Advanced Info Svc Plc Adr

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter of 2025 result conference call. First, let me introduce our management. We have our former beloved CEO, Khun Somchai.

Sawasdee krap.

Our newly appointed CEO, Khun Prathana.

Sawasdee krap.

Our CFO, Khun Tee.

Sawasdee krap.

We have Chief Enterprise Business, Khun Phupha. Sawasdee krap. We also have Chief Retail Business, Khun Prathana. Khun Nathiya and myself will be briefing you the results and running this session. So at this moment, allow me to officially welcome Khun Prathana, our new Chief Executive Officer following the transition from Khun Somchai, who has successfully led AIS for the past decade through multiple transformation milestones. Khun Somchai has been with AIS close to 30 years and holding CEO position for the past 11 years. Now let us hear from Khun Somchai as he would like to share a few words with this community.

Good morning, investors and analysts. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you that support me all the time. For me, it's a very great time. It has been a great journey to serving as a CEO for past 11 years. i will miss the meeting with all of you but i never miss the the lotto if you still invite me i will be willing to go with and i will be your side and follow up and push to make a more and more return to all of you Okay, for me, I will pass this leadership to Khun Pathana who will know all well and I will be confident AS will continue to grow with greater vision and energy. I hope the investor analysis will continue to support AS under the next chapter of leadership under Khun Pathana. Thank you very much. We hope to see you in any Rocho that you invite me. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Khun Somchai, for your kind words. We truly will miss you and we hope that we get invited to the Rocho. Before we begin the quarterly session, let me introduce the new org chart while we now have Khun Prathana as our new CEO. Khun Prathana also has been with AIS close to 30 years. Before this position, we are familiar with his role as shift consumer business, taking care of mobile service. and then he was promoted to Deputy CEO, Chief Operating Officer, Parapool's CEO position. Under Khun Pratana, we have two Deputy CEOs and now seven business units responsible by C-Levels reporting to him. At this moment, Khun Pratana will be acting as Mobile Business Unit Head, while Khun Tee is acting as Broadband Business Unit Head. The company is in the process of succession plan. Now let us hear a few words from Khun Takana.

Very good morning to everyone here in the conference call or analyst. I've been honored that the company appoint me as the new leaders of the team. Under Khun Somchai leadership, AIS has evolved from mobile network operator into a fully, I would like to use the word, integrated digital service providers. And we have set, we believe that AIS and the leadership of Khun Somchai have set a new benchmark for multiple times including this quarter for the industry. I'm very committed to build upon the strong foundations of AIS. And to drive AIS together with the whole team to a very new era whereby digital and AI infrastructures will play a very pivotal role for country capabilities in the digital economies era. AIS team as a whole is looking forward to work hard internally and with partner across industry to deliver exceptional experience for the customer and exceptional values for our every customer. with the comprehensive sets of product service across 5G, broadband, enterprise solutions, retail, entertainment, and about to come digital financial services. Again, I'm truly honest, and we are very committed to bringing the best for Thailand and society sustainably. Thank you very much.

thank you very much for your notes and we now expect to hear more from him in subsequent events now let me begin with a short brief and then going directly into q a at this time you may also reserve to ask the question through the chat box please kindly put your name and your corporate name in the third quarter ais continue posting solid result with call service revenue continue growing supporting by strong connectivity and content proposition despite a challenging economic situation mobile remain resilient focusing on 5g and driving more values to uplift apple alongside content engagement broadband delivered another strong quarter with continual focus on quality subscribers innovative products, and premium bundles beyond broadband. Enterprise momentum remains solid, driven by EDS and cloud, but we will continue to drive data center growth throughout the EGS game. The retail business will strengthen retail strategy in product mix, stock management, and sales capability. Profitability was strong from efficient month control and lowest return costs. Looking at the first nine months of 2025, AIS delivered a quality across all key metrics. Our EBITDA margin remains strong at 55% total revenue with ROIC at 15%. The net debt through EBITDA was at 1.9 times, underscoring a very solid financial position and a low cost of borrowing. OAS continues to outperform with quality growth in expanding our business beyond connectivity and efficient capital management. We expect to continue delivering strong returns to shareholders. While we are anticipating that this investment community will be interested on the impact from 2100 MHz NT contract expiry and the recent auction cost savings, we have placed an illustration showing the accounting impact in both MD&A and our conference call slides where you can download through our website. Further questions regarding specifically on this, please reach out to IR team after this session. And this is the end of the short brief, and we'll start with the Q&A session now. Please be reminded that you may reserve to ask the question through the chat box. please type your name and corporate name. And also please limit your first initial questions to three questions at the time to allow others to ask questions as well. And you may also come back for the second, third, or fourth rounds. And we have Ranjan from JPM for the first cut.

