Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. Sorry for the technical glitch just now. Now, welcome to all our friends from the investment community to Digi's third quarter financial year 2022 results call today. I'm Christine, the Head of Investor Relations, for those who don't know me. On my right is actually Praveen Rajan, the Acting Chief Executive Officer and Chief Marketing Officer. On my far right is Otto, Chief Financial Officer. Now, I know Deepavali is actually around the corner, so here's hoping our earnings call can brighten up your Deepavali vibe. Before we waste any further minutes, let me invite Praveen to kick off the session with opening remarks and his presentation. Over to you.
Thank you, Christine. Good afternoon. On behalf of the Digi team, thank you very much for joining us, today. Let me start with a quick overview. Q3 has been a good quarter for us, with progress on all three strategic pillars. On modernization, we consolidated our number one network position in Malaysia through our investments focused on customer experience and digitization. In Q3, we set a new record for download speeds at over 45 Mbps despite continuous traffic growth.
On responsible business, we continue our deep engagement through internal activities and cooperation with external stakeholders on key themes such as human rights, safety, data security, privacy, and ESG. On climate, we are constantly working on refining the roadmap and plan for climate change. This is a complex task, as you can understand. It requires time and deep cooperation. Those of you who participated at our recent investor meeting, which was held last month, we hope you also got a good chance, good impression, of how we work systematically on these topics.
Thank you for being with us at that time. Supported by the leading network position in Malaysia, we have a strong brand and good execution from a dedicated team. We delivered the best quarter so far in 2022 with around 1% QoQ EBITDA growth and 20% QoQ PAT growth. We will go into more details on the underlying drivers in the next slides. I'm pleased to report good progress made on the strategic projects. On the merger, we passed another important milestone on September fifteenth when we received the approval from the Securities Commission for the proposed merger.
We are now moving forward with seeking Bursa approval, then finalizing the circular to shareholders, and then preparing for EGM approval. We still aim for the transaction to complete by the end of this year. On 5G, we are pleased to inform that we have signed the equity agreement after a thorough series of negotiations with DNB. The closing of the equity transaction is conditional upon completion or us completing the Access Agreement or AA. There is good progress on this track, and we are hopeful it can be concluded soon, and we will, of course, update as soon as this is concluded.
As we've mentioned, Digi continues to look forward to rolling out 5G and taking a leading position in digital connectivity in Malaysia. Moving on. From a financial perspective, it has been a good quarter. Driven by good subscriber growth across all segments, disciplined spending, and continuous investment in modernization and digitization, I'm pleased to present to you the best financial results so far in 2022. EBITDA is up almost 1% Q-on-Q to MYR 749 million, and PAT is up more than 20% to MYR 265 million.
When you consider all the things we have had to deal with in the recent quarters, including the merger and the 5G negotiation process, we are pleased by how the entire organization has rallied and responded to the year. In the next slide, we will take you through the key drivers for this good performance. On the network, we continue to expand our footprint and invest in upgrades to reach more customers and deliver better performance. As you can see in the graph on the left of your screen, all network metrics show steady progress.
We now reach more than 95% of the Malaysian population with 4G, while the average data consumption per subscriber is increasing steadily to 23 GB in the third quarter. The average download speed exceeded a record 45 Mbps in the third quarter. Going forward, we'll continue to invest in wider coverage, higher speed, and accommodating more traffic in line with JENDELA and the national ambitions. We foresee 4G to be the main carrier of traffic for the next few years, and it will remain an important part of the network going far into the next decade.
With the 5G single wholesale network, we will see a gradual decline of CapEx and a CapEx to COGS shift in financial statements. The recent Opensignal report again confirmed our number one position. In this report, Digi has a clear number one position in download speeds, network consistency, and is also leading on video quality, all of which are important criteria for most of our customers. Now, I move on to our campaigns in the market. Here's a quick overview of our acquisition efforts in the third quarter.
We launched the Jom Internet Malaysiaku campaign in August with very competitive deals for several segments. These included attractive device contracts, extra data quota, and plan rebates for prepaid, postpaid, and fiber customers. In the postpaid segment, we've offered extra quota deals with good contract offers for customers who have switched or upgraded to the Digi Postpaid 60 or 90 plans. All of these tactical efforts helped us to drive a stronger contracted base, which has now increased steadily, while the gross additions momentum was supported by solid execution in our retail channels.
