Hi, good evening, everyone. My name is Amelia, and I take care of StarHub's investor relations. Thank you for joining us this evening for our first half 2022 results update call. This evening we have with us our Chief Executive, Nikhil Eapen, Dennis Chia, our CFO, Johan Buse, Chief of Consumer, and Tan Kit Yong, Chief of our Enterprise Business Group. We'll start off with opening remarks and an overview of our performance from Nikhil, followed by Dennis on financials, and then Johan and Kit on business highlights. We'll then open the floor to Q&As thereafter. Nikhil, over to you please.
Thank you, Amelia, and thank you to all of us for spending Friday evening with us. Hopefully this will be productive, so very happy to report our second quarter 2022. Without further ado, let's start talking about revenue. In revenue, we grew this quarter across every single segment of ours, both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter, despite the competition levels in the industry, and particularly the hyper competition in mobile. Now, overall service revenue growth was 12.6% year-on-year and 9.3% quarter-on-quarter.
Now, we consolidated for the first time, as you know, MyRepublic Broadband, and excluding the roughly SGD 16.8 million in service revenue that MyRepublic contributed for the quarter, service revenue growth for the second quarter was actually 8.4% year-on-year and 5.2% quarter-on-quarter. Now, on service EBITDA and margin, as you recall, when we released our guidance in February, we talked about a two-year upfront investment period, DARE+, for our transformation. We had guided towards an EBITDA margin target of 20% for the full year. We're glad to report that we're running ahead of that guidance level at about 24.9%, which is similar to the levels that we ran at for the first quarter.
However, we do expect to converge to a full year number of about 20% as we expect to incur more of our IT transformation expenses in the second half of the year. For the first quarter, what you see here is a reflection of ARPU, but also as our growth businesses grow, whether it's cybersecurity, regional ICT or otherwise, a skew in our business mix, which trends down EBITDA margins, as well as, of course, inflationary outcomes on utilities costs, et cetera, et cetera, stock costs, et cetera, et cetera. Our net profit trends track our EBITDA margin trends. Then of course, free cash flow is subject to the timing of significant payments quarter on quarter, but remains strong.
We'll talk about, you know, where we stand on to the full year, in a few minutes. Segmental revenue, as I'd mentioned, we saw year-on-year as well as quarter-on-quarter growth across all segments. Touching on each of them one by one. Mobile, we grew about 4% year-on-year, and a touch up quarter-on-quarter. The quarter-on-quarter numbers would have been subject to IFRS adjustments in the second quarter, without which, we would have grown at a healthier level, or the numbers would have shown healthier growth, quarter-on-quarter. Now, for broadband, as I just mentioned, we consolidated MyRepublic Broadband for the first time in the second quarter of 2022.
As you know, MyRepublic Broadband had strong metrics across revenue, across subs, across ARPU. We now have a position together with MyRepublic where we have revenue market share leadership in the industry. We are working closely with MyRepublic on how to leverage our joint revenue base, how to leverage, you know, our joint position in various segments and of course, how to realize cost synergies. Now, absent MyRepublic, or rather adjusting for MyRepublic, broadband grew 7% year-on-year with rising upgrade to bigger data packages, something that we talked about, and hence rising ARPU over the year.
Now on entertainment, you know, over the last few quarters, we've seen sort of this tale of two cities approach that we've been talking about, where we have a linear IPTV base that continues to shrink in line with the industry trend of cord cutting. On the other hand, we have pivoted, you know, for more than a year or so, and what we've seen over the past many quarters is rapid growth in our TV Plus base, our hybrid base, and explosive growth in our OTT base. What we've seen over the past few quarters is that the subscriber growth from OTT and TV Plus has outweighed the reduction in the subscriber base from linear TV.
