Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to Converge's full year 2024 financial and operational results briefing. I am Owen Ocampo, the Investor Relations Officer of Converge. Please allow me to give a few housekeeping reminders. Kindly mute your microphones while the presentation is ongoing. We will have the Q&A portion at the end of the presentation. If you have any questions during any time, please send them to the Zoom chat, and we will address them in the appropriate time. Please note that this session is being recorded. Recording in progress. Let me now introduce the management team who will be presenting today. We have Sir Dennis Anthony Uy, CEO and Co-founder. Miss Grace Uy, President and Co-founder. Sir Robert Yu, our Chief Finance Officer. Mr. Boboy Romero, our Chief Operations Officer, who will join us in a bit.
Benj, our Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Sustainability Officer. Let me now hand you over to Sir Dennis for the opening remarks. Sir Dennis?
Thank you, Owen. To all our investors and friends, good afternoon. 2024 has been a defining year for Converge. We made a leap in the future. We are proud to have made significant steps to expanding our offering beyond traditional connectivity. Our differentiated broadband and technology solution have performed and showed impressive growth over the past 12 months. Our residential sector continues to perform well. Surf2Sawa has been robust growth, with the mix a strong push into the more areas. Our flagship brand, FiberX, remain competitive among consumers, evident with its stable growth throughout 2024. Given the continuous expansion of our subscriber base, we remain committed for focus on delivering quality service. To that end, we introduced a permanent speed boost for all FiberX plans. Additionally, last year, we introduced the Converge Netflix bundle to enhance streaming and entertainment to for our users.
This stands as a prime example for the kind of collaboration with the inter into the give the best digital experiences. On the enterprise side, we are dedicated to creating groundbreaking solutions to equip businesses to success in the digital landscape. Our new hospitality solution, Converge Content Plus, improves the guest experience while streaming client operations. Our recent launch of the fiber to the room technology at the St. Luke's Medical Center ensure that patients have access to high-speed internet. These are just some of our services we recently introduced that in reinforce our role in the trust as a trust partner for business in the digital transformation. We are proud in that effort, we are recognized by the institutions around the globe. We have been honored by prestigious award from Ookla.
First of which is the fastest fixed network in the Philippines, but also including award of the best video experience and the best gaming experience. Those awards paints a picture of the technology company that is driven not just giving the best broadband connections, but is the best overall digital experience with its customer consistently. This 2025, Converge is positioning a transformative year for the main plan ahead of the advance in our technical directions. First, we're excited to activate two state-of-the-art data center to support of the growing demand for the cloud and the enterprise services. Within this year, we are preparing the integrate of two key infrastructure, the Lucban and the Pampanga Data Center. Second, two significant international cable system are expected to go online this year. The Bifrost Cable System and Asia Hong Kong Hainan Express Cable System.
The return of these two cable system will enable to support of the needs of our residents, the enterprise customer are driven innovation across multiple sectors. The integration of our new data center, along with the deployment of two sea cable systems, position us to propel our Converge enterprise business. To conclude, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone to consistent supporting Converge in our mission to empower our country through technology in the past years. I have seen the mind fiber now much We need to do to help our country transform digitally and catch up with the rest of the world. We are working non-stop to ensure that everyone get world-class connectivity and that we leave no one behind. Now that is the connectivity infrastructure is here, I enjoin fellow businesses in Philippines to come together and have a digital-ready mindset.
Together, let us accelerate the country's digital transformation. Thank you. Now I turn over to Grace.
Thank you, Dennis. Good afternoon to our investors and analysts. I'm Grace, the President and Co-founder of Converge. Converge performed at the high end of all financial targets in 2024, showing that we still have significant opportunity for growth. Allow me to discuss key highlights that Robert, Benj, and Boboy will expound on in their presentations. First, the consolidated revenue grew to more than PHP 40.6 billion during the year. This represents an increase of 14.8%, outperforming our year guidance. This was due to the consistently strong growth of both the residential and enterprise businesses throughout the year. Second, residential revenues grew by 13.7% to more than PHP 34.4 billion. This is brought about by the growth of our subscriber base.
