Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Singtel's results briefing for the half year ended 30th September 2022. My name is Sin Yang Fong. I'm the Vice President for Singtel's Investor Relations. A warm welcome again. Addressing us very shortly will be Mr. Yuen Kuan Moon, our Group CEO, who will make a short presentation from a couple of slides highlighting this set of results. He will be, after that, joined by his management team for a Q&A session where we will take questions both from the audience here as well as participants on our dial-in via Zoom. Without further ado, let me invite Mun.
Thank you, Yang Fong. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us here in person. Good to see you, and also welcome for those people who are joining us virtually. I can't see you, but thank you for joining us as well. I'll start with an overview of our performance, and then followed by updates on our strategic reset, and then we'll open up the session for Q&As with the rest of my management team. Let me begin with some of the key highlights for the half year. There's a major rebound on our core business, particularly in mobile, riding on roaming recovery and as well as a higher adoption of 5G services.
Airtel also outperformed, you know, as we see, 4G upgrades and tariff rate hikes lifted ARPU, with strong demand for its enterprise and home broadband solutions added to the overall growth momentum. At the same time, you know, we continue to scale our growth engines to capitalize on rapid digitalization. NCS, our ICT business, posted sizable bookings of SGD 1.3 billion and has expanded its presence in Australia through our recent acquisitions. Our data center business is doubling its capacity in Singapore and making inroads into the Thai market as well. Our financial position is solid, underpinned by a proven capital recycling model and strong cash flow generation. This allow us to raise ordinary dividends and to fund our growth initiatives and as well as return surplus cash to our shareholders.
Now, excluding Forex movements, NBN migration revenues and MOB consolidation, revenue actually rose 4%, primarily on healthy mobile service and ICT growth. EBIT and EBITDA would have grown with margin improvements due to roaming recovery, price uplifts, as well as tighter cost controls. Including a higher profit contribution from Airtel, the group delivered a 2% increase in underlying net profit. Net profit increased 23%, as we recorded a gain of SGD 165 million from a number of exceptional items. With exceptionals, we saw a couple of large items which I'll explain later. We recorded a substantial gain from divestment of a partial stake in Airtel and a dilution gain from the Google investment.
This helped offset a non-cash charge for Optus goodwill, which reflects the steep rise in interest rates, as well as a weaker Australian dollar and the impact of weaker consumer and business sentiments with rising inflation. This impairment does not affect the group's cash flow or its ability to pay dividends, nor does it impact Optus' operational performance. More details on the rest of the exceptionals can be found in our MD&A. Let us now take a closer look at each of the business unit. Excluding the impact of NBN migration revenues, which have tapered off, Optus revenue increased 2% with growth across its mobile and fixed business. The positive performance was led by a strong rebound in travel, an uplift in prices, and subscriber growth.
With better margins and strong cost management, it recorded proportionally better EBITDA and EBIT. Looking ahead, despite macro headwinds and weakening consumer sentiment, we are optimistic that the post-COVID recovery and travel rebound will continue to lift mobile service growth. Optus will continue to differentiate through its unique service proposition while capturing synergies from the integration of consumer and enterprise businesses. We remain deeply disappointed that Optus was a target of a cyberattack. Our main priority has been to protect our customers. Optus notified customers immediately and has been working relentlessly to support them in managing any potential data risk. This involves working closely with multiple federal and state government agencies and offices to support affected customers, as well as providing customers with complimentary credit monitoring services as an extra precaution.
Regrettably, the recent cyberattack has interrupted Optus' momentum, at the end of our first half year. We saw a spike in churn, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, but levels have since stabilized. Meanwhile, the group has made a provision of AUD 142 million to cover the cost of a number of activities to support customers, including, commissioning an external independent review, credit monitoring services provided to affected customers, and, also replacement of, impacted customers' identity documents, where needed. While the recent, cyberattack on Optus is expected to impact the near-term performance, we are focused on rebuilding trust, in Optus and are confident that it will rebound given its strong business fundamentals.
The Singapore consumer business, on the other hand, saw improved performance, led by strong mobile growth, roaming revenue, as well as a strong 5G take-up. TV revenues were affected by the cessation of Premier League. However, margins improved on the back of content cost savings and a muted churn. As a result, we saw robust improvements in both EBITDA and EBIT. We see further upside in mobile with roaming revenues at about 60% of pre-pandemic levels, and especially with 5G, rising 5G adoption, and particularly we have now rolled out 5G to the prepaid segment as well.
That said, competition remains very intense and we are focused on leading the market in quality and in customer experience, but we'll continue to keep a tight rein on costs through rationalization of our content portfolio, our increased digitalization, and improvement on productivity. Revenue growth in the enterprise segment was driven again by roaming recovery as well as robust ICT sales from data centers. Despite rising inflationary pressures, operating costs were prudently managed, resulting in stable EBITDA and EBIT. We expect the momentum in roaming services to remain strong as business travel continues to gain pace, while ongoing digitalization help boost our cybersecurity, unified comms, SD-WAN services. Another key focus is increasing partnerships with enterprise to deploy 5G applications, which I'll touch on later.
