Good evening. Welcome to the first quarter 2023 analyst briefing of Globe Telecom. We will begin the presentation with Mr. Ernest Cu, our President and Chief Executive Officer, giving an overview of our performance and a few updates on the Globe Group. Without further ado, we now hand over the floor to Mr. Cu.
Thank you. Thank you, Colleen. Good morning to everyone, welcome to our very first analyst briefing that is in hybrid mode. We got a few people here, so I guess it's a start that people want to do these kinds of events face-to-face, no? Just to start off, I'd like to say I'm very, very happy to report that Globe posted strong operating financial results for the start of this year despite the challenging macroeconomic environment that carried over from last year. First quarter revenues ended at PHP 30 billion, 2% against the same period last year, and relatively flat against the record-breaking level of the fourth quarter of 2022. As with past periods, this growth was mainly driven by mobile services.
The peak growth of our ICT business, as well as the increased revenue contribution of our non-telco subsidiaries. This performance is a good start to the year, particularly given the inflationary pressures of the consumer market and what we're continuing to face. These results put us in a promising position for the balance of the year and are generally in line with our full year guidance provided to the market last quarter. EBITDA for the period likewise showed great resilience, ending at PHP 20.5 billion, an increase of 4% versus last year, and a 9% increase versus the last quarter. This was driven by the continued cost management efforts of the company, given the renewed focus on cash flow health and sustainability. This translates to an EBITDA margin of 51%, which is trending a little bit higher than our full year guidance.
Normalized net income, which takes out the created by non-recurring gains and expenses, ended flat against last year, grew 55% on a quarter-on-quarter basis. In terms of our landmark sale and leaseback initiatives, our tower transfer continues to progress well, with Globe generating another PHP 11 billion with closings that we did this year with our partner, Phil Tower. I'm happy to report we also just signed with Unity Digital Infrastructure the sale and leaseback of 437 additional towers under the same terms and conditions to our past transactions. Our group CFO, Riza, will provide you with a more comprehensive update later in the presentation about this transaction, which was just announced this month.
On the 917Ventures front, our growing HealthTech initiative once again achieved a major milestone by launching the new super app, APL Health that showcases new capabilities and a deeper and broader provider network. Gogoro, our entry into the climate tech industry, also publicly launched its pilot last month. The target of making these scooters available to the public is by the 4th quarter of this year. Finally, our board of directors approved a dividend declaration of PHP 25 per share, which is consistent with our past quarterly declarations and is a testament to our commitment to a sustainable PPC. Our non-telco subsidiaries and affiliates again delivered robust performance, complementing our core telco services. Our subsidiaries contributed PHP 1.4 billion in revenue for the 1st quarter of the year, 50% higher than last year.g and Asticom remain the largest contributors to our top line, representing 1.5% and 7% of gross service revenues respectively. Our joint ventures and affiliates contributed as well to the bottom line, with our net share in equity gains of nearly PHP 300 million or 2% of net income before tax, underpinned by our equity share in Mynt of nearly PHP 1,205 million, 23% higher versus last year. This concludes my portion, I now turn you over to Darius to discuss in detail what happened in the core telco business. Darius?
Thank you, Ernest, good morning, everyone. For the core telco business, the mobile segment continued its steady growth, closing the first quarter with PHP 27.1 billion in revenues, equivalent to a 1% improvement year-on-year.
This growth stemmed from the company's prepaid brands as the impact of public mobility returning to normal cushioned the downward pressures brought about by the challenging economic environment. Mobile data services sustained its growth momentum, increasing by 4% year-on-year and ending the period with all-time high revenues of PHP 21.7 billion as our deliberate monetization efforts and risk management initiatives continued to bear fruit. Mobile data traffic reached over 1.3 exabytes while monthly ACTR ended at 12.9 GBs per month, growing by double digits against last year, given the increasing relevance of this service to the Philippines. On a sequential basis, total mobile revenues for the quarter improved by 1%. This growth was driven from a good quarter-on-quarter performance across the board, across the brands, driven specifically by postpaid and GlobeOne.
We applaud the government, led by the Department of Information and Communications Technology, for extending the SIM registration deadline, as this gives millions of our unregistered customers more time to comply with the law. In addition to our several online channels, Globe's 147 stores and 25 EasyH ub across the country are open for customers who need help registering their SIMs. Globe has also been regularly joining SIM registration assistance initiatives led by the NTC since January and works with local government units, groceries, and malls to set up assisted registration booths in various sites, focusing on more remote locations. In terms of its effect on our financial and operating metrics, we will communicate to the market that we are confident that this government initiative will not have any negative impact to our top line.
To date, we have already registered about 85% of our revenue-generating base. The 90-day extension will be more difficult to register the balance of 15%. We do see some reduction in the subscriber count due to SIM registration, as we churn out non-active SIMs from the network. This will translate to our increase in subscriber counts that will be more reflective of our actual active levels and at the same time also lower costs to operate on the network side. Moving on to broadband, total revenues for the business ended at PHP 6.5 billion and that's 7% lower than last year and 1% lower on a sequential basis, owing to the continued normalization of the home fixed Wi-Fi business. This led to fixed wireless subscribed base and revenues decreasing by 51% and 49% respectively, impacting the overall home broadband performance.
