Chunghwa Telecom - Q4 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Chunghwa Telecom conference call for the company's fourth quarter 2025 operating results. During the presentation, all lines will be on listen-only mode. When the briefing is finished, directions for submitting your questions will be given in the Q&A session. For your information, this conference call is now being broadcasted live over the Internet. A webcast replay will be available within an hour after the conference is finished. Please visit CHT IR website at www.cht.com.tw/ir under the IR Calendar section. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Ms. Angela Tsai, Vice President of Finance. Thank you. Ms. Tsai, please begin.

Angela Tsai (VP of Finance and Assistant VP of IR)

Thank you. I'm Angela Tsai, Vice President of Finance, Finance at Chunghwa Telecom. Welcome to our fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Chunghwa's President, Rong-Shy Lin, and our Chief Financial Officer, Audrey Hsu. During today's call, management will begin by sharing our recent strategic achievements and providing an overview of our fourth quarter business results. This will be followed by a discussion of our segment performance and financial highlights. We will then open the floor for questions and answers. Please turn to slide two to review our disclaimers and forward-looking statements disclosures. Now, without further delay, I'll turn the call over to our president. President Lin, please go ahead.

Rong-Shy Lin (President and Director)

Thank you, Angela, and hello, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter 2025 results conference call. To begin, I am pleased to report our exceptional financial performance for 2025. Driven by our dedicated efforts, Chunghwa Telecom's revenue, operating income, income before tax, and EPS for 2025 all exceeded the upper end of our guidance, reflecting our strong execution and the market-leading position. On the revenue front, we, our full year revenue reached an all-time high, demonstrating our continued focus on strengthening our core businesses and active expansion in the ICT sector. Notably, our full year EPS of TWD 4.99 marked an eight-year high, extending our annual growth momentum for the sixth consecutive year. This milestone underscores our commitment to driving innovation and enhancing long-term shareholders' value.

Based on the strong outperformance in 2025, we are entering 2026 with confidence. For our telecom businesses, we see Taiwan's mobile market remaining stable and favorable to us as the market leader. We are also pleased with our fixed broadband performance, and we will extend the successful existing strategy for further ARPU enhancement. In terms of ICT business, our technology capability will continue to remain cutting edge to support future growth. A particular highlight is our satellite opportunities, as we believe demand of satellite services as the communication backup solution will increase. With our satellite, satellites of OneWeb and the SES commencing operation in 2025. The Astranis satellite will join in second half of 2026 to enhance our multilayer team.

Furthermore, we will also focus on extending pre-6G related opportunities in AIoT, satellite, and big data services, and expect their combined revenue to surpass TWD 10 billion in 2026. We particularly expect to convert our AI capabilities into our service offering. We expect to assist our customer to integrate AI into their operational processes, legal compliance, and infrastructure management. In addition, as a leader in AI-driven connectivity, we are introducing AI edge computing into our AIDC to create a new revenue stream, alongside our continued construction of AIDC in 2026. Ultimately, in the fourth quarter, we were honored with multiple awards, recognizing both our ESG accomplishments and the technical acknowledgement.

We won the ESG Award for Corporate Sustainability Leadership for the fifth time, received the Silver AI Innovation Award at the World Communication Awards for our smart customer services solution, and was recognized as the only Taiwanese telecom company on this week's World's Most Trustworthy Companies 2025 list. More importantly, we have secured 4.6 billion kWh of renewable energy through a 20-year corporate power purchase agreement, CPPA, to support our 2045 net zero commitment. Now, let's turn to our fourth quarter 2025 results. Please flip to page four for the business overview. Please turn to page five. To review our success in Taiwan mobile market. In the first quarter, we solidified our leadership position in Taiwan's mobile market for 2025, with record highs across all dimensions.

