Hi, good evening, everybody. Thank you for joining StarHub's 1Q 2023 Business Performance Update Call. My name is Amelia, and I take care of investor relations for StarHub. This evening, as usual, we have our Chief Executive, Nikhil. Dennis Chia, our CFO. Johan Buse, Chief of Consumer, virtually. And Mr. Tan Kit Yong, our Head of Enterprise Business Group. We'll start off with opening remarks and an overview of our performance from Nikhil, followed by Dennis on financial. As usual, we have Johan and Kit Yong on business highlights. We'll open the floor to Q&A thereafter. Just before we start, this is a gentle reminder to please mute yourself when you're not speaking. Without further ado, Nikhil, over to you, please.
Thank you, Amelia. Thank you all for joining us this evening to hear about our First Quarter 2023 Results. Without further ado, I will start on the financial highlights, which you now have in front of you. First of all, on service revenue growth. We grew service revenue growth overall, up 11%, from the first quarter of last year. This growth was generally speaking across the board. Includes a first-time consolidation of MyRepublic. If you take out MyRepublic from this quarter, growth was around 7%. It also includes, you know, clearly we were able to capture some boost for roaming. Again, if you take out roaming, we grew roughly about mid-single digits.
On service EBITDA, we saw an uplift service EBITDA tracked our revenue. Albeit, we do have costs for transformation expense. Like revenue, running on a margin basis, ahead of our guidance at 22.4% relative to 20%. Net profit was up significantly year-over-year by about 26%. The other thing that I'd like to just talk about on this page, which I'm sure many of you have questions on, is our overall trajectory against our DARE+ targets.
As you know, in February of 2022, we set targets for 2022 and subsequently for 2023, and we had guided to revenue growth of 10%, and brought down our EBITDA margin from 30% to 20% to reflect the transformation expense that we were taking on. As you know, in 2022, we grew revenue by 17%. And we were also able to keep within our EBITDA margin guidance by absorbing, even whilst absorbing unanticipated macro costs, rising utilities, other inflationary expenses, et cetera, et cetera, and stay within that 20% margin. We saw more EBITDA than we anticipated.
Now, we were clear in February of this year that 2022 would be a trough year, with revenue continuing to grow, but profitability would recover in 2023. As we talked to you about, for the last year, including accruals, we incurred 35% of our transformation expense. Now coming to this year, we expect to incur, as we said in February, another 50% of our transformation expense, taking us to about 85%-ish overall. As we also said in February, we expect profitability to recover in 2023, despite this rising expense with revenue growth.
For the first quarter, we're glad to say, that we have already started to generate this recovery and profitability in the first quarter, we hope to continue this trend, as we progress through the year. Looking forward in 2024, the difference between 100 minus 15, minus 50 is obviously 15%-ish of our expense left. We expect to continue growth, but also start harvesting efficiencies, and continue the uptick in profitability. I just wanted to kind of end off this page to give you a general sense of our DARE+ trajectory. Flipping over on the next page to a quick review of our business segments. On mobile, we saw strong growth year-on-year, 13.5% impact.
We were able to capture roaming recovery, partial recovery, while holding our base ARPU roughly constant. Like in every other quarter, we continue to add subscribers, but in a very measured and cautious way, our approach being not to dilute our base ARPU. We have also been steadily over many quarters, increasing our lead to the number three operator, which in Q1 was about 300 basis points, and now we have increased over that number despite the fact that the disclosure has been curtailed a little bit. On broadband, we had a 20.4% increase. This reflected the consolidation of MyRepublic broadband. We also roughly doubled the penetration of high-speed plans, 2 gig and 10 gigabit.
We were the first to launch 10 gigabit XGS-PON into the Singapore market, which we did, you know, a couple of months ago. Now on entertainment, we grew strongly, fueled by Premier League largely. We saw rising subs, but we also saw rising ARPU, as our subs took on broader entertainment packages. Last but not least, on enterprise, we grew 3% year-on-year. The star this quarter was network solutions, which was an eroding business for us a couple of years back, but that business drove growth. Cyber and ICT were roughly flat. Frankly, we expect those to ramp quite steeply over coming quarters, as on the back of strong order book. Those are lumpy businesses, as you know. With that, to cover our performance versus guidance, I'll hand off to our esteemed CFO, Dennis Chia.
Thanks, Nikhil, and good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining us this evening. To take a point check on the, our performance for 1Q of 2023, our service revenue that we reported is SGD 461.6, translating to an 11% growth year-on-year. As Nikhil had pointed out, this is as a result of growth in all our lines or almost all our lines of businesses. Our EBITDA for Q1 is at SGD 112.8. Service EBITDA at SGD 103.1, and that translates into a service EBITDA margin of 22.4%, which exceeded our guidance of 20% that we started the year with.
Our CapEx commitments, which are typically relatively lower in the first quarter of every year, has come in at 3.1%. We had guided to BAU CapEx, so business- as- usual CapEx, that's 5%-7%. We're still well on track and with all the investments that we're contemplating for that plus for the rest of the year, we are keeping our CapEx guidance for the year despite the fact that our CapEx incurrence for Q1 is relatively low. The statistics I want to call out on the next slide would be our net profit, which came in at SGD 37.5 million. That translates to SGD 0.022 on EPS basis. That's also 26% higher than the number that we reported last year.
This is despite and on top of the fact that we've incurred relatively higher investments in relation to DARE+ this year compared to last year. This implies that we started to harvest and realize some of the benefits and outcomes from our DARE+ investment. The last statistic on this page is our net debt to EBITDA ratio, which came in at 1.26 x. We ended last year at 1.45. Our free cash flow for the quarter is negative, and that's typical for Q1 because we would have discharged some of our working capital payables that we took out last year. For the full year, we do expect our free cash flow significantly positive in relation to the rest of the year. On that note, I'll pass the floor to Johan, who is joining us virtually today. Johan?