NCS continued to ride the wave of digitalization by governments and enterprises, with digital revenue rising to half of total revenues. Global business revenues also increased to 16% of total revenue, supported by SGD 161 million of contribution from acquisitions in Australia. This momentum is expected to continue into the second half given its strong bookings and pipeline of local and regional projects. However, margins are expected to be under pressure from post-acquisition costs as well as increase in wages and investment in digital capabilities. To alleviate margin pressures, NCS is repricing for the increased cost of talent, and optimizing its onshore, offshore staff mix, by leveraging on its global delivery network. It is also focused on driving operational synergies on costs and cost savings, particularly with its new acquisitions in Australia and Singapore.
Contribution from our regional associates grew strongly on Airtel's continued outperformance in the market in India. Other associates posted higher revenues from robust data demand and reopening of their economies despite intense competitive pressures. However, Telkomsel and Globe's profit contribution were impacted by higher depreciation as well as investments in 5G and fiber while Thai baht and Philippine pesos depreciated sharply during the period. Looking ahead, inflation and interest rate hikes are key concerns for our regional associates although post-COVID reopening of economies will benefit their mobile business. There's also an opportunity to lift prices as market consolidates and 5G adoption increases. Our associates are also laying the foundation for future fixed broadband and enterprise growth by investing in fixed network and enterprise networks. Our financial position remains robust.
We generated over SGD 4 billion of cash in the last six months, reducing our net debt by SGD 3.4 billion. At the same time, we increased our proportion of fixed rate debt to 93%, stretched the average maturity over six years. This puts us in a good position to ride the volatile macro environment ahead. With better business performance and robust financial standing, we have raised our interim dividend to SGD 0.046 or 76% of our underlying net profit, which is in line with our dividend policy of paying out between 60% and 80% of our underlying earnings. As we have fully funded our growth initiatives and investment needs, we are also paying a special dividend of SGD 0.05 from excess cash generated from our asset recycling initiatives.
This capital management approach allows shareholders to share in the benefit of our asset recycling program, in line with our strategic reset. Now we are committed to a sustainable dividend policy without sacrificing growth. Our annual operating cash flow of approximately SGD 5 billion funds our regular network CapEx, our spectrum interest, as well as our ordinary dividends. Since last April, we have also announced close to SGD 6 billion from our asset recycling program, which will fund our 5G CapEx and our growth initiatives. As explained earlier, excess cash from capital recycling can be used to pay down debt, fund future growth initiatives and return to shareholders as special dividends. Let me briefly now cover key highlights from each of the pillar of the strategic reset.
First, we continue to lead in 5G with our differentiated set of products and services driving strong 5G take-up. We have close to 600,000 5G customers in Singapore, and almost three million 5G-connected devices in Australia. For enterprises, our focus is driving 5G, new 5G use cases, be it through incubation programs or partnerships with various enterprises. Moving on to our growth engines, we are rapidly scaling our data center capacity, doubling Singapore's capacity to 120 MW and adding about another 20 MW in Thailand, all by 2025. Our third pillar is on reallocating capital and unlocking value. We illustrated the sizable value in our associates by selling a partial stake in Airtel. We also sold Globe Telecom's towers, as well as completed the divestment of Optus Insurance and Amobee.
These initiatives help increase our return on invested capital and enhance total shareholder returns. Lastly, on championing people and sustainability, you know, we are deploying energy-efficient radio cells to decarbonize our network, investing heavily to keep building a future-ready workforce, actively supporting our customers whose lives were impacted by the recent unfortunate floods in Australia. With this, I end my presentation. Thank you.
We'll now take a moment to just get set up for question and answer. Can I get helpers to help me with that? Online audience, please stay on the line. For everybody who's joined us, please be informed that, you know, I forgot to mention this earlier, the whole session is being recorded for playback and for transcription purposes. All right. We are going to commence our question and answer session. We will first take questions from the audience from the floor here. Let me call your name, okay? Then please tell us, you know, which company you represent and then your questions. All right? I saw Piyush's hand. The mic. Thank you.
Hi. Hello.
It is on.
Yeah. Thanks. This is Piyush from HSBC. Congrats on, you know, on the dividends, especially on the dividends. My first question is actually on that. Can you discuss the framework you will be using to decide on special dividends? Let's say in future you do further value unlocking, then what would be the framework used for special div? Because if I just simply see you have paid 33% of Bharti Airtel proceeds as special dividend. Your thoughts over there. Secondly, on Optus, can you give us an update on steps taken after the cyberattack to control the churn, and how have been the subscriber trends in the month of October and November month to date?
Okay. Maybe I will ask Arthur to talk about the special dividend. I think suffice to say, you probably have recalled during our Investor Day, Arthur talked about the two pots of cash. You know, I'm sure he will explain how we look at how the use of funds and how we deploy our capital. Then I'll hand over to Kelly to talk about the Optus business environment. Kelly is online, and she will come in later. Arthur.
Sure.
Maybe over to you to talk about.
Thank you.
Our special dividend and how we look at cash.
Sure. Okay. Thank you, Moon. Sachin, thanks for the question. Maybe just back-
Piyush.