Consolidated net switch more than PHP 435,000 in 2024, or more than 74% of net adds than last year. The fourth quarter alone showed resilience despite the adverse weather. Net adds reached more than 103,000. Third, all enterprise sub-segments contributed double-digit growth in 2024, leading to an enterprise revenue growth rate of 22%, reaching PHP 6.2 billion. Fourth, profitability margins were also on the high end of our full year guide. EBITDA grew by 14.2% year-on-year, reaching PHP 24.6 billion, this represent an industry-leading 60.5% margin. Free side net income after tax increased by 18.8% year-on-year, PHP 10.8 billion, representing a margin of 26%. ROIC ended at 18.3%, which is likewise industry-leading, not just locally, but regionally as well.
With our strong 2024 performance, our board of director has approved in our cash dividend payment of PHP 0.43 per share to be paid out this April 16, with record date as of April 2. This is to share a part of the profits with our common shareholders. The PHP 0.43 per share represents our almost 30% or the higher end of our policy range. This positions us as a dividend paying stock, yet we continue to show strong potential for growth. Let me now hand you over to Robert to give you more details on our financials.
Thank you, Grace, and good afternoon, or as we say at Converge all the time, good morning to all our friends and investors and analysts here. As Grace mentioned, we have achieved our upgraded fiscal year guidance and metrics have been outperforming targets. Consolidated revenues grew by almost 15% above the 12%-14% guidance, reaching PHP 40.6 billion, with residential still contributing the book of it at 85% of total revenues. Similarly, EBITDA grew 14.2% above, ending with a margin of 60.5%, and that is slightly exceeding the high end of our target of 60%. Similar to previous quarters, ROIC remained to be industry leading at 18.3%, which highlights our ability to efficiently use the capital and resources we have available. Next slide.
For 2025, we do expect CapEx to rise approximately PHP 20 billion-PHP 25 billion, mainly due to things that we have mentioned before. One, we have two subsea cable systems, namely Bifrost and SEA-H2X, which is approximately PHP 7 billion in total this year. Two data centers, which totals up to 13 MW of capacity, one in Caloocan, one in Angeles, of approximately PHP 5 billion-PHP 6 billion, on top of the regular port expansion and redundancy CapEx for the year. Given the strong growth and the demand that we're seeing on the ground, we do want to deploy additional ports this year, which are included in the CapEx budget. Approximately 400,000-500,000 ports will be deployed, and majority of these will be servicing new areas in Visayas and Mindanao.
Next slide. While CapEx expectations are higher this year than previous, we do have sufficient liquidity to support our spending. We ended the year, the fiscal year 2024 with slightly less than PHP 30 billion in total debt and PHP 17 billion on cash, which translates to debt-to-equity ratios of around 0.5x gross and 0.2x on a net basis. These ratios are well within our debt covenants. Blended cost all debt as of year-end was about 5.3%, which is lower than we are seeing in the current environment. Next slide. To close out my section. I would like to reiterate our fiscal year 2025 guidance. With a strong 2024 performance, we really look to continue this and show the same growth for 2025.
This year, we're targeting a 14%-16% consolidated rate of growth, higher than the 12%-14% we had initially expected for 2024. EBITDA of 61%-62% margin, higher than the 59%-60% that we had guided for 2024 as well. ROIC, though, we expect to slightly decline to 16.5%-17.5%, because of the higher CapEx for the year, which is really for in future growth investments. With that, let me hand you over to Benj for the commercial milestones during the period.