Hi. Good morning, team. First of all, I wish you all the best. It's been a great leadership of AIS under you. And all the best to Kuntadana. Look forward to the same execution under you as well. So with that, I can come to my question. Kuntadana, can you help us understand your key objectives and KPIs as you look to lead the organization and also how you think about capital allocation as well? Thank you.

So the key objective and KPI of the organizations is to bring forward the growth for across business integrating mobile, broadband, enterprise, entertainment, retail, and digital financial service to come. So we truly believe that AIS can play more roles in the AI and digital infrastructure, bringing values to the countries, so that we set forward ourselves to go there.

Thank you. Can I just follow up on the capital allocation side as well? Given that you're generating such strong free cash flows now, how do you look to use the excess capital? Thank you.

I'm sorry. We didn't hear you clearly. Are you asking about the access, profit access cash?

Yes. You're a strong free cash generation of the business. How you think about capital allocation going forward? Okay.

Yeah, I think in the end, first and foremost, every time that we have this, then it's a dividend, right? So I think we committed to pay high dividend payout ratio. That's to be expected from OSHA holders anyway. But apart from that, I think we are preparing. It's actually good that we have excess capital right now because looking forward, we see a lot of growth path that we can take. Dinkun Patna mentioned a bit about, you know, growing in a few directions, enterprise, infrastructure, also mobile and broadband as well. We still believe there's room to grow. So I think you may see that we may come back with a bit more investment over the next few years and also in preparation for the spectrum auction that we have anticipate to happen in the next year or two i think that will be a certain requirement to to to put the money back to work and hopefully to grow the business again thank you and all the best thank you okay thank you karanjan we have peyote from hsbc

Yeah, hi. Good morning. Thanks a lot. First of all, all the best. And congrats on the new role and wish you the best. I have a few questions. Firstly, if you can discuss about the macro environment in Thailand and how do you see the kind of growth outlook in both mobile and fixed broadband outlook as well? The second question is your nine-month performance has been really strong. So why guidance has been kept unchanged? Are you expecting any headwinds in the fourth quarter on the cost side? And thirdly, if I may ask, there is a sharp decline in admin and other expenses of 21% year-on-year. What drove it and the outlook for the same? Thank you.

Let me address the first one in the macro environments. Thailand is now still, I would say, under the period of recovering. Especially the last quarter, we start to see a bit more positive in economy recovering. We believe toward the end of the year and next year, we'll be still under the phase of recovering. In any ways, we do not see a negative side, but a positive side. For mobile broadband and telecom in Thailand, it's very clear that the market is really moving on focusing on value creations rather than hyper-competitions. And you also see from us and our competitors on that particular focus. So the profitability has been brought back to the industry and we both are competing to bring value for customers. In terms of outlook, when we think about how things would grow, I believe that the digital services, based on both mobile, broadband, enterprise, will play a very important role to add values. So we do expect a positive side of it continuing. On the guidance... We do not expect the surprise for the last quarter. And this is now about to end the quarter. We do not have plan also to revise it. That's what I want to say.

On your last question about admin side, in admin, we also book the performance-related item.

That's basically the bonus. So there's approval in particular quarter, especially last quarter, and some adjustment in this quarter as well. We have a high base. If you recall last year, we mentioned that we booked the accrued performance base in Q3 for Q2 and Q1 as well. So we started the year in 2024 with a very conservative outlook, and we had a very low admin expense in first and second quarter last year. So in third quarter, we accrued more performance bonuses. And therefore, it was a high base.

Right. But the third quarter number is a normalized number. There is no reversal of any provisions, right, in this?