This reduction in the fixed Wi-Fi business was expected and anticipated. Fixed wireless subscribers meanwhile continued to grow, increasing by 8% year-on-year to 1.9 million due to the pace of postpaid fiber, which saw a 30% increase in subscribers and a 30% increase in revenues year-on-year, banking on Globe At Home's competitive portfolio in postpaid. As mentioned in the past, we recognize that the postpaid home fiber market is highly saturated. As true to our commitment to deliver fiber connectivity to the broader market, I am happy to announce that Globe will be launching prepaid fiber by June to cater to the underserved segment. This will feature a fully digital experience coupled with sachet pricing and a host of financing options that's most relevant and accessible to that segment of market.
Recall that we initially launched TM Power Fiber Wi-Fi last year, which converted sari-sari stores, town plazas, and other neighborhood convergence areas into Wi-Fi hotspots. Prepaid fiber now will solidify our foothold in the prepaid segment. Lastly, the corporate data segment delivered revenues amounting to PHP 4.5 billion, higher by 15% year-on-year on the back of the sustained strong performance of ICT, which increased by 52% year-on-year in terms of revenues. The growth in ICT was led by cybersecurity services, business application solutions, cloud solutions, and data center services, consistent with the prior quarters momentum. That ends my portion, and I now turn you over to Riza for our corporate updates.
Thank you, Darius. Good morning to all. In the first 3 months of 2023, our capital expenditures amounted to PHP 17.6 billion, lower by 16% year-on-year. This is consistent with our guidance of reducing CapEx spend following years of record level investments. Bulk of this amount, or 90%, was allotted for data requirements as a testament of our commitment to enable the digital lives of Filipinos by giving them access to quality healthcare, education, and financial services, including livelihood opportunities. During the first quarter, Globe built 220 new cell sites and upgraded over 3,000 mobile sites to LTE in order to keep pace with the dynamic and evolving connectivity needs of its customers. LTE remains to be the primary technology to deliver mobile data services, hence our continued investments in this space.
On the other hand, Globe continues to scale up the deployment of 5G wireless technology nationwide in step with anticipated adoption curve on 5G devices. We installed 66 new 5G sites in the first quarter, leading to 5G outdoor coverage of 97.2% of the National Capital Region and 90.2% of key cities in Visayas and Mindanao. Globe also launched 4.3 million devices in its 5G network in March 2023. I am also proud to report that all these investments we have made on the mobile network has allowed us to maintain the excellent quality of our service to our customers. For four consecutive quarters now, Globe has been recognized by both Ookla and Opensignal as the most reliable mobile network.
This only reflects Globe's continuous efforts to enable the lives of our customers with a network that they can fully rely on as we strive to provide them a consistent experience worthy of their patronage and loyalty. Globe was also the only operator cited and given the 5G experience awards covering 5G video, games, and voice app experience. I now turn you over to Tek, who will be providing updates on Mynt.
Thank you, Riza. Good morning, everyone. We sustained our momentum from 2022 and started the year strong, built on our focus and commitment to improve our users' daily lives. As of end March, our registered base grew to 81 million users, over 30% more than the same period last year. Moreover, our merchant and social seller base grew to 6 million, up 20% year-on-year, while our cash-in and cash-out outlets grew to 672,000, 2.5x than last year. We will offer the most number of touch points across our cashless ecosystem, providing the most convenience to our users. We also remain steadfast in our expansion into more sari-sari stores, tricycle operators, public markets, and convergence zones, growing by 200% year-on-year, ensuring that we meet our customers wherever they may be.
This dominance is further validated by external sources. Our daily active users and monthly active users are now 13x and 6x larger than that of the next e-wallet and even higher than those of popular social media sites. This is based on the reputable third-party platform, data.ai. One of the highlights of quarter one was also being recognized as the best digital wallet in the Asia-Pacific by the Asian Banker International Awards. This is a great honor for the whole GCash team that works tirelessly every day to make a difference in the lives of Filipinos. We continuously innovate to make. Next slide, please. We continuously innovate to make more financial services available and positively impact the lives of our users. For lending, we ended the quarter with PHP 74 billion total dispersed value across 2.8 million unique borrowers.
The real value of what we do is reflected in the following statistics. Two of every three borrowers we have enabled are one, located outside Metro Manila, two, belong to low-lower social, socioeconomic classes, and three, are women borrowers. This validates the headway we have made in making financial services available to the financially excluded. Through all these growth in borrowers and loan disbursements, we maintain best-in-class NPL rates across our three products. The strength of our products come from our unique ability to pre-approve our users, powered by our GScore, which is our proprietary trust platform and the most pervasive credit scoring model in the country today. Two, to auto-deduct in real-time the GCash wallet, enabling increased collection efficiency. For savings, in quarter one, our GSave base grew to 8 million registered users, 1.4x year-over-year.
