Hi, good evening, everyone. My name is Amelia, and I take care of StarHub investor relations. Thank you for joining us for our Q1 2022 business performance update call. This evening, our Chief Executive, Nikhil Eapen, will lead the senior management team in a quick presentation on our Q1 2022 financial and business highlights. We will then open the floor to Q&A thereafter. Nikhil, over to you to introduce the senior management representatives for the evening and then to start the presentation.
Yeah, thanks, Amelia. Thank you all so much for joining us this late on a Friday evening ahead of a long weekend. We really appreciate you taking the time to hear about our Q1 . Today I have with me Dennis Chia, our Chief Financial Officer, our Chief of Consumer, Johan Buse, both of whom you know. For the first time, I'm pleased to introduce Kit Yong, Head of our Enterprise Business Group. Kit Yong has been with us for a few years and has been leading and driving a lot of our growth initiatives around green tech managed services, ICT and telco, 5G, IoT, et cetera, et cetera. He's here to talk about enterprise and what we're doing. With that, I'd like to start by talking about our Q1 results. Yeah.
You know, as usual, I'll perhaps start with one or two quick caveats which have changed a little bit. You know, as you look at these numbers, please consider that we are glad to have had a strong Q1 . This was still in the face of escalating hyper competition, particularly on the mobile side. COVID, however, was a caveat in the past but is receding, and we are seeing partial roaming recovery. Now, looking at revenue and service revenue, as you can see, we were able to grow service revenue up by almost 11% year-on-year.
This was lifted by good growth in postpaid mobile, strong growth in broadband, growth in entertainment, strong growth in cyber, regional ICT scaling up, with a bit of drag from prepaid, and network solutions, eroding. We also consolidated JOS Singapore and Malaysia for the first time. We closed the acquisition in very early January. The consolidation contributed about SGD 27 million of revenue. Now looking at EBITDA, we were down year-on-year, as we anticipated and as we talked about, as we invested for DARE+. We were able to achieve an EBITDA margin of 24%, which is running well ahead of what we had anticipated and against our guidance for 2022 of about 20%.
We were able to do this by managing fuel costs, achieving some efficiencies and by virtue of delay in some of our IT transformation expenses. Now, net profit similarly was also down but higher than anticipated. As Dennis will talk about in a bit, we also spent money on Capex for DARE+, but that was less than anticipated. Looking at mobile, revenue was up year-on-year by about 4%. The postpaid revenue growth impact was actually much stronger year-on-year. Now, this was driven by the fact that we very judiciously added subs on both our own brand on postpaid as well as on Giga, and we did that without diluting ARPU. In fact, ARPU has been stable and rising.
Our 5G adoption has also been strong. Johan will talk about both. Both our postpaid ARPU as well as our 5G adoption are at the highest levels in the market. Churn is also at historically low levels, continuing to trend down. It's something we're pleased about because it achieves very high customer lifetime value. Now looking at broadband. Broadband revenue grew almost 10% year-on-year. We have been able to grow broadband revenue consistently over the last four quarters. We did this by continuing to drive take-up of 2 Gb plan with Infinity Play entertainment services, fueling consumption. Again, here, as a result of that, we saw stable and rising ARPU.
Now, one of the things you saw last year that we have been talking about with you is that we used last year to flush out our legacy discounted sub. That job has been done and in fact, this quarter we started to add broadband subs alongside stable and rising ARPU, hence the revenue growth. Now moving to entertainment. What we have done in terms of a bit of a reclassification is moved OTT revenue from mobile and broadband into entertainment. Entertainment revenue had a 3.9% increase year-on-year. There's some offsets, as always. We grew HiBREW TV+ and OTT subs dramatically, and this was offset to a small degree by the continued cord-cutting in linear pay TV.
Again, putting aside the reclassification, we saw stable and rising ARPU as we drove more product across OTT entertainment, gaming, et cetera. In fact, you may have seen that we announced the addition of Viu today as our 11th OTT streaming services, and we have on the way EPL, which we are doing for the first time as an OTT streaming service as well. We will have 12. Then on enterprise, last but not least, enterprise in aggregate continued to deliver strong growth for us.
We actually grew enterprise revenue by 19% year-on-year, and this was driven by strong growth in our cyber business, an increase in the scale of our regional ICT business, partially offset by erosion in network services. With that, I'll hand off to Mr. Dennis Chia.
