PLDT - Q3 2023

Transcript

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today to discuss the company's financial and operating results for the nine months of 2023. A copy of today's presentation is posted on our website. For those who've not been able to do so, you may download the presentation from www.pldt.com under the Investor Relations section. Kindly note that this briefing is being recorded. A podcast of this event will be available on our website after the call. QR code for the presentation is on the screen, and the MD&A, FS and podcast will be made available after the call. For today's presentation, we have with us Mr. Al Panlilio, President and CEO of PLDT and Smart, Mr. Danny Yu, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Risk Officer, Attorney Marilyn Aquino, our Corporate Secretary and Chief Legal Counsel, Mr.

Shailesh Baidwan, President of Maya Philippines and Co-founder of Maya Bank, as well as other members of the PLDT management team. At this point, let me turn the floor over to Mr. Panlilio to begin the presentation.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Thank you, Melissa. Good afternoon to all, and thank you for joining us this afternoon. I'd like to start off the presentation with a few highlights of the business, and then I'll pass it on to Danny for a more detailed financial highlights report, and then to SB for Maya. Do you have the slide? Melissa, you have the slide?

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Yes, sir.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Sorry about that. I have the slide, sir. Okay. Next page, please. Happy to report, our first nine months performance for PLDT Smart. Growth was made possible, nine months, 2020 performance. Start with, we have PHP 142.6 billion, or 1% growth in revenues, which is a nine-month high, revenues for PLDT. We also had the all-time nine-month high for our EBITDA, PHP 70.4 billion, +4% for same period of last year. Able to maintain our margin at a 52% EBITDA margin. Telco Core has shown growth also, +2%, PHP 26.1 billion, for the period. And, also want to share the CapEx we managed down to PHP 55.3 billion versus PHP 67.3 billion of same period last year.

So because of that, the CapEx intensity gone down to 37% from a high of 46% last year. Next page. So we continue to expand our network countrywide. We improved, we increased our fiber footprint, domestic fiber footprint by 44%. And that's now up to almost 394,000 kilometers. And if you add the fiber backbone of, in terms of, international subsea, it's about 1.1 million kilometers of fiber. Postpaid is at 17.31 million, up from 16.78 last year. And also happy to report that there are now more devices latched on to our network, passing 34% growth.

Now we have 3.64 million who are latched on, who latched on five new devices in our network. Jupiter Cable System, which we launched last year, was also gotten certification for ISO 22301 BCMS. And just an update on the tower sales that we started about a year and a half ago, two years ago. We've closed 1,319 posts, towers as of November 3, generating proceeds of about PHP 7.4 billion. And in total, from the first sale that we have, we've already completed total over 5,984 towers, equivalent to PHP 4.78 billion pesos. Next page, please. Happy to report also... Next page.

The recognition that we've gotten as a group, both locally. Go back one, please. Locally and globally, Umlaut has rated Smart as the best in test, both upload speeds, download speeds, and digital experience, and has been a consistent winner since 2018. TIME magazine actually also put PLDT as the only Philippine telco named, and is ranked highest in its its sustainability among six other Philippine companies, recently. And we continue to also get awards in terms of the governance initiatives scorecard, and recognition, which recognize PLDT upholding high standards of corporate governance. Next page. Our three business units continue to push for growth through innovation. Smart, we continue to empower digital lifestyles through exciting personalized offers.

We have Alex Caeg here today, who can answer your questions on what's in store for our wireless customers, and by the way, we have now the highest in terms of subscriber base, 55.2 million subscribers now on Smart, and TNT being the number one prepaid brand in the country. PLDT Home, Jeremiah de la Cruz is here. He can also share with you some of the plans in keeping families safe, connected, productive, and entertained. Both offers on fiber and fixed wireless products that he has launched in the market.