Oh, sorry. Piyush. Sorry, I saw Sachin, and I called you Piyush. Okay. Thank you for the question. Maybe to backtrack, you remember the beginning when we came out with the dividend policy about 18 months ago, it was focused on ensuring that our dividend, our core dividend, was sustainable on an ongoing basis, and it's based on core operations. We did not want to co-mingle that cash with all our 5G and our growth needs. We created this asset recycling model, which was very integral to our strategic reset. At that time, we started first. First and foremost, that was very important top priority to fund our growth, to fund our 5G, so we can keep that part one intact and untouched.
Now that part two has shown that over 18 months we were able to effectively recycle and this model was proven in terms of, you know, and it's proven by the fact that we raised $6 billion. We felt that it was important then, now, make sure we are fully funded from a growth perspective. Then now you layer on the volatile environment. We wanted to make sure that we have sufficient, I would say, cash to pay down any debt, expensive debt that we have over the next two years at least. Then we had some excess and we thought, okay, at the end of the day, we would like to reward or allow shareholders to share the benefits of this recycling with us.
The way to share the benefits is this in the form of this special dividend, where we pay excess cash over and above all the needs that we talked about in part two. Again, we do not want to co-mingle it with part one. We do have expectations that we'll like because it is part of our strategic reset, we will continue to recycle our assets, but the cash will still remain in part two, and we like to have the discipline that if there's any excess cash after meeting all the needs that we need to fund our growth, excess, we return to shareholders because we want shareholders to benefit from this as well.
We want to maintain that discipline to keep it separate because at the end of the day, we don't want to go back to some of, you know, the things we did in the past, and then we've got, you know, pressures when things take a turn for the worst. That's the rationale behind that. What we have done, maybe just to elaborate a bit more, is we have announced a special dividend of SGD 0.05 per share, but it's split into two tranches, right? Not a one-time thing. The first record date, I think is coming out. We're paying out in the interim in December. SGD 0.025 will be paid out together with the SGD 0.046.
The other 2.5 will be if shareholders still remain a shareholder, end of financial year, I think, on the record date in, I think Au-
August.
Where we pay out in August.
August.
We will pay out SGD 0.025. It's effectively two special dividends which we announced today, but total of SGD 0.05. We want to allay some of the mindset that this special dividend is a one-off thing. We want to space it out. To be frank, at the end of the day, we want to allow our loyal shareholders to stick with us to benefit from this. That's why we space it out. Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you. Kelly.
Kelly.
Kelly.
Thank you. Thanks for your question, Piyush. As you'd expect in the month of October, in the aftermath of the attack, and while we were still communicating with customers about the impact, our churn was elevated. It was up about 50% on what it normally is. In addition, our new connections were down about 25%, acknowledging that even through the whole cyber aftermath, there were still tens of thousands of customers choosing Optus every week. I have to acknowledge our part in those numbers, because we decided as a company to be completely focused on minimizing harm to our customers. In order to do that, we pivoted the whole company to that objective, which meant that we paused our marketing activities, including our base management activities that relate to communicating with our current customers about retention, renewal, and cross-sell.
What that means is that in a net connection basis, we have seen a small loss in customers in the low tens of thousands in the context of a customer base of 10 million. Importantly, it's on an improving trajectory every week. Today, we are launching an open letter to customers with seven clear, committed actions that we are taking to rebuild trust in the brand and ensure that our customers understand that we're focused on taking the right actions to secure them in the future. Those actions are designed around helping customers, making an impact in the community, and also strengthening further Optus' cyber posture. I hope that helps answer the question, Piyush.
Hi. Thanks, Kelly. Can I just confirm, have you restarted or resumed the marketing activities which you had taken a pause in the initial month?
Yes, we have restarted those activities, but we haven't gone back to the levels prior to the cyberattack. We're restarting them slowly and prudently, and we will be spending the next couple of months also communicating on our cyber response to rebuild that trust and confidence in the brand.
Thank you.
Ranjan, please.
Thank you.
It's on.
It's on?
Yeah.
Thank you, management team. It's Ranjan from J.P. Morgan. Two questions. Firstly, can you help us understand what are the steps required to turn around the profits of NCS, and when we should expect that to come through? Because I think it's one of the main-
Growth drivers for you. Second is on your digital banking initiatives. Is there any revisions to those plans considering what's happening in the global fintech companies? Thank you.
I'll give a bit of comments and then I'll ask Ng Kuo Pin to maybe explain a bit more on NCS business, trajectory and what he's gonna do. I think overall, if you look at the
As I explained earlier in my presentation, there is actually a lot of demand for IT services, especially when enterprises digitalize and move to the cloud, there's a lot of demand. You can see that with our high revenue growth and high bookings in this space. Obviously, we are going through the integration of newly acquired companies in Australia. I'm sure Ng Kuo Pin will talk a bit more about how and, you know, how much effort we're gonna do on the end. As well as some of these IT services, you can see that it takes time for us to build in a price increase on services because these are all contracts basis.
You know, inflation has been relatively low in the past in Singapore, if you look at it, right? That sudden surge of high inflation with high wage costs have not been fully passed on yet. That will take a bit more time for Ng Kuo Pin to move some of those contracts into a higher rate, which is expected because the whole market is facing inflation pressure. That is NCS and then after maybe come back and talk about-
Okay
digital bank later on.
