Maxis Berhad (Maxis) registered a RM1.94 billion service revenue (excluding wholesale) in 4FY2020 driven by growth in core mobile, enterprise and fibre businesses.
The telco showcased strong postpaid growth as subscriber base expanded by 4.0 percent to 3.5 million customers. The MaxisONE Plan and Hotlink Postpaid offerings contributed to the increase of more subscribers.
The MaxisONE Share and Hotlink Postpaid plans attracted entry level postpaid subscribers and there was also an ongoing momentum of pre-to-post migration.
Postpaid revenue posted a slight dip of 2.2 percent to RM967 million due to a decrease in Mobile Termination Rate (MTR) and lack of international roaming income due to MCO since March 2020. Monthly ARPU remained strong at RM83 but experienced a dip from RM90 in Q4 2019.
Maxis’ prepaid segment continued to be under pressure with contraction in subscription by 4.4 percent to 6.0 million customers and lower ARPU at RM39 due to the continued SIM consolidation, successful migration to the Hotlink entry point Postpaid service and lower foreign worker base. Revenue declined 11.1 percent to RM696 million.
Maxis also saw double-digit growth in home connectivity, with 21.8 percent increase in fibre and wireless subscribers year-on-year (yoy), bringing the total to 570,000.
Strong adoption of MaxisONE Prime converged packages and ongoing conversion to higher speed packages of 300, 500 and 800 Mbps resulted in 20.3 percent increase in subscribers to 444,000 subscribers and an 18 percent increase in revenue to RM144 million.
The ARPU remained stable at RM107. Additionally, Maxis saw continued strengthening of wireless connection segment.
The new Fixed Wireless Broadband Access 4G/LTE home routers service which were initially introduced as a temporary solution during the initial MCO in 2020, when installations could not take place has since evolved as a solution to customers not in fibre coverage area and registered strong growth during the quarter.
Subscriptions increased by 27.3 percent to 126k and revenue grew by 16.7 percent to RM35 million.
In continuing to strengthen its 4G network coverage and deliver the best customer experience, Maxis has been building new sites and upgrading existing ones in both Peninsula and East Malaysia, as well as expanding its fibre footprint.
With commitments in both mobile and fixed rollouts for Jalinan Digital Negara (JENDELA), Maxis continues to play an active and important role in this national agenda and has achieved 100% of its own 2020 targets for JENDELA at the end of the quarter.
Following the Government’s recent announcement on MyDIGITAL initiative and Malaysia Digital Economy Blueprint, which includes bringing 5G to Malaysians in stages by the end of 2021, Maxis is in the process of engaging the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) to gather more details.
“Our agility in meeting the demands of this unique environment has enabled us to continue to progress towards our convergence ambition. While we remain cautiously optimistic of the new norm for 2021, we will continue to develop more innovative solutions beyond mobile and create new opportunities for growth for businesses across industries,” Gökhan Ogut, CEO, Maxis said.
“It was indeed a challenging year for everyone, particularly for those most impacted by the pandemic and floods. We are grateful for and appreciate all frontliners across the nation for their tireless sacrifices, from those who work in public safety, health and recovery, to the police, army and medical professionals, as well as our employees who continue to support the needs of our customers.”
