Chunghwa Telecom Co., Ltd.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Zhonghua Telecom's conference call for the company's second quarter 2024 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. And for your information, this conference call is now being broadcasted live over the Internet. Webcast replay will be available within an hour after the conference ends. Please visit CHT IR website, www.cht.com.tw slash IR under the IR calendar section. And now I would like to turn the call over to Ms. Angela Tsai, Assistant Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Ms. Tsai, please proceed.

Thank you. I'm Angela Tai, Assistant Vice President of the Financial Department for Zhonghua Telecom. Welcome to our second quarter 2024 results conference call. Joining me on the call today are our Chairman and CEO Harrison Guo, President Eisen Lin, and Vincent Chen, our Chief Financial Officer. During today's call, management will begin by providing the CEO's message and our business overview of the second quarter. followed by a discussion of our segment performance and the financial results. After, we will move on to the question and answer portion of the call. On slide two, please read our disclaimers and notes concerning forward-looking statements. Now, without further delay, I will turn the call over to our chairman. Chairman Guo, please go ahead.

Thank you, Angela, and hello, everyone. Welcome to our second quarter 2024 results conference call. We are pleased to announce our continued success in expanding our lead in Taiwan's telecom market in the second quarter. Amidst the three-player market landscape, our revenue share in Taiwan's mobile market continues to steadily grow from 40.4% to 40.5% quarter over quarter. while subscriber share enjoyed a slight increase to 37.7%, maintaining growth in the new market landscape. In addition, for the past six consecutive quarters, our PostalPay mobile app has demonstrated the highest year-over-year growth in the industry, showcasing our growth capabilities. With this contribution, our total revenue in the second quarter reached a new high for the same period since 2018. In addition, our strategy of leveraging content investment to enhance our video performance has been successful. In August, during the first week of our exclusive 2024 Paris Olympic Games broadcast, we were pleased to see our video platform subscriptions surpass 3 million, a milestone that further expanded our lead among all the video platforms in Taiwan. As the Games are more intense, we are We are optimistic about the overall performance of our Olympic Games broadcast. Another area in which we currently invest in is AI development. As Zhonghua Group holds the largest IDC market share in Taiwan, We are well positioned to extend our leading IDC and cloud experiences to construct AI data centers and the GPU cloud. We offer our enterprise customers to leverage the GPU cloud either to build their own sovereign AI or use our GPU as a service In addition, targeting the best opportunities of AI-driven applications, we are developing the CHT AI Factory. This initiative aims to produce various customized AI models, AI-driven operation process, and AI agents for enterprise customers supporting them in their AI transformation. We believe this market has immense potential. Lastly, to strategically enhance our group's value, we are excited to announce that our subsidiary, ZHT Security, The largest managed security service provider in Taiwan will become a publicly traded company this month and will pursue its main board listing next year. This will be followed by another subsidiary, International Integrated Systems Company, a benchmark company in Taiwan focusing on opportunities related to government projects, smart city, fintech, and digital healthcare. We also continue to seek potential M&A targets to create synergy and enhance our agility in driving growth and increasing market value. Now let's move on the business overview on the second quarter of 2024. Let's move on page, slide four, slide five. We are pleased to report another quarter of market share gains in the second quarter of 2024. After the industry's market consolidation, Our revenue share of Taiwan's mobile market continued to stay about 40, hitting 40.5% as of the end of June, further widening our lead against our peers on both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis. Meanwhile, our subscriber share was 37.7%, achieving a stable year-over-year increase. Our excess revenue share over subscriber share was 2.8% due to the exciting revenue share gains, reflecting our healthy growth. As our postpaid subscriber net age continue to outperform peers. Along with growing 5G migration and steady international roaming contribution, our mobile service revenue and the post-pay approval recorded a 3.5% and a 2% year-over-year increase. respectively, maintaining their growth for 39 consecutive months and 13 consecutive quarters. In the second quarter, the average monthly fee uplifted from customers who migrated from 4G to 5G exceeded 39% uptick, maintaining healthy momentum. Let's move on slide six for an update of our fixed broadband business. In the second quarter, the year-over-year growth of our fixed broadband revenue and the subscriber number continued to increase by 4.4% and 0.6%, respectively, expanding growth margin compared with that of the previous quarter. thanks to our successful strategy of encouraging speed upgrade. 300 megabits per second or higher continue to be the mainstream service offerings. Its sign-ups increased by 24% year over year in the second quarter, maintaining double-digit growth and resulting in the 2% increase of six broadband are pulled on an year-over-year basis, which is outstanding. Now, let me send a call over to Ivan Lin for the performance of our customer-centric business groups.