Thanks, Robert. Good afternoon to everyone. First, let me talk about the residential business. The fourth quarter remained strong for all three brands, leading to a quarterly fiber net adds of 113,000, despite the usual seasonal headwinds from rainy weather and long holidays during the quarter. With strong efforts from all sales teams, we were able to reach 2.56 million subscribers or 430,000 consolidated net adds for the year. Both Bida Fiber and Surf2Sawa's EOP subscriber base grew by approximately 150% during the year. We're well on our way to reaching our midterm goal of 4 million subscribers by 2027. Churn rate remains stable along the low 2%.
Surf2Sawa remains to be a bright light with an average monthly churn rate of 1.5% in 2024. Fiber utilization has exceeded 31%, the first time since 2020 when we started our heavy port rollout. Next slide. On boost mode, we discussed this during our starting October 2024, we permanently boosted the plans of our existing and new FiberX subscribers. The base plan per month now runs at max speeds of 300 Mbps and goes up to 1 Gbps pesos per month. This was coupled with enhancements to our flanker brands as well, with Bida Fiber at 75 Mbps and S to S at up to 50 Mb. On top of this, next slide, please.
We've also announced a Converge Netflix Bundle, where new and existing FiberX customers will be both an internet connection and Netflix plan all in one. This offering aims to provide countless entertainment options and a better streaming experience for its users. With the installation of both the boost mode, new Wi-Fi next gen modem, and a Converge Xperience Box with freemium channels. The box is a Google-certified Android TV device that allows the customer to download apps such as YouTube, Spotify, Netflix. Now on to enterprise. This segment experienced double-digit growth at 22% year on year. The SME sub-segment continues to lead the segment by growing 48% year on year. As we expanded to new areas with our port deployment programs, we would be able to serve more micro, small and medium enterprises, we have been able to cater to residential demand.
Large corporates and wholesale segments also showed strong double-digit growths of 15% and 23% actively. As we continue to strengthen our enterprise segment to provide more than connectivity, we've been hard at work looking at possible innovations to offer our enterprise customers. In February of this year, we introduced Fiber to the Room or FTTR technology at the country's leading medical institutions, the St. Luke's Medical Center. This solution, known as the St. Luke's In-Room Digital Concierge, ensures a smooth and smart patient experience during each stay at the hospital. In addition to Converge's high capacity, seamless Wi-Fi provided in all common areas of the hospital. Next slide. Just a few highlights on our efforts to be a responsible business. More on this will be disclosed next month with the release of our sustainability report on our 17-A annual report.
Converge received a Five Golden Arrow award from the Institute of Corporate Directors in October based on our ASEAN Corporate Governance Scorecard rating. In terms of cybersecurity and digital skills, we launched Project PIGLET in part with the Francisco Legaspi Memorial School, where it hosted an event for elementary school students to teach them about safe internet practices in order to mitigate digital privacy risks. We've continued to protect our customers at the source. In 2024, we rejected 183 billion attempts to access illegal sites, including CSAM or child sexual abuse material, as well as websites promoting digital scams and illegal gambling. In terms of environmental responsibility, our modem refurbishment program continues.
More than eight out of our reclaimed modems have been used in 2024. Our scope one gas intensity has been brought down from 2.3 down to 1.4 tons of CO2 equivalent per petabyte as we improve our energy and also use more, a bigger proportion of renewable energy. For our people, we've exceeded our 40-hour training hour target with 57 hours per employee last year. Lastly, for business resiliency, we've secured ISO 22301 certificate for our business continuity management systems and also rolled out our ERM and BCM programs to some of our critical business partners. That's all from me. I'll hand you back. I'll hand you to Boboy now. Is Boboy here? If not, I will.
Yeah, I think he's.
I'll read the script. All right, let's talk about. Yeah. Let's talk about after-sales. Over the last year, we have shown vast improvement in addressing customer-affecting disruptions. Since we incorporated AI into our network monitoring, we have seen the benefits through our faster resolution rate. Our average time to repair of our backbone and outside plant equipment compared to last year improved by about 20%, where field network operators resolve customer issues 10% faster. Our ultimate objective is to have happy people to provide them with an amazing experience that they didn't think was possible. We look at processes, interactions and services that can deliver to address that. Right now, we're enhancing our customer experience to provide them with self-service options that are frictionless and easy to use.