We now have four partner banks and neobanks, CIMB, Maybank, BPI and the newest bank, UNO Digital Bank. Through UNO, we launched our first time deposit product in the GSave marketplace with an interest rate of up to 6.5% per annum. For our insurance marketplace, GInsure, policies sold reached 8.7 million, which is 6 times more than last year. We did this by growing our marketplace to 36 products across 8 insurance categories through 16 reputable partners. We have also added travel insurance to our growing product line. This is through Malayan Insurance and Standard Insurance. We continue to be the country's trailblazer in the financial services industry and offer accessible and relevant and impactful products to Filipinos. Next slide, please. At GCash, we work for innovation that serves the real needs of Filipinos, whoever and wherever they may be.
We value our users' trust and help them to be secure and safe in their use of our app. Recently, we launched GCash DoubleSafe, which helps users protect their accounts by including both OTP and selfie scans on their login. We've also intensified our efforts to work with the PNP Anti-Cybercrime Group, as well as other government agencies to help combat scammers. We enable our users to plan for their future while enjoying today. With GStocks and GInsure, we give them opportunities to grow their wealth as well as protect their resources from sudden depletion. Through GCrypto and our NFT Hub, they can use crypto to enjoy our exclusive collections of digital art. An all-new GGives allows users to pay their online purchases with zero interest installments in select merchants. We also empower our users to go global.
With GCash Overseas, Filipino migrants can use the GCash app with their international SIMs in the U.S., Italy, Australia, Japan, the U.K., and Canada. These users can easily send money for free, buy load, pay for their bills of their families back home, and do bank transfers using the GCash app, all in these countries. Our global pay services enables our users to travel cashless and worry-free without being burdened by high service fee across nine different countries. More than an indispensable tool for safe and convenient everyday transactions, GCash has evolved into a symbol of hope for many as a partner in building their future. This concludes the GCash update for the quarter. We continue to solidify our market leadership and reinforce our efforts as a national champion for financial inclusion. I turn you over now to Natasha for her presentation. Thank you.
Okay. A pleasant morning to everyone. As discussed in the past, 917Ventures comprises a broad initiative from building the future. We ideate, launch, accelerate, and scale new businesses that uplift the lives of Filipinos, these will typically be tech-enabled businesses that fall under our eight focus areas of FinTech, AdTech, digital health, education, e-commerce, media and entertainment, B2B SaaS or SME solutions, and last but not least, our newest vertical, climate tech. Since 2019, our inception, the 917Ventures team has vetted over 500 ideas, launched 25 ventures, and now have a total portfolio of 12 companies. As mentioned by Ernest earlier, one of our most promising new initiatives is our partnership with Gogoro, with whom we'll be bringing battery swapping technology and electric scooters into the country.
The team is working hard to ensure Gogoro's smart scooters and the entire infrastructure and network are up and running, available to the public before the end of this year. The launch will be driven by our B2C efforts, tapped in on GoBOOSTERS, our flexible financing options, and a small subset of B2B target customers as well. Another one of our winning initiatives is KonsultaMD. As of last month, we've launched the KonsultaMD super app, creating an even more intuitive and customized experience for patients. Users can now opt for a full suite of medical services, including medicine delivery care of HealthNow and home care of AIDE, on one comprehensive platform tailored to their exact needs from being served in specific dialects to consulting with leading specialists nationwide. We've actually seen traction in parts outside of Metro Manila for not just telehealth consultations, but medicine delivery.
As we expand our partnership network, this trend will likely continue. As KonsultaMD grows, it'll look to continue expanding vertically as well. For example, we recently launched a mental health offering as we aim to become any Filipino's one-stop shop for all their health, healthcare and wellness needs. We continue to extend our innovation capabilities to the wider Ayala Group as well. Velocity, our venture incubation program, is now in its third year, working with a variety of different companies across the group to foster entrepreneurship in a structured manner. We have seen and continue to expect many of the group's new fastest-growing companies to come from the Velocity. Select portfolio companies and seed ventures born out of this program include our EdTech portfolio companies KodeGo and EdVenture, and our venture under Test & Learn, Housify. That ends my presentation.
I will now turn it over to Riza for the first quarter 2023 financial highlights.
Thanks, Natasha. Good morning, everyone. To recap, gross service revenues reached nearly PHP 40 billion, up 2% year-on-year and flat on a sequential basis, despite all the macroeconomic headwinds. Year-on-year, OpEx and subsidy remained flat. This complemented by our top line growth led to our EBITDA margin expanding to 51%, which is trending above our full year guidance. Depreciation grew by just 1% from the same period last year and was lower by 10% sequentially on the back of last quarter's higher amortization for capitalized leases. Reported net income for the first three months of 2023 amounted to PHP 7.3 billion, lower year-on-year due to the one-time gains related to the sale of our data center in the first quarter of 2022.
If we take these one-offs out, normalized NIAT would have been steady year-on-year and 55% higher on a sequential basis. Showing our bridge slide in terms of OpEx, marketing and subsidy expenses dropped by PHP 214 million or 13% year-on-year as we ensured efficiency in our spending on advertising and promotions. Staff costs posted a decline of 2% year-on-year, while provisions also decreased by PHP 602 million or 10% year-on-year due to lower trade provisions. Meanwhile, network costs are up PHP 255 million, driven by higher utility and administrative expenses, as well as repairs and maintenance charges from the expanded network. This is partially offset by lower lease expense due to the reassessment of certain operating leases to capitalized leases.