Thank you, Dennis, and good evening, everyone. I'll take you through the three business lines mobile, broadband, and entertainment, and then we'll zoom a little bit more in on the progress around DARE+ the consumer. We had a good quarter in mobile. As you can see, ARPU is stable. We are benefiting from roaming ARPU. Subscriber base grew, also great, and churn remained relatively low at 0.8%. Prepaid. Prepaid is a bit of a challenging business. I need to breathe because I have COVID, so I'm a bit out of breath. Sorry. Prepaid is a bit of a challenging business. We're SGD 1 down on the ARPU, but base is growing. Tourism is not fully back yet. Segment revenue for mobile grew close to 14%, which is very good in a competitive market like this.
I'm really out of breath. Yeah, the data usage continued to improve or rise, 15.5 GB as we speak. Excuse me one second. I just wanna have a bit of water. One sec. All right. Back. All right. Moving on to the next page, broadband. Broadband, we obviously incorporate the MyRepublic numbers in. ARPU is SGD 34, and the sub base stands at 578, which makes us the market leader in broadband. Churn rate remains very low at 0.5%. Segment revenue, broadband, including MyRepublic, grew more than 20%, and we clocked SGD 62 million. That's broadband. Moving on. Entertainment. As you will remember, in Q4, we had the World Cup. That was a one-off. That obviously pumped up the ARPU in Q4 a little bit as well.
We clocked a really good ARPU in this quarter, SGD 43. The base, there is a change in reporting, and I need to explain that a little bit. We're moving from entitled subscriber base to active subscriber base, which is more reflective and more accurate in terms of actual relevant performance. If you look below the line, which you don't see here, you will see that the active customer base has been steadily increasing. We have changed that logic to be more reflective of that. Churn is low, 0.8%, which is also commendable in this space. With all that, the segment revenue increased 21%. That was driven mainly by Premier League as well as by both on the business side as well as on the consumer side. All right.
Getting back my breath a little bit. Moving on to Infinity Play. We embarked that journey a while ago, and I have to say, it's a very audacious and daring strategy, even if I may say so myself, but we're really making good progress. Last quarter, Q4, we launched the new app, and we did the first releases on the new IT stack. Linked to that, we believe that differentiation is a very important play for us. It's really rewarding to see that we are continuously being accolated by Opensignal for the best mobile network, as well as we have been by IMDA, by the way. We embarked on a new direction to make sure that our brand can stand out in the market, which we do by speed and safety. Those are the two elements.
We are very proud to be the first in Singapore to offer a totally new 10 GB network, which will deliver a much better experience to our customers. Linked to that, safety, anti-scam is a very important element in society. We also have been putting extra effort there to make sure that we can offer our customers things which are relevant and protect them. Safety Suite is one of our, what we call T2 vertical products, which encompasses everything which customers may need to be secured at home and on the go. The last one here is entertainment. We have revamped entertainment in an OTT solution, as you know. You don't need to be a StarHub customer on a fixed line as per se to enjoy this service. Digital platform is on its way.
We have four main building blocks for this year to further enhance it. We're working very hard on more personalization, enhanced targeting. We're doing a lot of work on improved analytics, and we have deployed already a new marketing automation system. With that, having said all that, we are on track with a good Infinity Play all-in-one app, to make sure that we can maximize the efforts of our existing customer base. With that, I hand over to Kit Yong, and I will take a deep breath. Thank you.
Thank you, Johan. Thank you, Johan. Right. Okay. For enterprise business itself, we grew by 3% year-on-year. It's due to higher revenues from data internet with MyRepublic broadband and also managed services, right? With more projects and we have a pipeline within our backlog that we are delivering now. It's offset by lower voice services revenue due to lower domestic and international traffic. Right. Lastly, it's due to the clients shifting to more data to using voice services. Right. When it comes to cybersecurity services, it's higher revenue due to increase in project delivery. We do note that there is a record in operating loss of SGD 9 million for Q1. Right. It's due to other income, lower other income, lower income and other investment in R&D and talent.
When it comes to regional ICT services, it's a low revenue due to exit of major project delivered, right, for last year. We are looking at Q1 of a loss of SGD 0.1 million, right, compared to the same quarter last year, right? They still have backlogs in the business where it will catch in other quarters. Next slide. I'll just share with everyone that for our enterprise business, we managed to win a very important deal for enterprise business, which is Punggol Digital District. We are delivering the most advanced network solution in Punggol Digital District that include using software-defined network, and we'll use network automation, even AIOps, to run the network. With network telemetry for the digital twin. We're gonna be looking at also including security by design for the whole district network.
Right. This will be the important milestone for enterprise business because this is the future of digital infrastructure, right, for smart cities. We are looking forward that there will be more synergies and subsequent integration with our Infinity and 5G and building new use cases for Punggol Digital District. All right. With that, I end my presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Kit. With that, we now open the floor to Q&A. To join the question queue, please click on the raise hand button. I'll call upon your name when it's your turn to speak, and then you can unmute yourself and converse directly with management. First, we will have Sachin. Sachin, please unmute yourself.
Well, thanks, Amelia. Good evening, management. A few questions. Yeah. For this year, expectations of transformation OpEx was SGD 60 million-70 million, and transformation CapEx was SGD 140 million-150 million for the full year. Could you guide us how much of that has OpEx and the CapEx component has been incurred? You know, some kind of range will be very helpful. That's question number one. Question number two is, I mean, 5G was a premium product. Pricing was a premium till last year. Now we are seeing like below SGD 20 for 100 from, you know, below SGD 20 for SGD 100 , 100 GB kind of plan. Why do you think there's so much of intense competition?
You know, what are the drivers here? Especially when leasing is done by wholesale leasing, in many cases, is done by telcos for the 5G network. What could change to make it better? That's question number two on the mobile side. Lastly, if you could guide us, what does this new smart city contract mean in terms of impact on your earnings, whether in the near term or in the medium term? Thank you.
Thank you. Nikhil, do you have any opening remarks before we pass this on to.
No. Why don't we have Dennis take the first, Johan take the second, and I can add to it? Kit Yong take the third, and I'll add to it.
Yep.