Thank you, Chairman Guo, and hello, everyone. Now, please click to page 8 for an update on our CDG performance. In the second quarter, Total CDG revenue increased by 2.6% year over year. Driven by the increase of the mobile service revenue from ongoing 5G migration and more prospective subscribers, steady growth for fixed broadband revenue and the strong sales of iPhone series due to effective promotion. Although the CDG delivered promise in the business performance, its income before tax decreased by 1.6% year over year, mainly due to the increase of the talent investment, including salaried rights. Slide nine. Further illustrates our consumer business growth highlights. In the second quarter, our multiple product packages, which provide subscribers with the combination of our mobile six broadband and Wi-Fi service altogether, demonstrate 18 percentage year-over-year growth. in line with the goals of the CBG's core business. In terms of the individual and home-centric applications, we saw a 5.2% increase of our video platform subscriptions, mainly from Hami Video. Standing from the pre-promotion of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games in the second quarter. In August, we introduced AR and multi-camera replay function to broadcast the Summer Olympic Games for the first time, which successfully create exciting new viewing and experience for customers and attack new science apps. We expect subscriptions to continue rising as gains become more intensive and leading to greater revenue contributions. In terms of the well-received consumer cybersecurity service, we are pleased with its growth momentum as the size of increased by 15.3 percentage year-over-year in the second quarter, making meaningful revenue contributions. Please turn to slide 10 for an overview of our enterprise business growth performance. In the second quarter, EBG's total revenue decreased by 3.7 percentage year-over-year, mainly due to decreased ICT business revenue resulting from last year's high base from large projects and the deferred of the revenue expect in the second quarter. Now, with the standing list of factors, our ICT business remained on the track as expected. In addition, Allowed revenue from EBGs, mobile service decreased, excluding the impact of the prepaid card project. Mobile revenue from 5G looming and tax business continue to increase year over year. For EBG, fixed line business, despite the continued and steady growth of the broadband access revenue and the data communication revenue from trying to be upgraded. The decline in the fixed-voice revenue's significance upset these gains. This was the main cause of the 9.6% year-over-year decrease in the EBG's income before tax for the second quarter. Slide 11 illustrates our enterprise business highlights. In the second quarter, our IDC and cybersecurity business continued to demonstrate low-cost growth. IDC revenue achieved 6.6% growth year-over-year, ongoing growth. Owing to growth, the project numbers and long-term recurring revenue injection. Meanwhile, cybersecurity revenue is a little bit, 6.9% growth year over year, and driving by the rising demand for consulting service and network security products. particularly the zero trust related offering, make cybersecurity revenue achieved growth for 10 consecutive quarters in spite of the encouraging performance in the IDC and the cybersecurity business. EBG totaled emerging enterprise application revenue decreased by 4%. 5.9 percentage year-over-year in the second quarter, mainly due to the aforementioned higher basis result from large ICT project in the same period last year. It's only nothing like although our car service revenue decreased year-over-year due to the one-time project recognition in the base period. We are pleased to see our recurring revenues from international public cloud service continue to grow strong by 42% year-over-year. In addition, our limited rate price at a premiere in the Banqiao IDC designed for financial industries and were sold out quickly after lunch in the second quarter. Reflecting the strong demand of IDC service, in the meantime, to meet the feature demand, we continue to invest in construction of the AI data centers. I mean, to offer a variable AI-enabled function and a GPU as a service. Looking into the second half of the year, as the revenue deferred from the second quarter is expected to be recognized, and with healthy pipeline of orders, we remain confident in our four-year ICT performance. Slide 12 illustrates our international business performance. In the second quarter, we are pleased to see another positive quarter result for IBGE. As its revenue and income before tax increased by 21.8% and 8.2% on a yearly basis, especially the many contributors from overseas ICT business, which offset the slight decrease of the fixed line revenue resulting from from a portfolio change. During this quarter, leveraging our robust integrated ICT capabilities, we successfully secured overseas ICT projects from Taiwan high-tech companies to support their new plant construction in Thailand and Thailand. In addition, China's subsistence CHT security and to expand in Singapore. Our subsistence base in Singapore will cooperate to promote our cloud security and network security business in Southeast Asia. Now, I would like to turn the call to Vincent for our financial highlights.