Hello. In a way, it's not that big of an item. So you may somehow look at the third quarter onward.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. If no further questions from Biyush, we have from KKPS.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you. I have three questions. Number one on the mobile phone revenue gap between new and true. We have seen quite a substantial gap in the past two or three quarters. May I have your view on why the gap exists? Because when I look at the price of the two companies, they are almost identical. And do you expect the gap to continue in the next few quarters? That's the first question. The second one may have your view on the Carpex Outlook for 2026 and possibly 2027. Because right now your 5G network already covers 95% of the population. And the third one, right now people using the 5G package is already 35-36% of your subscriber base. Do you expect the migration pace to continue? What would be the peak? Can it reach 100% in the next few years? Those are all things I have. Thank you.

Allow me to address the first one. In terms of mobile revenue gaps, I would say we look inwards rather than outwards. We have been very focusing on the customer needs, acquiring the right assets, segment of a customer on the quality basis. So that has been helping us to improve the mobile revenue as well as improve the customer experience along the way. You might remember when we talk about unlimited load plan and all of those is continued to be tapered off. So that has helped improve the ARPU and revenue. On the other side of competitions, I think they will also putting forward that attempt as well. depending on the speed of each company. But I do see a positive trend of both competing on building on values. Whether the gap is wider remain to be seen, we don't know. But we will continue on focusing on what we are doing, bringing quality and value to mobile services. So I think that's number one. Number two, in terms of investment for network, we will continue on making sure that we strengthen our network services with the proper CapEx to fund that particular experience. For the past year, year and a half, the CapEx has been on the low side simply because we have pre-invested in 5G and the capacity is enough. We have seen the continue on growing of traffic for both mobile and broadband. That would require us to make sure that we invest properly to lead in the customer experience continue on. So that you can expect that we will fund that in 2026, 2027. On your last question regarding 5G, now we are at about 30-plus percent of penetrations. We do believe that 5G penetration can go to 70, 80, 90 percent, not so far away from now. Everyone would need to use it, and we are confident that it will grow. So I think there are a lot more rooms for AIS to build on that piece. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Now we have Khun Pisut from KSEC. We cannot hear you.

Hello, is it better now?

Cannot hear you. We hear you briefly and then... Hello.

Hello. First of all, congratulations on your results.

Can you talk closer to the mic, please?

Okay, hold on a bit.

I think your mic cut the noise, so you have to put the mic close to your mouth.

Okay. This is better?

Yes.

Okay. Yeah, if my voice is disconnected, please tell me. Yeah. First of all, congratulations to your good results, Khun Somchai, for your retirement. Hopefully you have a good time with your baby, and also Khun Bhattana.

I'm because of your suggestion for my daughter. Thank you very much.

Honest to be that. I have two questions. The first one is about your prepared segment.

Okay.

Is it better?

Yes.

My first question is about your feed head. If you look at your feed head R4, it went up from 120 to 150. I mean, 120 before the market consolidation. to 150 in this quarter. And prepaid revenue has gone up, you know, nicely. Do you think this is, what is the proportion of mix between prepaid and postpaid revenue? Because you see that the prepaid revenue mix has been going up as well. Yeah, and we have seen the two steps when you raise the price for unlimited fixed speed in 2024 and also the. Hello, is this okay? Hello, is this okay?

This is better? Very soft.

If... Okay, how can I do? I don't know. I change to this one. This is better. Okay.

Okay, better.

Thank you. Okay. My question is about prepaid revenue. Basically, it went up by okay. My question is that how far your prepaid output can go up further, and what do you think, what is the right mix for the revenue between the prepaid and postpaid?

Okay. Prepaid, I would like to put the perspective of prepaid and postpaid. It's very much like the method of payment. People subscribe, money subscription in prepaid. and they do pay monthly subscription, very large segment, tens of millions of customer paying subscription for data in the monthly basis. So I would say that very close to postpaid in some way, and the way they pay for it is through the bank account, bank application, and so on. So it's a mixture now of how they want to use packages and the way of payment among pre and post. Prepaid has been continue on recover from past four, five year whereby there are huge amount of customer and many of those have multiple SIM and some SIM are inactive. When the country strengthened the personal education, those numbers have been disappeared from the market in millions. So the number of prepaid and overall shrink a bit for the past three years. And at the same time, the market recover from hyper competitions of overly provide unlimited data. So that has helped prepaid APU to continue on. We do believe that both prepaid and postpaid APU will highly depend on the needs of customers to use data, and we do expect that the data demand will continue on growing year on year. So that's what I believe it would be. On the prepaid alone APU, we still think there is room because the penetration of 5G will continue on growing for both postpaid and prepaid. So you can expect that you'll see a continuation of it coming.