Interconnect fees increased by PHP 37 million or 11% year-on-year due to the increase of our A2P business, partly offset by the decline in outbound IDD. Services and other expenses were higher by PHP 586 million year-on-year from higher platform fees and bank charges. Hot off the press, as Ernest mentioned in his slides, last night, we signed a sale and leaseback agreement with Unity Digital Infrastructure for the sale of close to 450 towers. The tower assets consist of 84% ground-based towers and 16% rooftop towers. The sale comes with a commitment to build over 200 towers across Visayas and/or Mindanao. We expect to raise total proceeds of PHP 5.4 billion from executing this transaction.
The towers, which are all located in Luzon, will be leased back to Globe for an initial period of 15 years. The first close for this portfolio is targeted to occur in the third quarter of this year, with subsequent closings happening as and when we close the conditions or when closing conditions are met. We estimate the pre-tax net transaction gain from this transaction to be PHP 1.8 billion, reporting and recognition of which will be according to the timing of the transaction closing. If we summarize our entire sale and leaseback initiative, I'm pleased to report the turnover of our tower assets to the buyers have been proceeding as planned. To date, we have turned over 3,100 sites or around 44% of the total tower portfolio.
Breaking down further, for our partner MIDC, we have turned over 860 towers, which is 39% of their portfolio. We have also transferred 1,550 towers or 44% to Frontier. Globe generated another PHP 2 billion with the second closing with our partner, PhilTower, last April. This tranche translates to an aggregate of 710 towers or 53% of PhilTower's total portfolio successfully turned over. We expect to transfer a few more towers over the next few days. In summary, our total towers sold is at 7,509. Closing to date is at 3,120. That's 44% of the total portfolio with gross proceeds of PHP 40.5 billion.
Ernest also mentioned that our board of directors approved the payout of PHP 25 per share, which on an annualized basis is equivalent to 75% or the maximum of our dividend payout range of 60%-75% of prior year's core net income. This is proof of Globe's commitment to a sustainable dividend policy that is in line with our earnings and cash flow generation, as well as to our commitment of delivering value to our shareholders. Key dates for this declaration are the payment date of June 2, this will be made to shareholders on record as of May 18. Moving on to our balance sheet, gross debt level is at PHP 234 billion with unrestricted cash at PHP 16.2 billion.
All ratios remained well within our bank covenants, with only a slight increase in our debt during the period. We expect these gearing ratios to further improve through the end of the year as proceeds should flow in from turnover of the tower assets sold to our sale and leaseback partners. I also have a last slide on reiterating our guidance, which we shared in our last investor call in February. For service revenues, we are guiding towards mid-single digit growth versus the record-breaking level of 2022. While for EBITDA margin, we are maintaining our guidance of 50%. For CapEx, we are committing to $1.3 billion for the year as we ramp down our spending and maximize the investments made in the last three years.
We are likewise committing to focusing our efforts to free cash flow sustainability, with 2024 CapEx further declining to around $1 billion. As mentioned by Darius earlier on the SIM card registration front, we do not expect impact on our top line while all investments needed in the implementation of this initiative has been considered in the development of these guidance numbers. Other item for consideration would be to consider the higher depreciation charges expected this year, still coming from the elevated CapEx spending from the last three years, as we consider the full year impact of the assets booked in 2022. This ends the portion of my presentation. I will now turn you over to Jose Mari for the Q&A portion.
Okay. Thank you, Riza. Before we begin with the Q&A session, we would like to introduce the management panel. First, we have our President and CEO, Mr. Ernest Cu. Our Chief Finance Officer, Ms. Riza Maniego-Eala. Our General Counsel, Attorney Froilan Castelo. Our Chief Transformation Operations Officer, Ms. Rebecca Eclipse. Our Vice President for Consumer Mobile Business, Mr. Darius Delgado. Our Chief Finance Officer of Mynt, Tek Olaño, joining us via Zoom. Our Vice President for Globe Broadband Brand Management, Mr. Raymond Policarpio. Of course, Ms. Natasha Bautista, our Head of Growth and Programs for 917Ventures. I will now begin the Q&A session. Our first set of questions come from Adele Bermudez of First Metro Securities. The first question is for Riza.
The question is regarding the power sales, how much does Globe expect to recognize as gain on sale from the sale and leaseback of telecom towers this year? Also, how much would be the expected total cash consideration for the same?
Thank you for the question. On our post-tax basis and assuming we are able to transfer the balance of the sites which I itemized in my presentation, then we would recognize a gain of around PHP 10 billion. Recall we recognized around PHP 6 billion in post-tax gain last year from closing 34% of the portfolio. There would still be around PHP 60 billion of gross proceeds left, bulk of which we aim to receive this year. This also includes the Unity transaction that we signed last night, which I mentioned earlier.
Okay. Thank you, Riza. The next question is for Darius, I believe. The question is, are the phones from the wireless broadband, particularly modems, covered by the SIM card registration?
Thank you for that question. The answer is yes. Wireless broadband is covered by the SIM Registration Act. Under that law, all kinds of wireless SIM types that provide SMS, voice, and data services will need to be registered.
