TM sees strong results for first nine months of 2021, revenue up 6.8%, net profit by 7.7%

• Operating Revenue YTD Sept up 6.8% to US$1.98 bil vs same period last year
• Strengthening offerings across segments in unifi, TM ONE, TM Wholesale

Fuelled by high demand for digital connectivity and solutions, Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) continues its positive trajectory for the year with the release of its third quarter (3Q2021) results last Thursday.

YTD financial highlights till Sept vs a year ago saw a 6.8% increase in revenue to US$1.98 billion (RM8.38 billion), from US$1.85 billion (RM7.84 billion) fuelled by an increase from all lines of products, particularly Internet services which saw a 6.8% increase on the back of steady growth in fixed broadband customer base.

Profit before tax stood at RM352.7 million, a 20.3% increase over the previous quarter’s RM293.1 million but representing a decrease of 14.9% over the same quarter of 2020 when revenue was RM414.4 million.

[RM1 = US$0.235]

Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) grew by 17.1% to RM1,414.8 million, from RM1,208.6 million as a result of revenue growth and continuous cost optimisation initiatives. PATAMI increased by 7.7% to RM815.3 million compared to RM756.7 million.

Imri Mokhtar (pic), Group Chief Executive Officer of TM said: “Throughout 2021, we’ve focused our efforts to deliver digital connectivity and solutions in supporting the sustainability and recovery of our country. As a result, we are able to deliver another solid quarter of revenue and net profit growth. Our next focus will be on delivering enhanced customer experience and strengthening our digital offerings across all customer segments in unifi, TM ONE and TM WHOLESALE. We will continue to play our leading role in Malaysia’s digitalisation drive outlined by the Jalinan Digital Negara (JENDELA) action plan, 2022 Budget and the 12th Malaysian Plan, including MyDigital blueprint.”

Driving digital adoption

In the quarter under review, TM registered an additional 210,000 new unifi subscribers in both the consumer and micro, small and medium sized enterprise (MSMEs) segments to 2.69 million, its highest total ever and representing the third consecutive quarter of record subscribers.

To deliver this demand, TM has been adding higher number of broadband ports and delivering a wider fibre network coverage which has exceeded TM’s committed targets for Jendela. As a result, capex rose to RM959 million vs RM879 million over the same nine month period of 2020.

Beyond connectivity, unifi has steadily strengthened its entertainment proposition with the addition of 19 new content offerings comprising 7 content streaming services and 12 new channels.

Unifi also registered encouraging increase of productivity and digital tools utilisation amongst its 375,000 MSME customers, leveraging the Government’s Digitalisation Grant.

Delivering network for the Industry

TM Wholesale which recently won the Best Asia Pacific Zero Outage Supplier by T-Systems, continues its “telco for telcos” role by providing wholesale services and solutions to all Malaysian licensed service providers. As the primary mobile backhaul provider for the industry, TM Wholesale registered an increase in bandwidth utilisation of its Next Generation Backhaul service by major mobile telcos. This also positions TM as a capable enabler for Malaysia’s 5G network deployment.

Internationally, TM Wholesale recorded significant growth of international bandwidth traffic, further complemented by the coverage increase of the global content delivery network (CDN) with more than 80 CDN nodes worldwide.

It has also established a collaboration with a Tier 1 Internet Protocol (IP) transit provider – Tata Communications – to offer high-speed and reliable connectivity in the ASEAN region and open access to global enterprises. It has successfully on boarded more than 15 major international hyperscalers and digital service providers in TM’s core data centres.