Welcome, everyone, to Far EasTone's 2024 first quarter earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the presentation, there will be a question-and-answer section. Please follow the instructions given at that time if you would like to ask a question. For your information, a webcast replay will be available within an hour. After the conference is finished, please visit www.fareastone.com.tw under the Investor Relations section. I would like to introduce Gary Lai, our officer. Gary, you may begin.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you to attend Far EasTone 2024 first quarter results conference call. Both President Chee and CFO Sharon joined the call with us today. Before Chee's presentation, please kindly pay attention to our disclaimer page. Let me pass to President Chee. Thank you.
Thank you, Gary. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for this first quarter IR call. First of all, I think we have a very good quarter, and organically, the FET business performed very well for both core and new business, and also across our BUs. The carried-over business from APT, it continued. It actually contributed to higher EBITDA and also revenue than we originally had forecast. That was all good. Our migration of APT mobile users continued with very good uplifts, and then also the NP market from where we can see is also very encouraging. Let me go to the financials. The first chart shows that all KPIs have exceeded guidance with, of course, the merger synergy. The total revenue came to TWD 25.75 billion, and that is more than 15% of growth year-over-year.
In terms of the goal achievement, it's over the goal by 2%. Our EBITDA also shows TWD 8.89 billion. That is a record high for us. It's 11.9% compared with the same quarter last year, and it is also exceeding our board target. The net income, we have got TWD 2.92 versus our original forecast. That is TWD 2.54. So it's 6.1% growth from the same time last year, and also 15 better than our goal target. Okay. The EPS, so remember our number of shares have increased by almost like 10%, 9%-ish. So it is TWD 0.81, and then compared to the same quarter last year, that is -4.1%. Why? But then compared to our own forecast, that's 15% over. Okay. Just some highlights and looking at the trend.
So our first quarter revenue, of course, the growth is contributed by not only the revenue synergy from the merger and also our organic 5G upgrades also is going very well and steadily. And also the handset sales, of course, our new economy revenue continues to grow very steadily. So the total revenue, we have seen a positive year-over-year growth for 14 consecutive quarters now. And it comes to the EBITDA. The first quarter EBITDA, as I mentioned earlier, this TWD 8.89 billion actually reached the record high for Far EasTone. And then, of course, this is attributed to merger synergy and also better margin from expanded core business in general. Okay. And for the net income, it's TWD 2.92 billion, and it is a new high for the same quarter in eight years. In the first quarter, net income grew 6.1% year-over-year.
This is attributed to higher EBITDA and also the non-op gains that we have seen from some short-term investments. Even we do get some higher D&A because of the merger, but then we were able to offset that in our first quarter performance. Okay. Look at some other financial metrics. Our net debt and net debt to EBITDA ratio has remained healthy, as you can tell. Our free cash flow continues to be strong. CapEx is in line with our 2024 guidance. That is TWD 8.1 billion. All right. In terms of the mobile core business, this mobile service revenue has grown 18.3% year-over-year to TWD 14.99 billion. It's almost TWD 15 billion. Our mobile postpaid ARPU, because of the merger, so the denominator is now bigger with APT users combined. Of course, APT users' average, their ARPU was lower.
And then so that did kind of hurt our ARPU a little bit from the 700s now down to below 700, but we still outperform our peers in this category. Okay. And then in terms of the total number of customers, it comes to 9.079 million. And then in terms of the 5G penetration, as we have mentioned before, actually, before the merger was effective on December 15th, Far EasTone has already achieved the target for last year for the 40% penetration. And then, of course, after the merger, the base is bigger now. But then even with that, at this point, we already have reached 39% penetration. And our new economy continues to grow, and then also we continue to expand our margin. And then in the first quarter, the growth is 12% year-over-year.
This is mostly organic Far EasTone because APT, yeah, just really wasn't particularly doing anything in this area. And then also our margin has increased with a year-over-year growth rate of 21%. Okay. And some highlights here. So our smart ICT business continues to do well, and it is 18% growth. And then in terms of margin, that is saying 30% year-over-year. This is partly due to we being more selective and then we de-risk. And then so in terms of overall management of our ICT business, it's getting us better margin and then at the same time still keep the revenue growing. And our security service has been doing very well. And then since a year ago, the business is turning around and very good, and the revenue has grown 52%.