PLDT Enterprise, both Mitch Locsin and Ding Villarino are here, making sure that we're able to provide innovative solutions for the digital transformation of the industries that we, that we cover, both large, large companies and also SMEs. Next page, please. Next page. Staying true to our company score on, I guess, sustainability, we did put, you know, we had a digital convention held last October called Vision. And part of that is, part of those, discussions in the Digi Hub was about sustainability, in-depth, discussions on, sustainability and the program that, that we, we have embarked as, as PLDT. In fact, we had a swearing of ballroom over with, Joseph Horner of the ICP, Sec. Ivan, during the time. And we also implemented e-waste collection stations for delegates.

Same with the second pillar here, where we put it in our businesses, where we're collecting old phones, chargers, devices, modems to properly dispose this stuff. And, in Positive Impact, we, we did have a some initiatives that we... As for our sustainability, where we collect PET bottles, plastic bottles, that, that we want to also dispose, sustainably. Next page. Our, our push for nation building, through, public and private collaboration, remains to be strong. PLDT Group joined the call for the creation of a connectivity index, creating through PSAC to elevate internet quality in the country with the raised buildings, for, for customers and for, for people to be able to raise building its connectivity.

We also partnered with Maya, with the GDP and DTI Cashless Expo 2023, which is happening this month. During also the DigiCon, we launched the first-ever sovereign cloud in the Philippines, the fast strategic transformation of the country's public sector. But this will also be used obviously by private sector as soon as the IRR of the ICT is submitted by government. Next page, please. Our Smart, PLDT-Smart Foundation remains to be very busy in serving our communities. Just to highlight, a lot for all the public health initiatives by the first lady is supported not only by PLDT, but also the MVP Group of companies, others that we continue to push. Next page.

So at this point, we will continue to innovate for tomorrow and but, we start innovations today, and we will continue to push this last quarter to make sure that we're able to end the year at the high note. So at this point, I'd like to move the presentation to Danny for a more in-depth look at our financials.

Danny Yu (Former CFO)

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll be presenting the financial and operating highlights for the first nine months of 2023. Service revenues of PHP 142.3 billion for the first nine months of 2023 were higher by 1% compared to the same period last year. On gross basis, service revenues of PHP 149.8 billion were up 3% from PHP 145.7 billion in 2022. Operating expenses decreased by 3% or PHP 1.7 billion to PHP 63.9 billion. Consolidated EBITDA rose by 4% to PHP 78.4 billion, an all-time nine-month high, with EBITDA margin at 52%. Telco core income, excluding the impact of asset sales and Maya, grew to PHP 26.1 billion, up 2% year-on-year. Next, please. On a segment basis, revenue growth was broad-based.

Individual revenues, representing about 43% of consolidated revenues, rose 1% to PHP 60.6 billion. Record highs were registered in the home and enterprise segments. Home revenues rose 2% to PHP 45.3 billion, with fiber-only revenues having risen 10% to PHP 39.3 billion. Home revenues, our enterprise business grew by 1% to PHP 34.8 billion. Let me now go through the segments in greater detail. Next, please. Home broadband revenues grew by 2%. Fiber-only revenues, which now account for 87% total home revenues, were higher by 10% or PHP 3.6 billion compared to the same period last year.

As a result of installation plus migration and loan, fiber net adds reactivated in the third quarter with 88,000 compared to 42,000 in the second quarter, bringing the total net adds for the year to 210,000. The growth of our fiber-only revenues and the sequential, albeit modest, improvement of revenues from our fixed wireless broadband business underscore our view that the home broadband market remains under-penetrated, with unserved demand more at the lower market segments, thus more sensitive to price. Unique to PLDT is the ability to complement our fiber offer with others at different price points, using varied fixed and wireless technologies to address market affordability. PLDT continues to enjoy strong brand equity and superior network quality, making it a formidable competitor in the market. Next, please.