With a chatbot feature recognized during the 2024 Asian Experience Awards, we're seeing over a third of inquiries now being handled by the self-service feature, allowing our personnel to be allocated to other concerns requiring more complex handling and innovative solutions. Imagine the efficiency and productivity that these agents as they can now serve even more customers. With the help of these AI enhancements, we're able to further reduce our social media response time and ticket handling time throughout 2024. With our vision of trying to exceed the expectations of our customers, we will not provide a certain average. We wanna provide an experience that customers did not think was possible, and we want to be proactive in addressing concerns and ensuring that our customers remain happy with our service.
To close on a high note, we were yet again recognized by Ookla during Q3 and Q4 of 2024. Converge awarded as the fastest fixed network with maximum upload and download speeds more than 500 Mbps, the best ISP video experience, best ISP gaming experience and the best fixed net. We positioned ourselves as the best network for customers who are streaming, gaming, working or browsing, reinforcing Converge's relentless pursuit of delivering world-class internet services to Filipino households and businesses. With that, I hand you back to Owen for the Q&A. Thank you.
Thanks, Benj, thank you to the rest of the Converge management team for ceding the floor to questions. We have a few lined up. Again, let me remind the audience that if you have any questions, please type them out on the Zoom chat or Zoom chat box so that we can address them in this section. First question, I think this is going to be for Robert. How should we think about CapEx beyond 2025?
Sure. If you look at this year and last year, 2023 and 2024 CapEx, approximately 500,000 ports or so, 400,000-500,000 ports or so with some fee baked in there. If we're building 500, I would say we're probably going to build 500,000 ports per year for the next couple of years, several years. Likely around the same levels that you saw the previous two years. The interesting is we're spreading out to Visayas and Mindanao. The more subscribers we have, the more redundancies we actually need to. It's all for growth, and it's all for the experience.
We're happy to support, you know, more spending on this if it gives our customers the right experience, therefore driving financial performance anyway.
Thanks, Robert. Next question. On a hot topic, any comments on the route news that was published by Bloomberg?
I guess the short answer is no comment. Obviously, we can't comment on speculation, but I will tackle it differently. Right. August last year, August 2024, we did announce a partnership with Sky Cable, wherein they will be a tenant to our network, so they will pay us on a per port basis, right? It helps drive utilization for our network, given that we have 8 million or so ports today, almost 9 million ports. We're utilizing 2.5 million of that, so helping drive utilization, especially in areas where we're still building our sales team. We're open to have these types of arrangement with other cable companies, other telcos, internet service providers, value-added services providers.
With regards to a carve-out, which I would akin to think of as, you know, a special project or a financing project. You know, we do get approached by financial advisors or financiers from time to time, I guess all the time. While we have yet to receive a formal proposal, you know, any discussions that they bring up, we always have to consider if it creates value for all shareholders and general stakeholders, I guess, in general. If there's anything that is material, then we obviously will disclose. At this point in time, nothing for us to really comment on.
Thanks, Robert. Next question, I think it's tied up to another question sent in the chat box. Has Netflix Bundle gained any traction since introduction? Maybe Benj, would you.
Yes, it has. We have very aggressive targets. Unfortunately, we're under NDA, so we can't tell you exactly how many for Netflix. We're very encouraged by the performance of our new bundles, both our Netflix Bundle as well as the Super Bundle with SKY TV, which will. You know, we've soft launched, and we will be, we will going on full blast later this month.
Thanks, Benj. Next question. Why did the margin drastically drop in 4Q 2024 versus 4Q 2023? What led to the higher?
