Digi reported its Fourth Quarter 2016 (4Q16) financial results yesterday.
Key takeaways below:
- 12.3 million mobile subscribers
- 10.2 million prepaid subscribers with an ARPU of RM34
- Loss 55k prepaid subscribers. Digi said “prepaid growth remained challenging from persistent intense competition and deteriorating market conditions.” Digi had 10.26 million postpaid subscribers in 3Q16.
- 2.1 million postpaid subscribers with an ARPU of RM81
- Added 105k postpaid subscribers in 4Q16
- 8.1 million Internet users or 65.8% of the total subscribers (1.8 million postpaid, 6.27 million prepaid)
- 4.2 million 4G LTE subscribers
- 4G LTE network coverage at 85% of the population, 4G+ (LTE-Advanced) population coverage at 41%
Digi said:
- RM780 million in Capex to improve overall network coverage, density and performance in 2016.
- Stepping up customer experience through digital experiences for always-on video and music streaming, gaming, internet for sharing and for daily and unlimited weekends with Digi Postpaid, Digi Live and Best Prepaid.
- Increased digital customer interactions across self-care platform MyDigi, now serving 1.5 million customers, frontline retail engagements with Mobile Sales app completing new registrations within 3 minutes and a new digital retail concept store to be rolled out in 2017.
- This continued focus on customers and innovation has seen growing confidence in Digi’s product and service offerings: 81% growth of LTE subscribers to 4.2 million in the year, and close to 600,000 new internet subscribers with significant growth in their data usage. Average data usage per user on prepaid has increased 0.9 times and 1.4 times on postpaid compared to last year.
Key highlights from the financial results, according to Digi (Q4 2016 v. Q4 2015):
- Service revenue resilient at RM1,555 million, up 0.1% q-on-q while y-on-y decline stemmed to 2.0%
- Postpaid revenue grew 13.6% to RM511 million, amped by 14.1% postpaid subscriber growth
- Prepaid revenue moderated by 8.2% to RM1,044 million over a relatively flat 10.2 million prepaid base
- Internet revenue up 15.1% over an expanded 8.1 million internet subscriber base
- EBITDA up 5.7% to RM741 million at 44% margin
- Normalised Profit After Tax (PAT) registered solid growth of 7.3% to RM410 million
- Final dividend of 4.8 sen per share or RM373 million, delivering FY2016 dividends per share of 20.9 sen
Digi’s CEO Albern Murty said, “This has been a year of strong execution for Digi. We have kept focused on delivering excellent, quality internet experiences for our customers on mobile while remaining solid in our operational performance.
“Customers are increasingly recognising the quality of our 4G plus network, internet and digital services, benefiting from the significant investments in 4G LTE, 4G+, fibre and digitisation efforts we have made over the year. This has led to strong growth in data usage across our customer base. Looking forward, the internet and smart devices will become an even bigger part of our customers’ everyday life. And our commitment as their digital life partner is to continue investing to deliver quality service excellence, and innovations in digital content and services.”
