Okay. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Clare Chin, Head of Investor Relations at Axiata Group Berhad. Thank you for standing by, and apologies for the slight delay in our call. Welcome to Axiata's fourth quarter results briefing. Today, we have present with us Vivek Sood, Group CEO of Axiata Group; Nik Rizal Kamil, Group CFO of Axiata Group; as well as representatives from our operating companies. There'll be a short presentation followed by a Q&A session. One last housekeeping matter to note, please, since it is Ramadan month, we would be keeping this call to only 45 minutes today. Without further ado, I would like to hand the conference over to Vivek, please.
Thank you, Clare. Very good afternoon. It's my pleasure to present Q4 2025 results. Let me start with a quick slide, and then I'll hand over to Nik to go through the details. 2025, we ended up the year with MYR 365 million profit, but very strong cash flow generation of MYR 1.6 billion. We are very happy to declare MYR 0.05 dividend, that translates into full year dividend of MYR 0.10, and this is in line with what was the market message we made earlier in the year. We also feel a strong balance sheet of 2.46 net debt to EBITDA. However, performance does get impacted because of the strengthening of ringgit versus our operating currencies.
I think all against our operating currencies, somewhere between 7%-12% was the strengthening of ringgit, and that does impact our translation number into ringgit. Let me quickly cover the three buckets of our assets. You will notice that I'm not really talking about infra here. Let me start with digital telcos. Our underlying performance of all our footprint markets, including the two joint venture companies, was strong. We are seeing very strong synergies coming from the merger in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, as well as CelcomDigi, and they are pretty much on track. We are also seeing visible market repair subsequent to the consolidation which has happened, and we've been a significant part of that consolidation exercise in these markets.
start with the first question from the audience. The first question is from [Name] from [Company]. The question is, "What is the company's strategy for growth in the coming years, particularly in emerging markets?" [Speaker Name]: Thank you for the question. Our strategy for growth in the coming years is multi-faceted, focusing on both organic expansion and strategic acquisitions. In emerging markets, we see significant opportunities for growth, particularly in [Region 1] and [Region 2]. We plan to leverage our existing infrastructure and expertise to expand our market share in these regions. Additionally, we are exploring partnerships with local companies to accelerate our growth and ensure cultural relevance. We believe that by focusing on innovation, customer experience, and sustainable practices, we can achieve our growth targets and deliver long-term value to our shareholders. [Speaker Name]: To add to that, we're also heavily investing in digital transformation across all our operations. This includes enhancing our e-commerce capabilities, improving our data analytics for better decision-making, and integrating AI-powered solutions to optimize our supply chain and customer service. We believe that digital transformation is not just about technology, but about fundamentally rethinking how we operate to be more agile, efficient, and customer-centric. This will be a key driver of our growth, especially in markets where digital adoption is rapidly increasing. [Speaker Name]: Furthermore, we are committed to responsible growth. This means ensuring that our expansion efforts are environmentally sustainable and socially responsible. We are actively working to reduce our carbon footprint, promote diversity and inclusio
I think it's been profitable and also fairly cash liquid, looking for opportunities to further expand as well as create bigger value. Boost, strong loan growth coming from the Boost Bank and the non-Boost Bank now, losses are narrowing. I think the good news is our ability to generate strong cash flows in operating companies translating into upstream of dividend of around MYR 1.7 billion during the year, as well as significant reduction both at the group and overall group as well as the holding company of debt. Some of the markets, in fact, most of the frontier markets have eliminated their dollar exposure over the last year. Monetization of infra businesses is progressing. I think we expect to close this year our exercise.
With that, I'll hand over to Nik to take you all through the financial numbers.
Okay. Thank you, Vivek. Good afternoon, everyone.
The merger was successfully executed in quarter two of last year, with financial year 2025 synergy targets being achieved and in fact, exceeded. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, comparing to quarter three, there was a strong revenue growth of 3.9%, driven by mobile ARPU growth of 15%. The business fundamentals remain strong, despite one-off adjustments and ongoing integration. At the PAT level for full year 2025, it was IDR 4.4 trillion loss, and this is mainly due to the accelerated depreciation and also, which was about IDR 4.5 trillion, and also integration costs of IDR 1.8 trillion. Added to that, there's also LinkNet impairment as XL Smart still owns 20% of LinkNet.
If you were to exclude these items, PAT would actually be a profit of 3 trillion Indonesian rupiah. As I alluded to earlier, FY 2025 synergy targets of between IDR 150-200 million was achieved. In fact, they achieved slightly more than that. XL Smart declared a dividend of 244.7 rupiah per share for the financial year 2025. Next, we have Dialog in Sri Lanka. Despite the impact of Cyclone Sitrang in Sri Lanka in quarter four, their quarter four performance remained resilient with a 1.8% higher revenue quarter-on-quarter. In fact, on all metrics, they had positive momentum for the quarter.