Thank you. My second question is about your network topics. Your nine-month network topic seems, you know, below your full-year guidance quite a bit, but you keep the guidance unchanged. You may not want to change the core revenue target or EBITDA target, but in terms of the network target, do you think it is possible for you to underspend what your target will spend for this year? And this means that you're going to have higher fee thresholds to make more aggressive capital management for this year and next year.

Allow me to address this one. We are very committed to network qualities. Supporting our customer, it will be on schedule on our plan. There are many of work in progress that may not immediately reflect in Q3, but it's on plan.

My last question is about the on the liquidity front you know the mbtc has been trying to you know enforce uh some of the uh budget package uh to to serve to help to assist uh i mean the source of living of the people i think first thing that about to come out uh and also what i heard from the mbc is that is about to revisit the ceiling rate for noise and data not counting the what happening next year is about the 3.5 gigahertz spectrum plan that could be auctioned in 2027 would you please make some comment on these three things elect on the electricity fund thank you

On the attempt of the regulators, we see as a very positive trend that the government do see a very strong value of digital services and it will be part of everyone. as well as the government service through that digital services. So that's why mobile and broadband has been on the highlighted how the government will support Thai to have access to all those in a very economical way. What we have been providing AIS and the industry is a very competitive telecom services, and we are the third from the lowest price in the world in terms of price per gigabyte or even broadband in service. So we see a very good trend. Even though it looks like there will be more impulse and we will work with regulators to bring the best, for the consumers. So that's what I would say. And the cost structure itself also is unavoidable anyway that we have continue on cost structure of spectrum network investment and many more. It will continue on to be in next year. The new spectrum come, it will be more. But with the economical of scales and the technologies, we believe that we bring in value continue on.

with even with those structures thank you very much thank you very much next we have good wassup from maybank good morning i'm wassup from maybank i have three questions so the first one is about the admin expense can we expect the admin expense to be relatively stable q1 q in the fourth quarter Or alternatively, can we use the number that we saw in Q3 as the base going forward? So that's the first question. The second question is about the marketing expense. So I'm aware that 4Q is usually the highest for the marketing expense. But for this year in particular, is it reasonable to assume that the marketing expense will drop year on year because of the mourning period that we are seeing this year. So that's the second question. And the final question is about the CapEx trend over the long term. Given that Khun Prathana just mentioned that the data usage is rising and also through just completed the network consolidation process last month, So should we expect AIS to increase the network capex in 2026 and 2027 to maintain the network quality leadership going forward?

On admin side, it may be difficult to gauge where the numbers will land.

However, in third quarter, because there's some adjustment on both the staff-related and IT rationalization, so likelihood is fourth quarter, it could be higher on the admin side. Marketing-wise, yes, it's morning period. However, we also do have plans on certain marketing campaigns, also relative to the content engagement. Normally, it's a high season, so difficult to say what the number will be, but we expect that we will continue to try to manage the marketing campaigns as properly. CapEx trend in the future. So maybe just remind you a bit that two or three years back, if you recall, we did invest quite heavily on the 700 megahertz for 5G. So that also gave us quite a lot of capacity over the last few years. As we are moving forward, We also, as Khun Bhatana mentioned, we want to ensure that we lead in the network, quality leadership and customer experience, including some new features of the network that we want to build upon. So the tendency is we are looking at the higher trend of the CapEx versus this year.

Thank you, Kath. Thank you, Kath.

Next, we have Arthur from Citibank.

Hi, thank you for the opportunity. And firstly, all the best to Samchai and congrats to Patana on taking the hot seat. Several questions, please. Firstly, you mentioned digital and AI services as a key focus area. How should we see this from an investment and CAPEX standpoint? Are you, for instance, looking to invest more in additional data center capacities outside of the JV with Gulf or things like GPO as a service? I'm just wondering how this impacts CapEx and earnings volatility going forward. Second question I had is with regard to mobile. AI has been gaining market share over the last two quarters. What do you think it's been doing differently? Both of you seem to be quite rational and focused on quality subscribers. I'm just wondering what's driving the gap. Is this mainly because of the churn related to their network outage, and has that started to change into the fourth quarter? Thank you. Thank you, Kunal.