Now, what we have here is this, in this quarter, which we believe is a sustainable trend, is that's not just reflected in overall subscriber growth, but also revenue growth due to the lower numbers. As a result, we were able to grow entertainment revenues by 5.4% year-on-year and 4.3% quarter-on-quarter. Now, to be clear, and to anticipate the question, this does not include any revenue impacts from Premier League, which you will see in the third quarter. Moving on to enterprise very quickly. Prior to [Amelia], sorry. For enterprise, we saw strong double-digit growth year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. Cybersecurity grew 34% quarter-on-quarter, although that is, you know, lumpy. That business continues to grow well.
Regional ICT grew 4.7% quarter-on-quarter from Q1. We also saw improved year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter performance for network solutions in the second quarter, which also grew a bit. With that, I will hand off to our CFO, Dennis Chia.
Thank you, Nikhil. Good evening to everyone. Looking at our first half performance against the guidance that we provided at the start of the year when we announced our prior year financial results. At that time, we had guided to a 10% improvement year-on-year and increase in service revenue.
On the back of the improvements in almost all lines of our business and the consolidation of our recent acquisitions of JOS, which were completed in January, and MyRepublic, which was completed in March, our service revenue grew 11.7% for the first half. We had guided to a 20% service EBITDA margin. We've ended the first half with 24.6%. This is well ahead of our guidance. In recognition, however, of the investments that we're making in IT transformation, as well as the ongoing 5G wholesale cost, which as a reminder, is accounted for as cost, because we are rolling this out as part of a joint venture. These are obviously going to continue accelerating as we endeavor for nationwide coverage.
As well as other investments around building talent. We do anticipate, and we reiterate our guidance for service EBITDA margin for the full year. For CapEx, we had guided to 12%-15% at the start of the year. We are trending relatively lower at 7.5%, and this is typical of the first half, where we typically do not commit as much, and that catches up with us in the second half. That said, we do expect our CapEx to come in at the lower end of this guidance. Our dividend, which we had guided.
At SGD 0.05 , or the higher of SGD 0.05 or 80% of net profit after tax, we're happy and pleased to advise that our board has approved and declared a dividend of SGD 2.5 per share for the first half. Moving on to slide number eight. To reiterate certain numbers, in terms of the service revenue, which has grown 11.7% for the first half. Our service EBITDA margin, which for the second quarter is 24.9%. Total EBITDA of close to SGD 121 million, and for the first half at SGD 230 million.
Our net profit of SGD 31 million for second quarter and about SGD 61 million for the first half, which translates into SGD 0.033 per share on an EPS basis. Our free cash flow for the first half was SGD 61.3 million or translating about SGD 0.035 per share. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio stands at 1.3 times, again, in the first half, with cash and cash equivalents of SGD 739 million in our balance sheet. On that note, I will hand this over to Johan.
Thanks, Dennis. We're going to dive a little bit deeper into the different product lines to give you more color and context. Mobile. Let's start with mobile. Postpaid EBITDA was flattish quarter-on-quarter, but we did have some IFRS adjustments and if you would take those into account, actually our ARPU would have gone up, as you can see in the lower left-hand. We did see a continuous healthy subscriber base growth. We actually grew 77,000 customers overall, and that's mainly coming to a large degree from giga! which is performing very well. On the back of that, churn remains low, 0.7% for the quarter. That's actually an improvement in terms of percentage compared to previous quarters, so that's a great performance as well.
Prepaids stable either in ARPU, but significantly increasing customer base. We basically grew 70,000 customers in the quarter and 26,000 for the year. That results in a healthy revenue uptick on the yearly basis of 3.8%. If we would not have had the IFRS adjustments, that would actually have been 5.5%, and we would have grown 3% quarter-over-quarter. With the adjustments, it actually is 0.1% growth. The data usage continues to sort of grow, as we would expect. It's at 13 GB for the quarter, slightly up compared to the previous quarter. A good quarter on mobile side. If we then move to the next product line, which is broadband, you can see that we really had a very strong quarter on broadband.