Even this is the first quarter, usually it's a slower quarter for our subsidiary ISSDU, but then it has already performed very well and then has more evenly kind of revenue performance. The margin has also gone up, and that is 61% year-over-year, so very impressive. Then on the right-hand side is our consumer business, our friDay Video. It is double-digit growth for both revenue and margin. Our handset insurance and also the direct carrier billing payment business, we are seeing a very steady growth, and also it's a pretty big pace. The revenue is 12% year-over-year, and then the margin is 11% year-over-year. Some highlights from the consumer business, just for information. Our friDay Video maintains the number one local OTT platform position. It's experiencing growth in paid memberships and also revenue.
And also we continue to invest in this area, and we have been seeing some good success with the original content that we invested. And just recently, it has premiered a new global movie in March, and then it has hit the box office pretty well. Okay. And then we have also expanded our online candle lighting blessing. As you know, this blessing business in Taiwan is quite popular, and then we make it digital, and then we lead the market in providing a variety of this online worship, we call it, product year-round. So number of transactions have surged nearly 50% year-over-year. So in the past, people do that before the new year, but then now they can do it all year round. Okay. And then so for our security feature, that's a network security feature.
We have worked with an Israeli company a lot, so we offer this Guardian Network feature. And then we have seen double-digit year-over-year growth in subscriber numbers, and also it reached over 600,000. And then also it's 70% of them would convert to a paid after-trial. So that is a very high percentage of a conversion compared to other similar or other digital offers that we have done in the past. And also, as you might have heard, because of the April 3rd earthquake that has caused quite damage to Hualien area, so we have offered this send love to Hualien via our online shopping, friDay Shopping. And then so it's a care project. So we offer free shipping and waived fees for the local business, and so we encourage the rest of the country consumers to buy more products or merchandise from the Hualien merchants. Okay.
And then we have seen some good results for them as well. All right. For the enterprise business highlight, we have since a year ago concentrated on four particular areas for us to grow our ICT business. And this is also contributing to what we have seen, the higher margin, the much improved margin. And then so the four areas, that's where I show the highlights accordingly. So in the sustainable smart city, we have some air quality sensor maintenance and operations project. That is ongoing for a big government agency. So this is a kind of recurring business for us. And also we have some construction and maintenance project for rainwater store, water level monitoring system. And this is all related to our smart city solutions. Also, APT, actually, they have one particular solution in the sewer water monitoring that we have integrated into our smart city platform.
So that definitely helps score there as well. Our telecom-based SI continues to grow very well. The merger with APT actually expanded our enterprise customer base. So the telecom customers that we already have and plus theirs really give us more uplift or upsell opportunities. So this MPLS VPN circuit integration in cybersecurity, equipment upgrade project for connecting all branch ATMs of a local big bank, we have secured that. Our telemedicine project already has finished all 14 counties, and that covers 51 villages and small cities in terms of this project that was sponsored by the government. On top of that, we have provided this smart ambulance project. So that is kind of tailoring the original platform. On top of it, we customize it for the ambulance use.
So, we are deploying to different counties, various counties. And then, so we do that as a charity project, as an initial offer. And then we know from Taipei City as an example, after they have used it and they do see the effectiveness and how, in what they call the golden window, how you can save more lives, right, for those that are transported by the ambulance. So we expect this will expand. This service demand will come up in due time. Okay. And there's some digital transformation project there. And then last year, we have got this Microsoft LSP license. So we continue to grow well, and then we have seen very impressive numbers in terms of the contract values that we have secured.
And what is good with this business is it is recurring once you have secured a contract, like a three-year contract, and it will renew and recur. And then we will become part of the IT budget for those clients. And then also we have some other work with the drug evidence management system for the Coast Guard. So we have quite a variety of kind of clients that can use our digital transformation capabilities and professional service here. Okay. All right. Just some major honors and recognitions that we have received in the first quarter and recently. First of all, the Taiwan Stock Exchange, this is like hot off the press that we are confirmed that we ranked in the top 5% again of the listed companies for corporate governance evaluation. And this is actually 10 years in a row now.
I think there are very few companies who are in the same tier with us. And then Finance Asia recently has given us the award. And thanks to those of you who have voted for us that we have received the award for Best CEO and Best Mid-Cap Company in Asia's Best Companies poll 2024. Okay. And our microgrid renewable energy application, that is our EMS energy management system solution, has won this 2024 Smart City Innovation Application Award. Okay. And we also ranked the top 5% globally for this S&P Global 2024 Sustainability Yearbook. For the CDP Climate Change, we are also the only telco in Taiwan to receive the highest A-level rating for four years in a row. Okay. And the last but not least, it is Taiwan's Chain Store and Franchise Association.
