0.5% of where it will be over the next 10 years. That's really the undercurrents behind ADA. Next slide, please. In this, I'll talk about kind of our services, what we offer, our clients, our past performance, and a detailed list of our current services today that we offer many enterprises across the region. I'll also touch a little bit about our financials of how they have scaled both in terms of top line as well as bottom line. Next slide, please. In a nutshell, this slide gives you a view of who we are as a company. This kind of encompasses all our kind of key attributes. We are a data analytics and a marketing company.
We provide integrated digital analytics, marketing, and e-commerce solutions to various clients and big brands and enterprises in the region. The geographic footprint is quite visible here where we are today. We are in South and Southeast Asia, and we also have a business in South Korea where we handle some very large key clients like LG, Amorepacific there. Overall, we are 1,000 people across the company, and we continue to grow, and that's because our skills keep expanding, and there is quite a lot of demand for e-commerce, for data science, for digital media expertise across the 10 countries we are in. We are deeply local. We have local offices with deep local teams in each of the countries, in Indonesia, in Thailand, in Philippines, in Cambodia, in Vietnam, Bangladesh, etc.
We're very lucky to have an amazing set of shareholders that I think our competition would be envious of, Axiata Group, of course, with all the synergies that we can have with Axiata Group. We were very lucky to have SoftBank earlier in May. They entered as a minority shareholder with 23% stake, and SoftBank brings a lot of large ecosystem that we can leverage, and I have some more material on that, and Sumitomo entered ADA as a minority investor in 2018 and have continued to kind of be a strong supporter of ADA business across the markets. Next slide, please. This is a list of all our key clients and some of the top clients, not all the clients, some of the top clients across the region. We work with a lot of banking, financial services, and insurance companies.
You can see some of the top banks across most countries as our clients. This represents the biggest, I would say, revenue source for us in ADA. The next largest one is telcos and digital companies. We work with Axiata Group of companies, but we also work with other telcos like Globe and True across the region. Collectively, the Axiata Group of companies represent about 10% of our overall revenue today. We work with a lot of consumer goods companies like Unilever, Secretlab, LG, Nestlé, British American Tobacco. And within this group, the fast-moving consumer goods companies, the FMCGs, are a key growth area for us because they are shifting more and more and more of their sales across to e-commerce channels like Lazada, like Shopee. And we enable those marketplaces and their kind of digital store operations. So this is a growing business.
And this business was at the heart of our acquisitions that Dato' spoke about of ADA buying Awake Asia in the region. And we were essentially doing a capability acquisition to serve our clients. And a growing sector for us is retail and automotive as they, of course, also digitally transform themselves. Next slide, please. A little bit about our financial performance. Our top line has continued to grow from strength to strength. In the last three years prior to 2021, we grew at a CAGR of roughly 43% year-on-year. As I was saying, COVID has further accelerated this growth. This year, we will be in the vicinity of close to MYR 1 billion of gross revenue across ADA Group. And of course, that top-line growth has also benefited the bottom line. We were profitable from 2019 onwards.
In 2021, we hope to be in the vicinity of MYR 100 million of EBITDA performance this year too. Next slide, please. This is our list of kind of detailed list of our services, how we break it down. In a nutshell, we provide from left to right lots of actionable insights, data insights that we charge customers. This we provide on a subscription basis or on a per-use basis. We provide digital media and creative services. This is bulk of our services that we provide to most brands where we do their performance marketing on their Facebook, on Google, on programmatic. So essentially, we take clients' ad spends on these and we drive good performance out of it. Then this is provided as a retained service with long-term contracts of typically one to two years.
Marketing technology is where we implement and operate technology stacks for marketing domain inside our clients. E-commerce is where we actually enable their store operations on marketplaces like Lazada or Shopee or enable their own websites and actually run the websites for them. And customer engagement is where we provide solutions for clients in order to engage with their consumers. Initially, it was, of course, one-way communication like email, SMS. So for example, when somebody buys a product from a particular company, they would get a notification over SMS or an email. Of course, that's now transforming itself into two-way communication with WhatsApp where brands and enterprises can upsell and cross-sell their services via chatbots, etc. And that's something that we are proud that we enable in Southeast Asia.
We are Facebook's key WhatsApp partner as well to enable that for businesses to get onto WhatsApp and enable the services. Next slide, please. This is a little bit to give you a glimpse of some of the ecosystem that ADA has today with SoftBank. Essentially, there are three main layers to this. The first one is the data and AI solutions. SoftBank has an amazing set of data and AI solutions globally that they have invested in, Treasure Data, which is a great customer data platform, Cinarra, which helps telco data monetization, etc. I mean, through this partnership, we are able to bring this technology across into Southeast Asia and have the first-mover advantage on providing services around it. The next layer is, of course, the digital ecosystem that SoftBank has invested in across Southeast Asia like Grab, Tokopedia, LINE, and Naver in Korea.
We are able to leverage this ecosystem for the benefit of our clients. Thirdly, something that we are exploring as part of our next three-year roadmap is India. SoftBank, of course, has a large ecosystem there and how we can export our capabilities to new geographic footprint like India, definitely Taiwan, definitely Japan. That's part of kind of our growth plans beyond where we are today. Next slide, please. To touch a little bit about the market landscape, next slide. I wanted to talk through what is going on at the enterprises and the brands, what is going on in a typical chief marketing officer's head since COVID. If you asked, on the left-hand side of this slide, you will see if you ask any typical CMO or a marketer, what are your top three problems? It's typically digital customer experience.
It's drawing insights from big data. It's e-commerce. I need new routes to market. I need to enable more e-commerce. It's data organization and management, and that's at the heart of digital transformation of the full marketing and the sales funnel, and really, there are three tailwinds that are supporting this. One is, of course, even more so after the pandemic, we are all, as consumers, we are far more digital. We want to interact with our brands far more digitally. So every interaction is via Facebook or Google or the website or the app of the client. There is now easy availability of technology, especially with cloud, with SaaS models. There's more affordable tech available for marketeers to use, and the third one is lots of big data availability.
As enterprises get more consumers on board, they are able to use more data from the apps, from the websites that they collect, which is more easier to harness and then drive insights from. Essentially, these three are creating this perfect storm for digital transformation at this stage. And that's what is really creating that demand. I wanted to double-click on some of the maybe more near-term trends which we have seen and will continue to see in the next 12 months, which is in the next slide, please. So the first one is, of course, lots of bottom-of-funnel focus on e-commerce sales initiatives that clients are focused on. They are looking at how do they drive more value from their digital marketing spends on Facebook, on Google, etc. And that's at the heart of what ADA does as a performance marketing firm for these clients.
They're looking at, number two, activation of first-party data. First-party data is the data that they own of their consumers and hence installing customer data platforms to enable that. Number three, they require deep capabilities on new walled gardens. How do enterprises and brands leverage TikTok, LINE, other super apps like Grab in the region? And of course, continue to exploit what Facebook and Google have to offer in order to push their brand and their e-commerce sales. And that's something that we do for them. And the fourth one is next-generation messaging, what I spoke about earlier, going beyond one-way communication of email and SMS and really enabling two-way conversations between brands and consumers via chatbots, which is enabled by WhatsApp, Viber, LINE, and some of these channels where consumers are.
So these are the fundamental market trends that continue to shape our future over the next two to three years as we are planning it. So the next slide, please. I will just quickly summarize our overall positioning. So ADA is positioned today in the region as a company with deep digital execution breadth where we are able to really help the marketeers across all their problems of digital transformation. And we are quite deep with the clients. And that's what separates us from maybe more pure-play consultancies or maybe single-focused agencies like creative agencies or media agencies. And we separate ourselves and differentiate ourselves from more of the horizontal technology players, which you might see coming more from the Silicon Valley, etc., but actually deep client focus. We have 1,000 people across the 10 countries we are in.
And we are deeply penetrated into our enterprises and continue to serve them with more and more and more services. And hence, that's kind of what differentiates us in the region. There are similar companies to us like S4 Capital, which is another digital services provider, but much more so in more developed markets as opposed to Southeast Asia at this point of time. Five minutes. So let me just quickly talk about our overall vision for the next three years. Next slide, please. So in a nutshell, the vision is quite simple and clear for us. It is to be a sustainable and a profitable unicorn across APAC. And we want to be the largest digital services provider. And globally, we want to be among the top 20 global marketing firms. And as part of this, be the end-to-end service provider for enabling enterprises with data and digital maturity.
Today, we are in the countries which you see, which are marked as blue on this chart. And we are looking to expand into some very major markets leveraging the capabilities that we have built, especially India, Taiwan, and Japan. And that's on the back of the synergies from SoftBank that we can exploit when we enter those markets. And that's really part of kind of our growth story over the next few years. And the next slide, please. It will show you in terms of how we expect to grow into this one billion aspiration that we have. At the end of 2020, if you look at ADA's gross profit, it was about $38 million. And our overall valuation was $260 million at the end of 2020 from the SoftBank investment valuation round.
By 2022, we expect to grow the business two and a half times from where we were in 2020. 2021, if you saw the numbers, was a good stepping stone towards that. We'll continue to drive more organic growth. We have some planned M&A for capability acquisition, which we call Tuck and M&A, and definitely another value elimination round on the path towards the 1B. By 2024, with the geographic expansion, continued organic growth that we are able to build along with further value elimination, we expect to cross a one-billion valuation mark for ADA overall. Really aiming for a 4X growth in our total business size and also in terms of our valuation peg. That's pretty much on my end.
Thank you, Claire. Good afternoon, everybody.
It's good to be with you today to share a little bit about our journey at Boost and generally what we've been doing in the fintech space. Srini always complains that he usually goes after me, so something has happened this time around, and he's managed to turn the tables on me, so the title of the presentation is Path to Profitability. I think, as Srini alluded to in ADA as well, with all our digital businesses, including Boost, while we have the aspiration of building value, the value elimination goal to build a unicorn, we also are very cognizant of the need to put our businesses on a sustainable path, and that is really the focus of Boost, so before I start getting into the business itself, I thought I'll share a few insights on what we've been seeing in the markets.
Now, I realize that I'm talking to a room of investors here, and a lot of this may not be alien to you, but we've seen really post-pandemic, especially in the private markets, a very substantial or heightened interest in fintech businesses such as ours, fintech businesses that are able to show sustainable paths to growth, certain types of models, and we'll talk a little bit about those models that we are investing in our own businesses, and if you look at the chart on the right, I think this has been great for us operating in markets in Southeast Asia. I call it really the 2021 has been the year where we've seen the rise of the unicorn in Southeast Asia, and these numbers are only until September, so the number could be even higher.
As a fintech company that is based in Malaysia with an ambition to reach unicorn status and build a footprint regionally, primarily around Southeast Asia, I think this bodes very well for us. Now, introducing you to the business itself, I think, oops, yeah, a lot of you who are here in Malaysia may be quite familiar with the Boost brand. A lot of you may associate it with our e-wallet service, which is widely known here in Malaysia, gained mainstream adoption. But the key message I wanted you to take away here is that we've built a whole host of other fintech businesses alongside our e-wallet business over the last three to four years. One thing we did this year is we consolidated all those businesses under the Boost umbrella.
So we've evolved into a full spectrum, what I call a full spectrum fintech player here in Malaysia with a growing presence in adjacent markets like Indonesia, which are fast-growing for us. And if I just run through the individual businesses, I'll deep dive into those a little later. But just to introduce them, our consumer e-wallet business was branded Boost Life, which is really the original payment business that originated the Boost brand. We have close to 10 million customers in Malaysia on that payment platform. It has gained mainstream adoption in Malaysia. We are one of the top three payment service providers in the e-wallet space. And we were pioneers in bringing a lot of services to the consumer, including QR code-based scan and pay in this country. We've also carved out, which we've rebranded as Boost Biz, our merchant business.
If you think about it, that's the other side of the payment platform. And initially, we looked at merchants almost as an enabler to build a large catchment of consumers. But we realized very quickly that the merchant business is a business on its own with a substantial set of problems to solve, especially for small merchants. And we have amassed close to about 400,000 merchant touchpoints in Malaysia. And that gave us a very, very strong basis to build out a merchant business. Over the COVID period, this has obviously got a lot more heightened attention. The digitization of small businesses, taking small businesses online, has become a big policy agenda item in most markets as well. And I think Boost was well placed, given that a large part of our merchants are what we call tier three, tier four merchants, small merchants.
These could range from a hardware store to a corner store to an Nasi Kandar outlet here in Malaysia. That is a business where we started with really, again, a payment relationship where we were able to take a small business from enabling what were largely cash transactions, cashless. It has evolved into a whole host of other services, including giving them financing to grow their business, insurance services, and taking them online, and also a whole host of other services that we hope to launch in the near future. The credit business, again, this was originated under a brand called Aspirasi, which we have rebranded as Boost Credit under the consolidation exercise we did this year. Again, this business has been a pioneer in Malaysia, especially. The business is centered around giving small business loans, productive loans to small businesses and SMEs.
We've disbursed close to about MYR 500 million worth of loans in Malaysia, so it's a business that operates at scale. It's a complete digital lender, so the entire journey is end-to-end digital. And we use AI and machine learning-based scoring to do it, so it's really the alternative lending model in its purest sense. Now, this is also the business that will form one of the key building blocks for the digital banking license that we have applied for, and Boost is a leader to that. So this business, if and when we get the digital bank license, we'll fold into that venture, and it will form one of the key pillars or building blocks of that business. We've also been present in Indonesia, focused again primarily on the lending side.
It's a very close replica of what we do for merchant lending on the Boost Credit side, where we service small merchants. And we've been able to build a very, very large business, a very fast-growing business, I would say, in that market. And we've also extended that again to a wider set of merchant solutions across. So if you look at the different types of services, you may get a small merchant on board to provide them lending services, but then would provide a whole host of other services from order management, invoicing, and so forth, right? And the final business on the far right here is a business that originally didn't start as a fintech business, but very quickly morphed into one. It's really a cross-border payment business, originally set up again under a different brand called Apigate. We rebranded it as Boost Connect.
And it really provides cross-border payment services to content providers. And these could be the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime, giving them access to billing relationships in our markets through alternate payment means like direct carrier billing, wallets, and so forth. And that's also a business that has scaled quite nicely. So if you really think about the Boost that we have going forward, it's really a full spectrum fintech player. And this is actually the vision that we had when we started off. Payments was always a beachhead into building a wider set of services that we would layer on. And I think we have pretty much been able to stick to that script. Talk a little bit about the growth we've seen. So obviously, the last 18 months have been a very unusual set of 18 months. It has helped certain parts of our business.
It has hindered certain parts of our business, especially offline-related components of our business, naturally. Also, certain components of our loan business were affected as small businesses were under stress and had to shut down. However, I mean, I'm happy to share here, as you can see on the slide, that we've seen exceptional growth throughout the period. So this year, we are on track to double our business in terms of our revenue. So we are not just chasing throughput numbers, which is cross-transaction value, which is a measure of throughput on our platforms, but really, how do we monetize? How do we extract value from that? And that's also been one of the drivers that helps us to build a sustainable business. Moving on to the next slide. So I'll talk about the individual businesses now and give you a little bit of a synopsis on each.