Okay.
Sachin, the total investments of that part, as we've updated the market, was SGD 310. We're saying that this year we're expecting to incur 50% or translating to a SGD 155 number with, as of Q1, we've incurred 8% of that number, which is about SGD 25 million. That is in the form of CapEx and OpEx. Part of it is actually in OpEx.
CapEx. SGD 25 million has been spent in CapEx and OpEx.
In Q1.
In Q1. bulk is. That's still quite. I mean, that's not really. It hasn't started in a big way. That's the implication here.
Yeah. Yeah. It's because it's tied, it's tied to delivery of initiatives, right? All of the initiatives are underway. A lot of them are going to be realized actually in Q2 and Q3.
Isn't this is coming a bit of this is coming as a backlog from FY 2022, so why do you, what do you think is causing all these delays?
It's not, it's not delays, Sachin. It is just the timing, right? For example, insofar as Cloud Infinity, which is the initiative we added on, to that SGD 270 million, which brought up to the SGD 310, we are in the early stages of implementing those. Insofar as the IT transformation project is concerned, we went through, you know, a scope rationalization as well and that is something that we took a pause in Q1 and we are, you know, we are well underway in terms of delivering in Q2. So it's not sequential, it is, you know, at the b ecause of the complexity of all of these initiatives we are taking, we do take stock checks, and pauses at times, to rationalize what we're doing and then, you know, to look at how we tweak those scopes to get a better outcome. Yeah.
Got it. Got it.
Okay. Then I come into the picture for the 5G question. Thanks for that question. Actually I wanted to say that question is probably a good question to ask some of my competitors. Look, our strategy is clear on 5G. We would like to differentiate as much as we can on 5G. Obviously we do quite a fair bit of investments in that. So far we have been successfully differentiating and also commanding a price premium compared to 4G, and we intend to strive to keep it that way. That's, I think bottom line the story here. We believe that it's unnecessary to destroy 5G pricing at this point in time in the market. It's a new product. It comes with, superior speed and latency, and we bundle it with differentiating factors to give the value for customers, and we'll continue to do that. Hopefully that's answering your question.
Yeah. I mean, my question is, if this is a wholesale network which you are leasing to some of the MVNOs, question is, there is no guideline, right? I mean, it's a one-to-one negotiation between you and the MVNOs. Why is the wholesale pricing so cheap that ultimately they end up, and some of the MVNOs end up giving so cheap? That's the question.
Well, that's a result of, I would say market forces, and, the outcome of that is what you see. That's not something we like, but it's reality. It's market working in a way. It's the way the market operates, and it puts pressure on the whole ecosystem, unfortunately.
Yeah. The only thing I'd add.
Okay.
The only thing I'd add, Sachin, is, look, I mean, we're not leasing 5G to MVNOs. You know, as Johan says, we can't control how others react to market forces. You know, similar things have happened in 4G, right? One of our competitors added 300,000 subs in the last year, but their consumer business declined 5%. Our strategy is very clear, whether it's on 4G, whether it's on 5G, whether it's on broadband, which is we differentiate on quality on things like safety and on product, and that's the way we'll keep on going.
Because it seems, we had a lot of roaming revenue in this quarter because of tourist arrival, but that didn't really benefit your revenue on a sequential basis because of, you know, the local non-roaming portion going down. Is that a right way of looking at it?
No.
No. That's.
That's not the right way.
Yeah. Sorry, go ahead, Johan.
Oh, no. Feel free to jump in, but no, that's unfortunately not the right way. If you look below the hood, you will see that subscription revenues, and roaming revenues are the key drivers, and obviously. That's not a 5G effect. What is coming down is out of bundle revenue, and that's a, that's a working of how tariff plans are constructed in the market on 4G and 5G. Of course, there has been, for the longest time, an organic decline in minutes. It's a bit more complex than that. Hopefully that gives you a bit more color, Sachin.
Okay.
Sachin, as I said in my opening remarks, I think what, you know, what we've been able to do is hold our base ARPU constant. We've added subs in a measured manner, while we hold our base ARPU constant, which is why you've seen our revenues go up with roaming, in comparison to others who've seen flat or declining revenue because the roaming increase has been offset by cannibalization on their base.
Yeah. Maybe to add to that, one- more point, what is also an element in this in the mix here is device versus SIM-only. They have different top- line behavior, but bottom line not necessarily too much difference. These are all factors which are playing a role here.
I mean, my simple thinking is, I mean, Nikhil and Johan, that roaming revenue has gone up sequentially, and it is going up in a major manner because of tourist arrival. It doesn't reflect in the mobile revenue. I mean, it's stable, right? The other portion has gone down. I mean.
Do you mean quarter-on-quarter?
Yeah, I'm looking sequentially quarter- on- quarter.
Oh.
Yeah.
Okay. Johan, you can clear that up then.
Yeah. Quarter-on-quarter, Q4 to Q1 is also seasonality. Typically, Q4 is higher than Q1. It's a pure logic of seasonality where in Q4 people, you have, A, the immediate impact of iPhone launch, for example. Which ARPU crypts, and you have quite a lot of travel in December. This year is actually slightly different in a way, that we don't drop that much Q4 to Q1. If you look at year-on-year, which is probably the better comparison, you can see there is a significant uplift.
Got it. Got it.
Yeah, keep in mind there's also a one-month delay, right, in recording roaming revenue.
Yeah.
Okay. That is good to know.
All right.
Yeah.
There was a question around Smart city, I think.
Yeah. Maybe I'll hand over to Kit Yong. I think the purposes of showing you this was to really illustrate how we're kinda evolving our network solutions business, to move away from kinda plain vanilla legacy connectivity and really, you know, driving towards more, you know, cloud-enabled digital solutions that have a green flavor to them. Go ahead.
Yep. Addressing the news impact. This is a multi-year contract we need to deliver for the first implementation within this year. There will be in-year revenue for this year, and then there will be subsequent revenues for maintaining over the multi- years. Right. That is the kind of large- scale multi-million dollar project that we embark into. Yeah. Does that answer your question?