According to data from our telecom regulator, our mobile revenue market share climbed to unprecedented 41%, while our subscriber market share rose to 39.7%, mainly driven by continued growth in the postpaid subscriber. We are pleased with this strong result. Our 5G performance was equally impressive. Based on regulators' data, our 5G subscriber market share increased to 39.2%, further solidifying our industry-leading position. The 5G penetration rate among our smartphone users climbed to 46.4% by the end of 2025, while the average monthly fee uplift from 5G migration remained robust at 41%. Given this solid momentum, we were especially encouraged by our strong mobile service revenue growth in the first quarter, which achieved a recent record high of 4.7% year-over-year.

Postpaid ARPU also grew 3.6% by this positive trajectory to continue, supported by Taiwan's favorable mobile market landscape. Let's move on to slide six for our fixed broadband business update. In the first quarter, our fixed broadband ARPU continued its upward trajectory, reaching a new high of NT$819 per month. This represents a 3.8% increase in revenue and a 0.5% increase in subscribers year-over-year. This strong result was driven by our high-speed upgrade promotion and MOD bundle packages, which successfully boosted the customer adoption of higher tier plans.

Subscribers choosing speed of 300 Mbps and above grew by 13% year-over-year, while those opting for 500 Mbps and above recorded a double-digit growth, and the subscription for 1 Gbps and above doubled in the fourth quarter. Slide seven provides a detailed overview of the highlights from our consumer application services. In the fourth quarter, our multiple play packages, which integrate mobile fixed broadband and Wi-Fi services, increased by 17% year-over-year, marking the 16th consecutive quarter of expansion and representing the collective growth momentum of our customer business group. In 2025, despite the absence of major global sporting event broadcasting, resulting in overall subscription loss, our Hami Video service demonstrated that solid resilience as its ARPU increased by more than 25% year-over-year in the first quarter.

Looking ahead, with the launch of Disney+ bundled this January and our ongoing partnership with Netflix, coupled with the exciting pipeline of popular sporting events such as the FIFA World Cup, World Cup, Asian Games, and etc., we expect to drive further revenue growth throughout 2026. Meanwhile, our consumer cybersecurity subscription recorded 11% year-over-year growth, with revenue also achieving double-digit gains, contributing to our to the steady growth for our consumer business group. The key development in our enterprise ICT business. In the fourth quarter, our group's ICT revenue declined by 6% year-over-year due to a higher comparison base in the same period of last year, though our full year ICT revenues still recorded robust year-over-year growth.

Meanwhile, our recurring ICT revenue grew 15, 15% year-over-year, continuing to show strong momentum, supported by increases across all major service lines, particularly contributions of AIoT, IDC, and international public cloud services. Looking at the specific service categories, revenue from IDC, big data, and the 5G private network grew by 19%, 3%, and 88% year-over-year, respectively. IDC performance benefited primarily from project completion in message revenue increased, driven by its recurring revenue growth. Revenue from 5G private network surged, supported by the project revenue recognition from both public and private sector customer. However, revenue from cloud and AIDC business declined by 16% and 27% year-over-year, respectively, due to a high base last year.

Our cybersecurity services, cybersecurity service revenue also decreased by 16% year-over-year, as the majority of our cybersecurity revenue for 2025 had already been recognized in three quarters. Notably, despite the quarterly frustration, both cloud service and the cybersecurity business still deliver full year revenue growth. We are also proud to share that we secure an AI customer service solution to build the first integrated AI customer services system for a leading in Taiwan. Furthermore, we secure a flagship government system integration project to upgrade the labor insurance platform to next generation infrastructure, with a contract value exceeding TWD 3 billion.

In addition, to further leverage our sea, land, and sky network deployment and expand our satellite business scale, we successfully incorporated our satellite services as part of the government's joint procurement contract framework, paving the way for more long-term service contract from government agencies. Lastly, our deployment of remote surveillance platform for correctional institution nationwide brought us five additional new projects in the fourth quarter, with a total contract value nearing TWD 150 million. We expect to further replicate and scale this success in the coming year. Slide nine illustrates the performance of our international subsidiaries. In the fourth quarter, our international subsidiaries revenue decreased 7% year-over-year, mainly due to sovereign demand for voice services, as well as higher comparison base in the United States and the Japan ICT market last year.