Thank you. Thank you, Nikhil. Good evening, everyone, and thanks for joining us. I'm now on slide number six. We'll recap the headline Q1 performance against the guidance that we had provided the market with at the start of the year. On service revenue, we had guided to at least a 10% growth year-on-year in service revenue. Q1 numbers, the actual performance was 10.7% increase in service revenue. This is ahead of guidance. Our guidance for EBIT service margin was at least 20%. For Q1, the margin that we recorded is 24.2% again, ahead of our guidance. For Capex, we had guided 12% to 15% as the range for Capex on total revenue. For Q1, our Capex is 11.6%.
Now, these results better the guidance across the board from a number of initiatives. Obviously, in terms of revenue, we had consolidated for the first time the JOS Singapore and Malaysia numbers, as Nikhil had mentioned. There are also improvements in our cyber security revenue year-on-year, as well as very positive trends in our postpaid, broadband, and entertainment revenues, which Johan will enthusiastically share with all of us. On service margins, again, it was better, a function of, again, some optimization of certain discretionary expenses. You know, there was also some timing delays in terms of investments that we had intended to make and will be making in respect of our IT transformation.
Similarly, on Capex, there were some delay, timing delays in terms of the incurrence of some of these Capex for IT transformation initiatives, which are well underway. You will see this coming through in the subsequent quarter. On slide number seven, Q1 numbers for service revenue, SGD 417 million. EBITDA of SGD 109 million. Service EBITDA of SGD 101 million. Service margin of 24.2%. Our net profit for the quarter, SGD 39.7 million, which is fairly similar and at levels of comparative levels of a year ago. This translates to about SGD 1.6 on an EPS basis. Our free cash flow for this quarter was negative because of certain payables that we had discharged during the quarter.
This is really a timing in terms of working capital requirements. As a result of that, our cash and cash equivalents at the end of Q1 stood at SGD 753 million, leaving our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio at 1.26x , which still provides us significant headroom and balance sheet capacity to fund our future growth. On that note, I'll hand the floor over to Johan.
Thanks, Dennis, and good evening, everyone, on this lovely Friday. I'm going to take you through mobile, home broadband, entertainment and a bit of a quick peek view in the kitchen. Postpaid, as Nikhil referred to, flat, few moving components. Obviously, we're seeing, thanks to easing of COVID, more roaming, that's good. That's reflected as a plus. We do continue to see pressure in the local market, reflecting in the lower out-of-bundle revenue, as we call it. We did add 84,000 customers over the year and 70,000 in the quarter. On top of that, we actually exceeded the 400,000 mark in terms of 5G customers, which is a real good performance. You'll see that across the different product lines, churn is historically low.
Postpaid, we closed on 0.8% churn, which you can see is significantly lower than last year. It's a real great performance actually in line with Q4. That's really good. Prepaid is a difficult segment, due to till now, COVID restrictions as well as, I would say, competition in the local market from low-end postpaid SIM-only. We do see a trend change in March on the back of opening borders and more traffic coming in terms of roamers or potential visitors, I should say. You can therefore see that the subscriber base is starting to increase, and we're hopeful that will reflect in revenue in the quarters to come. Overall, almost 4% growth in terms of revenue. Historically, seasonality, Q1 is always a little bit lower than Q4.
All in all, great performance on mobile. Every data usage, of course, as you will understand, continues to increase. We're, of course, at 13 gig at the moment on postpaid. That's mobile. Moving to home broadband. Home broadband, last quarter, you will remember, there were a few questions around the customer base development. Nikhil alluded to that just now. In fact, we actually added 400 customers net add positive to the quarter. That's why you see here a flat number as well as ARPU is up compared to last year and is currently trading at SGD 33. We have been doing really well in Q1 on the back of a number of promotional activities, adding a significant number of customers on the two gig plans and moving, trading up customers to two gig plans.
That's reflected in the revenue growth. Close to 10% year-on-year and no less than 5.5% on the quarter. That's a real great performance on home broadband. Entertainment, we crossed the mark 450,000 customers on total entertainment. That's classical pay TV as well as OTT. And again, also here, combined with a low churn rate, I forgot to call out home broadband, 0.5% churn only. It's really low. That's a good quality number. Same for entertainment. We're down to 0.8%. It has been gradually decreasing, the churn in entertainment. ARPU was down a little bit due to the composition of the sub-base having more OTT compared to classical linear.