Okay. I mean, I got it. I mean, typically my understanding is government projects tend to carry thinner margins than actually some of the other projects. This is a very, I would say this is a more sophisticated project than many other projects.
Yeah.
Does it change margin story?
I don't think we should comment on margins received from one type of customers vis-à-vis another, Sachin. That's a bit tricky for us, as you would of course appreciate. Thanks for the takeaway, that exactly what we were trying to portray, that this is a far more sophisticated type of project against a large- scale development. There are a lot of these large- scale developments coming in Singapore, we don't think a traditional telco approach where you get simply RFPs, you know, kind of on just plain vanilla connectivity is the best way to monetize. This is the approach we're taking.
Got it. Thank you, Nikhil.
Yeah.
Thanks, Sachin. Next up, we have Sasin. Sasin, please unmute yourself. Sasin, are you there?
Hi. Thanks, Amelia. Thank you, StarHub team. I have three questions. The first is actually a continuation of what just, you know, you discussed with Sachin. Johan, you mentioned that, we should be looking at it on a year-on-year basis. I actually disagree on that, because last year, almost at this time in the first quarter, almost all the markets were in lockdown within Southeast Asia, and China was definitely in lockdown. When I look at that whole roaming revenue versus tourist arrivals, et cetera, it looks quite soft actually. If you have any color on that would be good. My second question is on. I mean, entertainment is fairly straightforward in terms of performance. In terms of broadband, MyRepublic consolidation, on a sequential basis, that's not much of an uplift.
When you all bought MyRepublic, if I seem to recall, the ARPU for MyRepublic because of the premium gamer base, et cetera, was way higher. Why is that the case? Is there pricing pressure in the broadband environment as well? My third question is just sort of a broader strategy question. You know, for years, StarHub has been largely Singapore-centric. In the last 18, 24 months, there's been quite a few acquisitions. I actually don't see the impact of that acquisitions in the enterprise business. What's holding it back? Is it the macro environment that's preventing corporates from spending on CapEx or any other reasons? Any color on that would be great. Thank you.
Thank you. Is that you, Neil?
Let me try to answer point number 1 related to roaming. Thanks for that question. Roaming actually consists, broadly speaking, out of 2 components: inbound and outbound. Outbound roaming, we've seen quite a good recovery post-COVID, and we can debate whether you wanna look year-on-year or quarter-on-quarter. That's something we see steadily growing, but it's not yet fully on pre-COVID level.
Johan, I mean, I'll agree with you quarter- on- quarter is normally not the right comparison when you compare to fourth quarter. I'm looking at it in terms of tourist arrivals.
Yeah.
The various metrics like retail sales.
Yeah.
Et cetera.
Yeah.
Yeah. Because they're coming off a COVID year on year it should be a lot higher and if I remember correctly, it used to be about 10, 11% thereabouts pre-pandemic, the roaming revenue or, you know, the proportion of blended revenue. B lended ARPU, not revenue, sorry. ARPU.
Yeah. For postpaid, yeah, for sure. As I mentioned, I think there's two components here. You have the postpaid part, which is fine. I think the one you're alluding to is basically typically inbound roaming/prepaid tourist card sales. That hasn't really recovered yet because China is still missing in that respect for the last quarter. I'm with you on the year-on-year and the quarter-on-quarter. That's perfectly fine. If you compare, for example, this performance here to one of our competitors, which didn't list some numbers, you will see there's a stark difference in terms of revenue and monetization on the back of roaming.
We believe we have been doing a decent job and obviously we are hoping in the next few quarters that the travel opportunities will further enhance. There's still a little bit of limitation here and there. That's especially what we see in the prepaid card sales at this point in time.
I recall in Q1 and Q4 and Q1 of last year, outbound roaming was quite strong.
Sorry, Nikhil. Can't hear you too well.
No, I said I was recalling that this.
Oh, yeah. That's much better.
Yeah. Sorry, it's this mic. No, I was sort of asking Johan, I recall that this time last year, both Q4 and Q1, 2021 and Q1 2022, outbound roaming revenue was actually quite strong. There was a lot of revenge travel, right, from opening up.
Yeah. Correct.
Mainly.
Yeah.
Exactly. That's, yeah, you're totally right. It's mainly the inbound piece, especially the prepaid part of it as well, which is also subject to different competitive, I mean, I would say dynamics. I mean, one of the things we haven't discussed is that obviously the borderline between pre and postpaid is sort of eroding because there's more and more SIM-only cards which are sold on a one- month basis, that sort of thing. They all play a role. If you look pure on the outbound roaming and postpaid subscription revenue is up year-on-year, outbound roaming revenue is up on year. Those are good indicators, and that makes a difference in our performance today, I would say.
Thank you, Johan.
You're welcome. Broadband, on the ARPU. Well, the market is definitely getting a bit more competitive on broadband, no doubt about it. You are all keeping a close eye on the industry, and you have seen that SIMBA has announced their plans to launch broadband. The market is still growing on broadband, that's the good news. Not as fast as we have seen it in the past, but it is a steady growth. What has helped us on StarHub side, and Nikhil alluded to that earlier, is a strong growth on higher tariff plans, so we almost doubled. Actually, we did more than double on the 2 gig customer base. Your specific question related to MyRepublic. Their ARPU is still very strong. It didn't change that much.
They also get into a cycle where they obviously have to recontract more customers and like any business, if you go back to ARPU six, seven years ago, they're always on a much higher level than they are today. Those are the effects which are coming to play there. MyRepublic has done a phenomenal job over the last couple of quarters and continue to grow the base at a very healthy ARPU level.
Just a quick follow-up on that bit. I cover a couple of the internet stocks as well. I kind of get that the level of engagement from gamers, which MyRepublic is focused on, has dropped. That's not just here in Singapore, it's across the region and, you know, China is the most telling sign of that in terms of, you know, once people are not locked in at home with mobility restrictions, the level of engagement drops. There'll be some aspect of that. When I look at the ARPU, flat despite MyRepublic consolidation, should I think that ex MyRepublic, your mainstream offering under StarHub broadband, the ARPU has actually declined?