I'd say on the G&A spending, 2 things. 4Q is usually higher than the year in general because 13th month, which is mandated by the government. But compared to 2023, there was a provision in 2023 that happened in the 4th quarter. It used to be for the nine months, sorry, we were provisioning 7% of revenues for bad debts. Based on the feedback from our auditors, they had us provision to a 4% number, so much lower, so we were super conservative last year, I guess, 2023. Hence the reversal in 4Q EBITDA margin. Since we did not have that in 2024, that's one of the reasons for the decline.
I would say 2024 4Q EBITDA margin is much cleaner, much more representative, on, from a core and ongoing basis.
Thanks, Robert. Next question. How many enterprise subscribers did Converge end with 2024?
We don't disclose, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, we don't. We cannot disclose same, similar to, Netflix.
Thanks, Robert. Next question. Sorry. Please help us understand what will grow in 2025, enterprise or residential, and number of customers or ARPU. Not both.
Robert, you wanna go first in terms of the mix, and then I'll talk about individual.
Yeah, sure. Sure. It's both. Do expect enterprise to grow faster than residential, it's really gonna come from both. Benj? Yeah.
Yeah. Even for within each segment, right? For residential, we're gonna see continued growth in FiberX. The sales trajectory in terms of subscriber growth will really come from Esto and Vida and really go to reach the unserved and underserved in these segments. On the SME side, just to talk about enterprise as well, we have programs to really focus on expansion to in new towns and cities. Also using both our SME brands, which is our main fiber, flexiBIZ brand, as well as our flanker microBIZ brand, to reach micro, small and medium enterprises.
We'll also be introducing, value-added services for these segments, in this, in the coming quarters. Enterprise, as I described during the presentation, is going to be really focused on going beyond connectivity, XaaS portfolio, beyond connectivity services, looking at both horizontal solutions, but also more importantly, specific vertical solutions for our priority industries.
Thanks, Benj. Next question's on impact of competition. PLDT seems to be quite aggressive in recently increased the number of homes passed by 6% year-on-year. What impact have you seen from this?
And so the biggest, uh, uh, net adds last year. Um, and, uh, as alluded to, uh, we're not, we're not stopping in terms of our port rollout in 2025 , uh, going to the remaining areas that we have not, uh, yet tapped, and also going deep, uh, into the areas where, for example, uh, you know, the last major island that we have not, uh, rolled out yet is, uh, Samar Island in Eastern Visayas, uh, region. So we're continuing to work, continuing to work with that, continuing to roll out ports where we see demand, uh, including, uh, ports within buildings.
Thanks, Benj. In 2024, trade was higher than your 15% revenue growth. Can you help us understand why? Robert, would you like to?
Yeah, sorry about that. I was on mute. Yeah. There's a couple of things here. As you, as we have mentioned, enterprise has grown faster than residential. For some of our enterprise clients, they are longer lease, longer collection period as part of their contract. Three months usually, sometimes as high as nine months, depending on who the customers are. Partly given the typhoons and the weather in Q4 2024, we had some delays in payments on the residential side, but nothing that resulted in churn. All these, if you will be able to see in billings, which will show aging per category.
Thanks, Robert.
Yeah.
Next question. What kind of partnership, DITO, apart from the network sharing deal?
I think mostly commercial partnerships similar to the network sharing deal, including similar to Sky Cable, where they may use some of our, but nothing on the equity side.
Yeah. On the product side where we, you know, like we do with different partners, we have a lot of discussions, but there's nothing solid yet in terms of, you know, going go to market.
Thanks, Robert. Thanks, Benj. next question. I think the next question was already discussed. Can you elaborate on the competitive environment in prepaid fiber and postpaid fiber? Maybe Benj will take a stab at this.
Yeah. We continue to feel that there is an unserved and underserved market in the Philippines. We barely scratched the surface. There are 26 million households in the country. You know, broadband penetration is only, you know, around 30%, compared to our neighbors in the 60%, 70%, 80% penetration. It's a matter of who gets there first and who's able to deliver the best service that will get a nd the right price for these customers. Which is why we launched our FiberX B rand in both the residential and SME market. We'll continue to focus on that. Every time we've launched a new offering, we've seen the competition react.