Segment revenue, therefore 4%, close to 4% up, and flat Q-on-Q. For entertainment, it's a profitable business now. We came a long way, and it's in a good shape. I'm sure you will have a lot of questions later, because if we move to the next page, we're going to talk a little bit about what is coming in entertainment. As you know, we have signed an exclusive agreement with Premier League for entertainment. We're going to bring that in a very different way. I'm sure you will have questions later on. We currently have 11 mainstream OTT offerings on our platform. Quite a few of them are unique to StarHub, so that's a real great customer experience, and we see that flowing through in net promoter scores.
We also have been addressing a key pain point in society related to fraud, cybercrime, and everything else. We've launched recently two products, CyberCover as well as CyberProtect, and we do see very encouraging uptake from that and good customer feedback. Then the last one, which we are still working on very hard as we launched it end of last year, is cloud gaming. We've launched a partnership with Ubisoft not so long ago, and we're continuously expanding. You'll see quite a few activities coming in cloud gaming in this quarter. On 5G network, I mentioned it already, north of 400,000 customers on 5G, but what is even more important is that we continue to be the most awarded network in Singapore. We garnered also in Q1 quite a few accolades related to network performance.
All in all, we're very pleased with these results for Q1 from TBD side, from consumer side. I hand over to the new kid on the block, Kit Yong for the enterprise.
Thank you, Johan. Now from an enterprise front, earlier Nikhil has mentioned it's on a year-on-year growth. If you break it down, when it comes to network solutions, we are still seeing intense competition, which offers the lower revenue. Right. From data internet, managed services, and voice services. When it comes to cybersecurity, year-on-year is growing. Right. Quarter-over-quarter is decline for several reasons with the project trading sector. They are seeing lower orders compared to Q4. Having said that, in terms of operating loss is at SGD 1.4 million compared to last year, SGD 2.6 million. It's partly due to high margin and higher stock costs. All right. In terms of regional ICT services, we are seeing higher revenue due to consolidation of Hong Kong broadband across Singapore, Malaysia, and also that we are seeing an operating profit of SGD 0.8 million.
All right. Move on to the next slide.
Kit Yong, you need to speak closer to the mic.
Up close to the mic.
Maybe adjust the mic.
Oh, sorry.
Thank you.
Right. Realizing the enterprise growth, harvesting the three Cs, connectivity, cloud, cybersecurity. We are maintaining our 5G leadership through our 5G digital experience. We set up a showcase. We have good bookings from our different clients or different industry looking at our showcase of 5G solutions. We have created new 5G digital workspace solution, and we are seeing quarter-to-quarter growth with new contract wins. We're turning our mobile services to managed mobility services. In terms of cloud, we have introduced new Cloud Connect services, and we also got new wins in the Cloud Connect services. When it comes to cybersecurity, we talked about launching SASE last year, and we actually won a multi-million dollar SASE contract today. We also launched a new SASE services for SME. Security is really in our DNA from consumer, SME, and enterprise.
We're continuing to harness our synergies with the new acquisition. For example, we have better new wins, better quick wins. We have new proposals that we send out with a combined capability to our client. We also launched CyberSecure Business Solution. It's a combination of partnership with global technology partners at Palo Alto, Veeam, and with Ensign to give an end-to-end security view for our clients. When it comes to green tech managed services, we're getting new wins. When it comes to NUS, it's a classic example where we co-created new solutions with engineering, enterprise network, and 5G, and create a sustainable solution for them. We are seeing more traction with other clients, other industries who are looking to be sustainable and want to be green and with 5G use cases. We're going to continue to co-create more together with them. Right.
That's all from me on an enterprise growth perspective.
All right. Thanks, Kit Yong. We'll now open the floor to Q&A. 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 and converse directly with management. Who would like to start the ball rolling? Oh, Arthur, please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes.
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Just several questions, please. Firstly, just to clarify with regard to the cost trends. You mentioned that some of these cost items have been pushed back. Are these expected to catch up in the subsequent quarters, or some of them have actually been stretched out into the next years? Also, does the guidance actually include the impact of EPL? Because presumably that content cost is actually quite significant as well.
Thank you.
Thanks, Arthur. Sounds like a question for Dennis for the cost trends and guidance.
Okay. Hi Arthur. You know, on the cost trends, yes, we expect to incur the costs for the IT transformation and digital transformation initiatives, this year. We are expecting to onboard the releases, which are associated with the transformation initiatives and management is working extremely hard to get this on stream, so as to deliver the outcomes, in the subsequent year and beyond. Yes, the short answer is we expect these costs to come through in the subsequent quarters. In terms of the guidance, we have not changed our guidance for the year, which then therefore implies that we've taken on the impacts of Premier League into the numbers.