Okay. Thank you, Darius. The next set of questions come from Arthur Pineda of Citi. Again, Darius, the first question is for you. On SIM registration, the take-up has been quite slow with a hard deadline. Based on the 49% who have registered, what percentage of mobile revenues have been secured? How confident are you that there will be no revenue drop-off at the expiry of the registration process?
Thank you for this question, Arthur. Also mentioned earlier during my presentation, we have about 62% of our SIM base of 84 million as disclosed in Q1, 2023 already registered. That translates to 85% of our revenue generating subs. Given also our learnings in the last 120 days of implementing the SIM card registration law, we are confident that the additional extension of 90 days will be enough for us to cover the remaining 15% unregistered base.
Thank you, guys. The next question is for Raymond, I believe. The question is, can you get any clarity on the fixed broadband business? How many subscribers have signed up for the service in, first quarter 2023? Where is the company on the prepaid broadband launch?
Yeah, thanks for the question. As mentioned earlier, as of Q1, we already have 1.1 million fixed broadband subscribers, with our fiber subscriber base growing 20% year-over-year, with the revenues coming off from that business around 30% growth year-over-year. In line with our thrust to further accelerate the fiber penetration in the country, we are rolling out our prepaid fiber this June. We are on track for our commercial launch. We're currently wrapping up our user tests with some live customers already. By June this year, we should be having our commercial launch for our prepaid fiber.
Thank you, Raymond. The next question is for Riza. On the cost side, we've seen significant reductions in OpEx and D&A. Is this the new benchmark level going forward, or were there any adjustments made in the first quarter?
Thanks, Arthur. On the OpEx levels, we are still committed to our guidance of 50% margin for full year 2023. I believe I mentioned in my presentation that we are outperforming in the first quarter, but we expect this to be muted in the next three quarters so that we end at around the 50% guidance. There's a second portion of the question related to depreciation and amortization. We expect depreciation to continue to increase as we are still continuing our CapEx investments, albeit at a smaller scale than in the past 2 years. In terms of guidance, we can say that our depreciation will more or less be posting the same growth level as in 2022.
Okay. Thank you, Riza. The next question is for Tek. The question is on Mynt, there was a significant jump on non-cash contributions in both first quarter year-on-year. What accounted for the significant jump? Were there any material expansion, expansions rather, on take rates, product offers or GMV?
Yeah, thanks for the question. Without getting into too much detail, the growth in equity contributions is basically driven by, one, the scale, as we continue to grow. The other part is really the diversity and relevance of various use cases. As we discussed earlier, we continue to grow. Your registered base continues to increase on a year-on-year basis. We've also been able to scale both our lending-based services, both management and insurance. This combination allows us to kind of grow both the top and bottom lines.
Just to note that, there will be periods where these equity contributions might likely swing up and down, as determined by our various product launches and our aggressiveness in the market. Thank you.
Thank you, Ben. The next set of questions come from Husseini of UBS. The first question is for Darius. With your indulgence, here's the question: On SIM registration, Globe is lagging its peers on the % of subs registered. Does it pose a risk of disconnections?
Thank you for that question. Of course, we expect that inactive subs would no longer register, and therefore that will have an impact on the reported cumulative base. As mentioned earlier and emphasized earlier as well, that won't have any impact on revenues as we have substantially registered our revenue-generating base.
Thank you, Darius. The next question is for you. Industry mobile growth remains relatively subdued, although we do note that Globe continues to outperform its immediate competitor. What is driving slower mobile growth? Is there a room for telcos to price up as we are seeing in markets like Indonesia and India?
Thanks for that question again. Firstly, we believe mobile is in a healthy state, and with inflationary pressures in quarter one, given the following proof points that you can also see in the MD&A. Number one, we got increased traffic by 5%, and that resulted into an increase also in terms of ARPU across our base by 20%. That activity improving among our base translated also into healthy ARPU. Growing across the brands with Postpaid growing 3% QOQ, TotalEasy increasing 2% on a blended basis, driven by TM, which is the most financially constrained. Yes, it grew 4% in terms of R2. Churn also across the board improved given our base management initiatives. Netflix subscriptions, that's improved in churn rates QOQ, while Postpaid churn fell.
On the telcos, we have already started to implement monetization efforts since Q4 last year, we see the results today. We build this while also being sensitive to the situation with the mass market, whose spending power we all know are severely challenged. It also helps that our Netflix has been touted as the most reliable network in the Philippines for four straight quarters, thus supporting improvements across the healthy metrics that I've mentioned earlier. Lastly, mobile increased 1% versus Q4, where Q4 is a quarter that is seasonally high during the year. I believe the mobile as a business is in a very good place.
Thank you, Darius, for the comprehensive reply. The next question is for Raymond. When do we expect the drag in the fixed wireless space to be arrested? When will Globe roll out fiber broadband to a wider base? What is the latest on pledged fiber prepaid rollout?
All right. Thank you for the question. Well, we are still experiencing the normalization of the fixed wireless space. We expect this to stabilize immediately after the SIM Registration deadline passes and also as the country fully normalizes from the uncertain use cases brought about by the pandemic. Our wireless prepaid Wi-Fi will continue to provide connectivity, though, for customers in areas not covered by our FTTH as we evaluate these areas' viability. Now, even with the expected decline in fixed wireless, we are well positioned to cushion this with our fixed wireless business. We continue to accelerate our push for fiber as the demand shifts to more reliable fixed broadband.