Dennis, our CEO, has always been the leader and the first mover when it comes to innovation.
Thanks, Benj. Next question.
Let me answer that, but I'm like, I just get back from Vietnam, no. I visited a lot of operators, three to four operators. You see, Vietnam today is almost close to 90% of the home are connected with fiber, no. Philippines is not far, no. You're talking with the population wise, also the same size, no. What's the factor to able Vietnam is penetrate that much against Philippines, no? Number one, how much are, for the internet in Vietnam is almost $10. In Philippines is still almost $20, no. It's. End of the day, we need to cater the low-end market to be able to make sure every individual Filipino should be connected. Imagine how big the revenue Vietnam are, the value-added service they have, no.
The content, $3 additional a month, the smart home, the smart security, many, and cloud gamings. Without connectivity, you don't have any value-added service revenue to generate. This is the way we are. That's why we have data center. Our data center is not real estate play. Our data center is a technology solution play serving the, our consumer, the getting bigger and bigger consumer, and we serve value added beyond connectivity. I mentioned about smartphone, IoT, cloud gaming, virtual computers. Many things, no, you can deliver to the home because you're connected to the doorstep, no. In the education, in the enterprise, managed service. Everything, connectivity, computing, application and total managed service. This is the way we're going to move this company to technology company. It's not just traditional telco.
We envision coming years to able to deliver a digitalized people company. That's our ambition, yeah.
Thank you. Thank you, Sir Dennis. Next question. What was Q4 net income growth? Were there any restatements in your quarterly P&L?
Yeah, I can take that. I'll give you the numbers. Q4 net income for December 2024 is PHP 2.6 billion compared to 2023 of PHP 2.7 billion. It's actually 5% growth. Again, it's driven by that reversal in provisions for Q4 of 2023. On a core basis, it's grown.
Thanks, Robert. Next question. Back to CapEx.
No, no restatements on any quarterly P&L in nine months. 2023, 2024, none.
Thanks, Robert.
[audio distortion]
Next question. How much is one-off CapEx for 2025?
It's from the CapEx side, the one-offs at this point in time, right, depending on how good the business performs, the non-BAU just network expansion CapEx is approximately PHP 12 billion, which is the international subsys, Bifrost and SEA-H2X, as well as the data centers. Now mind you, if Converge gets to 10 million subscribers in tomorrow, we do need to buy.
Next question. Maybe we can answer this on a very broad basis. What are you seeing in terms of net adds for Q1 so far?
We're satisfied with performance. As you know, we've guided to 14%-16%, compared to our original guidance last year. We are satisfied, and that's all we can say. Material non-public at this point in time.
Thanks, Robert. next question. Can you expand on the EBITDA margin guidance? What will drive the continued increase in margins for this year?
Yeah. Really driven by operating leverage, given strong top line. You, as you know, the DNA of our business really is having tight cost controls. We operate on a very cost-conscious manner. Historically, I would say, majority of our overhead has already been covered by the existing revenues of the business. For the most part, any new revenue or shall I say gross margin really flows through down to EBITDA margin, fairly quickly.
Thanks, Robert. Next question. When we say a carve-out option, will Converge convert from infra and service provider while the passive infra like fiber on land and undersea get transferred to the carved-out entity? If so, will the shareholding be mirrored in the current base?
Uh.
Can you take that question?
Honestly cannot respond to that. I mean, there's more to skin a cat. Until such time anything becomes actionable, then that's the only time we will actually spend a lot of time on this. Yeah, not again, cannot comment on matters like these given the news.
Thank you. Do we believe that the 100,000 and above quarterly net adds in your FTTH is sustainable 2025?