the first one regarding ai and digital infrastructures uh we pursuing with the joint venture structure with gsa uh casting tail ais as well as gais i i believe we have also released information regarding uh the joint investment with gulf on that we do see a very strong demand and needs of investing in ai infrastructures that would also related to GPU and AI factories that later on you probably will see. Allow me to not go into detail today, but that would be part and parcel of our plan to go for very strong demand. It will be in form of the joint ventures with partners and maybe more that to be released later. That's the first one. The second one regarding mobile, we are very focused on quality, supporting existing customers and quality acquisitions. We did not change our strategy at all for the past year. 24 months. And I think it is the right strategy to make sure that customers have the best product. And we hope to continue on. The competitors, some way, somehow, moving the same directions. And I believe that we also see a very positive trend later as well.

Thank you. So if you could just allow me a second question. I'm just wondering about pricing for the mobile services. Consolidation has happened two years ago. We've not really seen any notable changes for pricing in the industry, even with inflation and all. I'm just wondering the outlook for 2026. Do you expect this to remain static and the strategy will just remain on upselling and bundling? Or is there room for prices to finally move?

The whole mobile base is beyond $90 million, and all those are all in different price plan. The pricing in the market for new acquisition has been improved in the ways that the unsustainable price plan has been eliminated or continue on to be improved in terms of value offering. With that, on the surface, we may not see the price hike, but you have, if you look closer, you will see the elimination of those unsustainable plants. That's the whole fundamental of it. And with the base, and a new customer coming in, we see the demand to use more data, continue on. And that gives us opportunity to offer them individually with the proper packages for the upsell and cross-sells. And that also, again, has helped improve our revenue and profitability. And we see that one continue on rather than price hike.

Got it. Thank you very much. Got it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We have Ramzan to follow up.

Hi, can you hear me? Yes. I have a follow-up question. Thank you for giving me the opportunity. It's actually coming from an investor. So I want to ask him on your behalf. Can you give more clarity on future CapEx and how that's going to evolve? And how are you going to allocate that between mobile, broadband, data centers, digital banks, and the other initiatives that you might have? So the question is around the total traffic spending in the coming periods and how it's going to be allocated between the different businesses, existing and new business. Thank you.

I think you're asking for the future plan of just working with the shareholders in the board. But in terms of the trend and direction, as I think Natia mentioned, the past two years, I think we minimized the spending on CapEx because we invested earlier when we expanded 5G. The next two years, what we'll do, as I mentioned as well, is we will try to come back to make sure we have the best network in the market. You see the trend of data usage still going up. So we want to make sure that we have enough capacity to serve the customers. In terms of how we separate that, I think it's hard to say because mobile broadband is easy. I think you can project that. You can use certain percentage to revenue. We have more customers. We have more usage in our network. So we need to invest a bit more there. Also, when we acquired 3BB, we also didn't spend a lot in terms of capex for network on the broadband side. After two years, then it's time to actually go back and start to make sure we have enough port to expand the service again. But when you wrote in data center and other big-ticket infrastructure, um that sometimes you know uh take a bit of time to build up and also we're gonna invest one when we also get some security on future cash flow so we can toy the numbers you know um out but i think that let us get that plans you know finalized with the board and we give guidance next year but whatever we spend on data center or even the ai infrastructure it will it will need to link to certain uh anchor demand that we we feel secure with um that number because it's a jv so it won't show up as part of the cap exit even a guy but maybe in terms of investment that we're going to put into the jv we're still working out all those formulas. And hopefully, when we do guidance for next year, then we can give you a bit more clarity on that.

All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Next, we have Dr. Paul from TNS.

Good morning. Thank you very much, Carl.

I think since you have reclaimed number one market share in mobile again, so right now maybe looking for the new revenue stream. So may I start the first question on enterprise business that we see a lot of new investment in AI data center globally. Do you see an uptick or like accelerating demand for big corporate or even small corporate in Thailand to take up this kind of like to basically to propel your enterprise business. Or do you think Thailand needs some, I don't know, three, five year next time before that to grow?

Second one is on the product sales also.

We have seen a big improvement in terms of margin, but I think over the past few years, sales revenue or like product sales revenue is quite stable. So can we expect more of the margin improvement or the sales improvement to boost that portion later? Because I think you have to do a lot of the renovation of your branches, of your service points. Can we hope for the growth of that? And lastly, for Khun Prathana, do you think that are you still happy with these four pillars, if I'm not wrong, to drive AAS further? Or do you think to get the new revenue stream or to move the company further, do you expect another pillar to be added going forward? Thank you.