In the prepaid segment, we are proud to maintain the leadership position in high-speed internet passes, which we have done consistently over the last two years, and as seen through our Jom Internet campaigns. We have also launched the Prepaid NEXT Unlimited 40 plan, this quarter, I mean in the third quarter, to drive higher ARPU development and to serve a fair share of this market segment in Malaysia. This is part of our strategy to increase the quality of our subscriber base and the Malaysian segment overall.
After a good Q2, we again saw a good development on the subscriber base with healthy growth across all segments in the third quarter. The total mobile subscriber base increased by 206,000 subscribers to 10.7 million subscribers, up almost half a million since the first quarter. An additional 5,000 subscribers are on top of this mobile number that you see on this slide. As you will see on the next slides, all segments contributed nicely to our growth, including prepaid, postpaid, B2B, and fiber. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our members of the Digi team, the Digizens, and the frontliners for this positive development.
The decline you see on ARPU in Q3 is mostly related to the impact of the Jaringan Prihatin program, which peaked in the third quarter of 2021 and ended in the third quarter of 2022. The ARPU in postpaid and fiber, however, showed good development. I will now hand over to Otto to go through a thorough walkthrough on details of our financial performance.
Thank you, Praveen. On this prepaid slide, there are three things that I would like to highlight. The first one relates to the trend. In the third quarter, we continue to see positive trend from the last quarter with solid subscriber growth of 167 thousand subs in the third quarter, and 177 thousand subs if we compare to one year ago. I'm particularly pleased that we now see a firm return to growth in the migrant segment after a successful restructuring, focusing on longer tenured subscribers, high data users.
This is the second consecutive quarter with growth in these segments, and we do see potential for further growth as the economy and the borders open. At the same time, we also continue to see good trends in the Malaysian prepaid segment, which is the most important for us. This segment now represents close to three-quarters of our active prepaid subs. The second observation I would like to highlight to you is the ARPU.
The MYR 2 decrease of the ARPU you see in Q3 is mostly related to the impact from the end of the Jaringan Prihatin program, which peaked at the end of the third quarter last year and ended now in the third quarter. We do expect to see a normalization of that, this ARPU, during the fourth quarter as all the subs are now out of this program. The third thing I would like to highlight on the prepaid is what Praveen just mentioned. We launched our new prepaid Unlimited Forty product in most of Malaysia. We see a very strong organic interest for this product, which is complementing our leading high-speed offering.
We are confident that this new product will have a positive effect both on revenue and on ARPU, starting in Q4 and going forward. All in all, we have a more robust prepaid subscriber base now, with high quality migrants now growing and potentially growing more if the economy opens further, and also a loyal Malaysian base with very good growth side momentum and lower churn. On the postpaid side, this was the eighth quarter in a row with solid subscriber growth.
About every quarter, we have added around 40,000 new subs from consistent base management activities and strong organic growth for our high-speed products. On a year-to-year basis, the base is now up 164,000 subs or an increase of 5%. This strong growth side momentum is supported by very solid execution from our distribution and a meticulous planning of campaigns focusing not only on customer wins, but also on recontracting of our customer base through attractive device ranges and flexible financing options.
I'm also particularly happy to see that the postpaid ARPU returned to a small growth after a longer period of market decline. This year, the postpaid ARPU decline has flattened out, as we have seen, and now we see that it's growing again. It is also worth noting that the decline in the year-on-year ARPU is partly driven by the increased bundling that we have both with families and other smart bundles. This is reducing the churn, and we maintain a very healthy ARPA.
On the fiber, we continue to see very consistent growth, adding around 5,000 subscribers every quarter through selling primarily to our mobile subscriber base. I'm also pleased to see that there is a very positive ARPU development in this segment, driven by increased demand for high-speed lines, lifting our ARPU in the third quarter by MYR 3 and an impressive MYR 22 from one year ago, MYR 230. Going forward, we do see a very good potential for further growth as the market for fiber and high-speed fiber in Malaysia is still underdeveloped.
In our B2B segment, we continue to see strong demand for our advanced managed solutions to the large customers and of digital products for the SME segment. Thanks to the consistent investment over long time in building both competencies and solutions. In the third quarter, the revenue grew by 2.9%, whereas on a year-on-year basis, we grew by an impressive 4%. 12.4%, that is. In B2B, to build a long-term trustful relationship with our customers, we have to do that through consistent product innovation, solid deliveries, and best-in-class data protection.