Thank you, President Ivan. Good afternoon, everyone. Now I will present a financial summary of our second quarter results in 2024. Let's begin with page 14, income statement highlight. Revenue for the second quarter of 2024 was around $54 billion, the highest for the same quarter in seven years. This is a 1.2% increase from the same quarter last year. primarily driven by higher mobile service revenue, increased broadband service revenue, and growing ICT business revenue. Income fund operations and net income decreased by 2.7% and 1% on-year, respectively, largely attributed to higher personnel and utility costs. EPS for Q2 is 1.27. EBITDA margin continued to stay at about 40%. Overall, in the first half of the year, revenue increased by 1.3% compared to same period last year as a result of higher mobile service revenue, increased broadband service revenue, growing ICT business revenue, and greater handset sales revenue. Income from operations and net income decreased by 2.4% and 1.8% on year, mainly due to the high base from one-time government compensation. related to ST2 satellite last year, and higher personnel and utility costs. Excluding the one-time item of government compensation, year-over-year changes in net income have remained positive, demonstrating the healthy growth momentum of our core and ICT businesses. EPS is 2.48. EBITDA and EDTA margins exhibit stability, Now move on to page 15 for balance sheet highlights. Total assets increased by 2.4% as of June 30, 2024, compared to the year end of 2023. This increase was largely attributed to higher current assets, mainly driven by other current monetary assets, which offset a decline in property, plant, and equipment. Total liabilities expanded by 23.4% relative to the year end of 2023 and increased by 1.9% year over year. The rise was primarily due to dividends payable. Excluding the effect of dividends payable, debt ratio is 22.79%, indicating a healthy financial position. H16 provides the summary of our cash flows. Cash flows from operating activities increased by 3% on-year, mainly due to a rise in unearned revenue from ICT projects. Capital expenditures, CapEx, experienced an overall 12.8% decline on-year. Specifically, mobile-related CapEx decreased by 51.1%, while non-mobile CapEx increased by 6.7%. primarily attributed to the deployment of FTTH and submarine cable. Additionally, free cash flows increased by 14.1% year over year. Taken together, our strong balance sheet and robust operating cash flows provide the foundation needed for business expansion and the pursuit of digital opportunities amid economic uncertainty. On page 17, Let's turn to the table that shows our operating performance relative to the guidance. During the second quarter of 2024, revenue was in line with our projection. Performance measures, such as income from operations, net income, EBITDA and EBITDA margin, all exceeded our forecast by modest margins. For the first half of 2024, revenue was above expected. However, income from operations net income, EBITDA and EBITDA margin, all outperformed our guidance. The better than expected results were primarily driven by the steady growth of core business and the enhanced profitability of ICT business. This wraps up our financial results for the second quarter. Let me hand it over to Chairman Harrison.

Thank you, Vincent. On slide 18, You can see our awards and ESG achievement highlights from the second quarter of this year. First of all, in our pursuit of global sustainability initiatives, we have successfully passed the Greenhouse Gas Emission Net Zero Target Review by SBTI in July. Our goal is to achieve the reduction of Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas gas emissions by 95% by 2040, compared to the baseline year of 2020 in the long term. We have also published the inaugural TNFD English report as the first Taiwanese telco in reinforcing our dedication to transparency and biodiversity in line with global best practices. Besides, I'd like to report that Zhonghua has been recognized among the top 2% of the world's most sustainable companies by Time Magazine and included in the FTSE for Good Taiwan ESG Index for the eighth consecutive year. We have been consistently ranked in the top five by Taiwan Stock Exchange's corporate governance evaluation for the ninth time. This comprehensive achievement underscores the company's commitment to lead the telecom industry through sustainable governance. Moreover, I am glad to share that we have been honored with five top awards from the Asian Excellence Awards for our exceptional leadership in sustainability and the IR practices. Additionally, we won the Golden Prize for the Taiwan Sustainable Investment Awards this year. As the sole telco awardee, we are the first Taiwanese telco to issue a bond in 2022 and fully utilize the rest of funds for initiatives for sustainability within two years. We will continue to mutually benefit with the environment, society, and the to achieve a sustainable vision. This concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for your attention. At this time, I would like to open our conference call for questions.