Yes
on the new projection, which they have made a disclosure as well with GXS.
Yes.
Maybe, Ng Kuo Pin, you can come in first.
Yeah.
Yeah. I think thanks for the question, Ranjan. Maybe a bit of recap about NCS growth strategy. I think some of you may have heard me share that before. We are really trying to grow across three dimensions, right? One is growing outside of Singapore, which is why we decided on a Pan-APAC strategy. The second is, besides our stronghold government sector, we also are expanding to enterprises. The third is doing a lot more digitalization work, which is really what the market is asking for. If you look at our results, we have grown revenue by 20%. Again, it's not a small insignificant number. That number reflects all those three dimensions of growth, right?
For all of that 20%, a significant portion was due to our acquisitions in Australia, which now contribute, in the first half, SGD 161 million, right? Out of those, that 20%, there's also expansion into the enterprise space. Just to give you a sense, the enterprise sector plus telco sector now accounts for about 30% of our overall revenue. In the past, it was in the 20s range, right? Finally, we just hit about 50% of our overall projects being digital led, right? Which is a very important milestone for us. If you look at all those indicators, we're actually very upbeat. We are executing well to the strategy that we shared with you, six months, twelve months ago.
Now, the downside to this is, as you pointed out, Ranjan, the cost pressure, right? The margin pressure. There are three reasons that drive it. First is the acquisition costs. Here, I'm relating to the acquisition costs due to amortization of intangibles because of the assets that we acquired, as well as the earn-outs and the retention bonus that we set aside, right? So this is something that drives the acquisition costs that hits our bottom line. The second is increased talent costs in the IT digital market, which I think we are all very much aware. Obviously, this landscape is changing as we speak. I think if you look at the recent sentiment, I think it's a lot more muted.
Six months ago, nine months ago, there was a heightened competition for talent, which is obviously something that NCS went through. The third reason for the cost is the restructuring and investments that NCS is doing to turn ourselves from a very Singapore-centric IT player to a Pan-APAC globalized company, right? Those are the three factors that's the driving the cost increase, that's creating pressure on bottom line. I would say the first and third are something that we have always expected, right? Acquisitions, restructuring, and investment. It's not something that we did we're not prepared for. The key one though is the increased talent cost, which we were reacting over the last six months or so.
What we are doing now is, as what Yuen Kuan Moon just said, we have already increased our rate cards to our clients because we do need to pass on the cost to our clients. We are also looking at optimizing our cost to serve. Some of you may remember that, we are investing to build our India delivery center. We've also announced recently, two months ago, about our strategic delivery center in Vietnam. Those initiatives will help to lower our cost to serve. Finally, we will of course need to have disciplined cost management, which will be something that we will continue to work on.
All in all, I think we remain very positive about the growth trajectory for NCS, and we'll continue to do what is necessary to better our top line as well as our bottom line. Yeah.
On the digital bank, I think a few points. One is, you know, with what we're seeing in the current environment, both Grab and us, I mean, we have always done so, but the shift has been a more disciplined approach to not, you know, go crazy and to deliver and execute on a very measured way. We have come out and actually said that the bank would turn breakeven earlier than what we had originally factored into the MAS base case. Now in 2025, the bank will break even, and that was about a two-year acceleration on that. That's the first point.
The second point is that we, under the current rules, the MAS, in any case, has certain speed bumps. That as the digital bank grows, there will be a certain stage where they will review, and if we are okay, they will then graduate the bank to another level. This prevents excessive cash burn and costs, and allows for more costs or more decent cost management. I think that's the second point. The third point is at the end of the day, when you see what we are doing, what we have done at the bank is to focus on products and services that matter to both shareholder ecosystems. We are unlike a traditional bank, like, you know, I mean, there was another digital bank that just got launched. They're offering a whole gamut of services at one shop, right?
For us, we're a new player. We're a challenger. We focus on the ones that we think we can make money. We don't need to offer everything because that is not the expectation of a startup digital bank. So in the next few months we are gonna officially launch leveraging on the customer base of both shareholder ecosystem, which is large, right? The Singtel customer base and employee base, and then the Grab employee and customer base. I think the first thing that we are focused on is to offer, of course, deposits and all that, but we're offering flexi-loans. From a Singtel perspective, we are able to bundle, for example, devices, right? And could be bundled with certain plans, and then you can, you know, offer a flexi-loan on the next iPhone or the iPhone 14 or something like that.
It's a bit like a buy now, pay later, but the cost of capital is a lot lower than a typical buy now, pay later company, right? Because we are all, you know, we basically leverage on the customer of both shareholders, which means that the acquisition cost is lower. We don't need to offer a whole gamut. We can just focus on this, and we continue to leverage on this and go deeper. That's the advantage. And finally, I think we mentioned this before, in terms of the capital commitments, it's been quite measured over the years. You know, we are seeing basically for Singtel's contribution is SGD 80 million-SGD 100 million a year. Yeah. Thanks. I think Neil had a question earlier. Good to you. Neil and then Sachin. Sachin, yes.
Hello.
Yeah. Yeah, that's all.