There is long memory in terms of the cost of Premier League, but the things that we're doing, we expect to generate significant value in relation to that content, which Johan will obviously preview in the subsequent months. We expect the impacts, you know, to be pretty positive over time.
Arthur, if I could just add on each of those points. You know, we talked about DARE+ a lot, and our intent is to incur costs fast, drive the transformation fast, and start harvesting by the second half of next year. What we don't want to do is delay our execution and phase out the cost too much because that would also phase out the harvesting of the results of DARE+. On EPL, you know, I guess all I would say is I would hesitate to analogize the past too much with the current. We're doing EPL very differently on an OTT app-based streaming format. You know, stay tuned, we will share more.
All right. Arthur, does that answer all your questions?
It's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Arthur.
All right. Next up we have Huzaini.
Yeah. Hi, good evening and thanks for the opportunity. Just couple of questions from me. First, some, you know, softness on the mobile side, on the prepaid side. You alluded that, you know, the competition remains quite intense. Just want to understand from where the competition is coming and with, you know, the opening up of the borders, how should we see mobile growth trending ahead? I mean the 3.8% or 4% growth, you know, booked into Q1 , should we expect to see acceleration on that side, given the reopening? The second question is on the Strateq revenues. I mean the revenues were soft. Just want to understand how should we see it going forward and what is driving the softness? Thank you.
All right. Johan, would you like to take the first question on mobile?
Yep. Thanks for the first question. The first question was first and foremost related to prepaid, and the question was what is driving competition? Prepaid has been till, I would say last year, relatively isolated from the price competition in the market. Having said that has changed. Historically, quite a fair bit of the prepaid revenue came from what we call tourist SIM cards. SIM cards sold to foreigners coming here for a short stay. The competition for prepaid at the moment is mainly coming from the low-end postpaid SIM-only market. Increasingly, I would say from some more aggressive prepaid offers in the market, which is good, offset by more tourist activity. On your question, how will this sort of pan out in the months to come?
I think it's too early to comment on that. Obviously the markets are opening, but also one important, I would say inbound tourist market is still closed, which is China. That's something we need to be mindful of and keep an eye on. We are definitely hopeful looking at end of March, early April numbers that the tourism part of prepaid will pick up further, and will help us to offset the curve. Hopefully that's answering your question on prepaid.
Huzaini, I hope that answers your question.
Yeah. Yes. Thanks for that. What I'm getting is that the tourist part or the tourist SIM card is driving. We should expect, you know, growth on that side.
Yeah.
Just want to understand any color on the roaming side, inbound and outbound roaming linked to, you know, business travel and all.
Okay. Sure.
Any Vision.
If we talk about roaming across the board again, we have seen since December progressively improvements on both inbound and outbound roaming. Actually, this is an important month to really gauge this in a more accurate way because this is really the first month that things are opening up. Things are, from a travel perspective, easier. I'm sure that if you talk with people around you, a lot of people have plans to do short trips either Malaysia or other countries. The roaming recovery is still quite modest if you compare it before COVID. We have yeah, quite a way to go.
that will be very much dependent on how borders are opening, what are the regulations for customers to travel and the appetite to travel. We're hopeful that will be improving in the months to come.
Okay. Dennis, would you like to answer the question on Strateq?
Sure. On Strateq, you know, typical with the project revenue recognition, it's the timing of recognition on certain projects based on the timing of delivery of those services. Strateq has made attempts to increase the percentage of recurring revenues in terms of their business model, and that's something that management has delivered, and you'll see that coming through. Also as a note, the pipelines and order books remain healthy. It's just a question of timing of recognition of revenue for Q1.
Thanks, Danny. Huzaini, I hope that answers your question. Huzaini, I think you're on mute.
Yeah. This is very helpful. Thanks, everyone.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next up we have Aishwarya.
Yeah. Hi, Amelia. Thank you. So hi, this is Aishwarya from JP Morgan. I had a couple of questions. The first one is on the mobile pricing. Do you see any recovery in the market, or do you see something going forward which will subsequently affect the mobile revenues as well? The second one was, like, I think you mentioned in the presentation that there has been higher D&A costs in Q1. Is that related to the acquisition, or is there any other reason for that? Thank you.
Johan, question to you too.