We're very happy to see that we are growing not only through new customer wins, but we're actually also growing on expanding with existing customers, which is underlying a good delivery. Part of the growth in the business segment to the SME has been through the popular PENJANA program, offering us smaller government subsidies. This program is now ending, but we do not foresee a big change going forward, and we will also seek to replace this offering with other initiatives. To sum up the revenue performance, here you see an overview, a split of the service revenue.
After returning to growth, QoQ growth in the second quarter, we had a very decent third quarter with revenue growth in all segments except for the prepaid, which, what we explained, was impacted by the end of the JP program. In total, service revenue in the third quarter saw a marginal sequential decline of 0.5%. If I exclude the digital product, which has lower margins, the decline was only 0.2% or flat. If I take the postpaid segment, and this includes B2B and B2C and fiber, revenue increased a healthy 1.9% for the quarter and 2.4% year-on-year.
The prepaid segment, marked by the JP effect, softened by 2.3% QoQ despite the very encouraging subscriber growth. That is what we explained due to the ARPU impact of the JP program. We do also see positive development in particular going forward with the new Unlimited Forty product that was recently launched. Our digital revenues saw a slight decline, but the impact on profitability is limited. On the cost side, we continue to be disciplined and benefit from our improvement culture driven by continuous modernization and digitalization.
If I look at the COGS, there is a slight increase in COGS this quarter, and this is due to higher demand for devices and the growth that we see on fiber, where we have more fiber lines that we have to connect to our homes. We do remain very disciplined on device subsidies. Our OpEx was a good trend this quarter, declined by 4.4% QOQ on prudent spending, lower spectrum fees related to our 2.6 gigahertz spectrum going from AA to SA, and a noticeable reduction of PFTD, more than offsetting increasing costs related to network and IT expansion, and also moving to cloud as well, and from inflation pressure.
The year-on-year increase in OpEx is mainly due to higher one-offs in the third quarter last year to the network expansion that I explained, and also to merger-related costs. On the EBITDA, supported by the resilient top line in the quarter and the good second quarter, continuous modernization efforts and tight spending control, EBITDA increased 0.9% to MYR 749 million in the quarter, and that's a margin of 48.9%. This is the best quarter in 2022 and the second-best quarter of the last two years.
The decrease of 4.9% year-over-year is mainly due to the positive one-off I mentioned in the third quarter, the JP, the Jaringan Prihatin impact on prepaid revenue, on the network expansions and to the merger costs. This translate to a very good development of the profit after tax, which showed a healthy increase of more than 20% QOQ, and that was also due to lower finance and tax costs. Finance costs are lower this quarter since we had no hedge accounting impact on our interest rate swaps. The interest costs are stable, and we are well protected against further interest rate hikes through hedging and natural hedge positions.
The tax costs decreased this quarter due to a mix of a MYR 13 million tax penalty refund and deferred tax impact. The decline year-on-year is mainly due to the higher Prosperity Tax this year. Perhaps one comment worth mentioning is that the extra Prosperity Tax of 9% applied on income above MYR 100 million, which was introduced in 2022, was removed from the newly presented 2023 budget presented by the government. This is good news for corporate Malaysia, and it's good to see also that the government is keeping its promises on this point.
On CapEx, we do invest continuously, and the level is in line with our plan to invest approximately MYR 800 million for the year, maintaining a high level to support our network expansion, the upgrade of our IT security, and billing platforms and customer-facing platforms, as well as modernization. The operating cash flow improved by 1.6% this quarter to a solid 37.6% from the improved operating result and continued prudent and targeted CapEx in accordance with our plans to maintain a leading network in Malaysia. On a year-to-date basis, the operating cash flow margin stands at a healthy 39%.
Supported by the improved results for the quarter, strong cash flows, and a solid balance sheet, I'm happy to announce that the board has approved a dividend of 3.4 sen per share, up 21% versus last quarter. The dividend is payable to shareholders on the 16th of December this year. This is a payout of nearly 100% and reflects Digi's shareholder-friendly dividend policy and a very strong financial position. The net debt to EBITDA ratio remained flat at 1.5x, and if you exclude the lease liabilities, the ratio would have been below 1x.
