Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Chunghwa Telecom conference call for the company's fourth quarter 2021 operating results. During the presentation, all lines will be on listen-only mode. When the briefing is finished, the directions for submitting your questions will be given in the question-and-answer session. For information, this conference call is now being broadcast live over the Internet. Webcast replay will be available within an hour after the conference is finished. Please visit CHT IR website, www.cht.com.tw/ir under the IR Calendar section. Now, I'd like to turn it over to Ms. Angela Tsai, the Director of Investor Relations. Ms. Tsai, please go ahead.
Thank you. This is Angela Tsai, Director of Investor Relations for Chunghwa Telecom. Welcome to our fourth quarter 2021 results conference call. Joining me on the call today are Harrison Kuo, our President, and Vincent Chen, our Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, our management will begin by providing an overview of our business for this quarter, followed by a discussion of operational and financial highlights. After that, we will move on to the question-and-answer portion of the call. Please note the safe harbor statement. Now, I will turn the call over to Harrison Kuo. Harrison Kuo, please go ahead.
Thank you, Angela, and hello, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. Before providing an update on fourth quarter performance, I would like to begin by highlighting the ongoing success of our strategic transformation that began in 2019. Three years ago, we launched our customer-centric strategic transformation plan focused on value creation to enhance our market position. Under this plan, we sought to improve our competitive advantage by strengthening our core businesses, deploying emerging services, optimizing our cost structure, and further enhancing fundamentals, such as next-generation networks, IT infrastructure, and human resource planning. We concluded our three-year plan at the end of 2021 with several key achievements, including three years of consecutive growth in EBITDA margin, net income, and EPS. Mobile service revenue turned around since the second quarter of 2021, and the churn rate significantly decreased from 2019 to 2021.
In addition, the compound annual growth rate of broadband revenue increased by 2%, increasing the enhancement of our core business. In regards to emerging business, we are glad to see compound annual growth rate for both IDC revenue and the cloud revenue increased by 5%, while ICT business gross profit increased to 70%. By 2021, our backbone network was 100% software-defined network ready, and the fiber to the home coverage reached approximately 88%, demonstrating our enhanced core competence. The net promoter score, NPS, of our services also increased, which reflects the increase in customer satisfaction. Revenue and the profit per head increased 6% and 15% respectively, attributable to increased operational efficiency as a result of cost structure optimization.
Along with the strategic transformation, on slide four, you can see we have an organizational transformation effective on January 1st, 2022. We transformed our business groups under customer-centric structure. We expect our consumer business group to develop individual and home-centric business, such as mobile, fixed broadband, Wi-Fi, MOD, and OTT services. We aim to create value and better experiences for our customers. Former enterprise business-related units have been transformed into a single business group to streamline service delivery and create a synergy. In addition, the international business group has continued its outreach as we expand our business into overseas territories. Similarly, our technologically focused units have been transformed into three groups, forming a strong foundation to support innovation and provide solutions.
Meanwhile, our headquarters will continue to maximize its functions of devising planning and resource allocation. In sum, we expect the new organization structure to be more customer-centric and responsive as we aim to provide a better value creation opportunities for both customers and stakeholders. Now please turn to slide six for an overview of business from the fourth quarter of 2021. In the fourth quarter, the mobile market in Taiwan remained stable as operators focused on 5G migration and development. By the end of 2021, our 5G penetration rate reached approximately 20%. As we expect that this rate to reach 30% by the end of 2022. As we continue to lead in network quality by accelerating 5G deployment at better spectrum locations, we remain confident on 5G customer migration and reaching our targets, maintaining our leading position in 2022.
In the first quarter, 5G migration continued to drive ARPU uplift. We observed an average of 39% uplift in monthly fees attributable to customers who renewed contracts to adopt 5G services, particularly from the contribution of iPhone 13 bundle subscribers. Our excellent home-based infrastructure was well received in the fourth quarter as well. The number of home Wi-Fi devices continued to soar by 167% year-over-year. Broadband subscriber numbers turned positive during the quarter, while revenue hit a record high in December. As subscriber migration to our broadband services of 300 Mbps or higher increased by 45% year-over-year. Our broadband pool also continued to increase year-over-year, in line with our expectations.