Our payment, our e-wallet, our consumer business, Boost Life, like most e-wallet businesses, started off making large investments to capture a large base of customers. Originally, and most payments, a lot of e-wallets are still in this space, was contribution margin negative. So at a unit economics level, it was not making money. Now, what we've done over the last 18 months is to turn that business into a unit economics or contribution margin positive business, as you can see on this graph. And then we've been able to achieve that as of the end of last quarter, which is one of kind of the vectors or the levers that will help us in achieving the sustainable model we have. Another interesting thing to note is when we went into the pandemic, probably around 60%-65% of our transactions were really offline, QR-based, over-the-counter scan and pay transactions.
Now, about 70% of our transactions are online. And I think that also bodes well for us going forward because we see that's where the growth is. Our payment platform, Boost Connect, is a profitable business. It established run rate profitability this year. It's also a business that operates at scale. It does about MYR 1 billion of gross transaction value. And that's another business I think we are quite excited about. As we have a lot more content being distributed digitally, we see that business being, again, a strong vector for our growth. Moving on, I'll touch on the lending business now. The lending business is something that, as you can see from the graph, has had an amazing growth. These numbers are gross disbursement values, and this is in Malaysia. So we've grown on a run rate basis about 12X.
If you compare us where we were before the pandemic started, we've managed to keep the quality of our loan book intact. Our NPLs have been below 3%. From day one, the unit economics of this business was positive. So we make a contribution margin on average over this period of 22%. And it's really formed a very, very strong basis and a building block for us if we get the digital bank license to have a head start and have an anchor base to build on. We also recently got our credit portfolio rated. So a component of our loan portfolio will be carved out into a securitization asset. And we've got that rated by RAM. We've got an A1 rating. So as far as we know, I think we are the only digital lender in Southeast Asia to get an A1 rating.
Again, that's why. While we are quite confident about the quality of our portfolio, it's always good to get an external validation of the quality of that portfolio. So we are very, very, very happy about that. Indonesia, again, a very lending-focused model. We took a lot of what we did in Malaysia and started with lending there and expanding now into other merchant services. But as you can see, the growth has been even more exponential than what we've seen in Malaysia. So we've grown around 47X over that time period. We are actually on a run rate basis, projecting to do more than we do in Malaysia and Indonesia. The NPL experience has been better. It's been under 1%, and the contribution margins are also significantly better.
So this is, again, going to be one of Indonesia as a market is going to be a key focus area and a key component of our growth going forward. And given that we have established a very strong foothold into especially the small merchant sector, giving them financing, giving small businesses financing at a time where they really needed financing, we feel we can leverage on that affinity and extend into other services like merchant services, which we've just started doing inventory management, payroll billing, helping them digitize through partner networks and platforms. And we see that as a natural extension of what we are doing on the lending side in Indonesia. So if I just conclude a little bit by sharing, if you like, our focus areas or our key vectors of growth.
So you've got a snapshot of who we are as Boost, the businesses, the amazing growth we've seen, right? But in terms of where we are really doubling down in terms of our investment, in terms of our focus, in terms of where we see the opportunity, I think I've narrowed it down to four broad areas here on the slide. One big one is obviously digital banking. We've already sowed the seeds to build a successful business on the lending side. We saw the natural extension of that business being digital banking. The licensing framework that came out here in Malaysia was quite enabling for a fintech like us to think about transitioning into digital banking. It allowed for a foundation period, proportional regulation, a lot of elements of the regulation that would help us transition.
As digital banking opportunities arise in other markets, we would also look at that on a case-by-case basis. We remain quite hopeful of our application for the banking license. As Dato' Izzaddin Idri s mentioned, we would know the results probably quarter one next year. Consumer credit is a natural extension of what we've done on the merchant business side. Buy now, pay later, for those of you who've been following this space, has got a lot of attention in the media. We believe we have a right to play in this space. We've already launched it here in Malaysia. We believe we have a right to play in this space in a sustainable fashion. If you think about the value chain of consumer credit, we have assets right across that value chain. We have a very large engaged consumer base.
We have a very, very large engaged merchant base. We have credit underwriting capability. We have settlement collection capability, all scalable across a single digital platform. So we have the components really to really build a consumer BNPL-focused business in a sustainable manner. I think there are a lot of different models out there on this particular topic of BNPL. We believe that given that we own a large part of that value chain, we are in a position to do that in a very, very sustainable manner. And we feel there's a large value capture component there, again, for us. The merchant business, again, I touched on it. I think if you look at all the business verticals we have, I think one theme you will see across is a lot of our growth going forward is on the B2B side.
A lot of it centered around leveraging the base relationships that we have established, especially with small merchants. It's a business we know well. It's not a very crowded space. And it's a space that a lot of policymakers, a lot of governments are giving increased focus on, especially in the pandemic era. So I think both in Malaysia and in Indonesia, I think that's going to be a key vector of growth. And the final one is our regional presence. We are present in both Malaysia and Indonesia. We have opportunity to play deeper in both markets, especially in Indonesia. But we are always on the lookout for being able to enter other markets where, let's say, we believe we have a right to play. We believe that we have assets on the ground.
We believe that there is a market failure or a market structure failure that our business model can solve. So I think that's something that we are always on the lookout for. And that's also going to be, as we think about building a unicorn, building a sustainable unicorn, and establishing a footprint across the Southeast Asian region. I think that's something that is always in our strategic roadmap. So with that, I will stop and maybe hand it over back to Claire. And thank you very much for giving me the time to share a little bit about Boost.
Thank you, Claire. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome again to the Axiata Analyst Forum. I think 12 months ago, we met through Teams, so virtually. We thought that 12 months down the road, we could have met face-to-face. Unfortunately, things are still the same.
Maybe slight improvement, but yeah, I mean, happy to meet all of you again, right? So I've been 12 months down the road, I mean, with this new job at EDOTCO. And I think one of the key questions that I always get is from investors, "Hey, when are you guys going for your listing?" Yeah. And that's a popular question that we get when we talk to investors, potential investors, so on and so forth.
Maybe in today's presentation, instead of answering that question, which we think that the listing question should be with the shareholders, probably with Axiata and the shareholders, I think maybe I can give a little bit of perspective on what we are doing at EDOTCO to gear up, to prepare ourselves, right, to review our platform, to focus a lot more on our growth of our portfolio, right, so that when the time comes, we are in the best position and we are ready to take on that future move when it's decided. Can we move on to the next slide, please? So I will cover four topics today, right, talking a little bit about our Pan-Asia footprint, where we see in our attractive markets where the area that we think that has growth potential.
We will also share a little bit in terms of the organic as well as our growth potential on the inorganic part as well. We'll talk a little bit about the deal that we recently closed. Third, I think we'll talk about what does it mean, right, with the evolution of technology, where does our core like EDOTCO play, right? What are the new areas and new synergies that we see? Last but not least, I think we also want to talk about the ESG principle, which is core to our foundation in terms of moving forward towards the global top five, right? So if we can move on to the next slide. So I think today, I think we are present in eight countries. If you look in six of these markets, five of the eight markets that we are in, we are typically market leaders in those markets.
We are truly number one regional tower player, predominantly operating in Asia and South Asia, and we manage and operate close to about 42,000 towers today, right? And I think based on our last count, we are number seven global tower company in the world, right? And of course, I mean, we do partners. We do have our partners across all our footprints today, right? In Bangladesh, we have BRAC, Smart in Cambodia, Sojitz in Myanmar, and ISOC in the Philippines, right? And I think not just the eight countries that we have, we also have aspirations to grow and move into new countries, especially in the Southeast Asia region. You know that we are still not in Indonesia, Thailand, and potentially Vietnam, so those are probably three markets that we are interested in.
However, I think depending on opportunity that might arise in those countries. I mean, we are looking at it, and if there are opportunities, I think something that we would definitely consider. Yeah, so if we can move on to the next slide. So, I think the last few years, I think we have been growing. I think we've taken a pause a little bit, I think, last year because of the COVID situation. I think predominantly because I think there were a little bit of pullback from the MNO in terms of CapEx expansion, and secondly as well, I think we also saw that towards the end of last year, I think there was a lot of second-tier MNO, second-tier telco that did not survive the pandemic. Yeah, hence, there were a number that we saw in Pakistan, Cambodia, or even Malaysia that went out of business, right?
Growth was a little bit stunted in 2020. In 2021, we took the full impact of the slowing down or the reduction in the tier two MNO revenue. However, having said that, we have seen that 2021 has been our strongest growth, right, in terms of build-to-suit and co-location in most of our markets. Predominantly, we see in Bangladesh, in Cambodia, or even Malaysia is picking up, yeah, towards the end of the year. You see that not just from a revenue perspective, I mean, even though it's a single-digit growth as of September. However, if we were to take into account the fact that we lost the tier two revenue numbers, I think that growth would have been higher, right, on a like-for-like basis. EBITDA, we managed to grow our EBITDA this year, I think, by about 5%. PATAMI by 20% PATAMI growth in 2021.
But what's more important, not just from a tower tenancy, from a tower build-to-suit perspective, we also managed to grow our co-location. We've also managed to secure a significant number of managed sites, predominantly in Malaysia and Bangladesh this year, as well as growing our overall tenancies. So we saw that in 2021, even though slightly slower growth in 2020, things are actually picking up in 2021. And we believe with the momentum that the foundation that we have built in 2021, it will actually draw us to a stronger performance going into 2022. Yeah. I mean, you probably would understand that in an infrastructure business, it takes time to probably ramp up in terms of building the infrastructure. And the result will probably come subsequently. If we go next slide, please. So we saw COVID have actually managed to drive or accelerate, yeah, digitization and the need for bandwidth.
That's why we saw today, I mean, in 2021, there is a lot of demand coming not only from MNO to cater for the under-connected sites to improve speed, given that the increase in data usage that we see in most of our markets that we operate in. Typically, I think we saw that because of COVID, data traffic actually increased on average between 30%-60% in all the eight markets that we are operating in. Not just MNO that's driving the growth of coverage or even capacity sites. We also see that the regulators are also driving for better coverage, as we've seen in most of the countries, be it in Malaysia, be it in Bangladesh, or even Pakistan. We see that regulators are actually pushing the MNOs to increase their coverage, especially in the rural areas. Yeah. 5G gives us a new growth opportunity.
As you know, 5G, with the evolution of technology, is a different game altogether for the MNO. What does it mean? With 5G, also, it means that there will be more infra that's probably required depending on the spectrum that is being used. MNO probably need a lot more infra, even though I think the type of infra that's required is probably a lot between 18 to 24 to 30 meters, less of the higher GBTs that we see previously, but also a lot of street furniture, right? Second is power. In 5G, it doubles the consumption. It's two times more power in 5G. In this case, I think you would see that given that we are handling power for most of the MNO that we are addressing today, that gives us a lot more opportunity to drive our business further, especially in this area.
Power is going to be a key component given the fact that moving into 5G is all about real-time, is all about uptime, and managing power in a more efficient manner is going to be key in terms of delivering better quality services. Yeah. So next. So not just from an organic standpoint, we are also looking at growing aggressively in organic. Yeah. So we are always on the lookout for opportunities in the footprint that we are present with to consolidate the industry or even in new markets, yeah, that we think is attractive, especially predominantly in the Southeast Asia region, right? And I think I want to talk a little bit about the recent deal that we have managed to close, the acquisition of 100% of Touch Mindscape. That's for 100% of Touch Mindscape for MYR 1.7 billion, right?
So maybe let's focus a little bit. What's the rationale of us doing this deal, right? I mean, I think this is one of the bigger SBCs, that's opportunity that's present today in Malaysia. I mean, if you look at the quality with this acquisition, we will grow our total market, our market share in Malaysia from 21%-25%. Not only that, I think these towers come with a very attractive co-location with long-term contracts from key MNOs in the country today. And with a co-location of an average of 2.6 times, it will definitely complement the existing contracts that we have with the MNOs. Not only that, I think the assets also come with a strong regional footprint. Today, we are not able to build in places like Pahang, Melaka, Putrajaya, as well as Negeri Sembilan.
However, with this portfolio, it definitely gives us the concession in Pahang and in Melaka and also Putrajaya. Yeah. So this will definitely complement what we already have today, right? On top of that, not only that, it also comes with extensive fiber in the East Coast , as well as connecting to Kuala Lumpur, the Genting Sempah and Kuala Lumpur, right? And also around Putrajaya. This actually gives us the ability to play, especially when it comes to 5G, yeah, to enhance our connectivity, especially when it comes to 5G. If you look at the overall deal, I think this deal is creative from an EBIT perspective from year two onwards. And I think if you look at the overall deal as well, I think it is at a low teens multiple. It's comparable to some of the major deals that we see in Malaysia or in the region, right?
We have actually benchmarked this deal across. And I think looking at what the assets that we got as part of this acquisition, I think we are pretty confident that we are able to create value coming and integrating this asset and create synergy with our existing portfolio. If we can move on to the next slide, please. So 5G, with the evolution in technology, I think the role of a tower company will also evolve, right? I mean, typically, we are involved in a passive tower power and passive infrastructure. But with the evolution of technology, I think there are new areas that we can play in the active infrastructure, be it in fiber or even in antenna as a service, site as a service, or even network as a service, right?
New products like edge computing, small cells, private network are some of the new areas that we see that TowerCo can play. We've seen in markets like in Europe and all that, companies like tower companies like Cellnex and all that have actually started going into this area. This will actually give us new opportunity to play with all this new technology that's actually emerging. Having said all that, right, to move to all this, we also need to ensure that we are able to reskill and upskill our people, moving from more of the passive traditional services more to the active and evolve into the new technology and more sophisticated and complex solution that we need to play in this part, right? Not only that, I think we are also continuously challenging ourselves to improve on operational excellence.
Using technology to improve our site profitability and even monitoring our tower situation, right, using drones, for example, to measure our tower loadings and all that, right, and introduce a lot more software automation and digitization probably to move into a lot more zero-touch operation moving forward, right? All this, we hope, can introduce a lot of efficiency, productivity, as well as reduce our cost. Having a lower cost to serve is quite critical for us moving forward to be able to compete with this industry that's getting a lot more competitive as we speak, given the fact that now a lot of PE firms or whatever companies from Europe or the U.S. are coming to this part of the world looking for new opportunities.
Having said all that, I think we still believe that there are a lot of growth opportunities coming in this space, especially in the Asia and South Asia region. If we can move on to the next slide, please. ESG is one of our key pillars in our strategy house as we move into the global top five. Yeah. We have been investing a lot on the E part, on the environment part. I think by the end of this year, we would deliver 63% of carbon emission, yeah, by 2020, by the end of this year from a baseline of 2013. I think we aspire to support Axiata to deliver their net zero by 2050. And for us ourselves, we set a target by 2030, we will be a carbon neutral company.