As we scale up our fiber business, very important is for us to be able to reach the mass market segment, which till now remains to be underserved, thus prepaid fiber. For prepaid fiber, while we are very, very keen in ensuring that the fully digital experience that we will launch with, will live up to the expectations of the market. We are on track for a commercial launch by June this year as we currently wrap up our user tests that we are doing with live customers.
Thank you, Raymond. The next question is for Riza. First quarter 2023 costs were well managed. Sales and marketing, staff costs, provisions were down year-over-year. What drove the decline in those costs, and is EBITDA margin in the first quarter of 2023 sustainable?
Thanks. I think in my presentation I mentioned staff costs were down 2%, although network costs increased. With a better than expected overall performance, then we generated over 50% EBITDA margin. Now, we are also continuing a group-wide review of all our costs, consistent with what we did in the past 2 years. Costs that we no longer need to incur are no longer spent, and it can be moved to other new costs that we would need to fund. We are also looking at efficiencies brought about by the spend on our automation in the past 2, 3 years. We are working on that overall cost initiative. Spending would be more geared towards the new direction or the new growth areas of the company.
we continue to see that, for full year, we will be within a 50% EBITDA margin.
Okay. Thank you, Riza. The next question also, is for you. Where should we see the medium-term CapEx intensity to settle down? Given the very high CapEx spend the last five years, can medium-term CapEx to sales ratio go below 20%?
Well, first, our guidance for this year is $1.3 billion in cash CapEx, declining to $1 billion in 2024. There are structural issues specific to the Philippines that keep CapEx, and therefore CapEx to revenue ratio high. Like for example, the lack of the national broadband and a national broadband network. If you look at like a 20% number, that might not be realistic. You also need to consider that there are some investments that are quite significant in other markets, but are not present here. Like our access to frequency is much lower than other regional players. Albeit on the flip side, we do pay a lot of frequency-related taxes. If you look at it from that perspective, you will see that we are actually close to our peers in total network investments.
Thank you, Riza. The next set of questions come from Matthew d e Leon. The first question is, what's the subscriber breakdown between wired and fixed wireless broadband for the home broadband? Raymond, please.
Yeah. For fixed, wired, it's 1.1 million subscribers, and we have 1.2 million in fixed wireless base.
Okay. Thanks, Raymond. The second question of Matthew has already been addressed earlier. Maybe we'll just share that reply to with Matthew offline.
I can answer.
Okay, go ahead.
Add some answers.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, go ahead.
Thank you for that question, Matthew. First and foremost, there's a significant chunk of the population, like 30%-40%, who don't have government IDs. That's why we're also working proactively with the government, especially the ACT and NTC, to allow a conditional registration flow so that we can expand the available IDs that customers can use to be able to register. There's also a question that will there be risks to revenues. As I also mentioned earlier, 85% of our revenue generating base has been registered as of May 4 already. We're kind of the safe there with the extension.
Okay. Thank you, Darius. The next set of questions come from Herman Dela Paz of Abacus. The first question is regarding the SIM card registration, and I think this already addressed earlier. We'll just share the answer offline with Herman. The next two questions are regarding Mynt, so it is for Tek. For Mynt, do we expect any fundraising the near term, and are there any updates on the planned listing of Mynt?
I guess from a capital markets perspective, I think we're still not out of the woods. We see a bit of signs of early recovery and that might signal an opportunity for us to go back into the market. As we're doing this now, we're preparing as if a return to the capital markets might happen in the future, subject to the improvement of the market. In terms of, I guess, on the question of the IPO, we're currently looking towards preparing as if we're gonna get there in the next one or two years.
We're gonna approach it, on a strategic basis and on opportunistic basis as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Tek. The next set of questions come from Michelle Rodriguez of Maybank. The first question is for Raymond. May I ask the reason for the drop Q and Q of 11,700 in fixed broadband and a huge 234,000 drop in wireless subscribers. What is your outlook here?
Yeah. Thanks for the question. The decline really is in line with the expectations from the declining fixed wireless as the market shifts to the more reliable wired connectivity. A huge chunk of that trend in wireless subscribers is really coming out from the earlier demand from the acquisitions for the pandemic use cases, study from home, work from home, and those kinds of use cases. As the country normalizes, we do expect that the demand will be shifting to a more reliable connectivity, which is fixed wired. In line with our thrust to accelerate our penetration on fiber, FTTH.
Thank you, Raymond. The next question is regarding GCash and Mynt. This is for Tek. Can you give more updates on GStocks? Also, can you perhaps share profit numbers for GCash and Mynt?
On GStocks, I think we've already announced previously that we're planning to launch this together with AB Capital as our partner. We're currently at pilot stage with mostly testing across friends and families, across friendlies. The plan is to launch this on improved user experience maybe in the next 1 or 2 months. The second question on profit, I think an earlier slide shows the contribution of Mynt in Globe at PHP 400 million net income. That's an indication of the profit levels of Mynt as of the first quarter.
Okay. Thanks, Tek. At this point, we now give an opportunity to members of our live audience to ask questions. Please state your name and then your company and then your question please.