Well, they've given me that target. That's no lower than what it was last year. The pressure's on me to deliver on that. We're working towards our 2027 medium-term target of 4 million subscribers. Yeah.
Next question for depreciation. What drove this up during the fourth quarter?
Let me get back on that. Let me review.
All right.
Yeah. I know the answer.
Okay.
Depreciation went up 13% on the cost of services side, primarily because, as we've grown revenues as well. As you know, when we book a client, customer acquisition costs as well, which includes the modem, the IRU fees are booked as an intangible asset and amortized over time. The more customers we have on that level, then it will increase as a result of that. Yeah, just higher revenues.
Thanks, Robert. Next question, I pause because this is also for you, I think. What kind of P&L impact will the planned spending on the data centers and subsea cable have when complete? What kind of returns are you expecting?
Sure. I'll tackle the subsea cable first. The subsea cable was contemplated back in 2018. At that time, we were for the most part, leasing capacity from other providers, no, Telstra and these guys. Before that, it was costing us approximately 5%-8% of our revenue, and that's what they were charging for overseas. Over time, we've acquired our own, but these are approaching end of life. We needed to replace. That's number one. Now, when we invested, especially in Bifrost, the capacity of Bifrost actually doubled without a change in the amount that we're supposed to pay. We could potentially sell some of this capacity, which will generate additional revenue. The returns are actually cannot disclose the actual returns, but they're going to be quite healthy.
Because again, double the capacity for no additional cost, right. On the data centers as Dennis mentioned, right. One, we're focused on bringing and localizing content, so we're able to deliver the best experience for our customers. Cloud gaming, web browsing, videos, et cetera, et cetera. Eventually, we could offer smart homes and other products and services that will be hosted in a data center that we can expect to charge a margin on in the future. For now, to be conservative, have not really factored in revenues yet on the residential side. Some capacity sold for enterprise clients on the data centers on a managed service solutions basis.
Moving away from really traditional, asset heavy business to now doing more service-oriented type products, especially in enterprise side. More managed solutions types if we're going to. Again, our data centers, it's relatively small, 13 MW of new capacity, and most of it will be for our own internal use.
In addition to Robert, about that sea cable. Whoever asked that question, it's a supply and demand, I tell you. This is oversubscribed already as this moment. It's full. You have demand the price now, right? Don't worry about that sea cable. It's the longest time Philippines don't have a new cable. The first cable in Asia Pacific directly avoiding China water. This is the first one from Singapore to U.S. Okay. I foresee that this is oversubscribed.
Thanks, Robert. Thanks, Dennis. Next question. Do you also believe that churn will remain controlled given the rising contributions to Surf2Sawa and Bida Vibe? Benj, would you like to take this?
Yeah. We're trying to keep our churn under 2% as we said many times in previous quarters and earlier during the presentation. We believe that the right strategy to control churn, number one, experience, an amazing experience, so they won't leave us. Number two, it's also making sure that we're selling the right product to the right segment.
Right? A household that can only afford Bida or S.VI oversold to FiberX and once they encounter issues then they churn. We're. It's a continuous process to make sure that our sales channels, our sales people are incentivized to do the right thing in the market and make sure that they get they get [audio distortion].
Thanks, Benj. next question. Can you share any updates regarding Piso WiFi? Do you see this your subscriber growth?
You know what, actually, our Dennis, you can go ahead.
The Piso WiFi, the reason I created this is true partnership. We have almost close 1 million sari-sari store. I'm trying to build this for like a franchise because the infrastructure is there. It just create a platform to able to have cater the B and E market, no. Because infrastructure is there, it just only add on few phone equipment, Wi-Fi solution, QR code, but then come. I think this will start maybe 2nd or 3rd quarter, no, or next year, not this year. This is part of still in the R&D stage. We're doing a lot of. We make sure to have end-to-end solution and come up with a better partnership with our low-end segment market with the partner, with the owner of the sari-sari stores.