We have invested a lot in solar solutions, big for solar solutions or innovative structures, right, in terms of bamboo and all that, that will contribute less in terms of carbon emissions. Yeah. So we'll put a lot more work in this and aspire to deliver that carbon neutrality on our part by 2030. Not only on the environment part, we are also playing an active role in terms of the social as well as the governance part. I would like to touch a little bit on this governance. I think we've started this for the last 18 months, 18-24 months on strengthening our governance structure. Today, I think we have put a structure in place, policies and procedures to make sure that we have the highest integrity standards and best practices that are implemented across our footprint, right?
Not only that, I think we also have a ABAC policy implementation. And this ABAC policy implementation cuts across to all stakeholders, be it from the vendor, even employees, and even our customers, right? All this is to strengthen this governance process, is important for us as we move forward towards potential monetization as we go in the next one to two years, right? So if I can talk a little bit about this, if we can move on to the next slide on some of the things that we've done in terms of enhancing the governance structure, we have looked at the relevant board composition committees and reviewed for diversity, as well as looking at training programs for boards. At the same time, we are also embracing and aligned with Axiata on the Axiata Integrity Program.
The culture of integrity, uncompromising integrity, is something that is widely embraced across the organization. It's something that we are communicating widely across. And I think the awareness level across the organization today is at an all-time high, right? I mean, we have also started the implementation of COC on employees, suppliers, so on and so forth, right? A third part as well, given on data privacy that's coming into stream, we are also looking at our data hygiene, strengthening our data governance to make sure that we are adhering to this data privacy and we are protected in terms of critical data to make sure that it's all protected within that strong governance, right? Last but not least, not only on this, we have also established a setup of three lines of defense from management to our risk compliance side to our internal audit.
We have actually managed to secure an ISO 45001 and OHS certification in all the NTCs, pending, I think, only in Pakistan and KH, right, in Cambodia. So I think we are investing big in the ESG part. It's one of our core components. It's not just about driving profitability or meeting stakeholders' expectations, but also playing our part on the ESG, on the environment, so on and so forth, right? So if I may conclude, move on to the next slide. If I may conclude, I think as we go, we continue to gear up ourselves to prepare ourselves for that potential eventuality, right, of potential monetization in times to come. We see that I think there are a lot of growth opportunities coming from the underconnected in most of the geographies that we have most of our footprint.
We see that COVID has helped speed up those, accelerate those. The development of 5G will give us more opportunity for growth in new areas. And I think we believe that our ability to move and offer new product solutions as the technology involved will give us new areas, our revenue stream as we move forward. And ESG principles is actually one of our core foundations in our aspiration to become the top five. We also would like to share some of the key winnings or trophies that we have actually won on the Frost & Sullivan Award or even on the Sustainability Award that we won in Malaysia recently. And I think we have also won the HRD Asia Award for Employer of the Year as well in Asia, right? So I think that's all I have. Thank you. Back to you, Claire.
Hello. Welcome back.
So we're now to our first Q&A session. During this session, as usual, you may drop your questions into the chat box or you can raise your hands via the icon to ask your questions verbally. Don't forget to unmute your mic and turn on your video when you're asking the questions. We will be joined by Dato' Izzadin, I have on my left, as well as Vivek Sood, Group CFO, on the extreme left of the stage. On screen, we have Srini, we have Sheyantha, Adlan, as well as Dr. Hans, Axiata EVP and CEO of Telecoms Business. So I'll be moderating this Q&A session. Dato' will call upon the respective CXOs to answer the relevant questions. I do see two hands raised up, but I think we'll need to wait a little bit more because Manulife, one of our investors, has sent in pre-event questions.
She is ahead of the queue, Sheyantha. We will take the 11 questions she has first, and then we will move on to Ranjan and Piyush, yeah? Let's start with the 11 questions from Manulife. Okay. The first question that came through from Manulife is, what is Axiata's approach to collecting and using customer data for secondary purposes?
Thank you for the questions, first of all. Pretty extensive set of questions. Insofar as the Axiata privacy policy is concerned, we have adopted the principle of trust, TRUST. That stands for Transparent, Rights, Use, Security, and Transfer. Now, that is the foundation, if you like, that guides all our activities, processes, and practices, and we only use personal data for specific and stated purposes, and we only retain it for as long as we need it.
So there is no abuse, if you like, of the data that we collect. Yeah?
Thank you, Dato'. So let's move on to the second question from Manulife. The question is, how does Axiata balance the use of customer personal data for revenue opportunities with legal risk and maintaining customer trust?
Thanks again for the question. Now, our policy, our Axiata privacy policy encapsulates the legal and regulatory requirements while preserving customer privacy and business goals. Now, of course, this transcends across all the businesses that we run. And the general principle is, if there is a particular legal or regulatory requirement that's lower than the standard that we adopt at Axiata Group, that of course will adopt the Axiata standard. So the higher standard, if you like. And of course, we also employ technologies to ensure the anonymization of data to minimize legal risks while supporting revenue opportunities.
So this is, if you like, the approach that any organization uses in terms of data analysis, data analytics.
Thank you, Dato'. Let's move on to the third question from Manulife. The third question is, how does Axiata respond to requests for customer information from governments or law enforcement?
Sure. Now, it's a relevant question. What we do is we disclose to the regulatory bodies, law enforcement agencies, and any government authorities insofar as compliance with requirements under the relevant law or towards the detection or prevention of crime and fraud. But the key thing is how we go about doing it. We verify the source of the request. We make sure that it's relevant and addresses the concerns. We identify the concerns, and then we respond accordingly.
We go the extra mile to make sure that the questions or the requirements are genuine, relevant, and then respond accordingly.
Thank you, Dato'. Let's move on quickly to the fourth question from Manulife. What efforts does Axiata take to identify and address vulnerabilities and threats, as well as prevent data security breaches?
What we do is we continuously assess the vulnerability, all these activities that happen against internal and public-facing systems, and we closely track remediations that need to be done by the system owners. Of course, in the event of any cybersecurity breaches, we have established cybersecurity incident response procedures and playbooks with very clear roles and responsibilities. This has been developed and updated.
And suffice to say that the team is always in touch with practitioners internally within the country, the relevant country, and of course, across the other telco operators so that we are always kept abreast of best practices. Yeah?
Okay. Moving on. Question number five. What is Axiata's strategy to optimize energy use and protect against power grid disruptions?
Now, we have formed a Chief Technology Officer Council, a council amongst all the CTOs across the footprint. And amongst others, what they do is they monitor, we monitor and drive efficient use of energy within our network. Of course, at the same time, we always seek out more efficient technologies that can be adopted. Now, in our footprint, of course, the grid by itself poses challenges. There's always grid disruption. It's not necessarily the best, if you like, backbone in terms of power supply.
There are alternative fuel sources that we use as backup, especially in remote areas where risk of disruption is very evident. Yeah? Now, of course, the direction moving forward is to try to convert all these alternative fuel sources to renewables as it aligns to our strategy to reduce CO2 emissions from our operations.
Thank you, Dato'. Moving on to question number six, which is on competitive behavior and open internet. How successful is Axiata in complying with applicable regulations related to anti-competitive behavior?
Now, we've been complying to all the rules around anti-competitive behavior. There was an incident a couple of years back, sometime back actually, involving certain countries, I won't mention which one, involving the SMS cartel case. And in the case of Bangladesh, we have been identified, if you like, EDOTCO rather, has been considered, not quite officially just yet, that it has significant market power.
We know that competition authorities will now pay more attention on future potential anti-competitive behavior. Now, the peculiarity with Bangladesh, if I can elaborate, is that the authorities use the denominator of the towers in the market as those excluding the towers owned by telco operators. So if you like, the denominator is a low number. Now, on that basis, of course, EDOTCO Bangladesh has a high percentage. I can't remember the number now, Adlan. Is it 80-plus%? Yeah? 92%, Dato'. 92%. There you go. But there are towers that are owned by Grameenphone, Banglalink, and so on. And that's not under the denominator. So we've been engaging with BTRC, the regulator, to make sure that the analysis is done, if you like, in the right manner.
Okay. Thank you. Question number seven.
Again, on competitive behavior and open internet, does Axiata prioritize download speed of commercially associated content over non-associated content?
Yeah. What we do is we strive to provide the best experience to all our customers. We don't prioritize download speed of any content over the other affiliated or non-affiliated. Yeah? Because I think that's the commitment, if you like. It's part of the rules of providing a service to the customers. Yeah? So we don't prioritize the download speed of any content over the other.
Okay, good. Question number eight. How does Axiata balance risk and opportunities associated with net neutrality, paid peering, zero rating, and related practices?
Now, none of the markets today that we operate in have implemented net neutrality rules. Peering is not regulated per se.
Generally, all our OpCos are allowed to determine zero rating products as long as they do not breach general competition rules.
Okay. Moving on to question number nine, please. So on product end of life management, how is the company improving materials efficiency and reducing waste, including through recycling?
Okay. Very relevant question and very pertinent. Now, some of our OpCos have already programs in place for some time now. For example, EDOTCO Green Framework. It provides very clear guidelines on site waste management initiatives, and these outlines which materials should be recycled, recovered, refurbished, or reused. Dialog, for example, launched its waste management program in 2008. Now, that's some time back, yeah, to recycle all forms of mobile waste generated by customers around the country. And this is coupled with creating awareness of the importance of proper management of e-waste.
In fact, this particular program has been endorsed by the Central Environmental Authority of Sri Lanka, and last year, this program was expanded to collect a wider variety of e-waste. But just on that note, I'm pleased to let you know that the Group CEO's office is completely paperless from 1st January this year, so it's all electronic. We practice it diligently. Yes.
Okay. Moving on. Question number ten. How does Axiata prevent and respond to service interruptions, and how effectively does it minimize the duration of interruptions and prevent future issues?
Of course, this is the heart of our business, so needless to say, the IT and network systems are monitored 24/7. We don't spare resources and the need to create redundancies to make sure that we minimize outages.
Critical systems are designed in the best available configuration backed by the appropriate disaster recovery systems so that we have the ability to recover services based on predetermined service restoration time windows. And of course, this is generally prescribed by the relevant authorities. And of course, we try to make sure that this doesn't happen. I mean, it's one of those things where you have to invest in redundancies and at the same time hope that you don't have to trigger these things.
Excellent. So last question here from the pre-event questions from Manulife. What is the level of capital investment Axiata has made in improving the reliability and quality of service network?
As with all other markets, needless to say, because of the pandemic, data traffic has doubled and also shifted towards residential areas.
In Malaysia, for example, the average consumption of data is 24.9 gig per customer per month. That's gone up, as of September this year, that's gone up by about 30% year on year. Now, despite this, we have managed to maintain the network quality of service and have also kept CapEx, of course, excluding the additional MYR 400 million we announced during the third quarter results that's been allocated to XL Axiata for its transformation program. So the guidance that we've given was of about MYR 6.5 billion. That has remained unchanged. Now, of course, this is largely attributable to the efforts of the Collective Brain for network and IT, which has delivered CapEx savings of MYR 815 million via procurement efficiency and network design optimization.
Okay, thank you. So that wraps up the 11 questions that were sent in before the event. So we'll move on to the verbal questions.
We know that there are three on the line. So perhaps we'll start off with Ranjan from JPMorgan. Please unmute your mic and ask your question, Ranjan.
Hi, Ranjan.
Hi, good afternoon, and thank you so much for this event. I have two questions. Maybe I can take them one by one. Firstly, on EDOTCO, I believe the deal value is more than $400 million, and you get an additional 900-something towers. So the acquisition price of more than $400,000 per tower is probably the highest I've come across. What justifies this kind of valuation for these towers?
Now, Adlan has touched a bit on that, glossed over some of the aspects of the business. It's not just towers. They have fiber, they have landing rights, and so on. Perhaps, Adlan, you can elaborate? Yeah.
Ranjan, I think it's not just a straight comparison taking the EV per tower, right? Because it's not an asset acquisition. It's a company acquisition, right? And what's included in the company is, of course, today is 9/23, but at the point of closing, I think potentially they will deliver 1,000 towers, right? And essentially, what comes with the deal is a few things, right? One is the ability to build, right? Concession to build in some of the states that I mentioned earlier, right? Pahang, Melaka, Putrajaya, right? Which we were not able to do so in the past. This is what we call the red state before. But with this acquisition, we are able to do so. And in some of the states today, some of these states, we are exclusive in terms of building this, right? That's one.
Second is they have an exclusive fiber, quite extensive fiber as well on the East Coast that's connecting to Kuala Lumpur as well, right? And also some areas in Putrajaya, right? So this fiber in some are actually backed with certain customer contracts, long-term customer contracts with this. And I think in some of these areas, I think they are the only fiber provider that's probably available, right? So it's not just tower. It comes with the ability to build also in terms of concession, in terms of fiber assets that we have, right? Thirdly, I think if you look at the quality of assets that come with this, right? I mean, on average, it's a 2.6 times co-location. I think typically, if you look at the remaining contract life, it's between 10-15 years, right? I mean, that's still remaining there.
So there are cash flows that are guaranteed, right? With a high co-location cash flow guaranteed over a long-term period. Last but not least, I think that we have reviewed a bit. We've done the diligence. We've looked at the cost structure. We've looked at the CapEx numbers and all that. We believe that there's a lot of synergy that we can capitalize with our existing portfolio that we have. And even that, I mean, some of the synergies that we see, we have not even included in the valuation, right? So if I look at the 1.7 billion versus what we are getting and the ability to secure long-term contracts, plus the ability to build, I think we think that's a fair deal for us, right?
And if you look at the multiples as well, low teens is probably comparable to a company acquisition, infrastructure acquisition, company acquisition in Malaysia or around the region, right?
So, Ranjan, to echo. So the bit about the valuation, it's relative. And what we are looking at is actually what can we do with the efficiencies we can together with the existing business. Quite clearly, as a standalone business, they could only do so much. But we believe that with the capabilities, resources, and know-how of EDOTCO in Malaysia, we could certainly extract more value from it. And as Adlan said, it's the co-location, the quality of the asset that's also important in terms of determining the valuation. Yeah? Ranjan?
Yeah, okay, understood. Thank you for that. But so if I look at, if I include the fiber footprint, right?
The financials I got for the company, and I might be wrong here. But as of 2019, the book value or the asset value for this company was $50 million. I'm not sure if that has changed meaningfully. So you're spending about $400 million for a company with a book value of $50 million. Is that a right understanding?
Yeah, from a net book value, it's gone up slightly to your 2019 figures, Ranjan, right? But yeah, it's around there, right? So they've probably added new sites, invested money within 2020 and 2021. Yeah, but you're not far off from there. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you so much. And my last question is for Boost. You shared that the NPL ratio is less than 3%, which is quite commendable. But can I just understand how are you going about generating the credit scores for the lending products? Thank you.
Sure. Thank you for that question, Ranjan. So we have a couple of baseline data points, right? So a lot of the businesses that we lend to are already on our platforms. So we have a lot of transaction data that forms a lot of the bedrock of what we use for scoring. We overlay that also with the bureau data that we get in Malaysia, especially. Even among small businesses, there's a fair coverage of bureau data. And then there's a lot of other data, which includes behavioral data, location data, and other data that we overlay on top of that. But fundamentally, it starts with transaction. We need to have a transactional relationship. Either us or one of our partners needs to have a transactional relationship with one of the businesses that we lend to.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Ranjan.