That's for a number of reasons which we'll try to elaborate on. The ARPU increased to SGD 34, which is on the back of a good uptick on the 2Gbps plans, which we have been offering proactively in the market. This number also includes the consolidation of MyRepublic. With MyRepublic included, we actually grew to 572,000 subs, and we remain very low on the churn. All this results in a very strong uptick in terms of revenue. The service revenue, segment revenue in this case, increased 33% year-on-year and 25% on the quarter. You can see the split here in terms of the contribution of MyRepublic. Excluding MyRepublic, we would have grown 7% year-on-year, and that's still a very noteworthy performance.
To the last product vertical before we hand over to Kit Yong is entertainment. Entertainment is doing very well, as you can see, in this case here too. ARPU stable, SGD 31. That's a really good performance there as well. We see strong uptick in consumers. We actually moved to 469,000 entertainment subscribers. We added 19,000. The churn rate is low at 0.8%, lower than it used to be. That's very good as well. The segment revenue grew 5.4% on a yearly basis and no less than 4.3% for the quarter. With all that, I hand over to Kit Yong, who will take you through the enterprise.
Right. Thank you, Johan. Good evening, everyone. For the enterprise front.
You guys mentioned that, we're enjoying double-digit growth quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year. When it comes to network solutions, you can see that we are having a quarter-over-quarter growth of 4.1%, year-over-year growth of 1.5%. When it comes to cybersecurity services, we have, quarter-over-quarter growth of 34%, but a year-over-year lower revenue due to the absence of major projects in one half. When it comes to regional ICT services, we have a quarter-over-quarter growth of 4.7% and year-over-year of 168%. This is consolidation of JOS Singapore and JOS Malaysia. Right? We have recorded, operating profits of SGD 0.8 million compared to SGD 0.1 million a year ago.
If you look at our enterprise revenue mix, it remains intact, the same, similar to what we had. Right. Move on to the next slide. When we look at the DARE+ execution for enterprise front, I will cover enterprise and I'll hand over to Johan on consumer. For COVID-19 recovery, we are seeing that our data and voice are stabilizing due to the product portfolio refreshing. We also see a healthy demand for managed services, especially in the areas of managed network and managed cloud. For DARE+ progress, we have launched the Triple C, connectivity, cloud and cybersecurity. We launched our products, and we're now engaging the market to share with them our value proposition. You'll see us going into a mode of an end-to-end provider, a smart orchestrator for our clients to deliver their solutions.
You will see us going into more partnerships with global technology partners to create higher value business proposition to enterprise clients. With that, I hand over to Johan.
Thanks, everyone, and good evening again. This is a great moment to elaborate a little bit more about where we stand on DARE+. DARE+, just to recap that, is an essential part of our development. It's part of our strategy to really move to an Infinity Play platform structure. Besides the gradual recovery after COVID, which we see flowing through in roaming and prepaid recovery, it has been and it will be a very busy few quarters when it comes to DARE+. We have been continuously expanding into our verticals. We've launched products like CyberProtect. We also added new OTT options as part of our entertainment platform. Viu was number 11, as you can see here. Premier League was number 12, and we continue to do that.
We also have made good headway in terms of cloud gaming, which we launched a couple of quarters ago, and there are a few exciting things to come. Now, this quarter is extremely important for us, because there are a number of things going into the market in the next eight weeks, which we obviously, as you will understand, cannot share the details around. Super App will be definitely one of them, which will be, a big change compared to what we have today. On that note, as you will understand, this is a very exciting quarter. I'll hand over to Nikhil.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Just to close off on one aspect which has not been mentioned by Kit Yong and Johan, is M&A. There are two aspects to M&A. There's the M&A that we've already done, and we most recently acquired in the first half, as you know, JOS Singapore, JOS Malaysia, and MyRepublic Broadband. The work is underway, and is advancing at a rapid pace to leverage each other's platforms, to drive more product into each other's platforms, and fully leverage our combined customer base and the strengths, complementary strengths that we have. The second area that we're making progress on is driving cost synergies and efficiencies across the entire platform. Again, particularly given the inflationary environment and the acute importance of that is, we're making good progress.