Thanks for the call. I'm Gary from CLSA. I have a few questions. First, on the 5G side, are you seeing an increase in 5G on a quarter-over-quarter basis, considering the past few quarters have been down in demand for that? With CP, do you have any plans on expanding your data center services or perhaps constructing new data centers? Lastly on Mynt, regarding expansion abroad, are you looking at more countries outside of Australia, Japan, and Italy? What functionalities are you expecting to roll out for these countries? Thanks.
Thanks. Maybe I'll try and give a stat. 5G is gonna be flat, I think. It's remaining flat. There are no significant use cases that appeal to the public at this time. Technology is wonderful, you know. Having 100 Mbps on your handset really doesn't really do anything different today for the lifestyle of the people. We expect that unless something really drastically changes, it should remain status quo or the natural change, rotational change of handsets, you know, will drive 5G. I think your second question had to do with data centers. Maybe just to refresh your memory, we actually carved out our data center business into a joint venture with ST Telemedia Global Data Centres centers or STT GDC. We are in the process of designing and constructing 128 MW complex.
This will be one of the biggest in the Philippines, if not the biggest, in the Fairview area. That will be broken ground within the next week or so, with the first building hopefully up in about 12 to 15 months' time. Okay. We will be doing that in phases. It's a pretty significant investment, so we are very bullish on our data center business. With Jet station now, we're very, very qualified to do it. We're very, very bullish on that as well. The last question will have to go to Mynt. Is that the right question, please?
I can take that question.
Okay.
I think the question was related to GCash Overseas and how we expand or how we plan to expand. Outside of the currently 6 countries that the countries that we're currently available in, the plan is to continue to expand to where large OFW communities would be residing. This expansion would be in coordination with the regulator as well as potential partners in those particular countries that we have our mindset on.
We have our eyes set on localities like Hong Kong, the Middle East.
Yes.
Where there's a lot of Filipino OFW population.
Yeah.
Hi. Good morning. I'm Jeff from ATR Asset Management . My question is related to Mynt. Can you give us a feel in terms of how we expect GTV to grow this year and how did GTV grow in the first quarter? Just get us a sense also of the monthly active user or daily active users out of that. What percentage of the 81 million registered users are daily or monthly active users? Also, if we can get some color in terms of the GTV breakdown, which areas are growing the fastest in Q1 and also maybe for all of last year.
Okay.
Thank you.
We don't Sorry. We don't disclose GTV numbers and MAU numbers per se. Just to give you a picture, I think we've communicated in the past briefings that we were well over six, our 6 trillion target as of 2022. We continue to kinda outpace in terms of our own internal forecast in terms of the growth on both GTV. I think more than the GTV per se, what is now very critical to us is the diversity of the-
The products and the use cases that we're currently building. In the past, the our GTV was largely on payments and transfers. I think what we're seeing now is there's an over-index in terms of the growth from other use cases, particularly on the lending side, where we're seeing significant traction both in terms of the, say, the disbursements, but more so in terms of the revenues given the value, the value differential in terms of the take rates we do on the more complicated services vis-a-vis payments and transfers. On MAU, I apologize, we don't disclose MAU. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Tek. Okay.
Hi. Jerry from SB Equities. My question is, what are your optimizations you could do in cost base, and is accelerated depreciation of the legacy assets included in this? That's the question.
Thanks for that. Let me answer. There's no accelerated depreciation plan or foreseen for this year. In terms of optimization of cost, there are actually a lot of opportunities across the board. In the first quarter, you've seen marketing and subsidy decline. We'd like to play around with our OpEx depending on the needs. Thus, we're sticking to the 50% guidance. While there are opportunities, for example, to reduce network costs, these could be offset by the high prices of both electricity and oil or fuel. There's a balancing act that we need to do, given that this year's inflation had not been expected to be this high. Although it's good that we've seen inflation come down from the 8.7% level in the past 30 days.
Thank you, Riza.
This is Manuel Castro of Regina Capital. I have a question regarding the towers. Are there any plans to convert existing 5G towers with low traffic for 4G?
The towers, there's no solo 5G tower. 5G tower is also a 4G tower, so there's no need to do that. Basically what we do is add 5G to the existing tower.
Got it. Thank you.
Last call for questions from the live audience before we go back to our virtual audience with their follow-up questions. Okay. Next set of questions come from Varun Ahuja of Credit Suisse. First question, I believe is for Darius. Can you please provide an update on 5G take-up? How do you see the monetization potential over a two-year horizon?
Thanks for that question, Varun. As also mentioned by Ernest, there's no real use case for 5G that differentiates it from 4G, especially if you just use 5G in a small smartphone screen. To date, as of March 21, 2023, we have seen 4.2 million 5G devices being active in the network. It's not to say they're using 5G predominantly because the contribution of that in terms of traffic versus 4G is still insignificant. It may go back to the lack of a use case that actually differentiates the technology versus 4G, especially when you use a small screen. We don't see any killer use case in the next two years. The take-up of 5G will predominantly be driven by the take-up and adoption of 5G devices in the market.
Okay. Thanks, Darius. The next question is for Riza. On CapEx, how much is being spent on the tower rollout currently? Is it not that the coming of the tower costs have been reducing the tower-related CapEx?