Thank you. Let's move on.
The next one in line is Piyush from HSBC. Please unmute your mic and ask your question, please.
Hi, good afternoon. Can you hear me?
Yes, Piyush. Loud and clear.
Yeah. Thanks a lot for the presentation. A few questions. Firstly, on EDOTCO, you mentioned about your aspirations to potentially expand regionally in markets like Indo, Thailand, Vietnam. Is there a particular preference on organic versus inorganic, and why? Secondly, what's on ADA? In your slide six of the presentation, you have given some pillars, five pillars. Is there a way to get some kind of broad revenue contribution on those five pillars or streams of businesses? Thirdly, for the boost team, you have in the lending business, 22% contribution margin in Malaysia while 54% in Indonesia. So just want to understand what is driving such a big difference in these markets? What are some of the drivers with it?
Thank you. Adlan, organic versus inorganic. I think you'll take either, right? It's just a question of how rapid you can do every one year organically. Correct, Adlan.
So I think, Piyush, our strategy is two-prong, right? We'll do organic as well as inorganic. And I think for us, we need to get to scale, right? I mean, in the countries, especially new countries that we go in, we need to get scale, right? Because once you get scale, your cash flow, you're able to self-sustain, right? So typically, in a new country, ideally, we will try and go for inorganic to build the scale. But at the same time, we will also focus on our organic build-up, right? However, in the countries that we are already present, the key for us is to consolidate the industry.
For example, in Malaysia, right, the only reason why I think acquisition or inorganic is critical is because you see too many players, right? There's 200-plus NFP players in the country, right? So being a market leader in some of these, consolidation is something that we want to drive. And we also see that there are values coming from this acquisition. And typically, they are quite accretive in nature, right? So I think to answer your question, we'll do both. But in new countries, typically, it's prob ably a bit more critical for us to go for inorganic, given the need to grow scale as quickly as possible.
Thanks, Adlan. Piyush, it's always a challenge. If you start in a new country, for example, Thailand, if you start with an organic, you need to get a track record.
You need to get the scale of the operations, and you're going to have to invest X amount of money, yeah? But the inorganic will provide the boost or the base, if you like, for that local business to grow faster. So it's opportunistic at the same time. I mean, in Philippines, for example, PLDT has put up its towers, 6,000 towers for sale. So we're in that process, and hopefully, we win. And in a market like Philippines, it's very, very attractive given its growth and potential density and so on and so forth, yeah? Srini, the five pillars, broad revenue contribution from these five pillars?
So within the five pillars, there are basically for us three main areas where we hunt as a pack. And it's more easier to actually separate that out.
The first one would be more in terms of our digital marketing and the creative business. That roughly contributes about 40% of the overall revenue today. The second one, which is more an emerging one, and that was largely led through the acquisition of Awake Asia, that today will be closer to 10%, but will be a substantial portion going forward, just largely because of the demand of e-commerce solutions overall, and then remaining 50% is all our customer engagement solutions based on SMS, on WhatsApp, and some of these bots, etc., around it. So roughly, it's 40%, 10%, 50% today, but look, going forward, it's going to shape quite differently. It's more likely going to be one-third, one-third, one-third,
and Sheyantha, your diverging contribution margins in Malaysia and Indonesia, what's driving the big difference? Sure. I think there are three real sources for that difference.
I think one is the net interest margins themselves. So if you think about Indonesia, the average yield on the portfolio is north of 20%. So it's around 20%-24%. If you think about Malaysia, it's around 15%, and our cost of funds are broadly the same. So there's a net interest margin difference. And that's driven largely by the market dynamics, where the yield structures, the interest rate structures in Indonesia are about 10 basis points higher than what you have in Malaysia. The second one is the NPL experience, as I mentioned. And Indonesia is about one-third the NPL experience that we have in Malaysia. And I think the third factor is the model we use in Indonesia. It's very much an ecosystem-driven approach. So we onboard.
We really do supply chain financing, short-term supply chain financing loans there, which means that once we onboard a business as part of an ecosystem, so let's say a distributor and a supplier network, the marginal cost of acquiring the additional customer for a loan is almost zero. So the cost of acquisition of a customer in Indonesia is also quite different from Malaysia, where we operate a hybrid set of products.
Very good. Is that okay, Piyush?
Yeah. Thanks a lot. Can I understand, in Indonesia, who are your key competitors in this segment, in the supply chain financing?
So I think a lot of the licensed peer-to-peer companies play in this segment. They play at a slightly higher bracket of customers. They lend to slightly larger, if you like, larger operators or large SMEs, right? So there are a few companies that lend to our segment.
But by and large, it's the peer-to-peer companies that operate in this space. There are also a couple of multi-finance companies that operate. But what we find is most of them channel their funding through Fintech bridges. So it's kind of an indirect source of competition.
Great. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, everyone.
Thanks, Piyush.
Thank you. So moving on, we have questions coming through from Foong, CIMB. Please unmute your mic and ask your questions.
Afternoon, Foong.
Hi, good afternoon.
You're very faint.
Oh, okay. Let me just try and adjust my settings. Probably my mic settings. There's some background noise. Okay. Am I across clearer now?
Yeah, but there's some background noise, but we'll try and manage.
Okay. I think there's some construction noise around my area. Okay. Thank you so much for this annual investor day. Three questions from me for each one of the speakers.
So first question for Srini on ADA. I just want to understand a little bit more about the nature of the business. Are there many companies with similar capabilities, such as ADA, competing for the jobs in the region? And do clients generally give jobs to various companies, campaign by campaign, or do clients tend to be quite focused in terms of who they give the projects to and are often repeat customers? And you mentioned earlier on that we were able to get some big clients in South Korea, which I suppose is one of the most tech-savvy markets in the world. Can you briefly just highlight how we were able to achieve that? And also, do we leverage and mine the consumer data from the Axiata OpCos? And is that a key advantage for ADA? So that's question number one.
And then second question for Sheyantha for Boost, with regards to the digital banking license, if you guys win it, I hope you guys will win it. How do you see the size of the Malaysian loan market being augmented by digital banks? And what market share of this will digital banks be able to capture, say, in five years' time? And then my third question for Adlan for EDOTCO. I just wanted to clarify for the acquisition of Touch Mindscape. You mentioned that it will be accretive PAT-wise from year two onwards. Does that take into account the funding costs and also the cost synergies that you highlighted earlier? And probably a bit more top-down with regards to the whole overall industry. Do you see more SBC acquisitions for EDOTCO in Malaysia or maybe possible consolidation of the tower industry in Malaysia where EDOTCO could play a leading role?
Yes, those are my questions. Thank you. Srini, this is an opportunity to showcase ADA. You would say, "No, there are no other companies with similar capabilities," right? Don't blush, Srini. We'll offer you some claps at the end. Yeah, yeah. Just be honest. That's okay.
Thank you, Adlan. Thank you for the question. So I think the nature of the contracts are very much long-term, one to two-year type of retainer contracts. Clients don't typically separate their campaigns and give one campaign to one agency, another campaign to another. They call for a pitch, and it's typically a one to two-year investment, both from our side as well as on the client's side, because you have to deeply understand their strategy. You have to design around their business outcomes, and you are operating pretty much late nights, weekends around the client campaigns.
And that's not something that you can do if they were constantly switching suppliers. So it's a deeply strategic relationship when they form one. In terms of why we were able to win business across the markets, and of course, definitely even in Korea, for the primary reason that we have deep skill set around two main domains. One is performance marketing. We have deep expertise in how do we leverage technology, Facebook, Google, etc., to drive performance marketing. And we are generally well recognized in the industry for that. And we usually also win lots of awards for it. The second area is we deeply mine data assets in order to actually get consumer insights. We, of course, something we are very conscious of is never to use PII or personally identifiable information as part of it.
So one of your questions was, "Do we mine Axiata telco data?" We do, but not at an individual level, more at an aggregate level in order to help a particular brand to decide how they should be doing advertising. So those are the two main areas kind of for our essential differentiation too.
Sheyantha, how do you see the size of the Malaysian market in five years' time, wasn't it, that you asked, Foong?
Yes, yeah.
If we were to win the license.
Thank you for that question, and thank you for the wishes as well. I think if you think about digital banking, kind of the new digital banks capturing markets, I think it's really about growing the market, right? So if you think about the mandate that has been given to anyone applying for the digital banking license, it's really to serve underserved segments of the market.
By definition, what banks are not serving today, right? So it's really about how big that underserved segment out there is. Now, I think a lot of focus would be on the small business side. There is both an underserved segment on the consumer side as well as the small business side. If you look at small businesses, we think there are close to almost, I mean, registered businesses close to about a million in Malaysia. It could be more than about if you take the unregistered sector, it could go up to about one and a half million, perhaps even two. So in terms of number of accounts, we think potentially we are talking about, at full scope, probably over a million accounts that are underserved.
If you think about it as a potential in terms of loan disbursement, I mean, the numbers that we projected out are close to north of around MYR 40 billion if you take the entire opportunity that we see. Now, obviously, the challenge is a lot of data in this sector is also sketchy. But we've been able to use some of the experiences that we have servicing these underserved customers and kind of project those out. So I think there is a significant market. Of course, in the first phase of the licensing, all the banks will have an asset cap where they cannot grow their loan book beyond MYR 3 billion. So they will be constrained. Once you achieve a proven business model, which means you have to show profitability in that foundation period, then you can go ahead and expand beyond that.
So a lot of them may not be able to capture it within the five-year timeframe, depending on kind of how they perform in the foundation period. But we believe that the market opportunity is quite vast, especially in the small business segment.
Foong, you know the MYR 3 billion cap is dictated by Bank Negara, under their framework, yeah?
Yes, yes. Foundational phase, right?
Yeah, correct, correct, correct. Adlan, on Touch Mindscape as well as SBC acquisitions.
Yeah. So Foong, year two accretive have already factored in the interest cost. Actually, we have not factored in much of the synergy, to be honest with you, in our numbers. So of course, what we can see from the due diligence, we factor that in. Otherwise, we have not really factored that in our numbers per se. So that's the upside that we see, right, when we do the consolidation and integration.
To your question on SBC integration, I think yes, you would expect that in the coming two to three years, there will be many SBCs or even NFPs that's probably available in the market today. Even today, we see that there are a lot of offers on the ground, right, from NFP license provider. And we also see that SBCs are also starting to make their company available, right? I think in most of this scenario, right, the biggest value we see is if we are able to acquire companies or SBCs in states that we are not able to build, yeah, because these are rich states. We've got zero presence in those states. With the acquisition, like what we see in Touch Mindscape, is a fantastic opportunity for us, right, to play in those states, right?
And we see that in the next two to three years, there will be more and more NFPs and even SBCs that will probably be available for sale. Even from today on, I think we also see the opportunity also present as we speak today, right?
On Touch Mindscape, Foong, I'm not sure if you're aware, but one of the companies within the Touch Mindscape group companies we're acquiring is that one-stop agency that's responsible for issuing permits and so on. And that's always been the challenge, yeah? The legal framework created is OSC, and in the case of Touch Mindscape, it includes that particular entity as well. So that gives EDOTCO the leverage, if you like, for the exclusivity in the state of Pahang, yeah?
Understood. Maybe if I can just put in a follow-up question, right, to Adlan, right?
What other states, besides those that we have recently gained access to, right, via Touch Mindscape, that we still don't have the right to build? And do you see an opportunity to say, perhaps among the major telcos in Malaysia, right, to consolidate all the towers under a single company and then maybe monetize that?
So I think rich states remaining, I think, in Malaysia that we don't have presence. This is a big one for us, right? But the rich states remaining would probably be Johor. Negeri Sembilan, while we do have towers with this acquisition, but the right to build doesn't come with it, yeah? So still, we don't have the right to build in Negeri Sembilan. We don't have the right to build in Sarawak. We also see that Sabah, there is a change potentially also there will be some restriction in terms of building in Sabah.
I would say that these are typically in Kelantan, we also don't have the right to build at this point in time. And I think in Terengganu as well, right? So these are the four, five states that today we don't have the ability to build in these states, yeah? So your next question is, Foong sorry, what was your next question?
Potential to consolidate.
Yeah, I was just thinking about the towers that are held by all the operators in the country, right? I mean, is that all held by balance sheet? Yeah, I mean, is there a chance that everyone will just come together and put it into a basket and sort of monetize it?
Well, the remaining towers that we see now, you know that U Mobile is running a process now.
I mean, they potentially will be looking at offloading it to tower companies.
I think if you look at the other three MNOs, Smart is with us. I think Maxis is probably Maxis and Digi, yeah? But again, I mean, I cannot comment much on that, I mean, on behalf of the MNO. But so far, I mean, what we see is if there is any carve-out, it has been, at least in the case of U Mobile, it has been to they are looking to independent TowerCo or NFPs, yeah? So.
Okay, understood. Okay, thank you so much, everyone, for the response.
Thanks, Foong.
Thank you. I'm mindful of time as we are currently overrun by about close to 11 minutes. Shall we continue or? Take these questions in the next round? Yeah, why don't we take these questions in the next round? Next round. Okay, okay. So we'll take the outstanding questions.
I think we do have some in the chat box as well as from Isaac from Affin. We'll take that in the second session. So we'll be back at 10 minutes' time, which is 4:10 P.M. 4:10 P.M., yeah, 4:10 P.M. Okay, see you at 4:10 P.M. Thank you.
Thank you, Claire. Assalamualaikum. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Axiata Analyst Day. Today, the presentation from XL will share with you on how we will achieve our vision to be the first converged digital telco in Indonesia. Next. Previously, Dato' has shared about Axiata's vision and Axiata's 5.0 strategy, which, of course, need to be supported by OpCos and translated into OpCos strategy. Hence, we are in XL aligned our vision to the Axiata 5.0 strategy. We have crafted our midterm vision, as mentioned earlier, to be a converged customer-centric digital telco with a higher NPS.
These are three main important ingredients in this vision, which are one is converged, second is customer-centric, and the third one is being digital. If you see this slide, you can see that there are three vertical pillars and five horizontal pillars. This vision, as I said, is supported by three vertical pillars, which consist of three growth engines, which are mobile, fiber or FTTH, and the third one is enterprise business. The five horizontal pillars, which comprise five teams that need to be implemented across all three growth engines. The mobile is our biggest growth engine, will transform itself to be a digital family telco, which demonstrates a first step to convergence. Then the home or FTTH business will serve home segment with overall smart home proposition.
And then the third growth engine, which is enterprise business, positions itself as digitalization enabler for small and also for large enterprises. The horizontal teams will play as value proposition or digitization that each growth engine used to compete in the market, be it customer experience, digital play, or relevant infrastructure. These teams are very pivotal as we would want to move away from price game and not primarily using price as our value proposition. Next. So actually, lately, we received a lot of inquiries from analyst communities on how we would compete in the market in regards to MergeCo formation. So this part is actually. It has nothing to do with the previous slide, but this is just our answer to the inquiries.