No, incorrect. Our ARPU is stable, give or take a few cents. There's no a specific decline. There's a few components which work there. I mean, there's a higher tariff plan and there are some accounting treatments, but it's not declining as such.
All right. Okay. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Johan.
You're welcome.
Yeah. on the broader question on the acquisition. we're talking about, putting aside MyRepublic on the Singapore consumer side. We're really talking about Ensign, Strateq, and JOS. if you looked, Neil, at full year 2022 versus 2021, what you would have seen, if memory serves me right, is Ensign would have grown at about 23%. I think if you put together Strateq and JOS, they would have grown in kind of the low double- digits. 1Q versus 1Q, you know, comparing quarters year-on-year is always a little bit tricky for these businesses, just because they have large contracts, particularly Ensign, and there's a degree of lumpiness to them. You know, what we would say is a few things. Typically for both of these types of businesses, cybersecurity as well as regional ICT, we typically see you know, a fairly good ramp through the year, quarter-on-quarter.
I would say also that, you know, this year versus last year, the order book is strong and stronger than it was. We actually.
Actually, Nikhil, you know, my third question was not, it was a very broad-based question. There's been acquisitions, there was a lot of promise. I don't actually see that coming through on the enterprise numbers. I was wondering whether it's a macro environment thing, whether customers are holding back on CapEx, et cetera. It's more of that aspect to try and figure out on a 2, 3-year basis. It's not because the enterprise part with new acquisitions take a bit of time to integrate. There are some costs to it, yeah, that was the context of my question.
No, no, I understood. I guess what I was saying is when you look at last year and hopefully when you look at this year, what you will see is that the growth in those acquisitions has been quite strong.
That impact is muted for the first quarter. Broadly and more long range, you know, do we see a weak corporate spend environment and are these acquisitions, you know, kind of flat in terms of order wins and bookings? Because they're actually growing order book, and that should sustain growth, you know, through the year. Longer term, the way the corporate spend environment in Singapore, Malaysia, et cetera, goes, that's tough to predict. As we sit this year and looking forward, the order books have accumulated stronger than where they were last year, and we expect continued growth, you know, this year, no different to what we did last year, which was kind of, you know, like mid double- digits, 20%+ year-on-year revenue.
Thank you, gents. Thanks, Amelia.
If I may add to Nikhil's point, a lot of these acquisitions are in the first couple of years of the acquisition. The whole business case and thesis behind it was to generate the synergies and the integration with our base business as well that we run here in Singapore, as well as cost synergies, right? All of those are being executed. Granted that, you know, it's not come in a big way into our P&L, but many of those plans are being implemented and very similar to their plan. The harvesting of those are coming through.
Yeah, below the revenue line. Yeah.
Yeah.
Thanks, Dennis.
Thank you. Okay, next up we have Hong Wei.
Hi. This is Hong Wei from OCBC Credit Research. Just three questions for me. The first is, on the guidance checklist, because I mean, obviously, service revenue, EBITDA margin, and CapEx are quite different from the guidance. Just wonder if you have, you know, some chance to review the guidance or is this, you know, just a simple comparison against the old guidance? Basically, is the guidance still valid? That's my first question. My second is that if you, I mean, you have some mention about, you know, the 10 gig plan. Talk about the Safety Suite, home and sports. I mean, all those like digital platform you want to add. Do you have some numbers as to how big all these like cross-sells and new products are generating?
Just that's my second question. My third question is on free cash flow. It is negative SGD 19 million. Just wondering if the negative free cash flow is expected to persist. I mean, granted that there's lower CapEx spend, so if like when CapEx is going to go up the latter part of the year, is the free cash flow gonna be worse, or is this due to some one-offs from inventory or like, you know, some capital working capital changes? Yeah.
Okay.
Okay. Dennis, would you like to take the first question on guidance and the third question on free cash flow?
Sure.
Before we move on to Hong Wei.
Sure. Hi, Hong Wei. So in terms of guidance, you know, we had guided to 8%-10% on the growth in revenue. The actual recorded growth is 11%. That's marginally higher than the upper range. We have a view on the numbers going to the rest of the year. We still think the guidance that we started the year with is good in terms of service revenue. From a margin perspective, as in response to an earlier question by Sachin on the staging of the investments or DARE plan, the first quarter investment is relatively lower compared to what we anticipate for the rest of the year. The result of that is that obviously our service EBITDA margin is 2 points higher than our guidance.
If you mathematically add back some of the relatively higher investments that we anticipate for the rest of the year. We still therefore believe that our 20% guidance started the year with, is good. A point as we went through the result, that I made was that our CapEx in the first quarter of every year tends to be the lowest quarter, because, you know, we start the year with not committing to too many things. We do anticipate as part of the ongoing investments in our transformation that capital investments that we're anticipating will continue to accumulate. Also we are continuing to roll out our 5G network, on the new spectrum, on the 2100 MHz spectrum, and that's going to add up, add to the CapEx as well.
On that note, we are still maintaining our CapEx guidance for the year as well. To your question on free cash flow. If you look at the free cash flow for this year, for Q1 as well as Q1 of last year, is both negative. I had made a comment when commenting on that number, is that we do anticipate the free cash flow for the full year to be very positive. And the reason for the negative cash flow for the first quarter is a repayment of certain trade payables that we took up at the end of last year. That's really a timing, working capital timing as you concluded. I hope those responses answers your question.
Yeah. I think just as a general comment on free cash flow, I think it's important to keep in mind that, you know, our business model is shifting, right? You know, versus a traditional telco, we have components of our business model that are not heavy CapEx, they're asset light, right? Quite significant components, particularly across our enterprises. The second point I'd make is that, across our business, you know, we're shifting from a CapEx to an OpEx model. You know, antenna on 5G is one. Moving our IT to the cloud is another. Moving our network to the cloud is a third. As a result, you know, what you'll see is that shift from CapEx to OpEx.