Neil from CLSA. I had a couple of questions. One is on Optus. The AUD 142 million provision, can you give us the basis for coming up with that number? I presume some of it is to do with an estimate of ID replacements and reg fines. Just wanted to clarify, it doesn't include any class action event, right? The second was on associates. Moon, of your portfolio, what is it that concerns you the most from the various markets? Because they were all moving kind of aligned two quarters ago. Now they seem to be directionally in slightly different areas in terms of competitive intensity.
Sure.
The third, back to you, Arthur, on GXS. I'm still struggling to understand how is your cost of funding cheaper in this environment? I understand the yields, the asset yields would be higher on kind of BNPL-type plans. What are your thoughts on cost of funding?
Sure.
Because wholesale markets are what they are, and, I mean, you know what the Singapore Treasury bills are doing.
Yes.
For the next two years, I think it's quite a challenging environment.
Yes
on the funding cost side. Thank you.
Maybe you take the GXS question first. Okay. I think on that, first of all, we're not gonna rely on wholesale funding, the GXS, so it will be customer deposits. We will pay a certain interest rate, right? It has to be high enough to attract the deposit base. Again, we don't need to go all out to attract customer deposits. Just between our two customer ecosystems, plus the limits that the MAS has placed on this digital bank, we don't need to go all out and attract, you know, over X billion dollars of deposits. All we need is a certain amount. If you look at the market today, I think the size of the pie is about SGD 50 billion worth of deposits, if I recall.
These are not deposits in fixed deposits. These are deposits in your CASA accounts which are generating nothing. That's all there, right? All we need is a sliver of that, because we cannot grow beyond what the MAS is allowing us. All we need is to just capture that. We don't need to pay too much for that. That's why we feel that the cost of funding is lower. On top of that, the acquisition cost of a customer is lower because, again, it's through the Singtel and the Grab ecosystems. Very soon you will see on the Grab app, on the Dash app, and subsequently the Singtel apps, you will see GXS all over the place. We're leveraging on, you know, the Grab cars.
We're leveraging on the Singtel TV channels, where these are opportunities for us to go out and, you know, and market, right? Promote the bank without incurring the cost as a typical third-party bank would do. These are the various cost advantages, and this is how we're gonna prosecute it. We don't need, again, to offer a whole bunch of services at day one. That's how we manage it.
Neil, maybe let me cover the two questions. The first question on 142 million, that is the total amount, Singapore dollar 142 million. It covers Australian Optus AUD 140 million for Optus, and then there's the balance about 10 million between Singtel and NCS and The Dialog Group in Australia.
The costs are primarily on few things, right? First is to cover the cost on our independent external review, the cost of.
Providing credit monitoring service to some of our impacted customers if they choose to sign up. Also primarily the cost of some of the ID replacement costs that we may have to incur. These are all, you know, estimates and projections that we think are realistic, and we have baked that in, and therefore the total of SGD 142 million. It doesn't include any other additional or potential new costs that we incur. We have made disclosures on our contingent liability that there are two investigations.
Mm-hmm
In Optus that's ongoing, one from the OAIC and the ACMA. We are working collaboratively with them in the investigation. We do obviously work towards a scenario where, you know, a positive outcome out of those investigations. Of course, to date, while there has been media reports on class action, we have not received any formal notification yet. That's why we have disclosed it in the contingent liability and not make any provisions for it. Right. In the associates, I think that's a very long question if I were to go down all the associates. Maybe I'll just cover-
Why don't you go-
I cover in general. I think if you look at the Airtel strength, the outperformance in India, it's many factors. Firstly, you've got to understand that Airtel have come from a very negative position two years ago. You're seeing them rebounding and back into a more sustainable, profitable operation. That is in the context or behind a backdrop of market consolidation. All right? You have now three players in the market. It's not just Airtel. You see the other major operator there is also performing better. That's on the back of a few rounds of price up. If you look deeper into Airtel numbers, it is not just mobile. It is also their growth in enterprise, their growth in fixed broadband that is driving that momentum. That's one part of it.
If you look at the other markets, whether it's Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, you'll see a slightly different scenario because they have always been performing and delivering profitable growth and giving us good returns. They are at a different place to start off on a year-on-year basis, right? That's the first thing. Secondly, if you look at their primary driver or revenue business driver are primarily mobile. If you look at their current sort of strategy forward, Thailand and AIS is already investing in fixed broadband.
Yep.
In the 3BB acquisition. They are getting into fixed business, enterprise business. Telkomsel have announced that the FMC potential consolidation with Telkom, and they're getting into the fixed business as well, the fixed broadband business. Philippines in Globe, you know, Ng Kuo Pin is on the board, he'll tell you that he's working with Globe to look at growing the enterprise business. Globe is also investing in fiber fixed business. If you look at these Southeast Asia markets, they are all pivoting to a new growth, which is more fixed broadband, enterprise-led sort of a growth for them, while keeping the stable mobile business. Because mobile business is still bread and butter for many of them. It's still a good business, good margins, good returns.
It's just that they may not be giving us that type of growth like before. What is growing? What is growing is actually fixed business.
Fixed, yeah.
Enterprise business.