Allow me to take the first questions about enterprise and uptake on the AI and data center. We still see the strong demand from the enterprise customer, the big customer, including the hyperscalers that coming to Thailand. We still see around 18 to 20% market growth and strong demand on that one. If you're talking about how they adopt the AI, I think all the enterprise customers talking about the AI demanding more on the network infrastructure because the AI also require the download and upload more.

uh we see uh uh business from the hyperscaler who invested and expand in the data center in thailand that's i think the information that i could share from the sales side uh the first nine months that we perform is about 13 growth comparing to last year so that is the i think uh is driven by um the apples that with what we are actually a lot in September and in terms of the margins the contribution margin is growing about 7.5 percent is about 8 percent comparing to last year so that is we are going to keep momentum of this momentum until the year ends for the sales side I think we're going to achieve more than a double digit for the year end also for that is my perspective in terms of the sales Okay. For the expected margin improvement, we're going to improve about maybe 10% comparing to last year also in year 2025 comparing to 2024. Okay. what we are going to achieve is the the first one we are going to focus on the product which is the apple which is the highest seasons of the the first quarter of retail the second one be keeping on the renovations which is of we we're going to have more 20 locations that we're going to um renovate to make the atmosphere and also the appearance of the store We're going to focus on our own brand, which is LingUp. I think once you get the sample last time, and I think we get in terms of the sales a bit growing, and I think the market is improving also on that one. But last but very important is about the financing focus, which is how to make the people come to the store and easy to buy. I think that is going to work closely with the bank and non-bank. I think those are the four focus for retail. and yes of course the last very important that we're going to introduce actually we we are on the trial phase is about the only channel once you go to the retail store and you cannot find the model or the color that you want from now on you can order and you can pay at the store you get the point of the as point and then the product will be shipped to your house within the certain days that we are going to to focus on this one yeah

And the last one regarding the growth pillars, I like to address in the ways to reflect the markets and the state of Thailand. In mobile, our number one core pillar is once again we are only at 30 plus percent 5g penetrations there are a lot more room for us to better serve customer in the deeper penetration of 5g in other countries go beyond 50 60 70 already and that pillar still very strong for us to do more work to serve customer and grow the company in mobile pillars The second one, broadband. The broadband, fundamentally, every home will need broadband in the future. Thailand is at about 50% household, living household penetration of broadband, and we do see rooms for us to grow. As Kunti mentioned earlier, that we make sure that our investment will support that strongly to get every home broadband available. And thirdly, a very important pillar is the enterprise, of which every enterprise in the future would be digitalized. We're just starting the journey of enterprise in terms of enterprise telecommunications solutions, as well as the digital infrastructure, AI infrastructure for the future enterprise, as well as the digital government. So those are three fundamental pillars that I believe continue on to be very important for us to make sure that we meet the demand and provide the best product and services. And on top of that now is entertainment, retail, digital financing are coming on top. to serve the customer with these three plus three pillars are our key pillars to move forward uh there will be more to come and later on uh when the times come we release the information thank you all next we have izadi from macquarie

Hi, good morning. I have a question on the AI infrastructure. So I just wanted to get a sense in terms of the competitive landscape, especially when it comes to the DC to DC connections, the terrestrial fiber wholesale part of the business, which I believe is parked under your EDS segment. So with the hyperscalers coming in Thailand and also in ASEAN in a big way, how has that changed in terms of negotiating with these key clients of yours? And are we seeing any competitive pressures coming from smaller private companies trying to provide similar services in terms of connectivity? Just want to get your thoughts on that.

allow me to take these questions about the AI and infrastructure. Actually, the way that we see is relating to the data center business and also the software on top of that. we have the strong let's say the partnership and strong position on the pricing point on the electric city as well i mean when we build the data center uh normally we we would have the anchor customer or some secure customer before we build and those customers come to us because of the tco And mostly coming from the cost of electricity that we can manage the price. And then that is a key issue that I want to share. The second one about the DCI, I mean the data center cross interconnectivity. We have the solid foundation that ready to serve the upcoming demand of the data center. As we see now, we have around 40. This is a roughly number of the data center around Thailand. And we see the growth around 20% or the demand of around up to one gig. uh in the near future so our infrastructure on that one is ready and when we talk about the eds we also have the the feature that we call the self network management which allow the customer who are in the data center manage the network by themselves and then increase our time to market also the service quality to our customer I think for our competitors, we don't see the significance. competitiveness or the price point fighting on that space a lot. I mean, it may be easy because we have very big infrastructure to serve the demand already. And instead of seeing the competitors, we see them as partners. Because we partner with them, we have the model to go to market and expand our adoption through the partner as well. That is our strategy to do this year and next year.