All of that when you put it together, will result and is resulting over time in an amount of free cash flow that should be substantially in excess of our net income. You know, that's something that we're kind of thinking through.
You had a question around 10G plan pickup rates, Safety Suite. Look, I appreciate very much the question. I hope you understand that we typically don't give that level of detailed information. What I can share with you is that the 10G plan actually surprised us a little bit in terms of take-up in a positive way. It is for us an important objective this year to bring that to completion commercially, I would like to say, as we have in mind. Safety Suite has a number of products underneath it. Definitely one of those, which is the Protect+, is doing very well. Obviously, it is a quite sensitive topic in the market for consumers.
We have for the rest of the year, a few other products in that space lined up to further enhance the security and protection for our customers. Hopefully that's information of use to you, but that's all I can share at this point in time. Thanks.
I hope that answers your question, Hong Wei.
Yeah, somewhat.
Okay.
I mean, yeah, thanks for the sharing.
Okay, thank you. Next up we have Varun, who texted me separately to join the queue.
Yeah, hi. Thanks, Amelia. Can you hear me? Hello.
Hi, Varun.
Go ahead, Varun.
Yeah, hi. Thanks. Thanks for the opportunity. I've got three questions. First is a more a broader context. If you remember 2021 when you launched the DARE+ initiatives, there were talks about as your network gets a lot more efficient and your OSS and BSS solutions as well, there will be a lot more revenue opportunities that may come across. Given you are almost two years into it, how do you see current landscape versus when you initially perceived about revenue opportunities? Are you seeing a lot more places? If you can elaborate more on that front, how should we think about the synergies or the benefits of the transformation that you're going through from the revenue perspective?
Transcript of a speech given by a speaker. "Uh, number two, on the EPL side, uh, obviously there has been a jump in revenue on the entertainment side. Uh, but, uh, the EPL is supposed to bring about benefits across the whole, uh, spectrum. Can you share with us some cost- benefit analysis on that front? How do you see cost versus the revenue opportunities that you have captured, with EPL on being there on the network? Lastly, Dennis, if you can clarify how much of these DARE+ initiatives on the OpEx side that you're going to incur is likely to remain permanent, and how much of it is likely to be a little bit fade away with time? Thank you.
Nikhil, would you like to start?
Yeah, let me take the first question on the revenue opportunities, and then, you know, I'll invite my partners to Johan and Kit Yong to add their comments. The short answer to your question, Varun, is yes, we do expect revenue opportunities to come from the cloudification of our business, right, and the digitization of our business. On the consumer side, as you know, we have been engaged on a few things. 1 is our super app. 2, that sits obviously on a cloud SaaS stack. 3, we're putting in place, you know, personalized marketing automation. 4, you know, we're building a data lake on the cloud. Now all of that is underway. We launched our super app in November of last year.
We have a significant number of monthly active users on the super app. The cloud stack was also launched in parallel, and we're doing more drops of products through that through the year on that. Marketing automation and data lake ready later this year. I think, you know, to your point, we firmly believe in those revenue opportunities on the consumer side. We've been rolling out more, as you've seen, in terms of products. Johan talked about the Safety Suite. You know, we've launched consumer health. You know, we launched Premier League and entertainment offerings. You know, what we're really focused on for this year and for the rest of the year is putting in place these platforms.
Once these platforms are in place, that will allow us to really look at where we want to go next, and do it with, you know, much, much more agility, speed, and dare I say it, lower cost. We're focused on platform building on the consumer side for now while we introduce new products. On the enterprise side, again, you know, the reliance is on, you know, a new, cloud-based stack. Also the other thing that we're doing, rather than just cloudifying our IT, is Cloud Infinity, right? Where we're moving our network to the cloud. That's not something that we started two years ago. It actually wasn't even in DARE+, when we announced it in November.
It's something that we budgeted, planned, and launched, you know, back half of last year. It's still in early stages. It's moving fast. That will bring revenue opportunity, and that will be leverageable on the consumer side, but probably more leverageable on the enterprise side. Some of that work that we're doing in terms of new revenue opportunities is very much already in play. When we talk about things like green tech, multi-cloud networking, the case studies saw around Jurong and Punggol, JTC, PDD. You know, those kinds of use cases are very much live, in play, winning multimillion-dollar contracts.
Both with the combination of IT on the cloud stack as well as our network being run off the cloud, Cloud Infinity, will widen that opportunity, widen that aperture for revenue opportunities. Yes, we firmly believe in new revenue opportunities. They're already underway. For this year, and particularly on the consumer side, what I really focused on is platform building.
Your next question was around PL, so here I am. Premier League. Look, you will hopefully respect that we don't disclose the detailed performance on specific content providers. Having said that, I think what I can share with you today is that it has interesting effects across entertainment. One of the effects we've seen is that these customers have a significantly higher ARPU than we anticipated by the fact that they're not taking only Premier League, but they also take other passes. Obviously, we had last year a bit of a windfall from that as well in terms of customers coming on the back of home broadband to us. This is, as you know, a 6-season contract. As we go forward, we will continue to innovate in this space.
There's an interesting product rollout, for the rest of the year as well. We're preparing for season two. That's what I can share with you. It has good side effects for us. It has helped the brand. We continue to further enhance in that space. Thank you.
Thank you. Dennis?
Varun, on your third question, if you look at our DARE+ investment, and just to recap on the nature of these investments, as it pertains to OpEx. One, it relates to software licenses, in relation to new technology that we're putting in place. Because it's new technology and it will remain in place, those software license costs will continue with that. Two, in building capabilities within the organization and bench strength, putting these individuals and teams within the organization to strengthen the capabilities. Again, these investments will continue post the transformation. Third, we're building new platforms, to house our microservices and so forth, and the new APIs attach that, all of which those costs will also continue.