Mm-hmm.
Digital business and data centers. That's why you see AIS and Gulf, our partner, investing in data centers with us, right? Telkom is looking at investing in data centers. We are pursuing growth together with our associates. I think if they play that growth right on that growth engine, it'll be very similar to Airtel, where they are growing not just in mobile, but also in fixed broadband, in enterprise business.
Thank you.
I think Sachin had a question, but maybe after Sachin, we'll move to some of the online participants as well.
Sure.
Sachin, could you speak into the mic?
Hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Two questions. Firstly, now so many disinvestments have been done or recycling have been done. Could you share what is the new target in the medium term for you? Or, you know, most have been done and less is left. Some clarity will be very helpful, in terms of medium targets and what kind of assets you're looking at. Secondly, the bookkeeping question, you had finance cost increased due to derivative losses. If I'm not wrong, there was a big rise in finance cost, and that was not captured as part of the normalized income. So are we expecting those? What kind of derivatives are those? And are we expecting those value, market values to bounce back or they fluctuate with the market? Yeah. Thank you.
Okay. I'll cover the first part of the question, and then Arthur can talk about.
Yeah
Some of the financing costs and derivatives. If you look at our strategic reset, and that was announced only about 18 months ago, right? We are just executing the plan. While a lot have been done, especially in the capital recycle and asset illumination of our value of our assets, you've seen a lot, but a lot is not done yet. In the area of core business, the growth, not just in mobile 5G, but also in fixed broadband business in our regional markets, the enterprise growth business is just starting. NCS has just started to embark on, you know, build on regional data center, just starting. While the strategy has been articulated, it's not done.
In the medium term, short to medium term, we look at ROIC, improving our ROIC, because that has been very tightly coupled with the Singtel share price if you look back at the last 20 years. The operating unit from Anna, from Kelly, from Arthur Lang and Bill, they all look at how within their business, how to improve their business return on invested capital. In the medium term and short term, I think if you attended our Investor Day, I said, we want to move from last year 5.4% to a high single digit in the short to medium term. Going forward, we want to break into double digits.
Yeah.
In the longer term on ROIC. Because we believe that will actually better reflect the value of Singtel through its share price because that's what we are working on. There will be riding the wave of growth of fixed broadband, you know, in terms of initiatives, riding on enterprise growth. We will be doing it ourselves. We'll also be doing it with our associates partners. Not new, no new news, but work is not done.
How about the disinvestment or recycling targets, you know, after the ATL has been done? I think you had mentioned SGD 3 billion last time. What is the new number you can throw at us now?
We're not giving any new numbers now because I think, you know, we still have got close to SGD 1 billion have yet to come from the Comcentre redevelopment, which will come in, you know, 18 to 24 months' time. There are still a lot more assets that we will look at, for example, the data center business that you are building.
Yeah.
You know, there are. We will review it at the appropriate time.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. On that, I mean, it's always good to keep the market guessing on what is the next asset to be recycled, right? It's really at the end of the day to the benefit of the shareholders. Like, if today I say X, Y, Z, we're gonna sell this, guess what? We're not gonna get full price on it because everybody knows we are willing to sell it, right? I think it's important to do that, right? To get maximum value. But this capital recycling model is here to stay. It's not a one-off thing, you know, everybody sit back and don't do anything. We're consistently looking to really illuminate value on our balance sheet because we still have that gap, you know, the SOTP gap that we talked about.
On your question on derivatives, the costs, this related to some derivatives we had to enter into on some inorganic transaction which we're involved in last year. I would say that has significantly been kind of cleared out. There's a little bit left and, you know, I think we are basically in the next few weeks and months, we'll be closing that out. You will not see the impact either way, positive or negative, or too much of that going forward.
Got it.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah. Yes.
Well, I think, you know, maybe you should ask some questions on data centers.
Yeah.
the good Singapore consumer business momentum.
Yes.
Especially with the backdrop of the whole market conditions. You see some very positive momentum.
It's the best half ever since the beginning of COVID.
Pandemic. Yes.
Yeah.
Meanwhile, while everyone think about questions on the core business.
Yeah.
Maybe we should move to some of the questions from the online audience.
Online audience.
Online audience.
Okay. Entcho, I saw you on the line. Your hand has been raised. Do you want to? Yeah. Thank you for showing yourself. Please ask your question.
Great. No, thank you.
Entcho, please.
Entcho Raykovski here from Credit Suisse. I had a couple of questions for Kelly. The first one was just to follow up on Optus in terms of the net connections losses that Kelly mentioned since the start of October. Can you give us a little bit more color on whether that's been on the consumer or the business enterprise side, and whether it's skewed towards mobile or broadband? If it's more pronounced in any one area, it would be just useful to understand. Then, in relation to the cyberattack, is the biggest risk that you see subs losses from here, or is it any additional costs on top of the AUD 140 million already provisioned?
Kelly, you wanna take that question?
