Welcome to Far EasTone 2022 fourth quarter result investor conference call. After the presentation, there will be a question and answer session. For your information, the webcast replay will be available within an hour after the conference is finished. Please visit company website at www.fareasttone.com.tw under the investor relation session. I would like to introduce Mr. Gary Lai, the IR officer. Gary, you may begin.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you to attend Far EasTone fourth quarter 2022 result conference call. Both our President Chee and CFO Sharon join the call with us today. A reminder, before Chee's presentation, please pay attention to our safe harbor statement in the first page. Let me pass the mic to Chee. Please, Chee.
Okay. Thank you, Gary. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our first fourth quarter 22 or the first IR call of the 2023. We'd like to report how we have done last year. If you turn to page 3, there is a summary on our fourth quarter last year's performance. As you can see across the board, our YOY are all positive, especially in the net income and the EPS area. That is, of course, excluding our one-time building sales in 2021. If you look at the full year for 2022, not only we achieve our BOD target, but then also across the board the YOY growth is also very positive and very encouraging.
For the 2022 financial highlights, to name a few areas, if you look at our total revenue. The fourth quarter total revenue was relatively flat. However, it's due to supply shortage of the new iPhone models, as you all recall. We had a higher base of ICT revenue in the year before. However, if you look at the EBITDA, the fourth quarter we actually recorded the highest EBITDA since 2018, the fourth quarter. In the last four years, it was the highest since. In terms of the EPS, the net income reached TWD 2.55 billion, with the EPS alone is TWD 0.78.
It is grown like 29% YOY. It is of course highest in the industry. Okay. Onto the next page. In terms of some financial metrics, if you look at it, for our both the net debt and the net debt ratio to EBITDA, they have both improved. Okay. Our free cash flow continues to be strong and healthy. Our 2022 CapEx, we spent about TWD 9.95 billion, and it was 10% below the guidance of our TWD 11.1 billion originally. Okay. If you look at our mobile core business, we have shown a solid growth, thanks to the 5G.
maybe I think a couple weeks ago or just recently, there was a report about like, the 5G penetration was kind of disappointing in Taiwan and all that. I'd like to clarify and to take this opportunity. Taiwan as a country, actually we're still ahead of Korea and Japan in terms of the penetration. Korea was deployed 5G a year before us. Korean government actually was , full force behind and then pushing for the 5G penetration. I think compared with the countries, especially East Asia countries were also more advanced than U.S. or the Western Europeans. We are actually, ahead of many countries, and this is not disappointing at all. Okay.
If you look at our mobile service revenue, we have a 2.9% year-over-year growth from 2021 to 2022. It is, a major factor. The 5G uplift is a major factor, and the continuous , increase on the penetration. Our post-paid customers, so the 5G penetration already is greater than 32% last year. If you look at our post-paid mobile ARPU, right? This is continues to be improving, and thanks to the monthly fee uplift for 5G renewals, and it's more than 20% we were looking at. Also the post-paid churn rate has hit the record low for Far EasTone at 1.0%.
That was the core business part. In terms of our new economy, the growth that we have seen is continuing. Again, since when we are tracking our new economy performance, in 2016 it accounted for 5% of the total revenue. Until last year it reached 19.4%. Also the new economy alone, it was at 18% YOY growth. Okay? If you look at the main growth drivers on the enterprise side, we have the ICT, and then cloud service is a major driver behind it. We also have a homegrown solutions ICT that also showed almost 30% YOY growth. Overall, it's a 24% YOY for the ICT side.
On the consumer digital service area, our e-commerce grew 11% and beat the market average at 8.7%. Our media service also has some okay improvement. Its growth is about 7%. Of course, during the earlier years, due to the pandemic, so the media service, they had some burst growth there. Now it is kind of back to normal, but we still see a 7% kind of YOY. All right. Some highlights for our enterprise business side. We have a strong ICT business demand, which drove the robust enterprise ICT revenue. Also, indicator is showing, going forward, our ICT contract value actually grew 38% last year, YOY.
Some of the major wins included we had it is still ongoing, the smart core building project for Southern Taiwan International Port. O ur digital transformation project, we actually seen quite a bit of the demand from the industry. The both digital transformation, which uses the cloud service, were very popular demand, and we also have done it for a world-leading fast food giant. On the EMS, the energy management solution, this, of course, not only we have deployed it in more than 1,200 elementary schools last year, and also we are extending our EMS to support a Taipower microgrid system project.