So we believe with MergeCo happen and fewer players in the market, the price competition will be softer, and it opens opportunities to XL Axiata to gain market share as well. However, it's also raised new challenges to XL Axiata on how to match the infrastructure that's owned by incumbent players and also by the new MergeCo. So to address the challenge, XL Axiata has prepared ourselves since the end of last year by increasing our network quality and also network capacity. And those efforts have given us a very good outcome. So we can see here that the number of our network elements has increased significantly in terms of number of BTS, the length of our fiber links, and also 5G-related infrastructure.
So as a result of this network expansion, our network experience has improved a lot, not only based on our internal measurement, but also from external parties' metrics, such as operational download speed and Facebook user throughput. So the download speed is from Opensignal. So we can see here that the download speed for XL users has increased 11.5%, and the Facebook user throughput has increased 5% in the past few months. Next. So back to our vision. So in today's presentation, the presentation will be focused on three themes. The first one is about our digital transformation agenda, which we call Digital Transformation 2.0. And the second one is what we are doing in terms of putting a differentiated customer experience to our customers. And the third one is about our convergence journey. Next slide. Next. So this is about the digital transformation.
As mentioned by Dato' and also Adlan earlier, the pandemic has brought new realities that change both how we do business and also how we shape the market. This situation forces us to adjust ourselves and incorporate the changing in terms of human or consumers' behaviors in terms of technology advancement that we have to adopt in terms of new ways of working and also sustainability going forward. We believe that responding correctly to these new realities will define whether we will win the future game or not. Next. In responding to the challenges that I mentioned in previous slides, XL Axiata, in the course of almost two years' pandemic time, we are able to change across our organization and accelerate our digitalization transformation agenda. In our digital transformation agenda, there are three main buckets. The first bucket is digitalization on the customer and front-facing front.
So on this bucket, what we have done is we revamped our digital touchpoints, which are self-care and also self-apps. We currently have high ratings for these apps in the App Store. So now, currently, actually at the level of 4.5 rating. The monthly average user has also grown significantly. It increased almost 50% since last year. So it shows that our consumer appreciates what we are doing in terms of digitizing the touchpoint that is used to communicate by consumers with us. So actually, not only this, but also the touchpoint in terms of customer care, also now 50% has been migrated to digital touchpoint. The second digitalization bucket is on how we operate our business. So it crosses eight business functions, be it finance, marketing, human capital, IT, sales, and network.
The digitalization on these functions actually brings not only efficiency and effectiveness, but also shorter time to market. Yeah, so even though this is the digitalization in backend, but the impact is for our commercial team. And the third bucket is on artificial intelligence augmentation. Mostly, this applies to network and distribution operation. Our aim is to have zero-touch operation. And this, we believe, will give a high operational performance and also reduce the outage, reduce the error. And at the end, it also brings us cost-effectiveness. Next. So the next part is on the differentiated customer experience. So when we talk about crafting customer experience, we need to understand which segment that we would like to focus on. So since earlier this year, XL brand has been repositioned to serve the young family in Indonesia. As you probably know, actually, in XL, for our prepaid, we have two brands.
One is XL brand, and the other is Axis brand. So XL brand used to be focused on blue and white color, and Axis is for youth. So now we reposition the XL brand for a young family in Indonesia. This is actually the biggest segment in the market, and currently, not many digital brands that are focusing in this segment. So it will give us huge opportunities, but of course, it requires a good understanding of their needs and also their expectations to the brand. Next. So since mid of this year, we are starting to serve families uniquely with convenient digital experience. And we launched a proposition or a product called Paket Akrab. So with this Paket Akrab, the families, they can actually manage their internet usage. So our app is tailored to manage family quota management with the simplest way.
And not only they're getting the convenience and the simplicity from this, but also those young families will get the best value out of it. Yeah. So these are the comments that we received from this segment. First is they said that it saves me a lot of time and headaches reloading for my whole family. So I think this comes from a mom. And then also the other one is they said this is very useful, especially for managing two phones or two devices that they have. Yeah. So it has very good traction. Although it's still in early stage, but we can see that the adoption rate is quite high. Yeah. And we see that actually this will be like a good path for us to go for the convergence. Next.
So as I mentioned, the Paket Akrab that we launched will be the foundation for our convergence plan. Even now with Paket Akrab and also the Paket XL SATU, now we can have fixed and mobile broadband solution in one bundle. Yeah. And we are doing that with a true one digital experience. So this is Indonesia. This is the first one. Yeah, the first one. So we see that after several months, we launched this product. Actually, other players copied it, and they launched the same thing. But the difference is in the experience itself. In the experience, because what we focus on here, it does not only like having something that will integrate these two propositions, but having something that gives them a seamless experience. I mean, not simplicity, convenience, and also flexibility. Next. And the third part of our vision is about the convergence journey.
The convergence journey to become the fully converged operators actually has been started in 2019. In 2019, we started to build up our home business with our organic rollout for FTTH. Today, actually, we have more than 650,000 home passed. And the home connect or the connection rate of this home passed is considered to be in the high side compared to the other player in the market, which is 30% of the footprint. And then also this is something that I have mentioned previously that we have launched the first true convergent proposition that called XL SATU. Yeah. Now 23% of the home acquisition are actually contributed by this converged proposition. And this converged proposition gives us a higher RPU compared to the regular XL Home fiber product. Yeah. And we see that this product is also utilized fully by our subscriber.
Currently, it's almost 50%. They actually activate their SIM card and utilize the convergent SIM card since the beginning. So then the question is how we will scale this up. Yeah. So the fiber penetration in Indonesia currently is still low, relatively, if you compare to our neighboring countries. So the opportunities to build this FTTH or home business is still large. Yeah. So what we are trying to do is both doing inorganic and organic to scale up our FTTH footprint. But also the other thing that is very important is not only putting the right converged product, but also to have the right go-to-market strategy. We believe with this that we can win the market and the vision of the number one converged operator will be achieved. Next. So this is a more long-term vision or roadmap that we have crafted.
Our convergent journey today is the key for our future. We have crafted the roadmap or the milestone how to get there. In 2021 and 2022, in terms of putting digital service differentiation, that we have actually laid out our foundation to serve families, yeah, and address their pain points. The second initiative that we have done in this year, 2021, and then also 2022, is really putting the household orientation, yeah. In terms of experience, that is reflected by the NPS. Now, we are trying to catch up with the incumbents despite the network and price gap that we have compared to them. On the following years, 2023 and 2024, in terms of digital service differentiation, our plan is to have a partnership. We do a partnership-driven enhancement for family proposition. Yeah.
So it's actually covered having diverse content and that diverse services such as, for instance, like smart home services, security services, and so on and so forth. Yeah. And then in terms of NPS, our aim for this timeframe is to lead within telco because of the service attribute that we have. And then next in 2025 and 2026 is that in terms of digital service differentiation, what we want to build is completing the whole ecosystem for the families. And then our aim in terms of revenue is we want to have more than 60% of XL revenue actually coming from this segment, the household segment. Yeah. And in terms of NPS, our aim is to lead, yeah, to lead or as like a benchmark for digital companies in Indonesia. So that concludes my presentation, Claire. I guess my timing is spot on, Claire. So back to you.
Assalamualaikum and a very good afternoon, everyone. It is good to be back here at the end of this day. I apologize last year. I couldn't make it for a certain reason. But it's good to be back. And what I plan to do today is to share with everyone the Celcom transformation journey. In the past couple of analyst days, I presented that Celcom is going through a major shift of the presentation where I took over in 2018. The transformation journey started even before I came in. In 2016, we have a journey we call the product. We transform our product portfolio and our distribution. When I came in in 2018, we focused in 2018, 2019, we focused on cost optimization and cost management.
In 2020, as what Claire has mentioned, we introduced internally a project called Project X-Men, which is to transform Celcom end-to-end and to focus on operational efficiency and operational excellence. What I'll do today, I'll share some of the results, the outcome of these past two years, 12 to 18 months, despite having the pandemic. And going through the pandemic is one challenge. Going through changes in the network is another challenge. But we'll share with you where we have gone so far. Then the next episode, I call it internally now, the episode four of Celcom's transformation, which is how do you transform now Celcom from where we are today to an ambidextrous organization. And to some of you, maybe familiar with this term, we introduced this even in Axiata Group in 2014, 2015, the term ambidextrous organization.
That's as a result. We see some of the digital organization that we have today. Now, at the same time, also, Celcom is going through the merger exercise, the merger process. We have the integration planning process, so on and so forth. Hence, whatever I'm sharing today, there's a limitation to it. As much as I can share in terms of some of our strategy moving forward. But at the same time, also, I'm sure you have a lot of questions around what's going on in Malaysia, as well as the integration and the merger exercise. I'm sure we'll address that during the Q&A session. Next slide, please. So this is in a nutshell when we say the phase three of our transformation journey, which we said in 2020. We said we are not going to do any more piecemeal transformation.
We need to embark on an end-to-end operational excellence transformation, which we did across the board from the frontliners to the channels and services to the platforms and innovation and how we're going to run our network, the various elements of our network, how do we change the people and the culture, as well as how do we really look at how we do things, our way of working. As an outcome of that, to execute that, actually, we have what we call internally the 11 impact centers that we focus on. This 11 impact centers has three main objectives. One is Celcom wants to be the fastest value growth within this sphere.
Number two, we want to build capabilities to future-proof and with a differentiated core, which includes leading the 5G era, building a direct distribution model, accelerating the convergence, the platforms for the future, so on and so forth. Right? And last but not least is to rebuild the fighting spirit of Celcom, the people and the culture of it. So it's not just about the mobile revenue growth. It's not just about the distribution. It's not just about the B2B business, but across the board. That's what we are looking at. And this is what we call the Project X-Men internally. And these 11 impact centers, of course, we have some very successful impact centers, some that we are still working on. But we have seen some early results coming out from this.
I will not be talking a lot about numbers today, but we've seen, at least from our results in the past four quarters, we have seen some growth in the market coming out. We're able to acquire back some of our subscribers. We're able to outperform the competition. We were able to, in a way, grow our bottom line or our EBITDA, EBIT, and also PATAMI or PAT faster than our top line. So it is a good indication that how we were able to execute some of this transformation, which resulted in some improvement in our business. Next slide, please. Maybe I'll go into some of these areas just to give some examples. In the past 12 to 18 months, as I mentioned, we have seen this in our Axiata's announced results in the past few quarters.
In the go-to-market space, for example, we managed to, as of the third quarter 2021, we managed to bring back or acquire one million subscribers in the last 12 months. This is, in a way, resulting in increasing our market share of about 1.2 percentage points against our top three. Doing this while maintaining our NPS, our RNPS is still the leading in the market. We revamped our postpaid product. We revamped our prepaid product. Our prepaid unlimited is well accepted in the market. We also introduced the Celcom MAX. In a way, at this point, we call it one of our convergence or early convergence products that we call it. We will see that later, how we're going to move into a convergence in a bigger way. This is a result.
Some may think that the result of this result is mainly driven by the product differentiation on the prepaid unlimited. Yes, that is one of the factors. But I will share with you, it's not just that. Internally, how we do, how we manage our trade, how we manage how the sales team behave, and our daily way of working has changed significantly over the past 12 to 18 months, which brings in the result on our go-to-market. We see major growth in our prepaid, but we're also seeing growth in our postpaid as well. The cost management, operational excellence, not too shabby, I would say, more than MYR 400 million savings since 2019 in terms of OpEx, more than MYR 300 million. We're talking about almost MYR 130 million in terms of CapEx. EBITDA margin improved more than 2 percentage points since 2019.
Even a bit, we're starting to measure our market share among the top three mobile operators, the top three public-listed entities, 1.3 percentage points in terms of EBITDA market share, which is very, very, I mean, which we are quite happy with as it is moving faster than the growth of our top line. There are many other changes that we do in terms of operational excellence around how we do manage the supply chain, how we empower our team in the region. One of our themes is that the competition, the market is in the region. The whole HQ, each quarter of Celcom is about supporting the region. We make a big change on how we operate.
I think, as you may know, network is possibly our biggest challenge during this period, mainly due to the pandemic, of course, the surge in traffic and the shift in traffic from the geographical revenue, sorry, geographical location. And as what Dato' Izzaddin mentioned earlier, the level of utilization per subscriber is almost unheard of. If you talk about 12 months ago, we would not have thought that this level of utilization would go up that high. So in the past, since 2021, this year alone, we have actually built 250 new sites. We have upgraded and optimized more than 8,000 sites across the country just to cater for the capacity for the additional subscribers that came in. We modernized most of our RAN network. Now, 90% of our RAN or radio access network is providing LTE Advanced capabilities.
We are also starting to deploy 8T8R capability network, which is a little bit technical, but it should double each site with double the capacity that we have deployed previously. This is, of course, to support the growth in traffic. Now, 5G also, we were very busy in getting ready for the 5G. We did our first Voice over New Radio , which is testing both the NSA, which is the non-standalone, as well as the standalone 5G capabilities on our own network. So getting ready for the 5G. We have more than 40 use cases on the enterprise side during our, what should we call it, the demonstration project in Langkawi. We have it in Petaling Jaya and some other areas that we have done before.
So we have also made, in the end, net-net significant improvement in terms of reliability and also availability of our network despite the growth in traffic, but again, it's also the growth in subscribers. One of the biggest changes through this transformation is about the people and the culture. As you know, we optimized the team, the one that we have. We have almost a brand new management team. Our top Celcom senior leaders, the top 100, the top 300 leaders of Celcom is more than half our new team, younger and more dynamic. I use the analogy if an ex-Celcom five years ago would come back into Celcom, we'll probably see a very, very different company today. We launch a new culture, transformation program, so on and so forth.
Some of these are some of the big changes that have happened over the past 12 to 18 months through our transformation program. As a result of this, you have seen how we perform in the market, as well as some of the improved performance of our bottom line. Next slide, please. In 2018 and subsequently in 2019, we came on stage and made some commitment to our investors and shareholders. I will talk about three areas that we want to improve in terms of our network cost, our EBITDA, and also our underlying EBIT. When we first started, when I first started, my first commitment was the network cost over revenue was at that point in time, of course, it's pre-MFRS 16, it was at 18%, and we committed to bring it down to between the 2% to 4%. We are on track on this.
I think by 2021 and 2022, we should see an improvement in terms of network cost by more than two percentage points. We also promised to see to grow our EBITDA margin from sub 40 to above 40. We will see now that we are hitting that target already around 40% EBITDA margin. You've seen that in the past few quarters, also as well as the underlying EBIT. In 2019, our actual EBIT is about MYR 1.2 billion, and we wanted to increase this by about 300, between MYR 300 million to MYR 500 million. We are targeting, we are actually on track looking at least about MYR 300 million improvement in terms of EBIT by the upcoming period. So we are on track. I think I truly believe the transformation that we have undertaken since 2020, 18 months ago, almost two years ago, is bearing some fruit, showing some of the early results.