Now, the other aspect of this is the M&A that we hope to do. I'd like at this point to reiterate our focus, and our continuing commitment to our M&A program. M&A opportunities continue to be under evaluation, and we'll update you. With that, I'll hand back to Amelia to run some Q&A.
Thanks, Nikhil. We now open the floor to questions. To join the question queue, either click on the Raise Hand button or indicate your name and organization in the chat box. I'll call upon your name when it's your turn to speak, and then you can unmute yourself to converse directly with our senior management. Sachin, would you like to start the ball rolling?
Yeah. Thank you, Amelia. Thanks management. Two simple questions, I think. Now 24% service EBITDA margin achieved. Now if I go by your guidance, it implies 16% service EBITDA margin the second half. That seems a bit far-fetched. Again, could you tell us what are the items, what are the cost things which you can incur in second half that you have chosen not to raise your guidance at this juncture? That's question number one. Again, the question is on the CapEx side. CapEx is also substantially below in the first half. Are we like there's a delay in our execution or it's just expected timing is like that that everything happens, you know, kind of pushed to second half? That's question number two.
Thirdly, if at all is on the mobile side, why do you think recovery mobile is not really visible in the numbers at all? It's like stable quarter on quarter service mobile revenue. How long, and what will it take to actually get it going? Yeah. Thank you.
Nikhil, would you like to start with some opening comments, and then maybe Dennis can add on for the first two questions and, Johan for the third on mobile?
Yeah, I think, you know, we are reaffirming our guidance, Sachin, as you point out, for the 20% EBITDA margin and for the CapEx guidance I provided. You know, the nature of the expenses that we're taking on, that lead to the service EBITDA margin guidance are lumpy in nature. They're associated with IT transformation. They're associated with the Super App, and moving to the cloud stack, both of which are pretty imminent events. And they are contractual in nature. So yes, it is due to timing. It does not mean that execution is slow, because the implementation of these things is fairly imminent. But the payments are contractual in nature, and they're scheduled for the second half.
There is some more elaborations and some other items which our esteemed CFO will handle.
Hi, Sachin. In terms of the investments, as you mentioned, most of the what we call minimum viable products in terms of the releases that we're making in relation to the IT platforms and applications that we are working on as part of our digital transformation journey will come through in the second half. Accordingly, the expenditure is recognized in relation to this timing of the releases will also be made in the second half. As a result of that, we've not seen any of it coming in in a meaningful way in the first half. The lumpy nature, as Nikhil alluded to, is going to come in the second half.
Second thing, obviously in relation to the rollout of our 5G network and our endeavor to reach nationwide coverage as soon as possible. That will also translate into an increase in 5G wholesale cost, bearing in mind that the radio component of our infrastructure sits within our joint venture, and that's accounted for in terms of operating expenditure as opposed to CapEx. So these two items in aggregate, plus some other items in terms of investing in talent, and also certain other inflationary issues such as the ongoing utilities costs have all been baked in the second half.
Also investments and marketing costs to promote our Premier League proposition, which we are all excited for the first game that's coming through on Sunday. All of that has been factored into our guidance for the full year. In terms of CapEx, the trend for commitments in the first half, as I mentioned earlier, are typically relatively lower and proportionately lower in the first half compared to the second half. Again, as part of our ongoing 5G rollout in the second half, which will accelerate, as well as the IT transformation investments, some of which should come through in CapEx, will be made in the second half. Again, a lot of this has not been incurred in the first half.
That's why we expect the CapEx to catch up in the second half as well, and therefore translating into the full year guidance that we've given, which we reiterate for the full year.
I think it's worth repeating the statement you made earlier that we expect to be at the low end.
Yeah
As for CapEx.