If you kind of look at the investment, most of the cost, and I'll give you a ballpark of about 85% of those costs will continue. 15% of those costs will fall off. The more important thing to note, however, is that we will be harvesting the outcomes of those investments. Those outcomes of those investments are the returns to the investments that we're expecting to be able to sunset legacy IT systems, for example, in OSS/ BSS. Those costs that we are currently incurring will fall off. We will be able to rationalize in terms of how we run our online versus offline transactions, for example. When you have more online transactions, the actual physical costs of processing transactions will also reduce. Those are outcomes of that plan that will come through in terms of the harvesting of those investments.
Although most of the costs that we're incurring will continue as recurring costs, the ones that we will realize in terms of benefits will be the additions, the P&L as a result of the change in our operating model. I hope that answers your question, Varun.
Yes, it does. Thank you, everyone, and good luck for the year. Thank you.
Mr. Paul. Paul, please unmute yourself.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the presentation. Hope you get well soon, Johan. By the way, that's not my question. I've got three questions for me. In terms of the DARE+ related revenue or opportunities, I mean, I can understand it, you know, intuitively, you know, you have a platform, but could you maybe give a bit more description, you know, with this platform, how much additional revenue you secure? Part of the DARE+, now you're supposed to get, I guess SGD 220 million gross profit growth. A bit more description will be helpful. That's my first question. The second question is just on cyber.
You know, you're always on this investments in R&D and talent or maybe, you know, DARE+ mini me situation. I guess, is there some timeline where maybe the pace of this investments may slow and then you get that operating leverage and earnings can creep up even faster? That's my second question. My third question, I'm not sure, are you able to give some, you know, roaming revenue as a percentage of total revenue? If it's possible, if it's, I'm fine. Thanks again.
Thanks, Paul. Nikhil, would you like to take the first two questions?
Then maybe I'll also ask Johan and Kit Yong to jump in their respective areas. On DARE+, revenue opportunities, you know, on the consumer side, it essentially comes from more product, right? Being able to launch more product in a more agile way on a faster cycle, you know, get early results and at lower cost. Being able to service customers and give them like a customer journey that's very fluid, that they can kind of self-serve themselves, so they can try out this new product, right? It's not a clumsy, you know, bulky, cumbersome thing.
On the enterprise side, we've talked, you know, in the past about when you combine, you know, the transformation and then you combine what we're doing on the network side, to move our network on the cloud. You know, we're really focused on things like, you know, things like the PDD study, right? PDD, right?
Green tech, installing green infrastructure, managing sensors off network, but then taking the next step, because what we allow therefore is bringing up cloud instances not just on the core, but on the edge for data querying, data analytics, securing end-to-end, taking our platforms, and being able to regionalize them, bringing our, you know, our fixed network together with our mobile network and being able to segment slicing, you know, across, so we can bring really sort of pinpoint levels of secure, ultra-low latency down to the very edge for things like holographic use cases, AR, VR, metaverse. There's a lot we can do. Maybe I'll ask Johan and, you know, on first and then Kit Yong to lend their perspective.
Thanks, Nikhil, and thanks, Paul, for the best wishes. I managed to dodge the COVID for three years, and this week it was my turn after three years, and I'm actually short of breath from time to time in the evenings, I notice. We'll get through it. Don't worry. Look, DARE+ is instrumental. Building on what Nikhil just mentioned, what DARE+ for some consumer will deliver and actually started to deliver is a few things. Number one, we tap into new product categories which we didn't have before, which enable us to cross and upsell in a different way. That is, in a way, a rejuvenation, a more modern way of offering bundling, like we did in the past.
What we track very closely at the moment is the number of product holdings customers have with us, and we track that on a monthly basis. We, based on the new tools we have at our disposal, check carefully where which customers, which segments can be offered additional products and services. We cast the net much wider than the traditional StarHub net was cast in a way. That's one. The other benefit of that will be that since we have one app, which is sort of the main gateway for every product or service we offer, we can monetize data eventually. That's our plan. Ultimately, what we want to deliver is a much better customer experience.
We get into what Dennis was alluding to earlier on, a quite long list of costs which will occur today, which in the future will not be occurring. Today, I give you a simple example. A lot of customers still go to stores to replace a SIM card or to call customer service for something. We already see now with the new app, which is being run with a new chatbot in the back, that the vast majority of transactions or service transactions, I should say, customers are end-to-end handled by bots. It's early days there still, but as I mentioned, Torpedo, which is the internal project name for this, is planned to be rolled out in phases. This is an important month for us, May, by the way, where we plan a big release.
By the end of the year, we hope to have that completed all in, you know, all together. That will change entirely the operating model, and it will enable us much better than we used to cross and upsell certain products and services. We have better customer insights. We can make offers more dynamic and personal than we can today, and we already see that happening today on a small scale. That's the revenue opportunity. It's a modern way of bundling, and it's increasing the share of wallet per customer. Kit Yong?
Right. From an enterprise perspective, right, for DARE+, right, you know us for providing connectivity, mobile services, right? Now, for DARE+ is that we add a layer, this thing called strategic services, where we add data, AI.
We added application development capabilities to help our clients digitize and pull through the whole network connectivity. Without these ingredients, without the managed services, we are not able to pull through our core product, which is a network connectivity. To do that, there are a few themes that our clients expect us to be able to address before they entertain us, right? One is digitization, second is sustainability, right? You can look at the previous quarter, NUS is an example of sustainability, where we are able to incorporate engineering capabilities with solar panels, 5G telecommunications also with fixed line, enterprise network, which is Wi-Fi, with digital and collecting data, right? To do the POC so that we can improve the performance and subsequently measure the sustainability data from the solution that we delivered for them. This cannot be done if we're doing the business- as- usual, right?
We come to digitization without application modernization capabilities in digital workflow, converting paper to paperless workflow. Helping client to move their transactional data which is on paper into cloud. That enables them to have transactional operation data which they never had. Now they can have the opportunity to integrate their operation data with their ERP or with their CRM and create better insights for their business. These are important topics of the client that expects a partner to work with them. Also, to deliver these solutions and services, it requires a multi-hybrid cloud architecture. All global enterprises are moving into this hybrid and multi-cloud architecture. The point here is that Cloud Infinity is actually a hybrid multi-cloud architecture.