The mobile ARPU also grew on a year-over-year basis as a result of a successful upsell during the quarter. Looking ahead, we will strive to develop video services by providing more popular content and leveraging 5G to create immersive viewing experiences. We are pleased to announce our ICT business achieved its full-year revenue and margin by the end of 2021. In particular, the ICT project margin for 2021 continued to grow, which is reflective of our overall performance and demonstrating that our enterprise business is on track and we expect to do well in the future. Now allow me to walk you through each of our business lines. Turning to slide seven, you may find updates on our mobile business.
In the fourth quarter, we maintained our leading position in the mobile market, as both revenue and the subscriber market share, excluding IoT SIMs, increased to 38%, 38.9% and 36.1% respectively. During the quarter, our mobile customer net adds and post-paid net adds both ranked highest among the big three majors. As post-paid subscriber numbers increased year-over-year and the 5G migration enhanced the adoption of high price plans, our mobile service revenue maintained its upward trend, resulting in a year-over-year increase of our post-paid ARPU. Looking ahead, we will guide our services with a key focus on our customers, rolling out popular bundled services for innovative 5G applications to further drive up 5G migration and mobile ARPU. Please turn to slide eight for an update on our broadband business in the fourth quarter.
During the quarter, our high net subscriber net adds continued to increase year-over-year and the broadband subscribers net adds turned positive year-over-year, which reflects the market's growing demand for fixed broadband. We were also pleased to see that our broadband ARPU increased by 3% year-over-year, attributable to our success in migrating subscribers to adopt higher speed services. In addition, the number of subscribers that sign up for connection speeds of 300 Mbps or higher increased by 45% year-over-year. Looking ahead, we are confident that we will maintain the overall upward trend in our broadband business as we believe our digital transformation trend is less likely turning back. As our consumer business group prepares to develop smart solutions, we expect to introduce more popular home-centric services in the future to enhance customer user experience.
Slide nine illustrates our MOD business performance. In the fourth quarter of 2021, MOD subscriber numbers decreased slightly, while Hami Video subscriber number increased by 20% year-over-year. Despite this, MOD revenue maintained its growth trend, and increased 2% year-over-year as a result of our pricing strategy. The SVOD all-access package that rolled out in the first quarter of 2021 quickly accumulated a great subscription number and successfully strengthened our SVOD revenue growth for four consecutive quarters. Channel revenues continued to increase year-over-year as 90% of subscribers opted for the highest price package among the tier pricing schemes. As a result, MOD ARPU achieved a year-over-year increase in the fourth quarter.
Moving forward, we will make investments in content development to further enhance our video service performance on different viewing platforms to maintain our leading position as the largest video platform in Taiwan. Please turn to slide 10 for an update on our ICT business. In the fourth quarter, both ICT project margin and the gross profit increased year-over-year as a result of our effort to take on projects with high returns, which is positive to our overall bottom line. Excluding the large project impact from 2020, ICT revenue in the fourth quarter increased by 20% year-over-year, mainly due to revenue recognition from financial projects and the cloud revenue increased 3% year-over-year. Revenues from cybersecurity decreased year-over-year due to delays in project revenue recognition.
However, we remain positive that the aforementioned business will grow at a double digit rate in 2022. In 2021, we were glad to see the 5G private network reach a billion-dollar value as a result of our recent efforts, such as introducing the first 5G smart store factory in Taiwan. In addition, we were proud to report some indicative ICT projects, such as building the first bus emergency signal control system in Taiwan, big data analysis platforms for large public service companies, as well as the network test bed for 5G Open RAN vendors. Looking ahead in 2022, we are pleased to see that the number of orders taken has exceeded our annual guidance, mainly attributable to opportunities from the government enterprises, retail stores and the tourism industry.
Now, I would like to turn the call over to our CFO, Vincent Chen, who will review our financial results. Vincent, please go ahead.
