Digi.com Berhad (Digi) reported its second quarter 2022 (2Q22) financial results last week. The Telco said it had 10.49 million subscribers at the end of June 2022, adding 127,000 new mobile subscriptions for the 3-month period in April, May and June 2022.
For the second quarter of 2022, Digi “adjusted” its reporting of the prepaid subscriber base to include customers that are still within the account Grace Period (up to 90 days). This resulted into a “technical adjustment” of an additional 140k existing prepaid subscribers for 2Q22.
As of June 2022 (2Q22), Digi’s prepaid subscriber base stood at 7.13 million (+226k including “technical adjustment”). The mobile network operator added 86,000 new prepaid subscriptions during the quarter. For 1Q22, it reported a prepaid subscriber base of 6.9 million.
Digi also re-adjusted its reporting of the postpaid mobile subscriber base to exclude fibre broadband customers, from 1Q21. There are now 3.37 million postpaid subscribers as of June 2022, “mainly from higher demand for high speed subscriptions and attractive bundling offers”. Digi added 41,000 new postpaid subscriptions between April, May and June 2022. It had 3.33 million postpaid subscribers as of March 2022 (1Q22), excluding fibre broadband customers.
APRU for prepaid increased by RM1 to RM33 while it was lower for Postpaid at RM60 (-RM1) due to “higher entry-level plan take-ups”.
92.6% of the Digi subscriber base are smartphone users and 86.9% are Internet subscribers. These customers consumed an average monthly data of 21.9GB in 2Q22 (vs 21GB in 1Q22).
There are 20,800 (+4.3k) Digi fibre broadband customers as of June 2022, up from the 16,500 in March 2022. APRU also improved from RM124 in 1Q22 to RM127 in 2Q122.
Digi’s 4G LTE human population coverage improved to 94.5% (+0.5%) while LTE-A coverage was at 78% (+1.5%). Digi said it “Recorded superior average download speeds of 44.1 Mbps in 2Q2022, record-high speed since the start of pandemic” however no further details were provided.
Financial highlights for Q2 FY2022, according to Digi:
- Postpaid revenue up 0.2% Q-Q on healthy demands for smart bundles, B2B and broadband
- Prepaid recovered 0.2% Q-Q for the first time after 3 quarters supported by resilience in Malaysian segment, stabilisation of migrant segment and higher data demands
- Fibre and digital revenue up 40.0% Q-Q and 21.7% Q-Q, respectively, fuelled by high demand for faster connectivity and gaming activities through trusted Digi brand
- Device revenue at healthy level of RM214 million to drive sustainable postpaid growth
- EBITDA (boi) up marginally 0.1% Q-Q to RM742 million or margin of 48.2%, attributed to topline growth, disciplined handset subsidies and efficient cost containment
- Profit After Tax (PAT) down 6.8% Q-Q on higher net finance costs from non-cash hedge accounting and deferred tax effects
- Second interim dividend of 2.8 sen per share, equivalent to RM218 million of dividend pay-out
Digi’s Acting Chief Executive Officer and Chief Marketing Officer, Praveen Rajan said, “Good traction in our fibre and business segments reflects our ability to deliver to the growing need for reliable, high-speed connectivity as digital adoption among consumers and businesses accelerates. To support this digitalisation drive, we continue to invest into modernising our network and expanding access to connectivity. This sets us in the right pace and direction as we commit to delivering better quality of internet experience for our customers, in line with JENDELA’s aspirations, as well as powering Malaysia’s digital economy agenda.”