However, we are glad to see a 12% year-over-year revenue increase in South Asia, Southeast Asia market as we completed the multiple planned construction project in Singapore and Thailand to continue through 2026. Notably, our Malaysia subsidiary commenced operations in December 2025, aiming to provide more timely, high vision ICT integration services for Taiwanese and the multinational enterprise in the growing Southeast Asia market. Looking ahead of 2026, we maintain a relatively optimistic outlook for our global market development, as we have secured several AI supply chain projects in the United States in our pipeline, including key project in Texas and California, which is expected to significantly boost our U.S. market performance in 2026. Now let's move on to page 10 for the financial performance of our three business group.

In the fourth quarter, our CDG delivered a robust 6% year-over-year revenue growth, supported by a steady increase in both mobile and fixed broadband services, plus higher sale, higher sales driven by the iPhone demand. However, its income before tax slightly decreased, mainly dragged by the final phase of 3G tele- telecom equipment impairment, which has fully recognized in the fourth quarters and a higher comparison base from government subsidies recorded in the same period last year. Our EBG, and, revenue decreased by 7.9% year-over-year. All major ICT projects has already been rec- recognized in previous quarters, resulting, resulting in a 7% year-over-year drop in the EBG ICT revenue. Income before tax was also impacted by the one-time impairment mentioned earlier. Encouragingly, EBG mobile and the fixed broadband services, as well as its satellite services, still deliver solid growth momentum this quarter.

As for our IBG by 2.5%, and income before tax increased by 1.8% year-over-year, driven by rising demand for the international IDC services and a stronger roaming revenue. Furthermore, we are pleased to report that our submarine cables, SJC2, and the first phase of Apricot... were completed this quarter and further boosted IBG's fixed line services revenue by 2.2% year-over-year. Now, I would like to hand the call over to Audrey for financial updates.

Audrey Wen-Hsin Hsu (SEVP and CFO)

Thank you, President. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to walk you through of our financial performance for the fourth quarter and full year of 2025, and share our financial guidance for 2026. So now please turn to slide 12 for our income statement highlights. Let's start with our fourth quarter results, shown in the first three columns on the slide. Revenue and operations. We reported consolidated revenue of TWD 65.65 billion. This represent a steady 0.5% year-over-year increase, and makes our highest fourth quarter revenue in nearly a decade. This growth was fueled by strong mobile device sales, alongside the sustained momentum of our core telecom service. Income from operations decreased by 2.2%.

This was primarily due to one-off impairment losses from the 3G network sunset this quarter, coupled with a high comparative base from last year's investment property valuation gain. Income before tax increased by 2.1% year-over-year. This growth was driven by investment disposal gains reflected in our non-operating income. As a result of this performance, EPS increased from TWD 1.16 - TWD 1.20. This reflects our consistent profitability and marks the highest fourth quarter EPS in 10 years. Finally, EBITDA for the quarter remained stable at TWD 21.55 billion. The EBITDA margin stood at 32.82%. So now let's expand our view to the full year of 2025, shown in the last three columns. The annual view reflects a strong growth trajectory.

So for the full year, total revenue reached TWD 236.11 billion, a solid increase of 2.7% compared to 2024. The growth was broad-based and driven by three pillars. First, we saw strong momentum in our sales revenue. This was fueled by higher mobile handset volumes and the robust performance of our subsidiary, Chunghwa Precision Tests, in the semiconductor testing sector. Second, our ICT portfolio continued to deliver with significant contribution from high growth areas such as IDC, cloud, and cybersecurity. Third, we maintain steady growth across our foundational mobile service and fixed broadband business. So this top-line strength translated directly into profitability. Income from operations grew by 3.6%, and net income rose by 4% year-over-year.

Consequently, full year EPS reached TWD 4.99, up from TWD 4.8 last year. EBITDA also grew 2.6% year-over-year to a strong TWD 88.77 billion. Our EBITDA margin remained stable at 37.6%, broadly consistent with the prior year. So in summary, these results reflect high-quality earnings growth. This profit expansion was driven by sustained positive momentum in our core telecom business, complemented by the continued scaling of our IDC, cloud service, and other ICT business operations. So now let's turn to slide 13, balance sheet highlights. So total assets increased by 0.4% year-over-year. The growth reflects strategic allocation into long-term investments and prepayments for satellite infrastructure reported in other assets.