All right.

Thank you so much. All right.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. We have Khun Supachai question from the chat box. So the first question is, can you explain the slower year-on-year growth in enterprise revenue in the third quarter compared to the first half? What is the trend in the fourth quarter?

Actually, the reason that we see, even though the slower on that one is very limited and very minimum, the explanation is about the problem that we have on the border. We are working on to recover that one. I think that's a short answer for that question.

What is the trend in Fort Water, sir?

I think we will be able to catch up the expectation from the shareholder on the enterprise revenue.

The second question goes to retail from Khun Tong Yuen Ta. What is the recent development in retail business? After introducing your house band, what is the feedback on this brand, particularly any new initiative to share?

Okay, we launched on July this year and I see the growth until today is about 56% growth comparing to the first launching. So we're going to complete about maybe 15 million, which you see from the number is not that much comparing to the other revenue that we have. but anyway the margin of the level of the house branding is extremely high comparing to what we are selling in the store. So that is the first milestone that we achieved. The second one is we're going to increase in terms of the SKU, the number of the So we're going to add up another three more items, which is related to the iPhone 17, which is going to boost up the sales of the 17 also. So that is our own brand. And the third one is we're going to sell in more channels. we just start to selling in our own location which is populated by the ais but we're going to expand to the partners of ais so that is the the link up in the in the in the summary and like i said before so the online sales in our own channel going to be one of our focus the only channel uh once you go to online we can shop offline you can go to offline you can go online also so that is the Three things in short that we are going to focus differently comparing to last quarter.

Thank you. Third question, what would be a big change Khun Prathana would like to bring to AS in the next three to five years?

First of all, I must say is that we, under Khun Somchai leadership, we have set the industry benchmark, bringing company into a very strong integrated digital service providers. Number one is not change, but to build on the strength and the fundamental asset that we have on integrated digital service providers. And number two, as I mentioned earlier at the beginning, we are very clear that in the digital and AI infrastructure era, AIS could play a very important role serving the countries, bringing a pivotal point of these capability products and services to the country and to every customer, and we do intend to do so.

Thank you. On the side note, he asked me to also make congrats to Khun Prathana and thank you Khun Somchai for your leadership and support. I am learning a lot from watching you lead. I wish you happy retirement. That's from Khun Tong Yuanta. Next, we have Khun Prisut from KS again.

Thank you. Yes, can you hear me?

Yes, sir.

Yeah, thanks for another opportunity, please. I have two follow-up questions. The first one, your nine-month mobile revenue grew 5% versus the GDP growth, you know, 2% plus minus, even below. I remember that Fusomchai management used to mention that the mobile revenue growth will be similar to the GDP growth. and this is much better than what you have said before so next year uh gdp code would be not much different from this year or even slower yeah and uh comment uh recently implied some confidence that AS will outgrow the mobile electronic with the GDP support again next year, if my interpretation is correct. What do you have idea on this one?

Currently, we are entering into the phase that everyone, every business do require to use digital services, to even live or do work. I think it's fundamental that a digital infrastructure fund the growth of the countries. So we do hope next year GDP would be better than what you said. We do really hope for that. But once again, the 5G broadband enterprise, we have started a lot, but there are a lot more things to do. So in mobile in particular, as mentioned, 5G is just 30% penetration, and we expect to be more. So I would say that it will be ongoing, hopefully I can say growth, and development of customer behavior as we start to see growth coming back and new applications will come in. I'm very positive about that.

Thank you, Pat. And my last question. With your ethanol keep growing, right, and your caphex could be higher in the middle term, but your caphex to cells or caphex intensities could be stable or even lower. Am I on the right direction on this one?