Data and ICT remain the key drivers of our enterprise business, which registered a revenue increase of 1% to PHP 34.8 billion from the same period last year, with third quarter revenues up by 2%. Corporate data grew by 6% due to higher fiber, IT, and iGate revenues. ePLDT recorded a 10% increase in revenues, mainly from data center and cloud services. With the Santa Rosa Data Center capacity expected to come on stream ahead of competition in the first half of 2024, ePLDT is well positioned to capture the robust demand from hyperscalers. In addition, our growth pipeline is fueled by our enterprise teams focused on enabling digital transformation in areas of corporate, SMEs, and government, including the creation of smart cities and the first launch. Next, please.

Positive trends are also manifesting in the individual segment, which has faced various challenges over the years. Revenue for our individual business rose by 1% in the first nine months of the year. In the third quarter, which is historically low, revenues were higher by PHP 100 million versus quarter and PHP 400 million higher than the same quarter in 2022. A 2% and 6% growth in prepaid and postpaid revenues in the third quarter supported year revenue improvements compared to last year. Mobile data revenues jumped to PHP 52.4 billion, with active data users of almost 38 million and following a 15% rise in data traffic. Average monthly data usage per customer escalated to 10.8 GB, up by 23% from last year and 17% from full year 2022.

While the industry availments of number portability remains small since the implementation of MNP in 2020, the majority of customers that ported their numbers moved to Smart, reflecting recognitions of PLDT's network advantage. Next, please. In the first 9 months of 2023, 82% of our consolidated service revenues were from data and broadband. By service type, mobile data rose by 3% year-on-year, while broadband and corporate data grew by 4% and 6% respectively. ICT revenues were up 10%, including an 8% rise in data center revenues. A broad-based cost management effort, next please, was undertaken, resulting in a 3% or PHP 1.7 billion drop in total expenses, including provisions and subsidies.

The combined impact of increase in revenues and decline in costs is a 4% rise in consolidated EBITDA to PHP 78.4 billion, a nine-month record high, with margin at 52%. Next, please. Telco core income for the period grew by 2% to PHP 26.1 billion year-on-year, reflecting the impact of higher EBITDA, partly offset by higher depreciation, higher financing costs, and higher tax provision. Telco core for the third quarter is stable compared to the same quarter last year. Next, please. On reported basis, PLDT income grew by 1% to PHP 27.9 billion, mainly from the gain from the tower sale and leaseback transactions, Forex and derivative gains, partly offset by MRP costs. Note that our share in losses from Maya stood at PHP 1.7 billion, lower than the PHP 2.4 billion reported last year.

This moderation in losses is in line with the expectation of breakeven and profitability towards the end of 2024. Next, please. PLDT's balance sheet remains healthy, with net debt to EBITDA at the end of September at 2.44 times, lower than the 2.48 times at the end of June. We expect this to further improve with the receipt of the remaining tower sales proceeds. Gross debt amounted to PHP 274.5 billion, of which 15% are dollar-denominated and 5% unhedged. Interest costs for the period stood at PHP 4.49 billion pre-tax, while the average life of debt is 6.7 years. Next, please. Total CapEx for nine months amounted to PHP 55.3 billion, consisting of network and IT CapEx of PHP 49.4 billion and business CapEx of PHP 6 billion.

In line with our objective of bringing down CapEx and aiming for positive free cash flow, CapEx intensity for the period has fallen below the 40% mark to 37% and is lower than the 46% recorded last year. In addition, the CapEx of PHP 55.3 billion is PHP 23.1 billion lower than EBITDA for the period of PHP 78.4 billion. We maintain our CapEx guidance for the year of between PHP 80 billion and PHP 85 billion. This includes approximately about PHP 11 billion out of the PHP 33 billion prior year's commitment. We continue to tightly screen and closely monitor our CapEx, especially multi-year projects, as well as introduce end-to-end process improvements in the value chain, covering plan to budget approval, procure to pay, build to provision, and related record to report. Next page, please. This page shows the usual network highlights.