For the full year, revenue growth was very strong, with a 4.9% uplift, mainly due to the strong 23% uplift in mobile, mainly in prepaid segment, underpinned by organic growth of 17% and also Airtel consolidation of 7%. There were further cost optimization in the year from the Airtel and Airtel merger synergies, which translated to a significant uplift across all parameters. For the year, Dialog declared a LKR 1.5 dividend per share. Next on Robi. Robi remained resilient in FY 25 and sustained their profitability whereby their PATAMI grew by 33.3% year-on-year.
Notwithstanding that, revenue was relatively flat, slightly higher at 0.4% on a local currency basis or constant currency. This together with the cost efficiency and optimization had meant that they were able to keep a bit of flat and however, grow profitability to about BDT 9.4 billion for the financial year. Their balance sheet continued to strengthen with borrowings basically reduced to near zero at the end of FY 2025. The borrowings that you see in their books are mainly due to leases. For the financial year, Robi declared BDT 1.75 per share for the year. Next on Smart.
Prepaid ARPU growth and cost efficiency drove their PATAMI growth. Revenue grew by about 6.2% quarter-on-quarter and 4.8% year-on-year. For FY 2025, the growth was mainly due to the sustained growth in prepaid segment from high ARPU and subscribers. Cost efficiencies continued to deliver strong EBIT and PATAMI growth of 11% and 5.9% respectively. For the year, dividend upstreaming from Smart was approximately $70 million. With the exception of XL Axiata, I just summarized all our telecoms portfolio showed a year-on-year PATAMI increase. The only reason for XL Axiata, their PATAMI loss was due to the accelerated depreciation, integration costs and the LinkNet impairment.
If you were to take those one-offs out, even XL Smart would have shown a profit. If you were to look at our telecoms portfolio in its entirety, it was a year-on-year portfolio growth with all telecom portfolio of OpCos upstreaming dividends to the group. Moving on. Next is on our technology. We used to be digital business, what we're calling now the technology portfolio. We'll start with ADA. Growth was led by the solutions business with underlying profit improving based on disciplined cost management. Revenue was relatively flat.
EBITDA and EBIT was slightly higher, but PATAMI was slightly lower at 7.5%, but still at MYR 49 million, which basically marked the seventh consecutive year of profitability for ADA. My apologies. For Boost, loans booked growth in the year resulted in higher interest income at both bank and non-bank, with overall losses narrowing. As you can see, there's a revenue growth of 43% in both bank and non-bank. For PATAMI, the for the non-bank PATAMI losses narrowed in the year. For the bank, it was slightly lower at MYR 41 million. Now to edotco.
edotco, on a revenue basis in quarter and quarter showed a 4% increase from Q3 to Q4. However, on a full year basis, it was 5.9% lower. edotco, like Axiata Group also, were impacted by the strengthening of the ringgit against our the OpCos that they have operating. For edotco, it was mainly in Bangladesh, which account for a significant chunk of their business. On a constant currency basis, they showed basically flattish revenue, and that was mainly because in FY 2024, they had the benefit of a price benchmarking that happened in the middle part of the year, which accounted to about MYR 121 million.
So, on a like-for-like basis, they would have shown growth if we were to normalize it in FY 2024. Although the decline in revenue due to Forex is what I was alluding to earlier, PATAMI actually more than doubled from 171 million to 379 million ringgit, where there were Forex gains because some of their borrowings are actually denominated in US dollars. They gain from the balance sheet side of it. There was also lower finance costs from the ability of edotco to pay down their debts in the year, mainly from the utilization of the proceeds they got from edotco Myanmar, indicating discipline in terms of capital management and recycling.
With regards to the tower costs, all were profitable, with the exception of Philippines, where losses are narrowing, and the expectation for Philippines for 2026 is that from Q4 2026 onwards, they will start going to PAT positive territory. Dividend upstreaming in edotco, this was actually the second year of dividend, right? Or was it-
First.