Thanks, Aishwarya, for the question on the mobile pricing. I would dare to say it's very difficult to assess at this point in time where pricing trends are going to. Unfortunately, the pricing competition is a real thing still in the market, particularly on the SIM-only side. We are, however, following a strategy where we diligently are working on differentiation of pricing and offering more benefits to customers, rather than just the pure price offer. Based on the latest offers, I think it's really difficult to say whether there is a recovery or not. I mean, revenue in mobile will be definitely, if I can use that word, being recovered, if that's an expression, by roaming, because that is a sizable amount of revenue in this market.
Now, with, as we just discussed, COVID easing off, we see that actually coming back progressively. That does not take away the local price competition, which is there. I wish I could give you a bit more guidance in answering your questions, but there are pluses and minuses, always, in things. We need to keep a close eye on the latest trends in terms of pricing.
Okay. Thank you. Dennis Chia, question on D&A.
Okay. On D&A, as you know, we've onboarded a number of new entities into the StarHub group. There are purchase price amortizations associated with those. Those have started coming through in the form of the Strateq ongoing amortizations as well as JOS amortizations that come through. On the baseline depreciation, we have sunset a whole bunch of IT legacy systems as we are getting ready to onboard the new one. When they come on stream, the depreciation on those investments will be recorded in our numbers as well. As of now, they have not come on stream yet.
Thanks, Danny. Aishwarya, I hope we've addressed your question.
Yes. Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Next up we have Neil. Neil, could you please unmute yourself?
Okay. I can't find the mute button. Hi, evening everyone. Thanks, team.
Hi, Neil.
I've got three questions. The first is just sort of very high level on the group revenues, right? If you excluded JOS contribution, and I'm looking at the sequential trends, that would've been quite poor, and in terms of sequential trends. If you can provide some color on that, both either on a total revenue basis or service revenue basis, and I assume JOS doesn't have too much of equipment sales involved. The second question is actually to do with mobile down sequentially again, 0.7%. I'm trying to understand some of the dynamics here. You've added quite a few subscribers, quarter-on-quarter. ARPU is flattish, slightly up for the post-paid segment. Now, ARPU for the prepaid is down by SGD 2. The subs have gone up also sequentially.
In terms of revenue impact, it's pretty much flattish. What's sort of going on here, I suppose? Within in the presentation, there's a sentence that, you know, higher roaming and subscription revenue, which is good with gradual opening up, but offset by lower IDD and excess revenue usage. Maybe this is not a sequential question, but I know year-on-year I would've expected there would've been even lower IDD revenue back last year this time, right? Maybe I'm missing something. If you could help me understand that slide on the mobile post-paid. My third one, I suppose, is for you, Dennis. It's on the cash flow. We've got negative free cash flow. On a sequential basis, the total revenue is down from SGD 14 million. That's not a huge amount.
Service revenue is slightly higher over Q4. Operating expense is slightly lower. What you mentioned is you're accelerating the transformation and Capex. Capex has been an underspend, compared to the guidance at 11.6%. I suppose my question is when you get to 12% to 15% for the rest of the quarters, should we continue to see negative free cash flow? If so, where do you think your gearing levels would approximately be at the end of the year? Those are my two questions. Thank you.
Thanks, Neil. Dennis, could you please address the question on revenue as well as cash flow?
Okay. Neil, on the question on service revenue, obviously, if you look at the Q4 of last year, typically there's a whole bunch of things that typically happen at the end of the year, particularly in terms of timing or recognition of certain project revenues in our ICT business for Strateq, as well as the cybersecurity revenues from Ensign. The revenues typically tend to be relatively and proportionately higher at the end of the year compared to the start of the year, which typically is a slower quarter. It is a question of timing. We monitor these businesses by looking at their order book and their pipelines.
As I mentioned earlier, the order books and pipelines for Strateq and JOS are all still at healthy levels. We obviously endeavor to grow them further. The order books for Ensign also are extremely healthy. It's just a timing of recognition of revenue for the Q1 revenues, sequentially. I hope that answers your question on service revenue.
Yeah. Got it. Thank you, Dennis. Okay, that kind of explains. Okay. Yeah. Understand.
Okay. The next question on cash flow, please.
Okay. I'll take your last question on cash flow. In Q1 itself, we actually discharged and paid off a whole bunch of payables. We did not intentionally delay this into Q1 from last year. It was just a question of the timing of payment of these payables based on actual payment terms that we had with our third-party vendors.
Mm-hmm.