Yeah.
All right.
Johan.
Sachin. The last question related to the upside from roaming and why that is not visible in this particular quarter. I would like to go back to that particular point. We did have a few adjustments. One was an IFRS, and then the other one was a one-off in terms of infrastructure. If you take that into account, there is actually a very decent uptake in terms of revenue. It would have been 3% were it not for these two adjustments, quarter-on-quarter and 5.5%, on a year-on-year basis. We do see encouraging signals and obviously flow through from roaming, be it partially offset with some local revenue, recurring revenue pressure. The offset is smaller than what we pick up from roaming. Hopefully, that's answering your question.
That's right. Okay. That's very helpful. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Thanks, Sachin. Next up, we have Foong. Foong, would you like to unmute yourself?
Yeah. Hi. Good evening. Thank you so much for the conference call. A couple of questions from me. Firstly, with regards to the mobile business, what is the 5G penetration for the StarHub subscriber base at the end of the second quarter? For the incremental 5G subscribers that you got during the quarter, are they still paying the same premium, or is this sort of softening as we reach out to a wider market? That's question number one. Secondly, on the mobile ARPU, you mentioned that there is still some pressure from lower access usage revenue. Can you sort of share with us how much more of mobile revenue or mobile ARPU is coming from access usage?
Related to ARPU as well, on the IFRS adjustment, does that also have cost implications as well? Thus the impact on the earnings is neutral, or is that just deferring some of the mobile ARPU to future quarters? My third question on the content costs for the EPL, has that been included in your service EBITDA margin guidance? I'm just wondering whether is the impact significant on its own or not really? Yeah, those are my three questions? Thank you.
Okay. Johan, would you like to take the questions on 5G mobile ARPU pressures and content costs? Then maybe Dennis can add on for content costs as well as IFRS comments.
Yeah. All right. Thank you for the questions. Let me try to answer them in a sort of holistic manner. We do see a continued uptake in terms of 5G subscribers. I think the last time we met here, we had around 400,000 there, and today we're well north of that. That growth momentum continues. We haven't changed anything about the tariff plans or compared to 4G, the premium is still there. Having said that, to be fully accurate, there is obviously a trend in the market where people either take, I would say, a premium 5G plan, most of the time included with the device, or they decide to operate 4G SIM-only. That's where we stand today.
We still see that price premium there on the 5G, and we're very keen on making sure that we continue to leverage on that. In terms of the data usage and that sort of things around that, it's interesting. We do see a significantly higher data usage from 5G subscribers, without revealing the exact numbers, compared to what we see on the device plans and the 4G SIM-onlys. Hopefully that is answering your question and gives that a bit of context. On the content cost and the IFRS, maybe Dennis is the best placed person to give you the correct answer.
Okay. Hi, Foong. In terms of your first question on the IFRS adjustment, the adjustment is netted against service revenue, and the other entry is against our balance sheet. In other words, the short answer, it does impact our bottom line, so it is a P&L impact. The second question around whether our content costs in relation to Premier League have been factored into our guidance for the full year, absolutely. Naturally, with the launch of any new initiative, including the Premier League, there will be marketing costs, product development around packaging, installation costs in relation to our provisioning for our customers and so forth.
All of that have been considered as part of our second half costs, which will be loaded upfront, and that has been factored into our full year service EBITDA margin guidance.
Foong.
Okay, thank you.
I hope that answers your questions?
I have a follow-up question on the mobile churn rate. That one, the trend there looks really positive. I mean, it's coming down compared to your previous quarters. How should we actually read into this? Does it mean that the overall market is, I mean, subscribers are obviously moving a lot lesser around these days, and does that mean that competition is sort of starting to stabilize? Do you sort of see any opportunities to start perhaps better monetizing on the back of this lower churn?