First year of dividends from edotco, and the second payment is MYR 54 million for FY 2025, and I believe they'll also be declaring as the second interim-
Okay
...to Axiata and to the other shareholders. Finally on LinkNet. Unfortunately, LinkNet is a OpCo that in fact face a very challenging FY 2025. Again, a comparison on a year-on-year or like-for-like is a little bit distorted due to the fact that in FY 2024, late in FY 2024, we had transferred or basically sold... LinkNet had sold the ServeCo business or the customers to XL. You can see in the FY 2024 bar, in 2024 alone, that accounted roughly for three-quarters of performance. That was already about 1.1 trillion Indonesian rupiah. Obviously, due to the transfer in 2024, this was no longer there for 2025.
like basis, comparing the FibreCo business, you can see that FibreCo business has done well compared to FY 2024. And this is the ability to essentially transform Link Net into a FibreCo going forward. Obviously, they made some progress on ISP expansion and open access. However, as the exclusivity with XL Smart only expired in Q4 of last year, it's only towards the tail end of 2025 and beginning of January that they had already started to sign up some of their home connects. So going forward, the improvement should come forth from there. Again, from a profitability point of view, you can see that the transfer of the ServeCo is one of the main reasons to
that impacted the PATAMI that grew from positive to negative in FY 2025. With that now, I will transition to the overall or the roll-up of the consolidated group numbers of FY 2025. As I had alluded to earlier, overall performance was impacted by Forex translation, with the ringgit strengthening by about 7%-13% versus operating currencies. On the revenue side, we closed the year at MYR 11.8 billion in revenue, 6.3% down year-on-year, mainly due to Forex, but on a constant currency basis, 2.2% higher.
Quarter-on-quarter showed strong performance in quarter four compared to quarter three, with both on a year and with basically on a constant currency quarter-by-quarter basis, it grew by about 4.1%. Again, the main the main reason for the improvement in revenue was basically higher ARPUs in Dialog and Smart. However, it was just offset by the weaker performance in LinkNet. EBITDA for the year, we registered MYR 5.46 billion, 4% down year-on-year, mainly due to Forex. At constant currency, 5.7% higher, mainly due to the merger synergies from Dialog, Airtel and Sri Lanka.
Uh, quarter on quarter, there was good underlying performance, uh, and EBITDA grew by about seven point nine percent. Uh, EBIT level, we recorded one point five seven billion, uh, ringgit, uh, for the year, uh, down nineteen point one percent year-on-year, mainly due to Forex translation and LinkNet impairment. Um, uh, so even on the constant currency, it was down seven point eight percent, mainly due to the LinkNet impairment. Uh, if we were to normalize for the LinkNet impairment and the impact of Forex, the underlying EBIT growth would have been twenty point two percent, which beats our headline KPI of high single-digit growth.
On joint control entities or JCEs, share of results for the year was 79.4% lower year-on-year, mainly driven by the share of results from Smart Axiata, where due to the merger integration costs and also the accelerated depreciation and LinkNet impairment, for full year 2025, our share of loss was about MYR 389 million. For CDB results though, contribution to AGB was 21.2% higher at MYR 468 million. Compared to the previous year. PATAMI, we recorded a PATAMI of MYR 365 million.
This was impacted mainly due to the LinkNet impairment, which if we were to normalize that PATAMI, would be at roughly around MYR 762 million. The MYR 365 million PATAMI reported here is on a combined reporting basis, so it includes besides continuing operations, also the discontinued operations of XL Axiata and edotco Myanmar. On an underlying PATAMI basis, this we recorded at MYR 537 million, 36.3% higher year-on-year. Again, reflecting the underlying performance of our OpCos, mainly our telcos, which based on a constant currency basis and also adjusted for one-off items.
Again, the outperformance is mainly driven by Dialog, edotco, and also, as I mentioned, the other telcos as well. On a quarter-on-quarter, performance was flatish at roughly about MYR 160 million in fourth quarter 25, which is driven by top-line improvement. Next, just quickly on balance sheet. As at the end of December 2025, group cash stood at MYR 3.7 billion. Lower year-on-year, mainly due to the deconsolidation of XL Axiata, which completed in quarter two 2025. FY 2024, in our balance sheet, we did not restate our balance sheet, so the balance for XL Axiata was still consolidated in FY 2024 numbers.
At Holdco level, our Holdco cash was MYR 826 million higher year-on-year by 70.8%. On borrowings, group borrowings, we closed the year at just slightly over MYR 15 billion. This is 35.1% lower year-on-year basis, mainly due to debt repayment at Holdco level, edotco, Robi, and Dialog, and also the deconsolidation of XL, which was in 2025. Holdco borrowings was just slightly below MYR 7 billion, 26.6% lower year-on-year, mainly due to the disciplined reduction in Holdco debt, including the EMTN buyback that happened in third quarter of 2025.
For info, at the end of 31st December 2024, Holdco borrowing stood at about MYR 9.5 billion. Approximately, we've managed to bring down the Holdco borrowings by about MYR 2.5 billion in the calendar year. This has resulted in our net debt EBITDA at the end of 2025 at 2.46 times, which is an improvement from 2.61 times that we recorded in Q3 2025. Comparing to Q4 2024 or where we ended in 2024, it was 2.74 times. With that, I will pass it back to Vivek.