On the fixed network, we passed 17.3 million homes and cover about 18,100 barangays, representing 43% of the total barangays in the Philippines. Total fiber ports grew to 116.2 million, as we have accelerated port rollout. We continue to carefully rationalize the rollout of new ports to ensure optimal utilization. PLDT's total fiber footprint remains unparalleled, with a total of over 1.1 million kilometers. Population coverage of our wireless network stands at 97%. About 82% of the total handsets on the network are LTE or 4G. Next page, please. The number of unique 5G devices and 5G data traffic continue to register improvements from the end of 2022. As part of our network optimization to realize operational CapEx and spectrum efficiencies, we reduced the number of our 5G base stations.

Nevertheless, our 5G speed remained faster than that of competition based on Ookla's speed test. Let me,

Shailesh Baidwan (President)

Thank you, Danny. So in 2023, we continued to push the boundaries of our fintech ecosystem, with Maya Digital Bank at the heart of it, and continued to launch new products and growing all our businesses. So in the Philippines, we are the number one digital bank in terms of number of depositors and the deposit balance, and we continue to see very good growth across our loans portfolio, and I'll touch upon that. On the merchant acquiring business, which is where we process Visa, Mastercard, QR Ph, domestic debit, again, we are the leaders in number of transactions processed in the Philippines across all these various fund sources and continue to see that market share expand. And we are the number one finance app in the Philippines, which is our Maya consumer app.

So let me give a little more color across each of these. So if we look at on the Maya consumer app, which was largely a payment-centric app and now has gone on and evolved into an all-in-one full financial service app for consumers, we introduced our high engagement saving product last year. Our customers look forward at the start of the month to pay their electricity bill, their various utility bills, to do their various purchases, which then helps them to earn higher interest rate. And on the back of that information that we are able to collect on customers, we are able to create better profiles and deeper understanding of their behavior, which then goes into our credit scoring models and allows us to provide them with our credit products as and when they need those.

Very pleased, we launched our first credit product last year, Maya Credit, and last month, we expanded that with a longer tenure product, Maya Personal Loans, and we've seen extremely positive take-up of that in the early stages of its launch. We continue to expand our services by adding on investments, so now customers are able to purchase and invest in a number of funds, and we will add the ability to purchase individual stocks on the Philippine Stock Exchange over the coming weeks. So what this has enabled has really helped the Maya consumer app to become the all-in-one primary financial services app for the customers, and we are seeing them generating 2-4 times more ARPU and profit per user versus the payments only. We see the same story when we look at on an enterprise side of the business.

This is a business where we provide, whether you're a large online player, a multi-, an omni-channel player, providing you with a full suite of payment solutions, including whether it's just for QR or whether it's Visa, Mastercard, or any other fund source, including domestic debit. As I mentioned, our share in number of transactions today in this business is over 50% across Visa, Mastercard, QR Ph, that's a market. With the addition of Maya Bank, we've now been able to integrate the ability for merchants, especially the SME, the MSMEs, to be able to use Maya Bank deposit to put their, settlement account. We have now started testing and piloting credit products to both micro and to small SMEs.

So in the same portal where they do all their transactions for payments, they are now able to draw down on credit, on working capital products, which we are able to provide on the back of seeing their payment transactions and business flows. So this is another area where we have piloted a number of products and are now scaling those and rolling those out through the course of the rest of 2023. And if you go to the next slide, to give you some color around the numbers, the number of depositors that we have in Maya Bank grew to 2.6 million. In fact, as of now, the number is very much close to 3 million depositors, and that has all resulted in us having a deposit balance of nearly PHP 24 billion.

We have been, as I mentioned, we started with disbursing consumer loans, adding on newer product consumers and adding on the micro and SME products. We have disbursed over PHP 16 billion of loans in the last month. And as a result of this expansion and the Maya, both the business on the enterprise side and on the consumer side, becoming key drivers, we've seen our EBITDA across the business have become profitable in the third quarter of 2023. And as Danny mentioned, thanks to that, not only have we been able to grow more than double our net income year-on-year, but we've been able to bring down our cash burn by nearly 40% versus last year.