Yeah. Thanks, Foong, for that follow-up question. I think that's a very interesting and important question, coming to think of it. We are working very hard, and we use solid data analytics to make sure that we minimize churn as much as we can. To your following statement then, in terms of what does that mean from the overall market perspective, we believe that it's important to focus on quality. The customers we add obviously are adding value. We typically use port in, port out numbers as a proxy to make sure that we garner some quality subscribers and that we do our best to basically offer the customers the right tariff plans.
If you then look at the underlying churn percentage between device plans and SIM-onlys and no contract, which is sort of a daily exercise for us, we're actually very encouraged to see that across all these categories, churn percentages are very low, and in most cases continue to drop. What that means for the total market is a bit difficult to say, but I would dare to think based on what we see in StarHub, that we're doing a decent to a good job to retain customers, that they value the service. We do see encouraging signs as well of those customers taking up more products and services which we are offering. Hopefully that gives you a bit more context.
All right. Thank you so much, Johan and Dennis.
Thank you, Foong.
Sure.
Next up, Paul.
Thanks so much for the presentation. Just a couple of questions from me. The first will be just on the expenses. There are many moving parts in expenses. We've got some are acquisition, some is DARE+. Could you just isolate a little bit just which parts of your operating cost lines are related to, you know, DARE+ investments, so we can kinda track that? Maybe that can normalize in future. My second question is just on roaming. Does your margin guidance include incorporate roaming returning? Related to roaming, I just wondered, like, so I know it's still early, just probably two months, but like, what has been the take-up rates, the margins? Has it been trending similar to pre-pandemic or even better? Just one last one.
Again, just following up on Foong's question, could you just elaborate a bit more on the IFRS adjustment? Does it mean that when roaming increases, the impact won't be that significant? Sorry, I'm just a bit not very clear on that part. Yeah, thanks for taking my questions.
Okay. Dennis, would you like to take the questions on expenses, D&A plus investments, as well as roaming, whether it's included in guidance and the IFRS clarification?
Okay. Hi, Paul. Okay, I'll start with your question around where we would be capturing the DARE+ investments. They are actually captured in different lines. But primarily, if you look at the IT transformation costs and the license costs associated, the software that we would have had to pay and we will be paying in relation to the releases for the platforms and applications that we'll be launching in the second half. They will be recorded against the repair and maintenance line in the P&L. That's the line item that you'll see it coming up. Just bear in mind that for the first half, it hasn't really come through yet.
The first half IT expenses primarily relates to our ongoing outsourcing arrangements that we have in place. Your second question with regards to roaming and whether that's been included in our guidance, absolutely. We started to see roaming coming through from the start of the year in a small way as borders started to reopen. They have picked up in some shape and form in the second quarter. We do expect as borders start to reopen. The one that we are really watching out for is China and when that reopens, because that is a significant contributor to our overall roaming pre-pandemic.
One of the key contributors to our roaming is the border with Malaysia and the fact that it's now reopened, that has contributed to our roaming recovery as well. I will stop short of giving you the absolute recovery. Needless to say, it has not come to the levels that we saw pre-pandemic. The other piece of roaming is that the recovery comes primarily from consumer roaming. The business roaming recovery has not come in a terribly meaningful manner yet. I just want to make those notes as far as roaming recovery is concerned. Why you don't see that coming through fully in the numbers and baked-in numbers, there are moving parts relating to competitive pricing pressures that we continue to see in the market. The final question on IFRS.
Without going through an accounting lesson, this IFRS adjustment is primarily relating to subsidies and handset subsidies that we gave in the past. You know, as we true up the level of subsidies that we provided over the 24-month contract, some of these adjustments, which perhaps were missed out in the past, are something that we're actually adjusting. That's to put it as simply as I can in relation to this topic.
Yeah. Yeah, thanks so much. Can I just trouble just one more housekeeping item? It's just on the 5G wholesale cost. So, you will have to pay the wholesale cost to the joint venture, but at the same time you'll be getting something back. There'll be. I don't know. Will there be like a revenue line at the joint venture? Because that joint venture will be making some revenue. Just wanted to clarify that part? Yeah, thanks.