Let me start with the headline KPI 2025 achievement. We did set a KPI of high single digits. We ended up with 20.2 on EBIT. This is after adjustment for Link Net goodwill impairment. Going forward, given that we're still in the process of monetization of our infra assets, there may be short-term deviations against what we set headline KPI. In this context, the Group's prospects will provide more appropriate guidance. In 2026, the Group is progressing into the next phase of its strategic journey, which as we explained in our Analyst Day, split between telecoms and technology portfolio to focus on profitability and valuation growth.
Telecom portfolio, I think we've completed the market consolidation, and with the improved market structure, operating companies will continue to with market repatriation efforts to obtain market position number one or strong number two. Our OpCos, Smart, Robi, Dialog, and key associates have an aspiration to realize full potential of top line convergence on operational excellence and to deliver full equity potential in high ROIC cash flows and profitability. Our portfolio of technology will focus on waste elimination, and the funding for that would be essentially external. ADA and Boost Holdings have an aspiration to achieve sustainable growth, execute on bolt-on acquisition, again, internally funded or funded through external capital, and move along to the path of monetization and waste elimination. This basically, in a way, spells out what our prospects for 2026 are.
We expect once all this monetization, et cetera, is done and where we are more in a static state of business, we should be able to come back to the guidance with some financial KPIs. We will let the market know what would be those KPIs would be. For 2026, we will stick to the statement. Okay. The last slide, as always, opportunities and risks. I think we still see benefits of merger synergies and market repair flowing down to the cash flows and profit generation of these OpCos. I think the two, specifically the biggest one would be so far, moving on track.
I think 5G market leadership, we've been ahead than our peers in these three markets, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Cambodia, in terms of our 5G rollout, and that's an opportunity. Monetization of infra assets, I think, this also came out in our Analyst Day as something important from the investors as a key trigger for any kind of relating of Axiata. I think that's something where we should attempt to get successfully completed, and that should also result in reduction in holding company core debt, as well as our continuing efforts in reducing the operating expenses of the holding company. Risks, I think we're still not there when it comes to the final state of DNB and the ownership structure of DNB.
I think that will still remain, for some time as an overhang. Monetization of 5G investments, I think so far so good, but we need to be conscious that this is not something which is easy to be achieved. Our markets, especially the frontier markets, will remain vulnerable to the geopolitical and macroeconomic risks. With that, I will stop. Hand over back to Clare.
Okay. Thank you, Vivek. Thank you, Nick. We move on quickly to the Q&A session, and I would like to highlight that we also have representatives from XL, Robi, Dialog, Smart and edotco on the line. Feel free to engage with the respective CEOs of our operating companies. To ask your questions, you may choose to do this verbally. You just need to raise your hand, wait till your name is called out for your turn. Otherwise, you can also type your questions in the chat box. Perhaps we have done a very good job in the presentation. There is no further questions.
We did have an audience.
It doesn't seem like we have any questions.
I think we just did an investor date.
I suppose so.
Two weeks back, right?
Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah, 10 days. When. Yeah. Yeah, almost two weeks back.
Yeah, two weeks back.
Okay. Prem couldn't resist, unfortunately.
Yeah.
So.
Thanks for flying the flag.
Yes. Okay, Prem, your hand is raised. Mic over to you then.
Thanks. Yeah, maybe because it's just very close to the Investor Day. Let me try my luck here. Any progress with regards to the asset monetizations since last month?
Well, I think, we are in discussions. We are progressing, but I don't think we can share at this stage. It's all in cooking, right?
Yeah.
It's all work in progress.
Yeah.
I suppose the one thing which stands out is, compared to one month ago, this time round you did come out to say specifically that you plan to complete the asset monetization in 2026.
Yes.
I think that's still holding.
Yeah.
Okay. All right. We are on track for that.
Yeah. No, no change to that.
Yes. No change to that. That is still the target.
What would be the biggest risk to that target date, I suppose?
This risk.
I would
I say regulatory approvals. Right?
Yes.
Cause that's like out of our control. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Specifically in frontier markets.
Yeah
...which might take longer.
That's right.
When it comes to the other parties involved, it's something where we are fairly certain of deal conclusion. Is that fair to say?
I mean, it's very difficult to say unless you sign on dotted line.
Yeah.
I think we are working in the right direction, I would say.
Yes. Yeah. Definitely progressing. Still work in progress, but definitely progressing.
All right. I'll leave it there then. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Look, I think, looks like we have no further questions.
Okay, great. Thank you.
That's great. Thank you. Thank you everyone to join this.
Yep, thank you very much.
Don't make it so easy for Nick when I'm not here. No questions.
Oh, I'm pretty sure they won't. We'll probably have smaller sessions and stuff as we go along anyway, so.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. Yes, have a good day.
Okay, take care.