The increase was partially offset by a net decrease in property, plant, and equipment, as depreciation charge exceeded new capital additions, along with a net decrease in intangible assets due to the 4G and 5G spectrum amortization. On the liability side, total obligation decreased by 0.7%. We repay older loan, older loans, while successfully issuing our first-ever sustainability bonds focused on biodiversity. The strategy not only strengthen our capital structure and reinforce our driven financing. Our financial health is best illustrated by our key ratios. Our debt ratio improves further to 25.25%. Our current ratio remained healthy, well above 100%. Most notably, our net debt to EBITDA ratio stood at 0. Moving to slide 14 for our cash flow summary. We will review our performance for the full year 2025.

Cash flow from operating activities decreased slightly by 2.2%. The variation was primarily driven by working capital dynamics, specifically, a decrease in accounts payable between 2025 and 2024. On the investment front, CapEx declines by 3.7% to TWD 27.7 billion. First, regarding non-mobile CapEx, spending decreased by TWD 1.4 billion. The reduction aligns with our roadmap to lower mobile capital intensity now that we have passed the peak of the 5G deployment cycle. Second, regarding the non-mobile CapEx, spending increased by 2%. The increase was mainly driven by strategic investment in submarine cables. Consequently, free cash flow stood at TWD 49.8 billion, a marginal decrease of 1.4% year over year. Despite this slight variation, we continue to maintain a strong cash position.

Our stable cash flow inflows remain fully capable of supporting both our business growth initiatives and our commitment to shareholder returns. So now let's turn to slide 15 to review our performance highlights against guidance. So in the fourth quarter of 2025, revenue exceeds the target, showing stronger than expected demand. Key performance measures, such as net income and EPS, were all in line with our forecast. For the full year 2025, the cumulative results validate our strategy. We are very proud to metrics, revenue, income from operations, net income, EPS, and EBITDA, either met or exceeds our full year guidance. Again, this broad-based success was powered by our telecom business, driven by a successful 5G migration and mobile service revenue growth, alongside our ICT business, which capitalizes on expanding demand for IDC and cloud big data overseas markets. So now moving on to slide 16, 16.

Please see our guidance for 2026. Looking ahead, total revenue for 2026 is expected to increase between 2% year-over-year, primarily driven by growth momentum in our core business. Where we see 5G service and speed upgrade promotion packages for fixed broadband are expected to continuously enhance our subscriber numbers and our pool. ICT business is also expected to contribute to revenue growth as we continue to see digital transformation opportunities in the market. Operating costs and expenses are expected to increase between 3.5%-3.7%, investment in talent and infrastructure that support future business development in both core and emerging business. So given these projections, we expect our EPS to be in the range of NT$4.82-NT$5.02.

As for capital budgeting, we have budgeted TWD 31.91 billion for 2026. Looking ahead, our with our long-term roadmap, balances discipline efficiency with strategic expansion into resilient and sustainable infrastructure. Our mobile-related CapEx is expected to decrease by 6.3% year-over-year. This marks the fifth consecutive year of this decline since our peak in 2021. This demonstrate our ability to maintain our mobile leadership through capital efficiency as we move past the heavy 5G construction phase. Non-mobile related CapEx is expected to increase. Investment is strictly aligned with our sea, land, sky strategy to capture emerging business opportunities while fortifying our network. Key investment include expanding submarine cables to boost connectivity, alongside building our IDC data center. We also strengthen infrastructure resilience by upgrading power, cooling, and cybersecurity systems.

We are turning digital resilience into a unique competitive advantage. This concludes our financial results highlights. Thank you for your attention. At this time, we would like to open the conference call for questions.