Our clients are unable to build this architecture on their own. They're looking for a partner like us to enable them, to support them for their journey into a multi-cloud and hybrid cloud architecture for their business. That's the importance of this piece of the thought process that the client expect from a partner and is right incorporated into our DARE+ strategy. With that, I hand back.
Do you have anything else to add?
No, that's great. Perfect way to end. Yeah.
Would you like to comment on the timeline for cyber [composability], Dennis?
Yeah. You know, as I've said in prior calls, you know, we intend, together with our joint venture partner, Temasek, to continue to grow Ensign quite aggressively. Part and parcel of that is investment in people, in security cleared high-quality resources, as well as in building platform, platforms that leverage, you know, artificial intelligence, advanced threat detection technologies, you know, certain types of footprint. Ensign really is as you know, you know, front of grade and is to some degree, you know, the Singapore cyber platform, right? With the customer profile that it has.
We sort of go through this active decision-making process together with management and our joint venture partner on when's the right time to kind of shift the continuum between investing for growth and then starting to harvest. And as long as we see the growth profile strong and the tailwinds strong, we're probably gonna continue to that, make that bet on investing for growth. Now, having said that, as Dennis has always said, you know, sort of almost automatically, as a result of the way the numbers work and the fixed cost structure, what you should see is you should see profitability start to, you know, mount once it passes, call it the SGD 400 million level in terms of revenue. It's a combination of those two things, I would say.
Paul, on your third question, roaming as a % of revenue, we don't typically disclose this breakdown. Johan, do you have anything else to add?
No. It's exactly that. We don't disclose that typically. I'm really sorry. No matter how much I wish I could give you more, but, no. I can only say that it has been encouraging, but it's not entirely yet, up to pre-COVID level, which we discussed, earlier on. Okay?
Oh, okay. Thanks so much, Johan. Thank you, Marcus.
Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.
I'm cognizant of time. If we can take last quick questions, first from Neil and then from Michael. Neil, please unmute yourself. Neil, are you there?
What about now, Shane?
Yes, please go ahead.
Can't hear you, Amelia.
Please go ahead. We can hear you.
Are you referring to me or someone else on the line?
Yeah.
You had a question?
Yeah. Yeah. I had a quick follow-up. It's very broad brush, possibly for you, Nikhil, and you, Dennis.
Industry consolidation, right? When I look at the structure of the industry, you know who I'm referring to. Would you be interested in the assets or the subscribers or whatever, if the opportunity came around? I don't see them surviving. It's a very different setup from what they're doing in Australia, where they had a fixed line business and they merged with the Hutchison Vodafone joint venture. Singapore is a slightly different, and, you know, except for enterprise, to be honest, and a lot of the enterprise growth, as you refer to and your competitor refers to, well, MobileOne, we don't know that much about anymore. The opportunities are actually cross regional, which the fourth operator cannot participate in. The other parts of the business, you know, they're pretty saturated markets.
Just broad thoughts on that, if you would be interested in some aspect of that business if that opportunity came along, whether it's the network infrastructure, whether it's the spectrum, whether it's the subscribers, and why?
Yeah.
Sorry, it's a bit of a curveball questions.
No, no, no, it's not. It's fine. It's, you know, we think about all things, right? It's not a curveball in that sense. Let me make some broad ranging comments. You know, number one, of course, no one can predict the timing and the outcome of consolidation. It takes two to tango. Number two, having said that, we're very well positioned to be an acquirer, right? We have low leverage, lots of free cash flow, as I said. You know, with a CapEx-like asset, more asset-light model, substantially, you know, higher than net income, is kind of our platform today. You know, our market share, whilst in mobile in particular is not at Singtel's, right? It doesn't preclude our acquisitions.
We have a combination of capability, leverage, and an ability to acquire. Now, is it, we're actually open to consolidation across the board, not just the fourth operator. Vis-à-vis the fourth operator, you know, the premise for us would, I suppose, be market repair. Given the segments that they occupy, relative to us, we're not necessarily the natural acquirer, relative to others, perhaps like the number three operator, which kind of overlaps in the same segment. That's the only thought I would leave with you. You know, I just did wanna touch on your point on enterprise.
It's kind of correct in the sense vis-à-vis the fourth operator or even the third operator in terms of, you know, the enterprise market and the sort of the presence or lack thereof in the enterprise market. What I would say is, the one thing I would like to perhaps, where we have a different perspective from you is in traditional telco on enterprise, you're absolutely correct. If you look at the sort of things that Kit Yong was talking about, whether it was green tech, whether it's about making a hybrid multi-cloud environment available to Singapore enterprises, there is actually room to run.
Not necessarily for traditional telco and the telco way of doing things, when you look at the way enterprises broadly are transforming in Singapore, when you look at the development dollars going into smart city development and the real estate sector broadly, we think there's still room to run. Your point on making, you know, all of this accessible to an acquiree is correct.
Thank you. That's interesting context. Nikhil, thank you very much.
You're very welcome.
Thank you. Now we take the last question from Michael.
Hi. Thanks, everyone. I'll just keep it short. Anything I'll just follow up with Mia. I'm just curious, now we are approaching one year of consolidation with MyRepublic, and as I remember, the part of the deal also included some incentive-based payments. Wondering if you could just share some color on the probability of such payments, and if so, when is the rough timeline such payments will be made?
Nikhil or Dennis, who wants to take that question?
Michael, the construct of that deal was a deferred consideration based on the incremental EBITDA that they'll deliver within this one year, which ends in June of this year. There will be a multiple of that incremental EBITDA that they would get that deferred consideration on. The short answer to your question, if the construct of the deal, we announced that the maximum consideration would be SGD 92 million. We expect some level of deferred consideration, which will be substantially less than that SGD 92 million. I'll leave it at that. The timing of that payment is going to be in August of this year.
Okay.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. With that, we've come to the end of the call. Thank you so much for your patience and for spending your evening with us. As always, please feel free.