Thank you, President Kuo, and hello, everyone. I will now walk through our fourth quarter financial results. To begin with, please turn to slide 12 for highlights from our income statement. For the fourth quarter of 2021, on a year-over-year basis, total revenues increased by 0.7%. While operating costs and expenses decreased by 3.7%. Income from operations increased by 5.8%, and our net income increased by 5.1%. In addition, our EBITDA margin increased to 34.82% from 33.45% in Q4 2020. Slide 13 provides a breakdown of revenue by business segment.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, total revenue increased by 0.7% year-over-year, mainly due to the increase in revenues from headset sales and mobile service revenues, driven by the 5G migration and the iPhone 13 launch, the increase of data communications revenues and broadband access revenue as a result of the demand of broadband speed upgrade amid the work from home trend and stay at home economy, which offset the decrease of ICT project revenue. Moving now to slide 14. Our operating costs and expenses for the fourth quarter decreased by TWD 1.88 billion or 3.7% year-over-year, mainly due to lower ICT project costs, partially offset by the higher cost of goods sold.
As you can see in slide 15, cash flows from operating activities for the fourth quarter of 2021 decreased by TWD 0.66 billion or 2.4% compared to Q4 2020. This was mainly due to an increase in accounts receivable resulting from ICT projects. As of December 31, 2021, the balance of cash and cash equivalents was TWD 39.82 billion, an increase of TWD 9.4 billion, or 30.9% compared to December 31st, 2020. The increase was primarily attributable to the issuance of corporate bond. On page 16, you may find a table that compares our financial results with forecasts. As you can see, in the first quarter of 2021, all of our performance measures beat our proposed guidance. Favorable results can be attributed to higher revenues from mobile services, broadband access and data communications. Moving on to slide 17.
Please see our consolidated guidance for 2022. Looking ahead, total revenue for 2022 is expected to increase by between 1.1% and 1.7% compared to 2021, driven by the upsell owing to 5G adoption, the ARPU uplift from broadband upgrades, emerging revenue, as well as ICT revenue coming from the expansion of emerging business in the digital economy. Operating costs and expenses for 2022 are expected to increase by between 2% and 2.2% as a result of an increase in maintenance and repair costs, as well as ICT business costs. Given these projections, we expect our EPS to increase up to 0.8% on a year-over-year basis. Please turn to slide 18.
Our CapEx spending in 2021 was TWD 35.3 billion, which was lower than the budgeted amount of TWD 43.1 billion, mainly due to some IDC and submarine cable projects that have been deferred to 2022. 5G cash outlay was higher than our budget in accordance with the accelerated deployment of 5G base stations in 2021, also marking the peak in 5G investment in recent years. Going forward, we expect the 5G CapEx to trend down. For 2022, we budget TWD 36.8 billion in CapEx, which includes spending on our business focuses as well as future opportunities, such as constructions of 5G network, IDC and submarine cable. Now, I would like to turn the call over to President Kuo for our awards and recognitions.
Thank you, Vincent. Slide 19 illustrates our awards and recognition from the fourth quarter, highlighting our distinction in mobile service, 5G speed and private 5G network service, as well as domestic and international recognition of our ESG practice and sustainable operations. We are delighted to see our 5G services receive awards and accolades. The Speedtest recognized Chunghwa as the fastest 5G and the fastest mobile network in Taiwan during the third and fourth quarters of 2021. Similarly, we achieved the fastest 5G download speed and upload speed and regarded as the best in user experience across gaming, video and voice app services in Taiwan. As we aim to expand our 5G private network solutions to the Southeast Asian market.
We appreciate the well-known international institute, Frost & Sullivan, for awarding us the best private 5G network for customer value leadership in Taiwan. International institutes, as well as those in Taiwan, have acknowledged our ESG performance with top awards in the fourth quarter, which further encourage us on our endeavors. Going forward, we aim to leverage our telecom capabilities and carry out digital empowerment to help companies accomplish digital transformation, further achieving carbon footprint reduction. Thank you for your attention. Now, I would like to open the floor for questions.
Thank you. We'll now begin our question and answer session. If you have a question for any of today's speakers, please press zero-one on your telephone keypad, and you'll enter the queue. After you are announced, please ask your question. When you are speaking, it is your turn to speak, please press zero-two to cancel the question. Our first question is coming from HSBC, Neale Anderson. Go ahead, please.
Thank you. Good afternoon. I have two questions, please. The first one relates to the 5G network coverage, and I was wondering if you have any targets for this year in terms of the number of base stations or population coverage that you can share with us. The second question is on 5G service adoption. I'm interested to hear, now that you've had 5G in the market for some time, if you can share your thoughts on which areas, which business customers are likely to adopt 5G first. Thank you.