With the expansion that we are seeing in the business, with the continued growth in the net income, as we launch new product and scale new products, we are looking at making the business cash flow positive towards the end of 2024. With that, I'm going to hand this back to Al.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Thank you. Thank you, SB. I don't think MVP is online now. I just wanted to give the outlook guidance for 2023. Trade revenue growth, low single digit growth for the group. EBITDA will also be low single digit growth. The core income will be at least PHP 24 billion. CapEx, we're looking at between PHP 25 billion and PHP 39 billion this year, and we will try to—we will, we will continue, obviously, our dividends. Sorry, MVP is here. MVP? [crosstalk] Hi. Go ahead. Go ahead, Al. Go ahead. And then, for, for dividends, we will, we will obviously, try to maintain the 60% dividend payout. MVP, if you might want to add a few things. No, I'm, I'm good, Al. Thank you. Thank you.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

At this point, we're now ready to take your questions. You may type your questions in the Q&A box in the upper right side of the screen. You may also click the Raise Hand button and wait for your name to be called before you unmute your microphone. You may also send your questions via email to [email protected]. Please indicate your name and company name so we can get back to you for any additional information that you may need. The first set of questions comes from Stephen Oliveros of China Bank Securities. The first one: How does Tel plan to sustain its top-line momentum in 2024, given protracted period of elevated interest rates and inflation?

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

I guess to start with, I think, we haven't finalized our budget for next year, but obviously we're going to target growth for our revenue line. Some, you know, some of the initiatives that will be on stream next year will be our 11th data center, which will be on stream by June of next year. So we will have the six-month benefit of that, and hopefully full year in the following year. I think we're showing a positive momentum on mobile, and we'll continue to grow that. There's still some growth areas still in home that we are also pursuing, although Danny did say that it's starting to get to be the financially challenged market, a segment of the market.

That's why I think the ability of Home to offer both fiber and fixed wireless solutions will be helpful in that push. And I know that Enterprise continues to push digital transformation across the enterprise base of customers. You know what, do you want to add a few things? Alex, Mitch, and Melissa will be well.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Okay. The next question: How does Maya Bank plan to strike a balance between funding costs and interest income, given the attractive deposit rates you're currently offering?

Shailesh Baidwan (President)

Yes, we absolutely are trying to strike a balance. In fact, what we have managed and seen as a deliberate effort on our part is ensure that the customers where it's high engagement banking see a growth in both the customers and deposit balances over there, which is where we get a lot of rich information on the customers, and these are customers who, for certain periods of time, have positive balances but also over a period of time need access to credit. And by virtue of seeing their transaction behavior, we are able to score them and provide them with Maya Credit. And that piece has worked really well. What we did see was that we had balances in our personal loans product, which was a time deposit equivalent product, and in that, we had some customers with high balances because of the interest rate.

What we have done is we are reworking that product, and as a result of that, we have seen some reduction in the balances on that product. So if you look at our performance quarter-over-quarter, the number of customers that we have in Maya Bank has actually gone up, but the amount of deposit, deposit balance has actually stayed pretty much flat. But that's helped us. And the second is, of course, growing the loan book. At this stage, as I mentioned, we have disbursed over 16 billion PHP of loan.

... These are largely short-term loans, so as a result, of course, our outstanding loan book is modest. But as we expand into longer tenure loans, as I mentioned, personal loans, SME loans, we will also start seeing our loan-to-deposit ratio go up. So we've had a deliberate strategy of making sure that we're growing the number of customers that we have. We are getting the transaction behavior and payment behaviors, which is helping us, and that helps us with high engagement banking. But we're very conscious of making sure that we're not, you know, at this stage, getting encumbered with high balance deposits at high interest rates. And that's what we have pretty much worked on over the course of the last couple of quarters and continue to refine that.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

There's a raised hand. Arthur?

Speaker 8

Hi. Hi, can you hear me?

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Yes, we can.