Thanks for that. Bulk of the rollout this year for the passive assets is already through our build-to-suit partners or with respect to the SLD arrangements that we've had. This has helped lowered our CapEx such that our guidance, we'd like to reiterate, is at $1.3 billion for this year. However, the larger component of network-related CapEx still is with the active equipment, which is still for our account.
Thank you, Riza. The third question is for Darius. We are seeing the entry of new players on the enterprise side, particularly on the fixed line side of the business. How is Globe looking at the enterprise side of the bus-
Thank you for that question. We've seen an increasing digital maturity across the large enterprises, most of which are actually our accounts in Globe. We expect also the ICT market to continue growing in the midterm. This is a space that we intend to dominate, and we actually dominate in Q1, where we have the lion's share of ICT revenues. ICT, we believe, is a growing solution for us to solidify our competitive advantage in the accounts that we serve.
Thank you, Darius. Again, we would like to ask the live audience if you still have any questions. If not, we again would like to request those dialed in on Zoom to send their questions to investorrelationsteam@globe.com.ph. There are no more questions online. Again, we'd now like to turn it over to Ernest for his closing remarks.
Thanks, Jamari. I'd like to close by just saying thank you to the team for a wonderful quarter across the group, particularly in the corporate business. Despite, you know, the maturing base that we have here in the Philippines, the headwinds brought about to our mass market base by inflation and the lack of, you know, attraction of people on 5G, we still eked out pretty decent growth numbers that we may hope to sustain over the coming years. I noticed quite a bit of interest in 5G. We are looking at various ways to stimulate revenue and usage. I don't think it's just Globe. It's the whole industry globally looking for some really mass use of the technology today.
We take advantage of the high speeds, the low latency, and the high IoT connectivity capabilities of that technology. Just seeing every mobile phone booth we attend and show it one day, and we did come up with another great use case. Once it comes out, you can expect Globe to be on it, just the same way we were leading a use case proliferation for 4G as well. I also want to talk about the SIM registration. There seems to be quite a bit of concern. Did expect that the numbers will be low. Again, Globe has never been a company that focused itself on SIM, or SIM cards or subscriber counts. We focus on revenue. As you heard Barry speak, we're approaching excess of 80% of mobile users already registered.
You know, as we stated at the beginning of the SIM Registration process, we are confident that this will not have any effect on our revenues, and I reiterate that once again. Another sort of recurring theme here is on the reduction of fixed wireless customers, prepaid fixed wireless customers. We believe that the plan has been slowing over the past few quarters, and we've heard that amount. We will probably be able to give you another definitive number as to where that bottom is. I think it's similar to mobile phone accounts, you know. I want to mention that this, we are pretty much believing that this is a highly prepaid market.
You can see an evidence to the fact, if you see the numbers for all the players in the industry, including Globe, the acquisition numbers have tapered off over the past year significantly, you know. It's interesting to note that we, as the third player, is the fastest growing in terms of our fiber base and fiber revenues now, compared to the competition. We're quite pleased with the way we have entered the market, albeit maybe 12 months later into the market. We'll be providing you with more of that. ICT, again, congratulations to the team for being able to take advantage of the recovery of the business sector in the country. We've been able to take advantage of that by providing more services and expect more from Globe to scale up data center, to scale up IT services.
All of those are coming out in the next couple of quarters you will see from us. GCash continues its lead. I believe, you know, I guess reportedly the undisputed leader. I saw one house come out with a study that stated that it has 90% of the payments market in the Philippines. You know, We didn't put that survey out. It's one of the investment houses and a pretty large one that mentioned that. We expect to continue that prominence and we're very bullish on, you know, majority of the use cases. Payments continue to accelerate. More and more people adopt e-payments in this country.
We're also very glad to see that the growth now in terms of AOA is no longer coming just from NCR, but the Visayas region. Very shortly, I'm sure we'll be seeing it in the Mindanao region as well as our efforts there being stretched, as I mentioned, in the Pacific region. We've developed as well in lending, as Mike mentioned to you. Lending numbers have been growing very nicely. We've been able to manage our lending loan numbers up to excellent standards, even better than you'd see in most consumer lending companies and banks. This is because of the continuous improvement of our GScore. As Dean actually described, it is the only score that rates a very high number of citizens in this country. Of course, excitement on the new ventures led by our health tech venture.
We just signed a deal with the City of Makati. They're always the first to come out and adapt these new technologies, starting with their city employees and hopefully soon to launch with the 500,000 Makati citizen members a year. We also wanted to remind everyone Makati was also one of the first to adopt GCash. GCash is a de facto standard. This is a sign of things to come. I think we are very recover the economic boom that this country can as well. Of course, very early in the game, but the Gogoro battery swapping cycles are going to be made available to a pilot group already. There is one station here at Doroteo Jose.
If you would like to see it, just go by the driveway, and we can show you that, you know. My fourth quarter, you should have consumer bikes available in the first flagship store will be open in Makati. Again, thank you very much for joining us today, both here physically, and as well as on Zoom. We've got more people now physically who are in this good fight for us, and very active conversations. Again, thank you, and have a really good morning. Thank you.