The 5G wholesale cost I referred to is net of what we call the recovery income. There is a revenue item. You are absolutely correct. That's the net impact of the cost, which obviously exceed the revenue.
Okay. Thanks so much.
Dennis, I think that's under the share of profits for joint ventures line, right?
No.
Um.
I mean, that is for the share of profits from Antina.
Mm-hmm.
There is that cost, a wholesale cost, which is recorded as cost of sales.
Okay.
Yeah.
Next up we have Huzaini.
Yeah. Hi. Good evening and thanks for the call. A few questions from me. First, on the revenue guidance, and assuming that mobile is, you know, the roaming revenues is improving, then we have the EPL revenues in the second half. Why the revenue guidance is still, you know, more than 10% when the first half is okay, 12% and we are expecting better growth in the second half? Just to get a better clarity on the revenue guidance. The second question is more of a housekeeping. The D&A expense was down compared to first half of last year. What drove the decline in D&A expense? Thank you.
Dennis, would you like to take those questions?
Okay. I'll take your second question first.
Johan as well.
to turn things around. On D&A, there are a whole bunch of IT systems primarily that we accelerated the depreciation on, as we prepare to embark on our transformation program this year. The transformation program entails a replacement of what we call the IT stacks and the platforms. Some of these legacy systems are systems that we will be sunsetting or have sunsetted. As a result, that, you know, we accelerated the depreciation at the end of last year, and that doesn't come through on a like for like basis this year. That's primarily accounting for that D&A decrease. Johan?
Yeah. In terms of the revenue forecast for the rest of the year, was your question. I mean, we obviously expect an interesting flow through from Premier League going forward. We do also expect a continuous uptake in terms of roaming revenue, but a big question mark there will be whether China will open later this year, yes or no. That's partially obviously offset by, I would say, challenges on the mobile side, the local market in terms of competitive side, where, you know, as you can imagine, there's still a shift to a certain degree to SIM-only. The big question mark for the second part of the year, which we find a bit difficult to assess, is what the new handset launches will do, and also related to supply chain.
That's a little bit the context in which we operate. We see a good flow through on the home broadband side, and we expect that to continue. There's no reason to think differently. And entertainment we already referred to, EPL. That's a little bit sort of the outlook, the landscape through the consumer lens from a revenue perspective. Hopefully that is satisfactory to you.
I'll kind of just add on to that. Johan has alluded to ongoing supply chain issues. That has some level of impact on our enterprise business and revenues as well as our, you know, in other lines of our business, primarily the regional ICT business that we have in Malaysia as well. All of those macro factors are things that we don't have complete visibility over. As to whether borders will remain permanently open, we all hope so. There's no guarantee and no full certainty of that.
Staying its course through the end of the year. Without an ability to really predict how the macro factors are going to play out, you know, notwithstanding that we did exceed our revenue guidance for the first half, we do believe we will continue to do well for the second half, but there are factors that are external beyond our control.
Huzaini, does that address your questions?
Yeah. Very well. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next up we have Arthur.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Just one question. Can you clarify in your comments on competitive factors driving down mobile ARPUs? What are you seeing in terms of pricing? Because when I scan the market on pricing, they seem to be generally better, at least among the main brands. The subsidies seem to be quite lower as well, across the board. What's softening the ARPU improvement?
Okay. Thanks for that observation. Yeah, I speak obviously from the knowledge we have about our own operations, and we are very diligent in terms of subsidies. The reality is that there is still a shift ongoing from consumers, from device plans to SIM-only plans. That's one. That has an ARPU effect on the recurring local revenue basis, that is. The other one to watch out for which you said it correctly, you referred to main brands, but we obviously look at the total market, is a little bit on the competitive pressure in the MNO market on the lower-end tariff plans. We do see there is a bit of a tendency of, I would say, ongoing intense competition on the SGD 18 versus SGD 20 SIM-only plans.