So let me take now, then what's next for Celcom? Is the transformation today sufficient to take us forward as the market moves into convergence, etc.? And this is where I want to talk a little bit about building the ambidextrous organization. Can we move to the next slide, please? And as we ourselves prepare for the new era of the business, we think, we believe what we want to be is that we need to build different capabilities for Celcom in the organization. One is we need to transform ourselves from today, which is predominantly known as a mobile or consumer mobile business, into a very focused and solid convergence player. So that means the mobile, the fiber, device, consumer, family, and how we manage these, all the various channels that we have, the app, commerce, retail, so on and so forth.
How do we do this to become, instead of today, what you see as a mobile-centric channel, mobile-centric stores and outlets to become more of a convergence? This is almost an end-to-end transformation that we need to undertake within the next two to three years. How do we closely link mobile or fiber, which will ask us to rethink about our fiber strategy, so on and so forth? I think that's one part of our business. That's the core of our business, and the core itself needs to transform. I'll touch a little bit detail afterwards in terms of what does this mean to how we do things differently, and the other part of the business, this is very, very different than the retail consumer business that we're doing. It's very different than the convergence, which is the enterprise solutions business. We have been embarking on the B2B.
B2B today is more than 12% of our business, predominantly still in the enterprise mobile. But as you have seen, in the past recent weeks, actually, we have made, we started to embark, and recent months, we announced new products around solutions, around cloud and cybersecurity. We announced a couple of acquisitions that we have made to complement the skills that we have internally with new skills in the ICT sector. So the enterprise, it's not just about connectivity. We need to start looking to the integrated solutions and this guided through organic and non-organic, as well as building more partnerships. It in itself needs to develop a different channel, a different kind of services with account management, dedicated dealers, and so on and so forth.
So the solution beyond connectivity, and this is especially important for us now in preparation for 5G, because as the network becomes a commodity, as the network is less and less a differentiator in the market, we need to build this new differentiation. So these two go-to-market, one is a convergence, very focused on convergence, and the other one is very focused on enterprise solutions. And internally, to support this, we will have the platforms and innovation. Of course, I will not go into the specific details of what platforms and what innovation, etc., but there will be a series of platforms and the strategy behind building some of the latest platforms we will unveil at the right time. The other component of this ambidextrous organization is to look at how we manage the network.
As we know, as a mobile network operator, historically, we are known for managing networks. We build this network, we create differentiation across this network. And as we know, as we move on, as the structural change, as the technology change, we are now moving into an environment where we may not be in full control of the networks. So we will be providing services. One is some will be on top of our own networks and our own spectrum. The other could be in an environment where we don't own the network, where it could be a wholesale network we're talking about. And the other one is looking at even the fiber. It's not just the wireless, but also the fiber, which will still be for the medium term, predominantly a wholesale in the wholesale environment. So how do we build an organization?
Celcom needs to transform itself to be able to provide services and the best experience to our customers when it is no longer fully riding on our own network where we have a full end-to-end control. This, of course, will be supported by how we build the operational excellence across the organization, being a lot more conscious around ESG. We have our targets. We have our plan around sustainability, how to reduce the carbon footprint that we are using today. Last but not least, of course, we pay a lot of attention to our people, our culture, the way we are working, and so on and so forth. This, in a way, kind of the framework what we are referring to today, calling it the Ambidextrous Organization. We call it the Celcom Episode Four journey.
This is to take us to the next evolution, to the next phase of our growth, the next phase of our transformation. Next slide, maybe just to give a little bit of appreciation of what do we mean and what are some of the things that we need to change. So just to illustrate this so that it's not just about concept at this point in time, there are things that we are working on in the background, and we can't share everything, of course, for competitive reasons, and so we are re-looking in terms of how do we look at our brand. Even the brand has to be looked at, the product, the device, and content, what we need to add onto the device, the channels and retail, for example. This is a very good example.
Our retail outlets, if you walk into the Celcom Bluecube today, you will see it is a mobile operator. It's a mobile service company. It's not a convergence company. And this is something that in the next upcoming months, you will see transformation in this area. How then we move into, as you walk in and any of our customers moving into our shop, we'll see that they are actually inside a company or a service provider that provides convergence services. And of course, the network, being the wireless network, the fiber network, so on and so forth, something that we really need to look at. On the enterprise, next slide, please. So on the enterprise side, similar. So how do we build the ICT play? The connectivity and fiber. It'll be a lot stronger play on fiber for the enterprise market.
We are looking at some other innovative ways of bringing fiber into the building. This is very, very interesting for us. And also, as I mentioned earlier, how do we build capabilities to help our customers to move into the 5G space? How do they change their own way of working, their own business operation using the technology that we're going to bring? The brand, of course, we have been on. The enterprise has been relying a lot on the consumer brand. We will see how we're going to transform this in the future, including the platforms. And last but not least, I mentioned that we have managed to make a couple of acquisitions to help our ICT journey for the enterprise market.
We will see a few more announcements will come in terms of partnerships so that we are able to provide this end-to-end solution together with our partners, together with the companies that we have a strategic interest in to augment our own capabilities. These changes are happening in Celcom as the next phase of our transformation. Let me recap, then let's move on to the next slide. Just to conclude the transformation program that we have embarked since 2016, 2018, 2020, we moved into the end-to-end expand. It's starting to show some of the results. There's a continued growth momentum in the market. We continue to improve our cost efficiency. We're changing our culture and the way we work. It is now quite a different company than what we saw maybe two, three years ago.
At this stage, we are about to pivot to become a more focused company as a convergence company and also an enterprise business company as we move into the 5G era. Now, with that, Claire, I will stop here. Perhaps there'll be some in the Q&A later, but thank you very much for your attention and back to you, Claire.
Thanks, Claire, and very good afternoon to everyone. Last year, on 3rd of December, I stood there and talked about repositioning Axiata to be a dividend yield company. I just want to kind of summarize and tell it's kind of a report card of where we are heading versus what we said last year. I will try and summarize that as I go along in my presentation here. I think Dato' touched upon this slide, and this was focused around the strategy of 5-10-20-20, which was five years.
We should have a cost per GB less than RM 0.10. Our EBIT margin, 20%, which was 14.4% in 2019, and we should be able to give dividend of greater than RM 0.20. Our ROIC should be greater than cost of capital. Where do we stand in 2021? I think you've seen quarter three results, and I think trending is pretty much in line with what we had targeted. I'll go through some more details in my subsequent slides here. This was the kind of fish diagram, which basically demonstrated how do we get to that RM 0.20 dividend per share. To get that RM 0.20 dividend per share by 2024, we should have normalized profit of MYR 1.8 billion. We should have operating free cash flow excluding the minorities of around MYR 1.8 billion, and we should be able to upstream dividend from OpCos around close to MYR 2.3 billion.
Now, to do that, we had these six specific agendas. One was to grow revenue by greater than MYR 6 billion over the period of five years. I must say we are trending pretty well when it comes to mobile. We've added around a billion of revenue over last year. In 2022, we are doing pretty well on digital business, and you've heard Sheyantha as well as Srini talk about it, and we would be having revenues greater than MYR 1 billion coming from digital business this year. EDOTCO is pretty much on track. I think where we've struggled a little bit this year is on the enterprise business, which is where we have to catch up on some of the activities around focus on capabilities as well as acquisitions of the right capability companies is what would drive enterprise revenue going forward.
OpEx, we wanted to bring down OpEx by around greater than MYR 3 billion over the four or five-year period. So far, in first quarter, we've saved around MYR 380 million of OpEx, and I think we are progressing pretty much in line with that. A lot of that will be driven through the actions we are taking through strategic cost management across the entire group. Reducing DNA, I think two specific agendas. One was 3G Sunset. I would say by the end of this year, we would have all OpCos excepting Celcom and Robi, which would have shut down or sunset 3G. Celcom is expected in early 2022, and Robi would be in 2023. With this, we should be able to refarm our spectrum, and that should give around 30% additional capacity to serve our customers.
CapEx optimization, I think with the efforts of Collective Brain , which I'll cover a little bit later, we are delivering around MYR 800 million savings in this first three quarters and should end up with more than a billion savings coming this year. A lot of it is coming through the optimization of networks and simplifying the number of configurations we have and also getting benefits of the negotiations, which has been started and done centrally by Axiata Procurement Centre from last year onwards. Next item is finance cost. I think if you recall, we did lock in a long-term funding last year of around MYR 1.5 billion, which we were at the right time to lock in that funding at a point in time where the treasury rates were at the lowest.
That lock-in is for nearly 10 years and 30 years, which does bring down our cost of borrowing from around 6% in 2019 to around 4.4%. Not only that, it just protects our balance sheet with maturity of our debt profile going beyond a short period of time, which was the earlier scenario. Mobile CapEx, I think we targeted to get down to less than 20% intensity. I think we are going through that fairly well, excepting what we talked about was additional MYR 400 million of spend coming out in Indonesia for strategic intent. What we've put in place is really the capital allocation framework. How do we look at capital across the three businesses we have, which is mobile, digital, and tower business?
Within that, how do we actually define the CapEx allocation within the OpCos in terms of specific target goals of CapEx to EBITDA ratio, which we want to deliver? And every additional spend should be linked to additional improvement in EBITDA. And the next one is really the technical technology direction. That technology direction is focused on standardization of stacks, looking at standardization of configuration, looking at value-based network planning. It's looking at optimization. It's looking at moving into cloud or open networks. And that's what is being driven through the Collective Brain . And last but not the least is really the capital allocation framework in each of the OpCos. So there are guardrails which have been put in place in terms of capital structure in each of the OpCos, which allows us to manage the overall balance sheet in the right way.
We've also set up some dividend policies across each OpCos, which allows dividend upstream available for Axiata to give it to its shareholders. Let me go through some more details around this. If you look at, we have basically five lines of businesses: enterprise digital businesses, which is basically the advertising business and the financial services, the home business, the tower business, and the mobile business. The first four, enterprise, digital, home, and TowerCo, is something which would be done both organic and inorganic. I think we are looking at investments beyond just the organic into these businesses. Those are the ones which will drive future growth for us because we realize mobile is going to be a low single-digit or a mid-single-digit growth going forward in our footprint.
What is represented here is really the growth coming from the organic play, but we have to layer on the inorganic opportunities we are looking around to grow these lines of businesses. If I go to the next slide, I think this is where we look at the Collective Brain , which is what I covered. We have around 1.3 billion saving expected in 2021 coming from Collective Brain , and the target is to deliver 3 - 4 billion savings by 2024. And that's really focused around procurement efficiency. And I think given the fact that we have now moved 70% of our network and IT CapEx centrally, negotiated, and also not just negotiated, the demand projection forecasting and standardization on configuration done centrally helps us get the scale benefit, helps us look at the substitution.
For example, Open RAN, I think something which we are looking at commercially moving on to that should help us reduce our dependency on some of the existing vendors and also focus negotiations with our vendors, not only looking at the traditional way of commercial contracting with them, but also looking at new opportunities, new ways of doing that with very clear vendor strategy in play. Network design optimization, I think that's something which we've started working on, which is looking at network planning based on value-based model, which means where do you put the next dollar of CapEx is determined based on where are we getting the highest ROI in place, and then involved with that is really the optimization of the network and driving efficiencies around the network designing.
Digitalization. I think we've got the benefit of the whole COVID where the acceleration of online channels, usage of our own self-help has driven a high shift from traditional channels to digital channels. I would say we have not seen cost impacts coming yet, but I think this is initial investments which should translate into efficiencies coming as we go forward. And there are other areas of operational efficiencies. We've set target for data profitability to go to around close to 13%-14% by 2024. And at this point in time, as I said, cost per GB is around $0.25. Most of it comes from the increase in usage or increase in data, but also coming from the fact that we are able to take out cost. And eventually, we see that translating into data margin or data profitability being created.
I think this year we should end up with positive data margin, whereas in the previous year we were at a negative level. I think this is quickly touching on the funding. I think we are looking at now our cost at around 4.4% on cost of debt. And this is around 67% is fixed with high maturity of 9.7 years existing. That does give much comfort to the balance sheet we have. This is about the focus around lower CapEx, less than 20%. I think we will have some acceleration on CapEx, specifically coming out of the requirements, strategic requirements in year two. But eventually, we see that CapEx coming down. I think XL Axiata is clearly focused on the convergence with the DNB talked about, and there would be investments required to move to convergence strategy.
There are markets where now there is need for us to improve quality of service. So there is investment happening at this point in time to improve quality of service, to provide minimum experience to the customers. And then obviously investments coming in to support ESG. I mean, ESG investments are not done without the cost implication or cost benefits realized from doing those activities. If I look at the capital framework for each of the OpCos, last year we did align the dividend policies for all operating companies. The percentages here are the minimum dividend which we expect each of the OpCos to deliver every year based on the profits. However, this is just the minimum, but we are looking at maximizing subject to the cash flows being available within the OpCos.
This year we should have all OpCos meeting that, excepting EDOTCO because EDOTCO we did not frame it last year. Going forward from next year onwards, we should have even EDOTCO declaring some dividend for us to give it to our shareholders here. That should take us, move us forward to the dividend levels of RM 0.20 by 2024. I think that should be, I mean, we expect dividend to be at least RM 0.09 this year, but going up to RM 0.27 by 2024. We are in that trajectory. I must say that there are still some moving parts, which is more from a sustainable long-term investments, which would happen due to the consolidation happening in Malaysia, as well as investments coming in EDOTCO as well as Indonesian terrain. These do not come without risks in place.
And there are headwinds which we are dealing with as we speak. And there are opportunities which should be helping us gain benefits here. Risk, I think regulatory challenges continue in markets like Cambodia, Malaysia, Bangladesh. We are seeing regulatory challenges in three forms. One is the taxes, new taxes coming in in some of the markets because of the economic environment we are dealing with. I think we've seen that happening in Sri Lanka. We've seen that happening in Malaysia now, in Cambodia, and the second one which we are seeing is governments, regulators insisting on quality of service, minimum quality of service, which does mean we have more capacity CapEx requirements to service those minimum quality of service, which we've seen happening in these three markets.
And the third one is really about revenue maximization by the regulators, which is still related to the spectrum pricing or revenue share which are existing in the market. So I think these are the three major developments which we are seeing, which we see as potential risk as we go forward. Chip supply shortage, I think everyone's aware of that. We don't see any major impact at this point in time other than delays in some of the supplies which are happening specifically from some of the vendors. But we do see prices of SIM, which is not that material from an overall impact, but those going up. And we are trying to consolidate those centrally and provide those resources to our operating companies. I think I touched upon increased taxes. This does have an impact on our effective tax rate going up.
We've seen two countries which have given the budgets for 2022, and both of them have increased their taxes, which is Sri Lanka and Malaysia. As far as the macro Sri Lanka is concerned, I think the companies doing extremely well with 20% growth year on a year. However, we do see macroeconomic challenges. I mean, they have around $90 million of forex loan. We are seeing stress on the reserves on forex availability and weakening of currency. We are also seeing inflation and interest rates increasing, which is detrimental to the investment opportunities in Sri Lanka. Having said that, given that Axiata being a parent company and also Dialog being a fairly cash-generating entity, it is well placed compared to some of the other operators within that market, and I think we all know that the headwinds on COVID-19 haven't got out yet, so we're still struggling with that.