Speaker 8

Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Several questions, please. Firstly, on mobile, I'm just wondering what can be done to address the revenue growth gaps versus your competitor? Now, it's PLDT has had the benefit of network upgrades for quite a while now, with the network advantages being claimed. What are the challenges in taking the premium users away from your competitor? Second question I had is with regard to the data center. Can we get some idea on the expected contributions from this? You've mentioned contributions or commercialization by early 2024. How much can this generate into the year? And is this immediately profitable, or is there a ramp-up phase needed, with utilization? And final question comes back to mobile. I'm just wondering, what does it take to get industry revenue growth tracking alongside broader GDP growth?

When you look at other markets in Asia, it seems to be tracking well. Philippines seems to be an outlier. Basically, I'm just wondering what can be done so that you're back to mid-single digits.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

I'll have Alex answer the mobile question. So thank you for your question, Patrick.

Alex Caeg (Former Head of Consumer Wireless Business-Individual)

Yes, we're looking at growth for 2024, riding on the restart of our network function, as well as the delivery of platform capabilities that will allow us to deploy targeted, customized, and very timely offers that are indeed relevant and value pack. Obviously, there's a skew towards our customers on postpaid business. We realize that we have work to do there in order to not just upsell, but also to encourage even greater acquisition through switching. Of course, we will have to bank on the strength of the network.

We have been looking at improvements in terms of speed as well as quality, and we also continue to work on our indoor coverage, where most of the mobile consumption has shifted, even as increased mobility has already been seen for the first few quarters of this year.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Yes, Arthur, for I think we—if you look at the sub numbers we're ahead, based on this third quarter reporting, we're at 55.2. Global said yesterday at 54%. So our task is how do we. The basic top on revenues is something that we have to work on moving forward. So, you want to answer this one?

Alex Caeg (Former Head of Consumer Wireless Business-Individual)

Revenue growth.

Victor Genuino (President and CEO)

The third one was on the data centers.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Mm, sorry.

Victor Genuino (President and CEO)

The third one from mobile was in mobile, how do you get the instant revenue growth?

Alex Caeg (Former Head of Consumer Wireless Business-Individual)

Yeah. Well, the programs that we have lined up are geared towards accelerating mobile data burn. A number of our customers have continued to enjoy, you know, the better offers, but I think we have to see velocity. That's why the emphasis on faster burn, as well as understanding the segments which require a higher bandwidth allocations. And at the same time, the related offers that might be interesting for this target market, whether it involves fintech solutions or entertainment and the like.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Thank you, Alex. I'll ask Biboy to answer the data center. Yes.

Victor Genuino (President and CEO)

Thank you for the question on data centers. I think the advantage of the PLDT platform is we have available capacity, and secondly, we will be the first to market to actually have a hyperscale data center in the country. This is very advantageous for us because as companies in the public sector transform digitally, they're looking for colocation services to meet their digital infrastructure requirements. We will be in the best position to capture most of this, given those two factors of available capacity and the first to market with a hyperscaler data center by the middle of next year.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Question. How, how, how soon can you monetize and profit?

Victor Genuino (President and CEO)

Yeah. So, if you, if you look at the data center, obviously, it's like building a, a house, like you need tenants. So we would need to find the tenants to fill it up. There will be a ramp-up phase. We are looking for an anchor tenant to fill up, the space that we have, and the anchor tenants will come in the form of hyperscalers, Eastern or Western hyperscalers. And as soon as they ramp up, then it will be easier for us to monetize, the colocation space that they've taken in our data center.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

But we have started this serving the space, and I think we're very warm on a few big engagements with hyperscalers from the West, not from the East, so or maybe two from the West. And that's something that we're really working hard on. So we want to make sure that we can get it as soon as possible. In fact, we're looking at you know what what's available by June next year is 10 MW, but we're pushing for not 10 by November, then early part of 2024 would be the balance 16 MW. So the teams are pushing very hard to get contracted.

Victor Genuino (President and CEO)

... these were even prior to, you know, the completion of the, of the data center in Santa Rosa. Hello, Arthur, we've answered your questions.