This is one of the strongest ratios in the industry globally, and it does secure a very strong financial capability and also strategic flexibility. With this good momentum, we are maintaining our guidance for the year. This guidance is based on a Digi stand-alone scenario, which includes merger preparation cost up until the closing, but revenue and cost post-closing, if we do close in the fourth quarter, are not included. With regard to the service revenue growth, we have seen a very good recovery in the last two quarters, and our target for the fourth quarter is to have both Q-on-Q and year-on-year growth.
This will give us a very solid and good momentum for growth entering into 2023. We do not foresee to have growth as a total in 2022, but we do foresee to have three good quarters and entering into 2023 with both Q-on-Q and year-on-year growth, supported also by a very strong growth in the subscriber base. The main risk to this guidance is probably the macro risk, potentially tightening consumer wallets. We do see, however, that the Malaysian economy, compared to other economies, is doing pretty well, forecasting solid growth in 2023 and relatively low inflation. Thank you.
Thank you, Otto, for the detailed financial review. In summary, we are happy to see the good growth momentum in all segments. We continue to drive our operational efficiency and customer obsessed mindsets in parallel, and have been disciplined in our spending in order to sustain our profitability margins. On the network front, we are proud to serve more Digi customers with our number one network leadership position, and we'll continue to prioritize efforts to deliver to the expectations of our business and consumer segments.
Lastly, our focus in raising responsible business standards is anchored on our purpose to empower societies. We continue to emphasize on our responsible business commitments in order to build a brand that customers can trust for what matters most to them. I will now hand over to Christine for the Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you, Praveen and Otto, for the solid presentation earlier. Now let's begin our Q&A session. We already have two hands up. May I invite Foong from CIMB to begin with his question, please?
Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for the conference call and congrats on the improved set of results. Three questions from me. Firstly, on the prepaid business, my question is, how many more prepaid subs can we add if migrant workers were to go back to the pre-COVID-19 levels? That's question number one. Secondly, can you give us an update on market competition in the recent months? Any signs of players trying to better monetize on their offerings in the market?
Thirdly, I guess for Otto, you mentioned just now normalization in, I guess, in ARPU from the closure of the Jaringan Prihatin program. Can you guide us on what is the residual impact left on the prepaid ARPU going into the fourth quarter from that? Those are my three questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Foong. Praveen, repeat the questions.
Yeah. Foong, hi, again, good to have you on the call, and thank you for the questions. I'll take the first couple of questions on prepaid. How many more prepaid subscribers can we add? That's a good question. I think we should also ask our team that, but our ambition is to continue to add subscribers here. On the specific part on the migrant customers here, we have spent the last 18-24 months really focusing on developing our retail channels to acquire and serve the migrant segment in Malaysia.
We are now seeing some of the results from that, and that means the ability to sell the Digi prepaid product either as a primary SIM or a secondary SIM to migrant workers who are already in the country. We believe there is potential upside going forward as the borders continue to open up and as new workers come into the country. We believe the foundation is there. We have the retail channels that are serving the customers there, winning from the existing market and the ability to win new customers as they come in. We are optimistic there on growth.
On the competition side, cutting across both the prepaid and postpaid segments, we believe competition continues to be intense, but we are focused on our propositions in the market. In the prepaid side, we have invested on taking our high speed proposition. As I mentioned over the last couple of years, we've been consistent, and now we believe there is room for us to also serve customers on the unlimited proposition at certain ARPU levels. That is an area where we believe we can add a bit more to the competition at this point.
On postpaid, the market dynamics have remained stable. We do see competition on subsidies in the market, but we have remained disciplined in how we offer subsidies. We are, of course, focused also a lot more on our existing base with lots of different offers and contracting offers to make sure customers get the best value and stay on a contract with us. I'll hand the third question over to Otto.
Yeah. Hi, Foong. Very good question. We foresee that the ARPU will stabilize in the fourth quarter. Perhaps I should go one step back and a little bit explain the JP how that played out. Most of the customers we have on the JP program, they chose to have a 15 MYR monthly subsidy that lasted for 12 months. All our subs are not out of that period. We have actually done very well in that segment. In particular last month, we have seen limited churn from that.