Opportunities, I think XL transformation program, which was what DN talked about, we should see a better position and opportunity to accelerate investment should realize upside in terms of revenue growth for us. ARPU uplift is an opportunity. Now, why I say that? Because we've not seen that, but what we've seen is the ARPU fall is not exactly in line with the data consumption happening. So ARPUs are kind of getting stable in most of the markets as we see. And I think over time with consolidation happening in some of these markets, we should see ARPU uplift, which should benefit us in long term. Interest rates remaining low. I think some of the markets where we operate, the economic factors will force the governments to keep the interest rate low. And that should be something which we should benefit at least from a short to medium term.
I think execution of M&A pipeline, and these are essentially maybe dilutive in the short to medium term, but are going to be long-term sustainable position for us for value elimination and value accretion. So that's it from me. And thank you very much. I hand it over back to Claire. Thank you.
Thank you. And welcome back to our second Q&A session. Thank you, Vivek. And now we have joining me on stage is Dato' as well as Vivek. And I think we are also inviting Srini, Sheyantha, as well as Adlan back to join us for our on-call session, as well as welcoming Datuk Idham, Ibu Dian, as well as Dr. Hans. Okay. So let's dive into it. I think basically we do have questions which poppe d up in the group chat earlier on.
You're not going to do the poll results first?
Oh, you want to see that first, Dato'? Okay.
No, no, no, no. Let's do the questions. Just keep the momentum going.
Okay, okay. We'll keep the best for the last. Sure. Okay. Okay, questions. So the first question that was in the group chat came through from Richard about the disposal of 5% stake in XL Axiata. So can you elaborate on that, especially the benefits from the transaction? Does Axiata plan to further dispose XL Axiata stake in the future?
Well, okay, thanks for the question, Richard. Well, it is just 5%. Hence the question, this is a common question I kept being asked. It starts with 5%. Now, there's no stopping for Ferrymount to go out in the market to buy more shares in XL Axiata. That's not a constraint on their part.
But as it stands, we wanted to keep our stake above 60%, at least for the time being. The benefits, well, as you know, the two principals or two shareholders of Ferrymount, yeah, Provident Capital, as well as Tiga Investments. Now, the principals there, Winato Kartono and Ray Zage, Ray Zage, rather, they've been long in the market, invested in a lot of businesses, and of late they've been also investing in digital businesses. And my understanding is they've been also investors in Gojek as well as Tokopedia. We're half hoping that we get a piece of the action or get to play as part of that ecosystem that has been created. So the benefits stem from the fact that, well, they're both long-term players in the market. They understand the capital markets, not just in Asia as well as overseas.
Of course, insofar as Winato Kartono is concerned, he is one of the founders of Tower Bersama. So he understands the business as well. Of course, we would expect them to help us with dealings with the authorities in Indonesia. Now, this is not so obvious, but maybe subtle, maybe obvious to some of you. I think as a business in Indonesia, as a foreign investor in Indonesia, yeah, we would need a local partner to help us navigate through the system to corporate Indonesia or through the regulatory framework. So with the investment by Ferrymount, again, whilst it is small, that's a start. They are at liberty to buy more. At this stage, we don't plan to dispose any more stake, well, not in the near future. There are no plans.
But we hope that they will be able to create value for the business that we have in Indonesia. Yeah.
Okay, thank you, Dato'. So let's move on to the second question that was on the group chat earlier on. This basically came from Alex of AmInvestment Bank. Interesting question here. How does a Celcom-Digi merger impact the strategies of ADA, Boost, and EDOTCO given that Digi also has digital startups?
Well, the business, as I understand it, Digi has sold some or closed down some of the digital startups that they had. For example, the wallet, they've sold it to Merchantrade, for example. And insofar as we're concerned, the merger between Celcom and Digi will not have a big impact insofar. In fact, their opportunity is far greater.
For example, right now, ADA does not rely in any significant way as to the business of Celcom, but there are plans on looking at ramping that up. Insofar as Boost is concerned, there are no relationship whatsoever. It's completely independent. Insofar as EDOTCO is concerned, yes, the Celcom-Digi merger will result in the rationalization of the network. But EDOTCO has got their, if you like, compensation clauses. If any of the towers that EDOTCO currently own that manage on behalf of Celcom needs to be decommissioned, yeah. So not just yet for us to come to the market to explain how the merger will affect the business of EDOTCO, but insofar as at least the MSAs are concerned, the agreements are concerned, EDOTCO is commercially protected if there is a need to decommission any of the towers that they currently own for Celcom, yeah. Alex, that's okay? Yeah.
Yeah. Okay, let's move on to the next question that was on the group chat, yeah. Jim from Kenanga Research, basically two questions. Firstly, to EDOTCO, would EDOTCO benefit from Malaysia having a single wholesale 5G network or from a more traditional model where each carrier owns and runs their own network? Second question is, why do Touch Mindscape's towers have such a high tenancy ratio?
I would like Adlan to tackle this, but broadly, I think it depends on the commercial arrangements, Jim, between EDOTCO and the 5G SPV, because we all know 5G technology requires more tenancies, if you like, yeah, more radio assets on each of the towers. And of course, what that means also internally in building systems, that also means a higher occupancy.
I think it's not fair to compare that traditional model where each carrier owns and runs their own networks because, again, what assumption do we make on co-location and so on? On Touch Mindscape towers, high tenancy ratio, a simple answer is the exclusivity that Touch Mindscape has in the state of Pahang. Yeah. Adlan, do you want to elaborate on both questions?
Thank you, Dato'. So I think for us, we are a neutral infra company, right? So we work with everyone, right? The industry players, DNB, so on and so forth, right? And for us, right, of course, the more customers you have, the better it is, right? I mean, technically, right? But essentially, I think our business model works on the concept of sharing, yeah? And I think that's where that's where your margin, your revenue actually comes from, right?
Because when you talk about new co-location, for example, hardly any cost, but there's all potential revenue upside, right? So in this case, I think, of course, the more the merrier. However, it also depends on, let's say, if each carrier were to run this, how would they run it, right? Whether it's going to go on a sharing basis and all that is something that will probably have an impact, right? But for us, we are neutral. We work with anyone. And on 5G, I mean, it has to be seen how other carriers would actually operate this, right? Touch Mindscape, I think Dato' have answered because of the exclusive nature of the Touch Mindscape operating in Pahang. So I think that's why they have such a high tenancy. You typically see the same, right, in other states as well.
Yeah, a bit in Johor, even as you speak, probably in Sarawak and all that, you probably see a high tenancies, right, on this, given that they have exclusive states, right?
Okay, thank you, Adlan. Moving on to questions from Rahman from Khazanah. So basically a question for ADA. Can you share more about the company's cost model, i.e., what's the breakdown of cost drivers as a share of revenue? EDOTCO, second question. Can you share more on how EDOTCO plans to monetize future value-added services, whether via charging of higher rental to customers or cut costs or both?
Before I invite Srini to answer the first question, that was always the question that we ask ourselves because it's a service-oriented business. It has 1,000 employees, so guess what? The biggest cost driver is actually employees' costs. Yeah? So Srini, do you want to take that?
Yeah, exactly that way as you said. I mean, our cost model is very similar to probably somebody like Accenture or Twilio or WPP or any of these big agencies. Roughly 70% of our cost goes towards publishers and basically paying publishers like Facebook, Google, or other customer engagement. Then another 15% is more towards people and staff. Of course, we are a very high-growth business, so we invest a lot in sales and our sales growth engine, so it is 15%, and another 5% in our technology platform solutions for data and AI investments. That roughly makes up 90% overall, and then another 10% is the positive EBITDA in the business. Adlan, can you share more on how EDOTCO plans to monetize its future value-added services, charge higher rental to customers or cut costs or both?
No, I think we would love to probably charge more, right? Unfortunately, the reality doesn't work that way, right? I mean, as you see, as things go along with technology, with 5G and all that, there's going to be a lot more pressure for M&O to drive cost per GB down, right? And I think as a result, given that our rental, our leasing are probably one of the biggest cost components, that's something that M&O would probably focus on, right? So from our perspective, probably increasing lease prices are going to be a challenge moving forward. Therefore, I think we need to focus on cost in terms of driving our cost down.
That's why I think we are paying a lot of attention in terms of looking at big cost components, looking at our tower design, looking at our power solution, yeah, looking at zero-touch operation, digitizing some form of our operation, for example, to see how we can drive these costs down lower. Having said that, I think one of the other areas that we are also focusing on is probably using data-driven analytics to probably drive higher co-location, yeah? Because co-location is the area that one way that we can generate more revenue by getting an additional tenant on the existing towers, right? So today, we are using Nava to drive that. Even in our marketing today, it's a lot more proactive going to the MNO to propose sites that we think have got higher potential revenue potential and follow potential.
Instead of waiting for MNO, we proactively sell this up to MNO, right? So the way to go is about cost efficiency and probably driving co-location up by using more data-driven and analytic tools to do that.
Are the rentals locked in anyway, right, per the agreements that we sign up with the customers, Adlan?
Correct, Dato'. This is talking about the new ones, right?
Yeah, yeah.
The new build-to-suit, yeah.
Yeah. And the other big initiative that EDOTCO has embarked on is looking at automation insofar as maintenance is concerned, perhaps using more drone services, for example, as opposed to physical inspections, therefore saving on manpower costs. That's always a big item when it comes to maintenance in terms of efficiency as well as cost management, yeah? Thanks, Rahman, for the questions.
Thank you. So let's move on to the verbal questions.
I think Isaac from Affin has been waiting for a while. So perhaps we go on to the verbal questions. Isaac, if you're ready, please unmute your mic and ask your questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Claire, and good evening, everyone. Sorry. I have two questions. Hi, Dato'. The first question is, in terms of the EDOTCO, I understand on the organic, the inorganic drive to growth. But in terms of the financing, where we are now for the EDOTCO after the acquisitions of Touch, going forward, how much more, say, the conventional borrowings, if I may, can EDOTCO take on before your EDOTCO will probably need to engage in terms of the shareholders or further funding? That's question number one. Question number two is that Malaysia, I mean, DNB have said that they're going to do the free trial for the wholesale.
Based on my understanding so far, based on the press, is the TM have signed out and have Celcom signed out? Or if not, what are the considerations for these so-called free wholesale services?
Thank you. Adlan, you want to take the first question? How much more can you borrow before you need to do a capital call? And I would have thought the answer is you wouldn't need a capital call.
Yeah. So maybe just to put in perspective, I think if we were to borrow for the acquisition of Touch Mindscape, our debt to EBITDA will be approximately close to two times, right? So I think there's still ample room for us to continue to borrow for further acquisition, right? I mean, we probably can scale up three, 3.5 times or even higher, right?
Despite that, I think if you look at our operation today from an organic perspective, if you look at all our big operations in Malaysia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, I think you see that they are all self-financing, right? We don't need, in fact, they are free cash flow positive. They have the ability to upstream dividend as well, right, to the group. So from an organic perspective, we don't need funding in this footprint. However, I mean, the smaller ones, the ones that are scaling up like Pakistan, like the Philippines, and probably Sri Lanka are the ones that probably require some funding. B ut as you can see, I think the additional cash that's generated from our mature market would be sufficient to even cover for that, right?
But in any case, our balance sheet is still strong even after the acquisition of Touch Mindscape, and we still could lever up, right, for further acquisition.
Vivek, do you want to add on to that, Vivek?
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, obviously, Axiata being the main shareholder also carries the burden of the balance sheet of EDOTCO. So I think that there is currently, we believe that the EDOTCO balance sheet is suboptimal given that it's an infra business with no leverage on the balance sheet is not the right capital structure for EDOTCO. So I think there is a clear path for EDOTCO to build balance sheet through, and if that comes with additional EBITDA through the balance sheet route, which is what EDOTCO is now doing for all these acquisitions because all the existing businesses are pretty much cash positive.
Now, we obviously put on certain guardrails in place on what is the level of leverage we want to go to as the major shareholder and other. And after that, we will have to look at opportunities of either investors coming in or possibly monetization of the towers. So at this point in time, we are not there. So I think at this point in time, we are comfortable with these acquisitions from an Axiata balance sheet standpoint.
Even, in fact, just to add on to that, you know, so far as the balance sheet is concerned, there's still plenty of cash sitting in the balance sheet. However, a lot of this cash is restricted in that sense. Yeah, for example, we have lots of cash in Bangladesh stuck because of a 15% withholding tax sort of levy, if you like, if you were to dividend that up.
So, you know, even putting that aside, the capacity for EDOTCO to borrow is still, you know, EDOTCO still has a lot of capacity to borrow to embark on the acquisitions that they've planned to. Datuk Idham, DNB, our favorite topic. Free trial for wholesale. Has Celcom signed up, whereas TM has? And what is the consideration for this free wholesale service? Yeah. Mind you, we're not supposed to, we're not at liberty to discuss a lot of these things involving DNB because we're still in the middle of the negotiations and discussions with DNB. We have chosen to not make any media statements, and that's deliberate. Idham?
Yeah, thank you for the question. As Dato' was saying, a lot of discussion is still ongoing.
We have been actually in discussion on quite a number of fronts, from the commercial fronts to the technical fronts, testing and all that, and this is still ongoing at this point in time, so until that is concluded, then we'll see where we go from there. Maybe that's as far as we can comment at this point on this.
All right, so at this rare juncture, you have not made any announcement to start to join the trial. That's a fair statement for this juncture?
Well, at this juncture, we have been doing some technical testing with them in terms of getting connectivity and all that, so some of this testing is ongoing, yeah.
All right. Thank you. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, Isaac.
Thanks, Isaac. So we'll move on to the next questions from Sean Yap from Zaba Capital.
Sean, can you unmute your mic and ask your questions, please?
Hi, thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I have two questions from my side. I'll start with the first one and then address the second one after the first one's been answered. On the XL Axiata disposal stake to Ferrymount, I want to dig in to understand a bit more of the call option terms that Ferrymount has granted to Axiata. What is the rationale there for Axiata having a call option to purchase the 5% stake back at cost when the prevailing price is below the 2,300 IDR stock price before June 2022? Just want to understand what is the rationale and how are you thinking about that term from your perspective?
Sure. Well spotted. Now, in any partnerships, there's always a trial period, and the trial period never really starts until you actually have a partnership. So the idea there is that if the partnership doesn't work out and one of the manifestations of the partnership not working out is that because for whatever reason the share price, you know, falls below that 2,300, then we have a right, but not necessarily we may not exercise the right because at the end of the day, share price, share price, but the purchaser, Ferrymount, felt that the share price is the best proxy. So when we, when I, when we were discussing this or negotiating this, that was the issue. The issue is, you know, how do we know if the partnership is going to work out?