Speaker 8

Thanks, Al. Just maybe to clarify, are there any plans to find any strategic partner which would help you accelerate takeoff levels on your data centers?

Victor Genuino (President and CEO)

We're undergoing a process now. In fact, we've shared it with the board, and we've actually have a very short list, and we're expecting some binding offers, hopefully by the latter part in November. Just reciting, you know, exactly what you said, you know, looking for a strategic partner that will grow the business and operate it more efficiently, because of the experience of the partner that we want to bring in.

Speaker 8

Understood. Thank you very much.

Victor Genuino (President and CEO)

Thank you.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

The next question is on mobile. Have you seen any impact from Dito after it received fresh funding?

Victor Genuino (President and CEO)

Alex?

Alex Caeg (Former Head of Consumer Wireless Business-Individual)

Well, there's been on ground as well as online action from the challenger. Obviously they will have to ride on marketing offers that will go with their expansion of the network. We understand that a number of customers, either from our side or from the other competitor, might be, if I may say, trying to experiment and understand, do they, in fact, merit being a second SIM inside their devices? But we have seen, you know, from the marketplace that a number of the customers have actually gone back to their primary service providers, you know, after understanding that the service is more reliable, more consistent, and more predictable.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Thanks, Alex. Next, there's a question: What are your views on prepaid home broadband? Please, take it.

Jeremiah de la Cruz (SVP and Head of Home Business Group)

Yes, thanks, Al. So, firstly, before I answer the question on prepaid, home broadband, and particularly prepaid fiber, I just want to remind everybody that PLDT is in a great position to be able to leverage two very, very strong networks. Our mobile network actually rated extremely high. We're in fact performing both 5G as well as 4G, which enables us to be able to sell fixed wireless as an offering to customers to be able to service not only areas that we don't have fiber, but to also service a different demographic of customer that may be looking for more of a sachet-based, sort of, infrequent usage, for various reasons.

The second one is our fiber network, which we have actually had quite an extensive rollout, and we currently do enjoy about 60% utilization, right? So we actually have about 60% of all of our ports with tolling customers. So we have two weapons that we're able to leverage. Because of the situation that we're in, I guess we're approaching the market a little bit differently from our competition. We've lent our push into the prepaid space with fixed wireless. So we've actually seen fixed wireless as a category has been challenged in the market for the last nine months. But what we are very pleased to be able to report back is we've seen two consecutive quarters of growth in our fixed wireless space.

So we've actually seen 5% quarter-on-quarter growth in terms of fixed wireless revenues. Now, while that may still be somewhat small compared to the, say, for example, fiber revenues, it does show that there is a role for fixed wireless to play in being able to service the different customer needs for the different segments. From a fiber perspective, we have actually, as we mentioned in our half year results, we do have plans to go into the prepaid fiber space. In fact, we are currently trialing with some of our existing customers now, our prepaid offering. The approach we are taking is a much more measured approach, though. We want to be very, very targeted with the areas that we make the prepaid fiber available.

Because we do currently enjoy the largest fiber base with a very, very high utilization rate, we want to make sure that prepaid fiber is something that's revenue accretive as opposed to revenue dilutive. We've seen through some of the other information released by the competition that the prepaid fiber ARPUs are significantly lower than postpaid ARPUs. So we want to make sure that we do prioritize where it is possible for our ports to be sold to postpaid customers where we get a higher yield. And where we do have an abundance of prepaid, that's where we'll be using prepaid fiber. So, you know, to answer your question in maybe a shorter way, we do think there is a role for prepaid fiber to actually play in the market.

But we're not only dependent on prepaid fiber to be able to service that segment, we also have the benefit of also using fixed wireless to be able to attack that segment of the market.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

The next question is: You mentioned about the launch of a Sovereign Cloud. What are the potentials of this business, and what is the traction so far?