Thanks for those questions. On the net connections, I think it's mostly been on consumer and small businesses. As we mentioned at the time, enterprise customers and medium business customers were not impacted by the cyberattack. Of course, it's been more skewed towards the customer base that was affected. I don't have a breakdown across mobile and fixed. To us, a customer is a customer, and we don't wanna see a single customer leave us. Each one is a regretted loss. From the cyberattack, on your second question, these are the holistic best assessment we can make of the costs that will be associated with it. We obviously hope to now rebuild trust in the brand and resume the very positive and strong momentum we had as we continue to deliver great services to our customers at great value.
As Moon mentioned, though, there are regulatory reviews underway. While we expect that they'll assess the totality of our cyber environment, our extensive investment, everything that we do in that area, and so we're hoping for positive outcomes from those reviews, we can't predict what happens. We don't anticipate that there'll be further costs to come.
Okay, great. Thanks, Kelly. And if I can just ask one follow-up, and this is specific to NBN broadband revenue. I mean, it's all really good growth in the first half, both subs and ARPU. Can you talk about whether you're seeing any step change in the market? I know some other operators have also been increasing price, or whether the market, the NBN market is still highly competitive. And does it change in any way the way you're viewing NBN economics? Thank you.
Thanks. I think we see the market as very competitive, and for every competitor who's tried to raise price, there's one who's lowered it considerably. Of course, the market is also very competitive when it comes to alternatives to NBN, such as fixed wireless access, where we've seen incredibly aggressive pricing. It remains a very competitive market. I don't think that we've seen anything that I'd characterize as a step change. We continue to advocate strongly on behalf of customers for a new undertaking from NBN that includes commitments to improved customer service and customer outcomes that will drive lower costs and better service across the industry.
I mean, not what you attribute to, but how do you sort of explain the strong growth that you've been seeing? Is it success of your particular products that you've got in market?
Yes. I think we've been very focused on delivering differentiated propositions to our customers. Things like the Optus Living Network that actually spans across mobile and home customers. Features like Optus Pause applies to both product areas. We've also done a lot of work to tidy up our portfolio so that we have a simple product offering that's priced in the right way, and that we continue to deliver great value to our customers and give them as good a service as is possible.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Anshu. We probably have time for just one more question. Eric, would you like to ask your question? Eric Choi from Barrenjoey Capital Partners.
Thanks, team. Just trying to turn on my video. Thanks for the question. I just had a couple for Kelly as well. Just to follow up on Anshu's question around the enterprise risk from the data breach. Just wondering, just going forward, how do we sort of think about, I guess any major contract renewals or any sort of significant enterprise contracts that might be up for, I guess at risk. I appreciate they're not impacted directly, but I'm just thinking about, I guess, impacts to your brand that might, you know, impact your renewal rates.
Maybe a second question on sub losses in terms of those tens of thousands that you've lost. I wonder if you've got some idea from the porting data where they've gone to, because obviously that kinda speaks to which part of the market consumers seek, sort of think of Optus sitting in. We probably don't have time for this, but no one's asked you about the ACCC process either. I know you guys said there's a real commercial likelihood that you guys would do some sort of deal with TPG in the event that the deal with Telstra was blocked. So I just.
If we had time, I'd love to hear your thoughts, Kelly, on what the form of any such deal could look like.
Thanks, Eric. Yeah, firstly on contract renewals. I would say that we've actually had a lot of support, understanding, and curiosity from our enterprise clients. I think most businesses in Australia understand that all of us are vulnerable to cyberattacks and increased cyber activity. Most have leaned in offering support, understanding, and wanting us to share the lessons learned with them. We actually see this as an opportunity to get closer to our enterprise customers, to share learnings with them, and to help strengthen the entire market when it comes to cyber posture. In terms of subscriber losses, I would say the main beneficiary is Telstra. That's what you would expect to see. Customers of ours still want quality, but there's a perception of flight to safety when people do want to move.
That's what we see in the port data. Finally, on the ACCC process, that has been extended out for a decision to the twenty-second of December. We've been very active and clear in our submissions to that process, that we see the potential regional merger of TPG and Telstra networks as negative for competition and negative for consumers. We are expecting to see an outcome from that when it's concluded on the twenty-second. We have submitted, as you're supposed to, a counterfactual that suggests that number two and number three coming together to compete more effectively with number one provides a better competitive outcome than a dominant number one and number three coming together to compete with number two.
We think that there are sound economics and rationale behind a proposal like that. It is certainly something that we would strongly consider, and we believe TPG would as well. It's hard to elaborate on details. I think that would be a logical next step once the outcome of the ACCC decision is known.
Appreciate it. Thanks, Kelly.
Thanks, Eric. We promised you time earlier to have questions for our core business as well.
Yes.
So any-
Maybe, instead of asking question, I'll ask Anna to highlight a bit of the Singapore consumer performance, just a short bit, where we have seen the rebound, and also Bill, maybe, one, two sentences on how do we see the data center growth. Because I think to answer some of the earlier questions on, you know, where do we see new growth or new investment, this is probably another area. Anna, over to you.
Sure.
Hello, everybody. I think the key highlights for the consumer business are really two things, three things I would say. One is clearly roaming, the return of roaming. The second one is the continuous strong migration, and we try to accelerate it actually in terms of 5G that I would like to touch on. Third thing is really the resilience of the home business, including TV. First thing on roaming, very good rebound. We are looking at about 60% of a pre-COVID level travels, but our rebound actually is a bit more than that. Because we see that actually the penetration of the roaming products among travelers has gone up compared to pre-COVID.