We actually paid off a whole bunch of this to the tune of about SGD 60 million. It's just a question of timing in terms of a lump sum payment that we actually made. To your other question in terms of whether we expect the negative cash flow trends to continue for the rest of the year, the answer, short answer is no. In terms of where the leverage ratio will end up at the end of the year, we do not provide guidance on that. You know, because this is an important point for us in our negotiation of bank rates and this is not a piece of information that I would share at this point in time.
I would give you assurance that we do expect to end the year at still a fairly healthy leverage ratio, which we always, as management says, that we would manage. We do expect that to be still the outcome when we end the year.
Neil, I think it sort of goes back to our guidance, right? From DARE+, the 20% to 30% EBITDA margin going down to 20%. Then what we'd achieved on CapEx as a percentage of revenue last year, 4%. We're really going to the, I guess, the 12% to 15% that we talked, that we'd guided to. Net-net, we are gonna be down on cash flow for the year from last year, but that's what we're doing with DARE+. We're investing upfront. To Dennis' point, you know, leverage ratios will still be healthy by the end of the year.
Understood. Thank you. That lump sum lumpy payment aspect is something that obviously I didn't see on the slide, so I was sort of scratching my head about that. Thanks, Nikhil. Thanks, Dennis. Sorry, my other question was a bit of color on the mobile. I'm clear.
Yeah. Johan.
I'm sure I've seen something here.
I didn't forget. Okay. Mobile. Mobile revenue year-on-year postpaid is up, okay? It is actually prepaid, which has been a challenging segment in the market. Now, in postpaid, if you look at ARPU, that was actually your question, there are three key drivers. Number one is obviously roaming, which comes back to a certain degree in the ARPU. As you will understand, that is definitely higher than it was a year ago, but far away from what it used to be before COVID. That's item number one. Item number two, which is really not to be underestimated, is the ARPU impact of customers moving from a traditional handset bundled plan to a SIM-only plan, which as you can understand, does bring the ARPU down quite a fair bit.
The third one is the opposite effect, which is customers moving to a 5G plan, which is typically SGD 10 to SGD 15 higher than an equivalent 4G plan. There's quite a few moving components in that. The items which you refer to, like IDD and out-of-bundle data revenue are not so substantial anymore. There are some fluctuations, but that is to a lesser degree impacting the ARPU or the revenues, I would say. Prepaid is a separate category, I would say.
Johan, I think before that, I think Neil's question was also on the sequential trend for postpaid.
Yeah. The sequential trend in postpaid, if you look at subscription revenue, is actually trending up. Okay? That's a good sign. There is also separately the roaming element which comes in going forward, which we expect to further increase. That's on the positive side. Hopefully that's addressing your question in more detail. Prepaid is very different. I think prepaid, coming back to the earlier question on that, there is a price, I would say price pressure on prepaid due to what's happening on the low-end postpaid SIM-only and within prepaid increasingly. Then secondly, which is on the up going forward, inbound tourism, which is again not to be underestimated. It's quite a sizable part, used to be, of the prepaid revenue. Okay?
Thank you. If I may have just almost 95% of it. The part that confused me a bit is the first bullet point on the mobile postpaid side, which is higher roaming and VAS expected, which that's opening up. Why is that offset by lower IDD and excess usage? I would have thought that would have been worse in the previous quarter. If I can ask a sort of crystal ball type of opinion, roaming historically is about just about double digit of the ARPU or slightly higher, if I remember. Where do you see that in this new environment through the recovery? Will it get back to those levels or now everybody does stuff on WhatsApp and Wi-Fi when they travel?
Okay. Let me start with the second part of the question first. Forgive me that I'm not going to answer you very explicitly or directly, but consumers have a need to be connected. I mean, you can imagine also with all the safety app and check-ins, there is a need for data connectivity in a convenient manner. We're hopeful that there will be a restoration going forward. To that degree, I can't give you the number. That would not be prudent from my side. That's something future will prove. On the first part of your point around IDD and lower data access usage, data access usage is a thing of the past. When data bundles were small, typically people would overrun from time to time their data bundle allowance.
If you remember, 12.9 GB is the average data usage of a customer. Most of the data bundles are passed. That's why it's gone. All right?
I mean, I'm sure there are others in the queue. It's basically unit data price compression that is driven that way.
Yep.
Okay.
Offset by a higher
Thank you.
You're welcome. Thank you.
Thank you, Neil.
Yeah. Yep.
Paul, you're up next.