You know, we don't want a 5% minority investor, a shareholder there, and so on and so forth. Ferrymount was confident of being able to make sure that, you know, they will bring and create value for XL Axiata. Then what we thought was a fair arrangement is to have a call option to buy back and, you know, at the same price, and, you know, we all just remain friends. I don't know whether that answers your question, Sean.
No, I think that's thanks for the explanation. Yeah.
Because there was a floor, sorry, just going to add on, because there's a floor, there's also a ceiling, yeah? That was only the fair sort of ask, if you like, from their side. Sorry, I didn't understand the part about the ceiling.
Oh, no, the part of the deal is that if the share price exceeds 3,000, yeah, then the call option falls off. That's right.
Yeah. Understand. Thank you. And my second question, I think this relates more to specifically to XL Axiata and the Indonesian telecom landscape. So maybe this is for you, Ibu Dian. I think during your presentation, you had mentioned two implications for XL on the back of the industry consolidation, one being opportunity to gain market share and two, less intensive pricing competition. Can you elaborate more on these two points on why do you think this gives you an opportunity to gain market share and why do you think price competition will moderate? Because over the years, we have seen some pretty intense price competition in Indonesia. So we'd like to understand how this might change the dynamic there.
Yeah, thank you for the question. So first is on the easiness of the price competitions. We see that, you know, currently for the past few years, the competition, as you mentioned, that it has been very fierce, worldwide. Yeah. However, we see that that is actually because of the number of players in the market is just too many. Yeah. So any consolidation will actually help in reducing the players in the market. And that is also will actually result in the more rational movement from each player in the market. And what we see is that, of course, the two companies that now are in the process to merge, they would want to have like the optimum synergy from this merger. So the most rational thing to do is actually to gain upside from the market rationalization, from the increment of the healthiness of the market. Yeah. So that's our rationale on that.
The second on why we think that it will give us opportunity to get market share is that this is also based on our experience when we are doing acquisition and also what we see from the other market when two operators are doing integration, that there will be a lot of process that the two companies will have to do in terms of integrating their network, integrating their ITs, integrating their distribution organization, and so on and so forth. So these things actually will occupy the management from doing an aggressive play or doing a specific go-to-market strategy. So it will give us a certain window for us to put a specific and also focus GTM in that golden window. So we see that this is probably will be like one in a lifetime opportunities to gain market share.
Understand. Thanks a lot, Ibu Dian.
Thanks a lot, Dato'.
Thanks, Sean.
Thank you. Let's move on to Alex Goh from AmInvestment Bank. He's got some follow-up questions. Please unmute your microphone and ask your questions. Alex?
Thanks, man. I just managed to unmute myself. Thanks for the opportunity. I have three questions. The first is regarding the acquisition of the additional sites, the towers from Touch. Digi itself has over 10,000 sites. As I understand, Touch has certain exclusivity in Pahang. But given the fact that once the merger with Digi comes into place, you also have to dispose of certain towers. I'm just wondering, why have you entered into this Touch acquisition before the completion of the merger? That's my first question. My second question is more for Ibu Dian.
Could you give us a bit of insight on how the regulators view in terms of the fiber rollout in Indonesia? In Malaysia, I mean, TM has the monopoly on the wholesale fiber. So in Indonesia, is that going, is that how the regulators are thinking, or is it going to be a free-for-all? And is there currently any form of sharing of resources with Telkomsel? And what is the ratio in terms of the leasing arrangement you have with Telkomsel's assets? My third question, I understand, oh, it's on the 5G. I understand management can't really give much comments on it, given that negotiation is in place.
But could you give us a bit of indication whether in your own internal view, that in the immediate term, that the wholesale arrangement and the corresponding cost sharing of your fiber network, will it lead to an immediate earnings accretion, or will it only take place over a longer time for you to scale up, for example, two-to-three years later? Yeah, that's my three questions.
Okay, thanks, Alex. Adlan, the first question on the exclusivity of Touch Mindscape, yeah? Why did we enter this deal before the completion of the Celcom-Digi merger? Because there will be some overlap and rationalization between the network. I mean, internally, we have considered this. So perhaps you can provide some color to the audience.
First thing is, I think, as we mentioned earlier, right? I mean, we work on long-term contracts. And I think there's a lock-in period, right?
Typically, if there is any merger, an early termination will be subject to a certain commercial penalty, right? So in that sense, I think in this case, what we have seen in other cases where early termination, for example, that will be a commercial deal between two parties, right? So early termination of one as a result of the merger, I think it has to be something that's acceptable to us to accept that will compensate for that loss of that tenancy. So whatever deal that we deal with the merger, it has to be something that's commercially acceptable to us for us to agree to any early termination, yeah? And I think, as Dato' mentioned, we have factored. We are well aware of the Celcom-Digi merger. We understand the impact. And I think we have factored in our valuation.
But I think more fundamentally, Alex, the vendor has decided to run a process to dispose of the tower, the business. As we understand it, we have been reliably told there are two other bidders. And of course, we have no certain, we don't know with certainty the valuations that they have indicated, they have submitted. But we like to think we were pretty competitive when it came to the valuation we put in. Or to put it that way, apparently the bids are around the same sort of, you know, same sort of side of that spectrum, so to speak. Dian, on our perspective of the regulators in terms of the fiber rollout in Indonesia, is that how the regulators are thinking, i.e., majority monopoly? You know, compared to Malaysia, it's a monopoly sort of, you know, situation.
Or would we be able to roll out a fiber network with no constraints and any form or any plans to share resources with Telkomsel? And if the ratio of leasing arrangements with Telkomsel assets?
Okay, thank you for the question. So in Indonesia, I think the government is very unlikely to govern fiber implementation or to build a common infrastructure for all the operators. But they encourage sharing infrastructures, both in fiber and also in tower infrastructure. But if it happens, it is based on B2B arrangement. So they don't govern the price, they don't govern, for instance, the percentage of the access that every player has to open. So it is purely B2B arrangement. So on the infrastructure from Telkom Group, actually Telkomsel, they do, they doesn't build and own their own fiber. So it is from Telkom, yeah, Telkom. Telkomsel itself leases from Telkom.
Probably the question is how much Telkom fiber infra that we unleash. Basically, Telkom in certain area or in certain links, they open their fiber asset for other operators, of course, with a B2B arrangement, which is, in our perspective, considerably in a high side in terms of price, yeah. So from Telkomsel, we lease some of their towers through Telkom tower companies, which is Mitratel. But currently, in terms of the percentage of tower that we lease from them, it's in the low percentage compared to, you know, tower that we lease from other tower providers. So I hope that answered the question.
Currently, among the fiber, how much do you own of all the homes that you have passed currently?
So I don't have the number currently. Our own fiber and lease. So mostly, you know, the new development is the actually lease.
We use a lease model for the new fiber development. We adopt this since last year because now the fiber providers are many. So that's why we can get a cost-effective business model by doing that. But what we own right now is mostly the one that we built in the past.
I see. But since you have been able to lease with other operators, what's the purpose of Link Net in that case, since you already can access, you know, the fiber that you need and you can actually market it to your clients?
Yeah. So even if it can be leased, but if the model is built to suit, so somebody built the fiber and then we can lease for them, it will still require time to implement the fiber.
Because if you want to go to a certain area for our FTTH business, then the fiber provider will have to build fiber in those areas. So it will require time, yeah? And building fiber is actually quite long due to the permit and so on and so forth, yeah? And also acquiring Link Net is not only acquiring their asset, but it's also acquiring their business, the FTTH business that will be beneficial for our converge nce vision.
Don't let us forget the gold mine, if you combine the two businesses actually in the back end, yeah? The infrastructure, the systems, billing systems, and so on. There's a lot of synergies that one could extract from the acquisition itself that you can't do if you were to lease fiber, yeah?
I mean, I think it's not strictly comparable, Alex, the benefits that we think one could extract from merging these two businesses or at least the assets, yeah? We think it's much better than having access to lease the fiber. Datuk Idham, DNB, in the near term, wholesale arrangement and cost sharing of fiber network, will that lead to immediate earnings accretion or will that take a longer time? I think there's two parts of this question. The telcos have been sharing fiber network all this while. Maybe we separate that out and just focus on the wholesale arrangement, whether wholesale arrangement will lead to immediate earnings accretion or will that take a longer time?
Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Alex, for the question. Yeah, Dato' is right. For the fiber, we've been sharing.
We've been doing sharing with most of the operators, and that has been very, very beneficial to us. On the wholesale versus whatever the traditional way, there are two things about this. Number one, typically we don't look at just the short term. We look at the more longer-term impact to whatever arrangement that we go into. But more importantly, at this point in time, there's still a lot of discussion, and some of this has still not been finalized. So we can't really say what's the implication for the short term, yeah? So maybe that's as far as I can answer right now. Maybe not as specific as you would like it. But that's where we are today.
Okay, great. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Alex.
Thank you. So I think we'll move back to the questions on the chat group to take questions from Ikhwan from PNB. Yeah?
Two questions from Ikhwan here. Firstly is for ADA. It seems that ADA is focused on enterprise customers in digital journey, digital transformation journey. Will ADA be also interested in expanding in the SMB category, or is this market covered by Boost via their merchant solutions? Secondly, will ADA be interested in looking beyond front-end customer and marketing data and also help enterprise digitalize their back-end processes such as ERP procurement, perhaps in the future?
Actually, Srini, Ikhwan is reading our minds here. But insofar as a small, I mean, ADA is, if you like, supporting the CMO function in the Group and all the customers that ADA has. Sorry, Srini, I'll pass on to you very shortly. So the SMB customer category is not quite the target customer base just yet.
We're trying to decide, you know, whether it's our enterprise arm through Celcom that's going to approach or that's going to roll out the applications and platforms for the SMB category, yeah? Not quite the merchant solutions that you've asked, Ikhwan. Srini, do you want to? And the second bit is about whether you plan to digitize the back-end processes such as ERP procurement, perhaps in the future. Srini?
Yeah, so exactly that was, as you said, our focus is very much to completely own the end-to-end domain of the Chief Marketing Officer of the enterprises. And that's the big opportunity in any market, if you look at any category, be it banks, telcos, CPG, the top enterprises probably represent more than 90% of the total marketing spend and continue to even within the digital domain.
For SMB, you require a very different operating model where you have very extremely low cost of SMB acquisition, extremely low cost to serve them, which is not the model for deep integrated data analytics marketing solutions today, and hence, we'll continue to focus on the large enterprises and actually spread more services inside the large enterprises because that's the, I think, will provide the highest profitability and economic model for us and then whether we'll expand our data analytics capabilities and digitization capabilities beyond the front end. Right now, our focus is very much deploying all the data and AI towards the CMO organization. There might be a time when we can leverage these capabilities more, the middle and the back office of the enterprises, but at least in the short term, it's all about e-commerce. It's all about marketing because that's the big opportunity.
I mean, e-commerce alone is a hundred billion opportunity in Southeast Asia, and that's what we're going after.
Thank you, Srini. So the next question from Ikhwan is on Boost. Is there a breakdown for online, offline, e-wallet transaction volume? And on the merchant side, how much do you depend on your partners for merchant acquisitions? Is the technology behind the value-added services offered proprietary, or is it based on partnerships with third-party vendors? That's a question. Sheyantha? Sheyantha, you're still there, right?
Yes, I'm here. Apart from my connection, it's a little choppy, so I'll keep the camera off. So on the online to offline mix, it's about 60% online now, 40% offline. And that's, as I mentioned during my presentation, as you saw during the COVID period. When it comes to merchant acquisition, it really depends on the category of merchant.
If you talk about big format retailers, tier ones, the large brands, there we typically still work with third-party acquirers. Most of the smaller merchants are direct relationships that we have. And over time, we see more of our relationships across the entire spectrum actually going into direct relationships with merchants. On the acquiring piece, what I also want to kind of highlight is we will be launching an online, or we have launched, in fact, we will be pushing it out quite aggressively next year, a self-registration portal as well for merchants to register with Boost. So you can register completely digitally, e-KYC with e-KYB, and download the QR and become a Boost merchant. So that's something we will push aggressively next year. On the value-added services, it depends on the service. So part of it is provided by us.
So if it's lending products, if it is providing a digital interface for transacting, that would be through us. If it is adjacent services like, you know, taking somebody online, providing them delivery services, payroll, ERP, mini ERP services, that would probably be with a partner.
Okay. Okay. Ikhwan, is that sufficient for your questions? Sufficient answers to your questions?
It was on the group chat. Oh, it was in the group chat. Okay. Okay. All right. Claire? Last question from the group chat we're taking is from Sharon Chen from Bloomberg Intelligence. With the increase in M&A activity, can you please confirm your commitment to maintaining Gross Debt to EBITDA belo w 2.5 times?
This is certainly a question for the Group CFO.
Thanks, Sharon. I think the intention is to maintain it. I think we've always looked at credit rating as a critical item from a risk appetite standpoint.
We would like to keep our credit rating. There's always timing where you have gross debt to EBITDA moving up or down because it's not always that EBITDA comes from day one, whereas the debt might accrue from day one. But what we say is on a sustainable basis. So I think our discussion with the rating agencies has always been around sustainable basis. We should be able to maintain gross debt to EBITDA. Having said that, I think last three years, if you see, we've actually brought down our gross debt to EBITDA to the levels which are fairly comfortable. And this is despite the fact that the gross debt now includes these lease liabilities. So I think from that perspective, we are comfortable.
But as I said, you know, there are occasions where you would see that increasing, but that's where we have discussions with the rating agencies with clear plans on bringing down to those levels of 2.5x.
Okay. Thank you, Vivek. Foong Choong, I see that you have your hand raised, but I think we need to have a hard stop in a few minutes' time. So perhaps we'll circle back with you separately to take your questions. Okay. So I think thank you very much for the speakers that have dialed in. But, you know, Dr. Hans, Ibu Dian, Datuk Idham, Sheyantha, Srini, as well as Adlan. We would appreciate your kind feedback from the audience on this event. Basically, another QR code, again, feedback on the event per se. The QR code is also available on the group chat.
So please help us fill this up so that we can continuously improve the event for you. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So that's basically a wrap. I think thank you very much for joining us. Dato', perhaps you want to end with some closing remarks?
Sure. First of all, again, thank you for joining us today. And thank you really for all the questions that all of you have posed today. I'm heartened to see the interest in the companies that's within the stable of Axiata, particularly the new digital, the two digital businesses. You know, Vivek was just commenting that it's good to see telco analysts posing questions on the digital businesses. So that will be a common feature for our quarterly reports moving forward, starting with the full year results. We will disclose the results of ADA as well as Boost Holdings separately.
We do have great plans for the two businesses, as you've heard from Srini and Sheyantha . And thank you to the team for organizing this event today. Thank you to the CEOs for participating. And looking forward to financial year 2022. We have a plan that we will just continue to execute because the key in all plans is execution. And if we execute well, then everything else will fall into place. So again, thank you for your participation. And if I don't speak to any of you, or you again, have a good break, good holidays, and look forward to meeting you again in the New Year.