This is also one area where Far EasTone is going to put in more resources in developing and expanding the EMS solution, the platform we have. In light of this green energy or green economy, we call it our green ICT area, the demand is definitely there, we want to make sure we are in it for it. This is one area we'll continue to invest, and it is a homegrown solution. Okay. Also we actually achieved level A enterprise customer satisfaction. The NPS has improved 11 points in 2022. For those of you who are familiar with this Net Promoter Score, you would know that 11 points are very significant improvements, we are very happy about that. Okay. All right.
Then for the consumer business highlights, our friDay Video, it ranked number one in terms of the social mentions among local OTT platforms. We have hired someone with the domain experience and then who were very with many years of experience in this area. They are now, he's now serving or leading our digital entertainment area. We Since he's joined us, we actually see even more momentum going on in this area. We do hope that this year we should see some good growth from this area. As part of that, we have invested in the content, right?
In the video content, we created a joint venture with 3 top-tier entertainment partners, local partners, to produce and acquire local video content. The work has already started since last year. We expect some good work later this year coming out of this joint venture. Okay. Our friDay Shopping last year has grown 11%, we actually have the president has spent quite a bit of time and effort in improving our AI engine. There are some new models that we are looking at from this friDay Shopping, the new business model, and which in the later last year we already see some early success. We are happy about that, we expect more growth from the friDay Shopping this year. Okay.
For the Mobile Circle app, that is our digital platform, or we call it our digital reach to our customers, the downloads has now accumulated greater than 5 million downloads. That is 23% growth. Also the active monthly active users have increased 36% YOY. Okay. I think we reported in the last IR call that our first 5G Metaverse Accelerator has concluded, and then it was quite successful. In 10 companies we have done, we have evaluated for our investment, and then we actually are invest at a first batch that we have chosen a few that we would invest. Also the next accelerator also has already kicked off.
We are in the process of selecting the new batch of the companies, the startup companies for this year. Okay. We have earned some business awards. Here is just a few for your information. For our 5G telemedicine platform, it really has received quite significant recognition from many areas. First is the HIPAA certification, the security related. This is required to be able to use by hospitals or clinics and doctors. During pandemic, it was kind of like exceptional when some clinics, offices, or even hospitals are using LINE, to communicate with the users or using LINE to do the video conferencing. That was only exceptional base.
To be a legit platform, used by hospitals and all that, according to Ministry of Health and Welfare, the HIPAA certification will be required, and we have got that. We got both National Innovation Award and National Healthcare Quality Award. They are both very significant. We also received the recognition from the Harvard Business Review Taiwan edition for this Digital Transformation leadership award for this platform as well. T he rest you can probably read it for yourself, these are, reflection of our team's hard work and good work. Okay. I think the next page we have some more, quite a few of them are FEG recognitions related, okay? For your information as well. Okay. All right. If we go to the next. All right.
Now let's talk about 2023. Our priorities. This is kind of consistent with the corporate strategy we set out in 2022 for the three years kind of growth strategy. We'll continue to move more mobile growth, right? Especially with the 5G penetration. We are going to target it at 40%. This is a steady growth that we are expecting. For the ICT business, we will continue to strengthen and expand our homegrown solutions. We will focus on improving the margins and then be very selective because now we have established ourselves in this area. And then given the economy is still volatile, so we wanted to manage the risk.
We are looking at the ICT business, but then we will be even more selective. Okay. We will grow the video content business. As I mentioned earlier, we have started investing in the content business, and we should see some good result this year. Also in the digital service, such as our e-shopping, e-commerce. Okay. Of course, the biggest task upfront for us is the merger, right? We were pleased that we received approval from FCC, and then right now it is being reviewed by FTC as well. That is the next approval we need to receive.
After that, we will just go through the Taiwan Stock Exchange kind of process because both APT and FEG are listed company, there is a process, due process that we have to go through. Once we get approval from FTC, a lot of the real work, groundwork can start, right? For when the official effective merger date starts, at that time, a lot of system work will already have been completed so that we will be ready for the merger day, for the D-Day, we call it. Right now, we target it to be in the third quarter for as our D-Day. Okay? All right. Because given that we are anticipating the merger effective day will fall somewhere in the third quarter.
Unlike, previously, every year in February, our, on the, on the IR call, we will release for the full year financial forecast. This year we will change it to only the first half, because the second half will definitely be need to be modified according to the merger, the date and all that. That's why we will just release first half. In terms of the first half financial forecast, if you look at it, the total revenue will be looking at 3% year-over-year growth to reach TWD 43.91 billion. Our EBITDA will be about TWD 15.5 billion, and the net income is TWD 4.87, with a 5% year-over-year growth.