Thanks so much for the presentation. Hope I'm not holding this up. Just a few questions for me. In terms of the EPL, you know that there was always a plan, you know, for pay TV to keep the content cost variable. At the same time you're bidding for this, I'm just wondering, are you bidding with the expectations that, I don't know, the pool of customers will be growing more significantly than in the past? That's my first question. Sorry, I've got four more. The next one is just on the cost structure. We understand that you have the transformation cost element to it. From this quarter so far, the higher cost seems to come from occupancy, which is electricity, staff cost, which is from JOS and cybersecurity.
I'm not sure which parts of the cost is actually the so-called transformation cost. If you could help me out on that. Thanks. My third question, sorry, I keep asking this question. Anyway, for roaming, just to confirm, has there been any change in the profitability or economics of roaming compared to pre-pandemic levels? Last two, final two. For cybersecurity, higher revenue year-on-year and at the same time higher losses year-on-year. Could you just guide us, like, this ramp in staff costs, I can understand, will stabilize, should expect this to continue for the next one to two years. My last one, just a housekeeping item. In your entertainment slide, ARPU is declining.
I know there's some. You restated some numbers, but ARPU is declining, but revenue is up. Just, I'm not sure how to explain it. I'm referring to year-on-year. Yeah. Thanks.
Okay. A lot of questions from you this time, Paul.
You know, nobody asking, so I just.
You ask for everybody.
No problem. No problem.
Sorry for that. Sorry.
No problem.
No problem.
Happy to answer your questions. Maybe we start off with Johan for-
Yeah.
EPL and roaming and entertainment.
Let me take three of your questions, Paul, and thanks for asking these questions. First and foremost, EPL. Yes, wherever possible, we will strive to have a variable CPS, cost per subscriber model on the content, but that's not always possible. If it's not possible, there needs to be a good reason for us to make an exception. EPL, we see as a very fundamental part to drive our Infinity Play. I would like to use the opportunity to stretch the imagination of everyone because this is going forward not to be a simple TV product, which you buy as a pay TV subscriber. This is part of our Infinity strategy, DARE+, which will be available across the board as an OTT to any subscriber. That's a departure from the past.
You need to look at it in that perspective. The second point related to roaming profitability, percentage wise, yes, unchanged. There's no change in obviously percentage profitability. As you will understand, the absolute numbers do vary based on the COVID impact over the last two years. We're actually very delighted that we see that coming back up again. On your question related to entertainment ARPU, that's merely a reflection of a higher subscriber base with more OTT. That actually suppresses the ARPU slightly. Nothing alarming. That's basically a mathematical exercise. On the TV coming back there, we actually today did a demo on what we plan to do with EPL. This is a unique Friday once in a lifetime opportunity I'm going to offer here.
If anyone is interested in the coming week to see a demo or maybe a little bit after a few weeks later to May, let me know. I'm happy to sort of take you through what we are preparing, what we have staged. Then it will become clearer that this is not a traditional linear TV channel which we're going to offer. Kindly invited hereby. Thank you.
Is the demo.
If anybody's interested in the demo, please sign up via me.
Is the demo in the pub or something? Is it like, you know?
In a pub.
Like if you please sign me up.
We can arrange it. We can arrange that. That's not a bad idea.
Okay
that you can have the full experience.
Yeah, yeah. That would give the good experience with that. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you for your question.
Sorry.
I'll pose the other question to Dennis. Go ahead, sorry.
Can I just follow up just on the EPL again. Is it fair to say that this is gonna be a fixed content cost.
We don't disclose-
Okay, sure.
details of content arrangement, as you will understand. Yeah.
Okay.
You can count on that.
Okay. No problem.
Great.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Paul, back to the entertainment ARPU, right. Actually, if you're looking at year-on-year, if you take out the effect of the reclassification, ARPU would have been higher.
Yeah.
Yeah. That's in second point on the slide. Maybe that will give you a bit more visibility. Okay, and then let's take your other questions on transformation cost and cybersecurity. Dennis, please.
Okay. So on the transformation costs, given that we are not releasing a detailed MD&A as part of this voluntary, if you had seen the details, you would have seen a fairly sizable amount that has gone through in Q1 already, to the tune of about SGD 9 million that was incurred in the quarter. The effect of that, it's called out in the line that says the write-off of prepayment, that is actually part of the recognition of the initial investment in terms of the transformation initiatives that we have undertaken already. That's gone through.
We will be obviously expecting to incur further transformation costs in the rest of the quarters as we attempt to deliver on the initiatives that will generate the outcomes, starting from the second half of 2023. Those costs for those investments will start flowing through the financial statements, both from Capex as well as Opex, primarily in the next few quarters. Does that answer your question, Paul?