Yes, thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, we will begin our Q&A session. If you have questions for any of today's speakers, please press Start key and 1 on your telephone keypad to enter a queue. After your name is announced, please ask your questions. And when you are speaking, please be louder or closer to the microphone. If you find that your question has been answered before it is your turn to speak, please press Start key and 2 to cancel your questions. You are also welcome to send questions via chat box on the webcast page. We will begin with the questions from telephone lines first and then move to the queries from the web. Now please press star key and 1 if you would like to ask questions. Thank you. The first one to ask questions, Neil Anderson from HSBC. Go ahead, please. Neil Anderson, HSBC, Thank you.

Good afternoon. I'd like to ask about the potential M&A that you mentioned on slide three. So could you give any more details about which sectors or areas you'd be looking at and also which countries? I presume that you'd be looking at countries where you have an existing presence or edge. If you could say any more about that, that would be great. Thank you.

Okay, so related to the questions on M&A, actually we focus on the areas related to our three pillars of ICT business. ICT, basically the AIoT, ITC, and cloud, and cybersecurity. We are also open, we are quite open-minded and open to any areas that can enhance our core and our more business. And in terms of the country where we are looking at, we also keep the option open. So we are looking for any suitable targets in any countries. But for cybersecurity, perhaps we are more open to any targets in other countries because for our CHT security, we have an ambition to explore and expand our footprint overseas. Thank you.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are now in Q&A session. If you would like to ask questions, please press a star key and number one on your telephone keypad. Thank you. As a reminder, please press star key and 1 on your keypad if you would like to ask questions. Thank you.

I guess before the questions on the Internet, now I have three questions from the Internet. The first one is the CHTs is about the CBG and EBG developments and the targets for the second half of this year. Just one question. Another question is about the AI. The question is, what is the CHT AI factory? What is this used for? And how CHT to build up the GPU computability and how to construct the CHT AI factory. That's the second question. And for the, yeah, that's the two question, thank you.

So the first question about the outlook for the CBG and EBG. So basically for both segments and we still maintain positive outlook for the second half of the year. For the CPG, because we have been able to effectively migrate our subscribers from 4G to 5G, so you can see for our mobile service revenue, it continues to grow. And for our broadband services, the growth rate for our broadband service revenue keeps at between four and five percent, and our subscriber base has been going up. So we believe our effective promotion package, along with our strategy to promote our products, that will help us to make sure our CPG performance will maintain its momentum. So this is for the CPG. And for the EBG, we still maintain a positive view for our EBG services. For EBG services, our focus is on the ICT business. And for, you know, for the typical pattern for the ICT business, the revenue distribution between the first half and second half is about 40% and 60%. So for the four year forecast for the ICT business, actually we are quite confident that we can achieve the four year forecast. So that's our view on the performance for these two segments in the second half of the year.

And about the What's the difference between an AI and traditional IDC? I think the AI data center requires a lot of GPUs and data to operate. It internally requires high power supply, efficient cooling system, and low bearing flow, and high external bandwidth, and data security, and so on. We have overcome this challenge with our extensive experience and our confidence to deliver high quality product and service. We have been operating the high cloud service for a long time, supporting the information systems of our enterprise clients, especially solving cloud applications. The GPU cloud we call it Upgrade HiCloud 2.0. It's a new designed version based on the original HiCloud service, featuring the number of GPUs and AI factories as our assistant to address the need of the AI-driven information systems. Our target customers include both the public and the private sector, across the various fields. that require digital and AI transformation. To achieve AI transformation, an enterprise needs to develop several different key information systems, such as the AI models. For example, a large language model, an AI chatbot, or AI agents, which require a GPU computation, the software development, and model training, and so on. We have the consolidation of all these resources into a standard product mechanism we call AI Factory.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are still in Q&A session. If you would like to ask questions, please press Start key and 1 on your telephone keypad. Thank you. Please press Start key and 1 if you would like to ask questions. Thank you. If there are no further questions at this point, I will turn it back over to Chairman Guo.

Thank you for your participation. Goodbye.

Yes, thank you, Chairman Guo. And ladies and gentlemen, we thank you for your participation in Chung Hwa Telecom's conference. There will be a webcast replay within an hour. Please visit www.cht.com.tw slash IR under the IR calendar section. You may disconnect now. Thank you and goodbye.