Victor Genuino (President and CEO)

Thank you for that question. You know, when we built the Sovereign Cloud, we really had target markets in mind. One was really government services, and the other one is the private sector. We felt that as part of our role to help digitalize the economy and help the administration also digitalize most of its public services, building a Sovereign Cloud in the Philippines was a first step for us in being able to offer that solution. This is a service that is similarly implemented or rolled out in other markets. We are actually the sixth or the seventh market in Asia to be able to roll out a Sovereign Cloud. So we feel that there's going to be usage and traction for this.

We cannot obviously say who the government agencies are, given the sensitivity of-

... data that we will be hosting. But, yeah, it has been a welcome solution for a need that government agencies have been looking for, for quite some time.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

There's a question on Maya. Are there any plans for fundraising?

Shailesh Baidwan (President)

Yes, we are very much as I mentioned, a couple of quick pointers to that. The business actually, all the business became segment EBITDA positive in the third quarter of this year, and we continue to push towards the overall company becoming cash positive towards the end of 2024. In the interim, while we are funded on a lot of the operating side, as we expand our loan book, we do need access to capital for some of the regulatory capital and to grow the loans book. So we are concluding external funding round with the existing shareholders to fund for the requirements that we have till 2024. We should be able to conclude that over the coming days and should be able to share details.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

I just wanted to add to that. PLDT will actually participate in that round and, in fact, will increase its equity, and more specifically, increase equity in Maya.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

There's a question on CapEx intensity. You've reduced your CapEx intensity significantly. How much lower can that go? And when do you expect it to get to the 25% level, similar to other telcos in the region? Si Danny.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

I'm not sure whether 25 is, is possible for us, Philippines, but I think what initially we'd like to do is bring it down to 30%, the CapEx intensity. So that's the target maybe for next year or so.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

There's a question on whether we're planning to do any more tower sales.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Right now, we want to just complete first what we have sold. We still got quite, quite a bit of... We've done a lot. In my summary, I said that we have the 5,904 towers. I think that we've already 5,984 that we've already closed. So it's only 79%-80%. So there's a bit—there's still 20% that we need to close. We're hoping that we can just take part of the channel that we can do.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Are there any other questions? There's nothing in the queue. Please feel free to raise your hand or type your question in the chat box. We see a hand raised. There's no.

Shailesh Baidwan (President)

It's you.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

It's me.

Shailesh Baidwan (President)

You're asking the question.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

It works. It works.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Yeah.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

But maybe MVP can.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

MVP, would you like to share some comments? There are no other questions in the queue.

Manuel Pangilinan (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Wala naman. Nothing, nothing significant. So better stay quiet, like, which I didn't in the media, right?

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

They will not quote you, don't worry. I think there's a question from Herman.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Oh, Herman de la Paz. Herman, please unmute your mic.

Speaker 8

Yeah, I'm okay. Yeah, I've unmuted. Can you hear me?

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Yes, sir.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Yes, we can.

Speaker 8

Okay.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

There's a question from Herman de la Paz. Herman?

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Maybe accidentally.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Ah, there you go. Also, testing if there are.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

There are no questions.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

No further questions?

Manuel Pangilinan (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Probably scared. Probably scared him, yeah?

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

Halloween special. There are no further questions, so turn the floor over to our chairman, Mr. Pangilinan, for any final notes.

Manuel Pangilinan (Chairman, President, and CEO)

But nothing, nothing really special by way of closing, except to thank you for joining us this afternoon for the third quarter briefing. And we look forward to seeing you again, perhaps sometime in February or March next year. So in the meantime, on behalf of all of us, we wish all of you a very merry Christmas. Thank you.

Melissa Vergel De Dios (Chief Sustainability Officer)

That concludes today's briefing. As always, should you have any further questions or clarifications, please reach out to PLDT Investor Relations. Thank you for your participation. Good afternoon.

Manuel Pangilinan (Chairman, President, and CEO)

Thank you.

Shailesh Baidwan (President)

Thank you.

Al Panlilio (Former President and CEO)

Thank you.