I think you should look at the long term compared to the past, not compared to just this year or last year. I think it will go back a little bit higher than this past two years, but it won't be as high as when we start expanding the 5G. I think the reason for that is, as mentioned, we want to modernize our network as well. and also prepare for new growth. So that's something that we need to put some of the money up front so that we can grow the business more than just the current mobile and broadband services. But as I mentioned, percent to sales, you can look at that as a benchmark. It varies within those range.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have , she leave us question in the chat box. Can you compare 2100 megahertz which will expire in 2027 with 3500 megahertz that which one you prefer and if you can get 3500 before 2027, will 2100 megahertz still be needed?

2100 is on schedule to re-auctions as it is expired. And NBTCs and the country are looking at all spectrum bands, whether it will make available in public for auctions. We cannot say right now. in particular. As Kunsomchai always mentioned that we look at every spectrum, both individually and collectively, value in combined. So we see later when NBTC announced which one is available, we will be participating. The 2100 is a fundamental band for our network and competitor network for sure. 3500 would be new to the industry, previously source of in between telecom and television satellites. We believe that the schedule of 3500 will be part and parcel of the whole thing related to satellite television as well. We cannot say whether it's going to be available sooner than scheduled. It remains to be seen. But we will consider it individually. There will be more spectrum as well that NBTC might put it for auction. So we will look at every one as mentioned.

Thank you. And the last question from Khun Siriwan PST from the chat box. First, congratulations on your results. I have two questions. First, could you share how the Apoop momentum looks for the mobile and home Internet business in October? Second, what is your revenue guidance for the fourth quarter and what positive factors are you expecting to support it?

So we see good trend. The government has been supportive of countries to recover. For the past few weeks, the stipulation program also helped every businesses. And even though it's not direct to us, we see a very positive trend ongoing for mobile. Thank you.

I think for the fourth quarter on the broadband side, I think we will still see the positive trend continue. But given normally the last month, we won't get to sell a lot anyway. So I think we still expect good results. But in the end, it's also depending on the competition in the market. um after we we announced our result and also computer announced the result and i think both sides will go back and try to revise their strategy so that you know still the the unknown factor that can impact the um the performance towards the the last two months yeah uh we would like the last questions from pius follow up from hsbc ha

Yeah, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. I have two questions. Firstly, on home broadband, could you share what drove kind of the ARPU quarter-on-quarter by 2% and what other initiatives companies are undertaking to continue this ARPU growth in home broadband? Secondly, on the mobile side, 5G subscriber penetration is still hovering around 34%. So what is the limiting factor? What initiatives like company could take to further improve this penetration? If you can share the split of 5G subs between prepaid and postpaid. Thank you.

I think on the broadband, the strategy for sure is right now we try to offer a higher quality broadband service to the higher segment providers. the more we can get the people who have money to spend to subscribe a better service then it's better for us we are not looking at increasing our pool across the board Normally, we will have new product and services launching in the last quarter of the year as well. But this year, we refrain from that because we are doing the IT migration of the system. So the new product and service is going to come out probably early next year. And that will be, you know, the continual effort in trying to lifting the output up. We're looking at increasing a number of services that we have with existing customers as well. That hopefully will continue to foil the APU growth for one to two, three more years.

For mobile 5G, the growth of 5G is go along with the 5G device penetration in the markets. Thailand markets are not under the highly subsidy markets. Customer purchase their phone individually rather than highly subsidized to fund the growth of 5G. So the key factor is 5G device penetration and 5G device injection to Thailand. We see a positive trend of more and more model continue on being a better offering of 5G model bit by bit. 4G and 3G, I would say 4G mostly still widely available at very economical price. So it will take a bit of time as well for 5G to bring down into those level of price, but we see a positive trend. To really support customer, as our retail, Khun Prabhat mentions, our footprints, our service direct to customer would be able to help AIS to support customer into the 5G era. We continue on seeing a very strong trend of customer adopting better phone with financial services that we together with our partner provide and later on next year would be also from ourselves supporting customer as a part of the plan. And that would be the engines that we will do a better job for our customer.

To support on this, we also see 5G handsets growing at 30% year-on-year. If you look at 5G package subscription growing at 36%, so there are growing hands-in-hands.

Thank you.

Thank you. So there are no further questions, and our time is up. sorry and our time is up and therefore thank you everyone for participating and see you in the next meeting thank you