Thanks, Dennis. Next question, for Dilip or Lepid. Why did G&A increase by PHP 1.1 billion year-over-year in Q4?
Yeah, I could take that. The biggest jump was an increase in managed service fees as we are to outsourcing our customer service platforms, as well as sales and installation platforms with our regional partners, our managed service providers. That is a managed service fee away from COGS. Again, for Q4, generally, 13-month payments which are statutory. We had higher promotions guided in our third quarter earnings, and then higher repairs and maintenance given the rainy September and October period in the Philippines. The biggest component is some service fees.
Thanks, Robert. What is the purpose of short-term cash placements of PHP 8.5 billion?
Sure. As you know, we had allocated and f or example, I will highlight to Bifrost, right? Bifrost was supposed to be turned over 3Q last year, the cash was available for us to pay. We had been putting this in time deposits as to match the duration because we had already purchased USD for it. As it gets more and more delayed, we wanted to lock in the time deposits, albeit they're still risk-free, lock it in into longer term to maximize on interest income. Under accounting rules, if you have more than 90-days deposit, it can no longer be considered equivalent, but is a short-term cash placement. This is basically us matching the...
when our expected payments will be for some of these projects that we've allocated cash for already and, yeah, just matching the release of the funds.
Thanks, Robert. I think we have a question. I love the growth performance for 2024 and growth guidance for 2025. May I ask if there will be another in 2025?
I think, as you know, when we announced our dividend policy, we announced 25%-30%, so we're in the top end. That being said, the board is very satisfied with the performance and the super outperformance, and the cash requirements are no longer there anymore. I'm sure it's something that they will consider, but at this point in time, very preliminary for us to really provide comment on. Mind you, the two biggest beneficiaries for another dividend are here in this call.
I think we had one, follow-up, one new question in the chat box. Margin guidance and cash on books final amount. Hold on.
16 by operating, yeah, driven by operating books, final amount, PHP 8.5 billion of cash and cash equivalents, and then PHP 8.5 billion term, cash placements. Total, in my mind, cash equivalents of, approximately, PHP 17 billion.
Thank you, Robert. I think that sums up our Q&A. Let me just give a few closing remarks and key highlights before we close. Dennis.
Let me just announce to the investor today. They are here. We have. I'm in the U.S. right now. We have, I've been going around with technology show with the company, the DTC conference with Jensen Huang the guest speaker for the computing of new technology. I attending for cybersecurity company. Personally meet all the CEO of the company and the founders, no. Fortinet, Palo Alto, and Google today, no. I'm going to Seattle to visit the Starlink facility. We're going to formalize next week the signing of partnership with Starlink to be able to deliver our enterprise segment all to more than 7,000 islands. We need to at least serving all those corporate and including the mobility.
That's more in the vessels or mobility, the defense things, our patrol or our armed forces and navy. All this, we conclude next week, we will formally announce all this in the media. That's why we want to inform the investor first before you hear from this news coming out next week. Thank you, back to Owen.
Thank you, Sir Dennis. To close, just a quick summary of the presentation coming from the management team. We outperformed full year 2024 guidance with industry-leading financial performance. We led the market in terms of total residential broadband subscriber growth of 430,000. We ended the year at 2.56 million residential subscribers. Enterprise segment likewise continued its strong momentum, from quality contributions from all sub-segments. We are now driving, we're now expanding our service areas and driving innovation on both residential and enterprise segments to develop value-added services on top of our connectivity product. Lastly, for the third consecutive review, we have been recognized by Ookla as the fastest internet in the Philippines, on top of being the best in internet gaming, video streaming and overall best fixed network in the country.
This is a testament to the company's efforts in enhancing and enriching overall customer experience. Again, to our audience, thank you everyone for joining. If you have further questions, please do reach out to us, at our posted email on our website. Again, for everyone, have a great rest of the day and rest of the week. Thank you.