We have three store managers actually receive the National Excellence Store Manager Award and then receive the award from the President Chee Ching herself. Okay. All right. So moving forward, we want to continue to finish our RAN network migration. And also, as you may have heard, that the 3G sunset is set for June 30th. And after that, we can fully realize our cost savings from the merger. And also for the 3G sunset, we can finally get rid of these 3G equipment that will definitely help us with our utilities. Okay. And then we will continue to grow our telecom services revenue with expanded customer base now for both mobile and fixed. Okay. And then we'll continue to expand our new economy business growth with smart ICT solutions and then expanded enterprise customer base. Okay. And also, especially with us, wanted to increase our presence in consumer space.
So we will accelerate our developing and investing in FET digital services. This is not only in reaching the current services that we already have, like we use in like a Gen AI in our friDay Video, friDay shopping, and all that. Then we are also looking to see the new applications that with the Gen AI empowered and that will suit our consumers. So hopefully, this will give us more added value and to offer more premium services for those that are willing to pay higher monthly fees and all that. So this is one area definitely we already are working very hard. And hopefully, before soon, we will start seeing some results. Okay. And then final reminder, we are going to have our annual shareholders' meeting on June 21st, 2024. Okay. With that, I think that's my last slide, and I'll welcome your questions. Thank you.
We will now begin our question and answer section. If you have a question for any of today's speakers, please press star one on your telephone keypad, and you will enter a queue. After you are announced, please ask your question. If you find that your question has been answered before it is your turn to speak, please press star two to cancel the question. Now, first question from Neil Anderson of HSBC.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Two questions, please. The first one relates to the merger synergies. And it looks like I think you mentioned first quarter you're on track for June, and that still seems to be the case. But you've exceeded your guidance by quite a lot. So can you give us any more commentary on, is there any area of the merger integration that's ahead of plan and leading you to be ahead of your guidance?
That's the first question. The second one relates to the new economy business. So the pretty strong percentage increase in margin that you detail in the presentation. I think some of that you mentioned is due to the change in mix. But do you think that's sustainable through the rest of this year that you can keep growing at that rate? Can that continue? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Neil. Okay. To answer your first question, as I mentioned, so the merger synergy, we do see higher revenue than we originally estimated for the APT carried-over business. So that's for one. And then so with that, it also helped with more EBITDA coming from the original APT business part. And also because of that, and then the bigger base for us to upsell. So that all contributed to the higher EBITDA and also higher revenue.
And then our RAN consolidation also and then we finished the consolidation from the RAN network per se before the end of January, as you know. But then there's a lot of follow-up work before we can fully realize the benefit of getting rid of the lease, right, the rental lease and all that. So that is ongoing, and we are slightly ahead of the schedule. But then we should see more OpEx savings starting in second quarter and then more in the second half. And then your second question about the new economy margin, is that sustainable? Yes. Especially, this is only after we started moving towards this four-concentration area.
And this year, the first three months, actually, I was working with my team to further streamline our process and the SOPs and simplify some of the processes that we use because in terms of trying to get to the business demand quickly or more agile. So some of that we kind of make do with the system and process. But then this time, we made the effort to really sort it through and then make the simplification. So that will help ourselves, this quote, "to cash process," a lot more efficient. And then with the four-concentration, everybody now is very familiar end to end from the sales all the way to delivery. So I do see this to become sustainable, and the result will be even more significant.
Thank you very much.
Just on the margin level of the new economy business, I think before you indicated that it was, if I remember rightly, 15%-20%, around that sort of area. Is that right?
Right.
Yeah. Okay. So just checking on that. All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We are now in Q&A section. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad.
Yeah. Sorry, I need to make a clarification. I didn't really finish with Neil. So Neil, to be exact, what we were saying before, we were in the 20th, and now we have actually exceeded 30% margin-wise for new economy. Neil, you got that?
Sorry. Neil is off of the line.
Oh. Okay.
But he can hear.
Okay.
As a reminder, please press star one on your keypad if you would like to ask a question.
We are now in Q&A section. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. There are currently no questions. I will pass the call back to Mr. Gary Lai. Gary, please proceed.
Thank you, everyone, to attend our quarterly conference call again and see you next quarter. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Please feel free to follow up with Gary if you have more questions that you didn't get to ask. Thank you again.
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