Operator (participant)

Yes, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now in Q&A session. If you have any questions for any of the today's, star key and one on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. After you are announced, please ask a question. If you would like to cancel your questions, please press star key and two. You're also welcome to send questions via chat box on the webcast page. We will begin with the questions from telephone line first, and then move to queries from the webcast page. Thank you. Now, for participants online, on telephone line, if you would like to ask, star key and one. Thank you. As a reminder, we are in Q&A session right now. If you would like to ask questions, please press star key and one on your telephone keypad. Thank you.

Please press star key and one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask questions. Thank you. Now, the first one to ask questions, correct me if I pronounce wrongly. Okay, Rajesh at J.P. Morgan, go ahead, please.

Speaker 4

Thank you very much. A quick question on the CapEx. If you can give some more detail about the big increase in the non-mobile CapEx, which is almost 24% for 2026. And also, can you provide some more details about, you know, you're looking at like almost 3.5%-4% increase in the operating costs, which is higher than the revenue growth as well. That as well. Thanks.

Audrey Wen-Hsin Hsu (SEVP and CFO)

Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Raja. So, the first question is about CapEx, about more detail on non-mobile CapEx, about 24% increase in 2026. So, there are a couple of categories, as I just mentioned. This include, like, the fixed line maintenance, which consists of, quite, the big proportion, of the fixed line maintenance. And, the second is about the, the satellite and also the cables. And the third one is the IDC. I should say that, mainly that, from, the IDC and also the satellite, portion. And so, this is the, for the first part. And, the second part about the increase, about 3.5%, operating costs.

I think that one of the main. There are two main portions. One, couple of the reason is that one is the human resource, the talents. I think that, as you know, that we are in emerging in a growing. We have a lot of the sectors in IDC. We need a lot of the AI-related talents, so investment in the human resource is one important area. And the second is that electricity. I think that we are not so sure about the electricity policy in Taiwan, so we bit cautious. Also, this is also a second big area that takes our the cost. The third one is about depreciation.

As that, in the early stage, we have, although that, we try to trend down a lot of the CapEx in recent years, as I mentioned, that discipline management is a key philosophy in our CapEx policy. But in the early many, in the early stage that we still have some CapEx. So you will see, as you see in our cash flow statements, you will see depreciation and also the amortization. These two portions is a bit much higher than the net increase of our CapEx of the PPE. So is that clear, or do you want me to clarify any others?

Speaker 4

Yeah. Can you, if you can share, like, of the total increase in non-mobile CapEx, how much is from IDC?

Audrey Wen-Hsin Hsu (SEVP and CFO)

We don't separately disclose the exact number of the CapEx budget for each non-mobile item. But, you know, but I can share with you that I think the CapEx for IDC and cloud, you know, it's remained, the, I mean, like the second-largest parts of the non-mobile CapEx.

Angela Tsai (VP of Finance and Assistant VP of IR)

... CapEx for 2026. Okay. And then, I want to add some, one more point for the non-mobile CapEx. As we know that CapEx investments, we have just, you know, passed the peak, right? But, for 2026, actually, we will invest in, SA standalone related applications like the network slicing, for your reference. But, the total non-mobile CapEx in, for 2026, actually, still, less than that of the 2025.

Speaker 4

I got it. This is helpful. I, it would really be helpful if going forward, you can provide greater breakup of non-mobile CapEx because, you know, it's almost like more than 3/4 of your CapEx is now non-mobile CapEx. So it would really be helpful to get more details about that in the future. Thank you.

Angela Tsai (VP of Finance and Assistant VP of IR)

Okay. Thank you for your opinion.

Operator (participant)

As a reminder, please press star key and one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask questions. Thank you. There seems to be no further questions at this moment. I will turn it over to President Lin. Please go ahead, please.

Rong-Shy Lin (President and Director)

Okay. Thank you very much for your participation. Yeah.

Angela Tsai (VP of Finance and Assistant VP of IR)

Happy New Year.

Rong-Shy Lin (President and Director)

Happy New Year.

Operator (participant)

Yes. Thank you, President Lin, and ladies and gentlemen in Chunghwa Telecom's conference. There will be a webcast replay within an hour. Please visit CHT IR website at www.cht.com.tw/ir under the IR Calendar section. You may now disconnect. Thank you again, and goodbye.