The EBITDA year-over-year growth is not as high as the revenue. That is mainly due to, first of all, with the inflation, right? Some of the headcount costs we will anticipate. Also another driving factor is the utility cost. We need to take that into account as well. All right? For the first half, our EPS guidance will be at TWD 1.49 per share. Okay? That is about 5% increase or growth from last year. Okay? Our CapEx will continue to come down. This, from TWD 9.9 billion-TWD 9.0 billion.
Of course, we have a little bit buffer there. We look at it at about TWD 9 billion, and this is our forecast for the full year CapEx. Okay? All right. Okay. All right. For the 2022 dividend proposal, of course, just a reminder, whatever we tell you now is subject still to our assembly of our gen, actually in June, right? In May. Okay. Yeah. In May. We will have our shareholders meeting in May, so this is still subject to the approval. We are proposing the 3.25. We want to still maintain our very stable dividend policy. It will be 3.25, and the payout will be at 110%. Okay?
With that, we can now welcome questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now open for questions. If you'd like to register for a question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Thank you.
Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to register for question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Thank you. Thank you. Our first question comes from Neale Anderson with HSBC. Please go ahead, Neale. Thank you.
Thank you. Good afternoon. I have two questions, please. The first relates to your new economy outlook. I understand it's difficult to give guidance for this year given the expected APT integration, but do you think you can continue to grow at a similar rate as compared to the last year? Where do you expect to see the strongest growth? You mentioned energy in your discussion earlier, and that would be good to get more detail on that. The second question relates to the 5G. I think on the last call you discussed some of the network slicing services you'd started to introduce. What's the outlook for 5G specific services? Is it possible to do more on differential pricing, say, this year or consumer services that are specific to 5G? Be very good to get your views on that.
Thank you.
Thank you, Neale. For your first question, even though we are not in a position to forecast the full year. For the new economy, I don't think we will grow because last year we are growing at like 18%, right? 18.3%. As I mentioned, given the volatile global economy, we want to be kind of cautiously optimistic. In dealing with some new, especially on the enterprise side, right, one of the biggest driver for the growth last year was from our cloud service, the cloud resale service. As some of the big users of the cloud services are in the Bitcoin or the blockchain kind of business.
That itself has quite a bit of a, like a rollercoaster ride last year. We don't know if that would continue or repeat itself and all that. We have, as we were evaluating, how we are growing our business and then how we're going forward. I have put emphasis with our in this area of the business, and then we wanted it to do more tighten the risk management to de-risk, to anticipate the kind of risk in this area. Because, as you may know, the cloud resale margin isn't that high, we don't want to, be impacted by any of the bad debt in this area.
This is why, I liked my team to actually dive into more of those, like our homegrown solutions, the higher margin. They may not grow as fast, but then those are like, you deep, you build the roots deep, and then you will continue to benefit from this growth, but then not as much as the kind of risk we are looking at in the cloud business for some of the type of accounts. I do not see we will grow at the same rate, but then it certainly will still grow. That is from the revenue perspective.
However, we are looking at, improving the margin, in a higher rate than what we have done in the past. We want to improve the new economy, especially on the ICT area. We probably improve about 2% of the margin, the overall margin for the new economy. Our focus is more on the bottom line, the EBITDA, than the top line. Let me put it that way. Okay? That is to answer your first question, Neale. For the second question. Yes, in terms of the slicing. That was more of a kind of to be, even though that's a 2G, it's a government kind of, the.
We work with the police department in Kaohsiung, actually since then we have other government agency wanted to use the technology. That is more of like a, one at a time kind of, kind of like a project, right? It is not like a for every consumer type of application. However, I see the biggest use for 5G as I can see in the near future will still be in the telemedicine area, because the policy that we have seen from the Ministry of Health and Welfare is that they are relaxing in terms of the scenario, the where, the who can use this telemedicine. That is of course in terms of that they will get reimbursed by the government insurance program.
We see that is definitely opening up. When they will make it available to just ordinary residents, right? For more for the convenience, then, out of, this necessity, like for some of the people or like in the rural areas. That is when, everyone would not take your own health, likely. Then you would like to be on the 5G network, you would like to have a good 5G, device. Now your doctor can see you clearly when they try to diagnose if you have any problems. I do see that as in the near future, that will be a, you're talking about millions of people who will just use it.
Until then, right, just how do we introduce more network features that will actually give us more added value, more added value to the users, and then also more added value to our pool. Just, late last year, so November, we kicked off. We deployed a feature that's a network security feature. We worked with Israeli company a lot, right? That's a network security feature. That is protect.