Yeah. Yes. Thank you.
Okay. On cybersecurity, you know, we've always guided to the fact that, we as management and in partnership with our fellow shareholder in relation to Ensign, we are building, you know, a pure play cybersecurity end-to-end, a pure play with all the capabilities. It's grown very nicely in terms of scale. It started scaling also overseas in terms of footprints as well as winning fairly sizable and very meaningful awards from very notable customers. The result of that is that we are investing to build the scale and therefore the capabilities in relation to this.
We believe the cybersecurity segment is a very viable one, very lucrative, and it makes complete sense for us to continue investing to grow that business such that we become obviously, you know, a significant player in this space. At the right time, it will deliver the scale, would deliver the right profitability, because your costs will not increase in a linear fashion in relation to revenue at that point. For the time being, and as we've always been saying, the short term, we continue to invest in these capabilities.
Yeah. I'd sort of close off on that, Paul, by saying that, you know, with Ensign, we are aggressively driving things to grow. The tailwinds are very strong. The imperative for government enterprises, even SMEs, is really strong. We're investing in capabilities, we're investing in resources, and our priority is absolutely growth. The other thing that is going on is very positive shifts in business mix as we increase capabilities. Over time, you should expect to see growing revenue, and you should expect to see, you know, margin trending the right way. The priority for now is growth and capabilities. That is the path to increasing value of this business, which has increased.
Okay. Just a quick follow-up. When you say scale, can we kind of draw a line, draw a conclusion that your obviously your overseas markets should be growing much faster because it's smaller and that's where you. Because you probably have scale in Singapore or. Just trying to understand. When you say scale, like what are you? Is it referring mainly to overseas markets?
I think growth across the board.
Okay. Sure.
Because, yes, overseas markets you could say are less penetrated than Singapore, but penetration per se is not perhaps the right metric to look at because the spending and the imperative in Singapore is very strong for cybersecurity, right?
Yeah.
Government and large corporate.
Okay. Thank you so much for taking my questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Paul.
Thank you. Do we have another question? I'll just give it another minute.
Paul, you have another question? Your hand is up. Oh, not anymore.
Fat finger.
You quickly pulled it down.
Getting ready for the pub.
Yeah.
Yeah. The beer's getting warm. Yeah.
Exactly.
Please don't be scared off by Paul's five questions. We're happy to take one or two questions too.
This might be the first time we're not getting questions until the very end.
Yes.
May have something to do with that 7:35 on a long weekend Friday.
Okay. Oh, we have a question from Huzaini.
No.
Okay. Fine. I'll ask a question. I just want to check on the EPL. Why a six year contract? Usually what I call is that it was used to be three year contract. Why a six year contract? Johan, again, on the mobile side, you mentioned that, you know, on 5G side, you're SGD 10-SGD 15 higher ARPU, plus, we are seeing SIM-only plans, you know, taken more and more. Just want to check if you can give some qualitative comment on the margin side. Are we seeing that? Is the margin going in the right direction on the back of all those things, plus the roaming, which I assume is a higher margin business also. I just want to understand on the roaming, on the margin side of mobile as well.
Okay. Let me take the EPL question first. Thanks for raising it. Yeah, it's a six-year agreement, and the reason why it's a six-year agreement is that both, EPL and ourselves have a strategic understanding of how we want to drive this business, and we're aligned, and we wanna do that in a long-term partnership, which is very encouraging. I think also for subscribers in the market, being reassured, for a longer period of time of this particular content, which, we plan to bring, as stated earlier, in a different manner. We should do this demo in a pub with beer. That's something we're going to fix. On the plan mix with the 5G, margin-wise, we're trending in the right way. That's for sure.
If you look at the price up we managed to do on the 5G. We also have a 5G SIM-only variant, which has similar level of price differential to 4G. With more and more customers being interested in 5G, the coverage is also growing every month. That is a good avenue for us to ensure that we're on the right track to monetize, I would say, from a subscriber revenue point of view, 5G. Hopefully that's answering your question in a bit more detail.
Noted. Thank you very much. Very helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you. Do we have any last questions from the floor? Otherwise, we can start our long weekend early. Okay. If you have any further questions, you know how to get me. We'd be happy to answer any further questions that you may have. Thank you, everybody, for spending your Friday evening with us. Have a restful long weekend ahead. Bye bye.
Thanks, guys. Thanks, everyone. Stay tuned for the EPL demo. Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.