I think talking about the 5G network coverage in terms of population, you know, network coverage, I think that we consider the nation. This is a lot of different kind of ways to calculate. It's really difficult for us to really give the number. But since, you know, Chunghwa we are leading brand, you know. Tell you, I would say that, you know, at least, you know, 90% of the population coverage we can give, you know, the number. But you have to understand that, you know, there's a different ways to calculate. But for Chunghwa we are leading brand.
I think earlier, you know, in the presentation, we mentioned that, you know, we actually received a lot of awards, you know, internationally and domestically and in the world, you know. We are pretty, you know, confident, we have a pretty good, you know, network quality. Thank you.
To answer your question number two, at the end of 2021, we have more than 12,000 base stations island-wide. For the 5G market, the government and the enterprise business segment will be deployed first. The vertical smart solutions will be deployed very soon, as we accumulate one and a half years of customer feedback. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is coming from UBS, Sara Wang. Go ahead, please.
Thank you for the opportunity to ask a question. My question is regarding guidance for 2022. It seems the implied growth is lower than 2021 for revenue, EBITDA and net profit. Especially for net profit, it skews towards negative growth. May I ask, what's the key reason here? Thank you.
Basically when we prepare our budget, we take a prudent approach in the sense that we try not to be overly optimistic. We try to be cautiously optimistic. We basically focus on the income from operations and recurring items. That's why for some of the gains on investments, actually we try not to be too emphasizing on these items. That's why when we look at the forecast numbers, it's between TWD 4.4-TWD 4.65. Having said that, it doesn't mean our target is to hit TWD 4.4. Actually we are still, we'll try very hard, and we'll strive to hit the higher boundary of our forecast.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, press zero-one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now in question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press zero-one. Thank you. The next question is coming from UBS, Sarah Wang. Go ahead, please.
Thank you again. Just one quick question on ICT business. We have been disclosing the growth rate for several quarters. May I ask what the percentage in terms of contribution to total revenue and then how's the margin profile of the, say, overall ICT revenue?
Currently for the ICT business, it accounts for 12% of our total revenues. For the gross margin, it's about double digit. It's about 10% plus. We expect the growth rate will still be moderate.
Thank you. Going forward, are we also accounting 5G enterprise projects inside this ICT revenue?
Yes.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you very much. The next question is coming from Deutsche Bank, Peter Milliken. Go ahead, please.
Hi, good afternoon. My question is about the impact of the merger that has been proposed in the market. Do you have any views on how that may impact you or the industry in the medium term, and what opportunities and/or challenges you see from it?
Peter, could you repeat your question?
Sure. Yeah, I was asking about the merger in the market that's been proposed between Taiwan Star and Taiwan Mobile. What challenges and opportunities do you see presenting to Chunghwa as a result of that merger? Whether you think there will be other industry impacts from it?
We think the decrease of the number of mobile operators will be really helpful for a healthy market in the medium term. We think Chunghwa has the largest 5G plus 4G spectrum resources to serve our enterprise and retail customers and the current multi-SIM standalone network structure. That is very important. Currently, we have built more than 12,500 5G base stations, as I mentioned earlier, including more than 10,000 contiguous 90 MHz 3.5 GHz with the largest spectrum, which provides excellent user experience.
As for the 5G private network, we have been opening quite a few projects for leading companies and government entities in Taiwan for smart solutions, like smart manufacturing, et cetera. As I mentioned earlier, our 5G ecosystem is relatively mature and ready in terms of devices, equipment, et cetera. Actually, it takes time to integrate networks and more momentum to see synergies of such integrations. Yeah. Thank you.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, please press zero-one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question. When you're speaking, please speak louder or closer to the microphone. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please press zero-one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question. Now, please press zero-one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question. If there are no further questions, I will turn it back over to Harrison Kuo. Go ahead, please.
Thank you for your participation and a happy Chinese New Year. Goodbye.
Thank you, Harrison Kuo. Thank you for your participation in Chunghwa Telecom's conference. There will be a webcast replay within an hour. Please visit www.cht.com.tw/ir under the IR Calendar section. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.