If you sign up for this feature in a part of our network feature, we actually will already , screen those websites that or links that you try to access and just check in real time if they are dangerous sites, they are risky sites, or they are, sites already on the blacklist, and then we will block them for you and then make you aware you are trying to access an unsafe site. That feature is good to protect seniors because there are just lots of fraud these days, and they are also good to protect the youths, right? Especially there were some dangerous sites. They may not be fraud related, and they may be, sites that the parents just don't want their kids to have access to.
We just deployed it in November. The report I got from my team. We actually had a very good strong sales without a lot of the marketing. Those are the kind of, features, the true value add features that we are, we want to grow more or introduce more in using our network. Whether it's using the 4G or 5G, it doesn't matter. I think to make our network different from the others, and that is one direction we want to continue to do. Okay? We don't have to wait for the 5G specific application. There's a lot more that we didn't do enough, and I think we'll do more.
Thanks very much. It's very helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Peter Milliken with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead, Peter. Thank you.
Hi. Good afternoon. My question really follows on from Neale's first question on the growth in the new economy stuff, particularly ICT. You say that your contracts are up 38% in 2022, which is great. I'm just wondering why it went up so much. Was there a lot more tendering available in the market, or were you just more aggressive on margin and now you're looking to just kind of lock in those higher volumes perhaps, but make more profit going forward? Thanks.
Okay, good question. First, why it was like a 38%? That was a good question. I think it's a mix of several factors. First, our win rate has increased. We've done better even than the year before. In terms of number of tendering, certainly it wasn't anywhere less than the year before. That same factor actually was why we were more cautious this year about the ICT. As the cross-strait tension, right? We were also anticipating some of the government budget may be shifting towards more in the military related spending. In terms of the other type of government tendering may be reducing.
That's why I wouldn't expect the kind of rosy picture will continue necessarily, at least not this year per se. This year still, there is a lot of uncertainties. We haven't really seen the tension has been totally. How would I say this? decreased, right? Still you see this back and forth. I think the tension is still there. Until we see more clearly, I want to be more cautious and conservative in terms of, what I would expect from the type of a government tendering. That definitely is one factor. Another one is, yes, we will be even more selective and in terms of how we would grow, where we will grow our ICT business.
For the cloud resale, last year it was a good contributor to the top line. Now I wanted to scale back a little bit on that. I want to grow, on our homegrown solution, like you said, the energy, right? That is both, while we are having the demand, we are also working , to expand our own platform. At the same time we are, we have some strategic partner like Microsoft, right? We are co-creating with them. So in this area, that itself is not like a right away you have the demand, but you still need to work on it. The solutions is not one size fits all necessarily.
At first there will still be some kind of fitting and tuning and customization. I would think , this year we will still kind of do that trial and error, just to get a good feel. The year after, next year, I think in terms of our ESG solutions, it will be much more clear. We probably will have more solutions that are ready to go. There will be less customization per se, the growth will be stronger next year. This year there will be still a lot of efforts for the , the lead work.
Right. Thanks. That's very clear. One other question. On the merger, do you need to give back any spectrum to allow the merger to go forward?
Well, because the government's rule changed, right? When we bid for the 28 GHz, that's the millimeter wave, for 5G at that time, we had acquired like a 400 megahertz, right? APT also had 400. According to the rule at the time we had the auction, this will be fine if we were going. Even though at that time, we didn't have any plans to merge with them.
still together, the 800 would not be a problem. Because for that millimeter wave spectrum, it wasn't totally sold, right?
There was, they changed, they reduced the denominator, okay. In other words, the cap now becomes smaller only because they didn't sell all of them. Because the new rule, now when we add together becomes 800, we are over by like 160. The government at least is reasonable enough. They said because the 60 part would be like a fractional, right. They said we only need to return 100 megahertz. That , it's really not significant, not like. Our peers that what they are going through, as you may already heard.
Yes.
To us, that's, yeah, that's really not significant. Also because that spectrum is still underutilized, but we need to pay for the spectrum fee every year anyway. We calculated, the net loss on what that is like absorbable. It's really nothing. C onsider all the synergies we'll have from the merger. To us, that is like, nothing.
Yes.
We still go forward.
Okay, great. Hey, thanks for the answers.
Sure.
Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions, please press star one on your telephone. Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to register for question, please press star 1 on your telephone. Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, that is star one for questions.
Well, if you think of any questions, you can always contact our IR team. If you need some other sessions to be arranged, we will be happy to meet with you.
Thank you. Gary, there seems to be no further question at this point in time. Thank you.