We had another group that took a handset subsidy, and they sign up for three months, and then they were free to choose. That is a much smaller segment. All in all, we expect that the ARPU will stabilize in the fourth quarter, also supported by the new Unlimited Forty product, which we believe will take the ARPU the other way. We're confident about the fourth quarter. There's obviously some risk. We don't know exactly how this will play out, but we are very confident.
Okay, understood. Thank you so much. Yeah. Praveen and Otto.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Great. Now we have Arun Kumar. Over to you for your questions, please.
Hi. I have two questions. When do you expect Celcom and Digi to be fully integrated post-merger? How much CapEx do you expect to need for business as usual going into 2023, as well as for the 5G rollout? How much do you expect to be debt-funded? Thank you.
Thank you. Maybe Praveen can take.
I think on the CapEx into 2023, those plans are not ready yet. I think you will see a consistent CapEx spending. We'll continue to invest in modernization. Over time, you will see from the 5G there will be a CapEx to OpEx shift. It's early days. I think in 2023, not so much difference from the second half of 2022. We have solid cash flow in Digi, so we finance all our investment with cash flow.
On the question on the merger and when do we expect it to be fully integrated, let me just clarify. We are hopeful that the completion of the merger will be done this year, by the end of 2022. As you may have also seen through other public statements, the full integration is also dependent on the commitments we've already made as part of the remedies, which is published. This will take the span of between 2-3 years for all those things to materialize. I hope that covers the question. Thank you.
Arun, any follow-up from you?
No. That is all. Thank you.
May I also open the Q&A sessions for those who dial in via their phones? Okay. Any more questions? Yeah, we have Izzati from Macquari e . Izzati, you can proceed.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Hi. Thanks for the presentation. Just one question from me. This is with regards to the 5G single wholesale network that you've signed a conditional share subscription for potentially 12.5% equity stake, right? Just wanna understand post this equity stake finalization, what does Digi hope to get out of this stake sale? What is it that you can do now that you were not able to do before with DNB? Just wanna understand the rationale from that perspective. Thanks.
Yeah. Izzati, thank you for the question. I would like to clarify here that Digi has, of course, signed the equity agreement, as you've pointed out. But we are still in the process of concluding the access agreement. The access agreement is necessary to, in order for us to actually offer 5G services to retail customers. Now, the equity participation for us, we have mentioned prior to this, is part of our commitment towards also shaping the future of digital connectivity in this country, in Malaysia. We see it as an important way of reinforcing our commitment, and that's part of the reason as to why we have gone ahead and participated in this. Thank you.
Back to you, Izzati. Do you have any follow-up?
No, that's fine. Thanks.
Thank you. Fong, I see your hand is up again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes. A few more questions if I may. Firstly, can you remind us how much of your ARPUs came off because, you know, of the decline in roaming due to COVID-19? I just wanna get a sense of how much, you know, that will add back to ARPU once we get back to, you know, a normal situation for international travels. That's question number one.
Then, secondly, I noticed that the O&M cost also rose a fair bit Q on Q in the third quarter. What drove that? And thirdly, you charged off zero for bad debt provisions in the third quarter. Is that just because you've more than provided for in the preceding quarters, or are there any other reason for the better credit management? Those are my three questions. Thank you.
Sure. We'll hand over to Otto, please.
With regard to the ARPU impact of pre-COVID, that's mostly related to roaming. I assume it's around MYR 1.2. On the O&M spend, I think that yes, things fluctuate a little bit quarter to quarter, nothing particular. That is more related to specific activities we have in each quarter. You will see over time it's actually quite steady. With regard to bad debt, actually, we've been working and we are working consistently with refining our credit scoring models and the way we work. We have seen that over time. Actually, we've done well and done better than our provision. Yes, this was an effect that we could reduce the provision going forward. We had a one-off effect this quarter. Normally the cost sits around 10.
Got it. Okay. Thank you so much, Otto.
Thanks, F o ng. Now, can I also open up to the rest of the audience? Does anyone have any more to address? Great. I think we can conclude our call. Maybe I'll invite Praveen to do some closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you very much again for joining us on this call. We are again pleased with our results, and we are committed to continue to deliver the best in digital connectivity to our customers going into the rest of this year. As we've also outlined, we're hopeful that our merger transaction process will also be concluded within this year. We will be updating as soon as that happens. Again, on behalf of the Digi team, thank you very much for joining us today.
Happy Deepavali, all, and thank you. See you next round.
Thank you.