Indonesian telco XL Axiata on Wednesday reported modest growth in revenues and normalized net profit in its 9-month results for 2023, which it credits to its fast growing fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) business.
XL Axiata said revenues for the first 9 months of 2023 grew 10% year on year to IDR23.88 trillion (US$1.5 billion), with data and digital services revenue accounting for around 91% of total revenue.
Meanwhile, its normalized net profit grew 4% to IDR1.02 trillion during the period, while XL’s EBITDA was up 13% to IDR11.76 trillion, and its EBITDA margin up to 49%.
XL Axiata’s president director and CEO Dian Siswarini credited the results in part to significant traction in its XL Home fixed broadband business and XL Satu FMC service.
By the third quarter of 2023, XL Axiata had 206,000 Home service customers, with over 52 thousand added in three months. Also, 69% of them are XL Satu subscribers as XL managed to migrate more Home customers to an FMC package. Dian attributed the growth to expansion of its XL Satu Fiber network, which now reaches 75 cities/regencies, including 12 additional cities/regencies in the last three months.
“The challenges ahead will persist. For this reason, we will continue to carry out various initiatives, including encouraging and accelerating the growth of the FBB and FMC businesses, which continue to show highly encouraging potential,” Dian said.
That includes its cooperation agreement with Link Net to build and operate a broadband network passing 1 million homes across numerous cities/regencies to accelerate the penetration of XL Satu services.
XL Axiata added that it’s continuing to develop FMC products for the corporate and small and medium enterprise (SME) segments to serve increasing demand for ICT, IoT and Big Data services. XL Axiata and Link Net ultimately plan to cover 8 million homes in the next five years.
Meanwhile, XL Axiata said it had 57.5 million total subscribers by the end of the third quarter of 2023, with ARPUs at IDR40,000 for prepaid services, IDR90,000 for postpaid and IDR42,000 on blended basis. XL says the increase in blended ARPU is in line with the company's focus on gaining and maintaining quality customers.
XL Axiata also said it managed to keep its opex stable, thanks in part to lower interconnection costs compared to the previous quarter. Overall, the operator said, year-on-year opex was maintained below revenue growth.
The company also said its digital transformation strategy is paying off, particularly regarding its MyXL and AXISNet consumer apps, which are being actively used by over 27 million customers. XL says the apps’ Monthly Active User (MAU) growth has reached 77% since December 2021, and shows “improved customer experience and monetization of XL Axiata through a better understanding of customer needs.”