There is a category on the SGD 10, which we do keep an eye on. We will continue to differentiate and, I mean, earlier on, I think we also had a bit of a discussion about inflation, inflationary pressure, which we need to keep an eye on. It's quite a complex, I would say, pricing and competitive arena in which we operate at this point in time.
Thanks, Johan. Arthur, does that answer your question, or do you have other questions?
Yes, it does. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Next up we have Varun.
Yeah. Hi, thanks for the opportunity. I've got just one question. If you look at your strategy that you elaborated early in the year, obviously, you talked about investments and then those investment paying off in two, three years horizon. If I look at this year, a large portion of growth is driven by the M&A that you have done, whether it's JOS or MyRepublic. Now looking at current macroeconomic background, high inflation and your strategy towards those transformation or Super App strategy, when you look forward over the next two to three years, has anything changed in terms of your expectation of growth from the investment that you're making because of the inflationary pressure? Whatever you thought earlier.
Just wanted to understand, looking at the change that has happened over the last three-six months, any change in the management thinking about the investment that you're making and the rewards that you were expecting earlier versus now? That's number one. Yeah, and on the M&A side, any color that you're looking at right now, the gaps that you're looking to fill versus previously that you had thought. Any clarity on that front will be helpful? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me take that in a few different pieces. You know, with respect to DARE+, there's sort of a sort of divided into three areas, you know, that roughly straddle execution and financial outcomes, which I think gets to a lot of what you're looking for. On execution, there are really two things. There's our ongoing product rollout, and then there's our ongoing platform rollout. Now, our ongoing product rollout on the consumer side, I think we're quite happy with. We've executed very well, in some senses beyond our expectations. Johan talked about the fact, you know, that we launched our 11th OTT platform Viu. We've seen good take-up across the board.
We're launching our 12th OTT platform, you know, EPL, done as OTT as an app for the first time in the world, I have to say. You know, we've also launched a product in Peace of Mind, like travel insurance and otherwise. In enterprise, we've launched product, you know, across, Cybersecurity, Cloud and Connectivity, really in an effort to bring all that together in a single platform use cases. That all has been continuing well, right? On the platform side of things, you know, roughly speaking, there are lots of different things going on, but roughly speaking, there are three things. There's the digital engagement side of it, which we call Super App.
The second piece of it is the cloud IT stack that sits on, which is really important because, you know, as you've talked about in various forums, Varun, you know, moving away from kind of the legacy telco, bespoke, highly customized stack, that's non-scalable to something that's agile, scalable, really fast product cycles, really fast change cycles. And then, you know, the third is data lake capabilities, which come a little bit after. On the platform side of it, a lot of this is either very imminent, or it's, you know, it's kind of within the next six months. So we are on the cusp, and we're quite happy with our platform execution. Now, to your point on financial outcomes, you've seen where we are for the first half of the year.
We've been very clear about where we're gonna be for the second half of the year and the fact that we are reaffirming our guidance, albeit on CapEx, you know, talking about maybe at the low end. That's where we are for today. That we reaffirm. That we're quite happy with. You know, the macro is volatile. We continue to look at it. We continue to monitor, you know, our transformation program. That's work that we continue to evaluate and do. We'll, you know, come to you with our guidance on the usual timeframe in February.
Thank you.
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you, Varun. We still have time for maybe two more questions if anybody else has anything to ask our senior management. Let me just give it maybe five seconds more. Otherwise, we can end the call early.
This is very unusual, guys, to finish 15 minutes early. I guess everyone's having a tough week. We certainly are.
Okay. Last call. All right, if there are no more questions, you know how to get me. Thank you, everybody, for spending your evening with us. As always, please feel free to reach out if you have more questions or if you want to catch up with management. Till next quarter, bye-bye.
Thank you.
Have a good evening.
Bye-bye.