I think people see the benefits of staying on the roaming of your own MNOs rather than just picking up random SIM when you arrive in a destination. Of course, in the early stage of recovery, the business travelers also are over-indexed, so I think that contributes to the penetration as well. We do see that consumers seeing the benefit of taking the roaming products that are secure and very guarantee in terms of the quality. They see the benefit of that. We see with Japan opening up as a corridor, major destination for Singaporeans, and we see there's, you know, still more runway in terms of the growth path there. Number two, don't forget our 5G. We are the first SA nationwide coverage in terms of, you know, coverage of the whole country.
This is actually the first in the world, and I think Singaporeans really take to that very well. Since we last met up, we also extended 5G not only to the postpaid, but also to the prepaid segment. Extended, for example, to those workers in the dormitory on a prepaid segment. This is very important because normally we are looking at a relatively low ARPU for those segments. For those who are looking at a lot of data coverage and the high speed, ultra-high speed, they are willing to pay, you know, even more than SGD 30 for the packs. You can see that the ARPU uplift is very important. Now, having said that, I think the competitive pressure on the prepaid is still very much there, and we would like to see a lot more rationalization there.
Third one, just to touch on, is, of course, for those football fans, you know, we don't carry the PL anymore. The churn rate has been much lower than what we were budgeting for. Of course, this is thanks to a lot of actions we have done to hold on to the customers. At the same time, we see that the hybrid working mode still drives a lot of interest among our customers to upgrade their home. For example, if you look at our Wi-Fi 6 and 2 gig plan, it is well over 50% of our new acquisition already. We see that momentum continuing still. Thank you.
Maybe just one more point to add on Anna's point is, you know, while we have lost some TV revenue, but that is actually more than compensated with the content cost savings. You look at the overall underlying TV business actually has improved, the business model has improved.
The margins, yeah.
The margins have improved, and therefore, you see a better EBITDA and EBIT performance at the consumer Singapore level. Bill, you want to talk a bit about data center?
Thanks.
Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. Data center, obviously this is our pillar number two, very important growth engines in a regional format. To just give you some context, we are already the largest player here and about 60+ megawatts in Singapore. We have now set our plans to build the greenest and the most sustainable and also the largest data center in this region, somewhere in the west of Singapore. That will come on stream in 2025. This will double our capacity to about 120 megawatts. Of course, there is an RFP going on. We have to be part of that process to bid for more. This next 60 megawatts will come on stream. We are also working with Gulf and AIS in Thailand.
We've identified a site and in the midst of preparing the procurement activities and tenders for a site that would take 20 megawatts times two. We'll start with 20 megawatts and then, you know, expandable to 40 megawatts. In Indonesia, we're working with Telkom with a site in Batam and preparing for that as well. Obviously, we're very conscious of, you know, where supply and demand situations are. In Singapore, it's a case of over-demand, limited supply because of the moratorium that happened two years ago. The need to build the greenest data center defined as less than 1.3 PUE. We are gonna get there, below the 1.3 PUE, and that will give us the knowledge, the IP and knowhow, how to build this really green DCs in this region.
That's valuable not because of Singapore. It's gonna be valuable as we move out in the region to build not necessarily the 1.3 and below, but the greenest DC across this region, as well, because we know the blueprint and the know-how. That's, you know, important because our clients would really want in their own ESG goals to think about working with players who are rock solid, and they've experienced that and understand it and can meet the ESG goals. Now, beyond Singapore, the situation may not be over-demand, limited supply, maybe a huge supply, and demand may probably be lacking a bit, right? In some of the countries.
Differentiation becomes very important, and this is where we are not just only building the greenest and most sustainable DCs, but also playing to our strength as a, you know, connectivity provider, and also with our local partners like AIS and Telkom to bring, you know, our capabilities in international subsea cables to domestic capabilities such that, you know, the greenest DC with the richest interconnectivity value proposition. It's very important. The third element that's very important to DCs is green energy. Beyond designing green and operating green, you know, capabilities is the energy. We're working with our energy providers like Gulf in Thailand, and, we're also sorting this out in the region to ensure that, you know, part of that brown to green electrons transformation is being, you know, thought through as well and be providing that.
Now, the other very important differentiation that is going to be positioning this to come, it's on 5G. As you know, 5G and edge cloud are going to be synonymous, bringing connect and compute capabilities, low latency, and this edge cloud will be growing rapidly. We're starting to see that in Singapore, and this edge cloud will be a very key component adding on to traditional enterprise hyperscaler government kind of hosting. It's a new phenomenon that we'll see. We're positioning our DCs not just with rich interconnectivity, but also to be a 5G edge cloud, really kind of environment with our Paragon platform to be included in it. If you think about this in a case where supply exceeds demand, differentiation comes key in how we're positioning with all these factors beyond just being a DC provider.
That's going to be how our blueprint of execution in this region. Thank you.
Thank you. With that, we come to the end of the conference. To participants online whose questions we have not answered, we will follow up separately with that. We will thank you very much for your participation. See you again in next May.