Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the first quarter of 2024 result conference call. First, let me introduce our management. Our CEO, Khun Somchai. Good afternoon. Deputy CEO, Khun Mark. Good afternoon. Chief Consumer Business, Khun Pratthana. Good evening, [Foreign language]. CEO Broadband, Khun Tee. We have Head of Investor Relations and Compliance, Khun Nattiya. Good evening, Ka. Myself, Somruetai, will be briefing you on the results and running this session. The session will begin with a short brief and then go directly into Q&A. At this time, you may also reserve to ask the question through the chat box. Please type your name and corporate name. Now let me begin the presentation. In the first quarter, the Thai economy showed a mixed trend in the economic indicators. The recovery was driven by increasing tourist number and government subsidies, which benefited consumer confidence and device sales. AIS continued to demonstrate a core service revenue growth of 18% year-on-year, and EBITDA growth of 23% year-on-year, driven by all business segments, especially mobile and broadband, spurred by the full quarter of 3BB Broadband. Our focus on sustaining profitability through delivering quality revenue and operational efficiencies has led to strong performance in net profit and cash flow, resulting in solid dividends to shareholders. The mobile business continued the revival momentum from the previous quarter, growing by 3.7% year-on-year, due to accumulated efforts in enhancing the value of packages for customers. The continued growth in ARPU, led by a focus on high-quality acquisition, as well as benefited from increasing tourist arrivals, which boosted the prepaid revenue. The profitability focus extended to the subsidy optimization, also improving sales margins by close to 5% in the quarter. Our 5G subscribers reached 9.9 million, with 5G coverage exceeding 90% of Thailand. Broadband more than double in size due to the consolidation of a full quarter of Triple T Broadband revenue. Organically, we also added almost 73,000 quality subscribers, reaching a total of 4.8 million subscribers through our extended coverage and attractive value-based content bundling packages. We place focus on segmented package and introduce innovative products like Home Fibre LAN, aiming to improve ARPU, ARPU, which also delivered an upward trend Q-on-Q. The priority this year remains in integration, which is progressing according to plan, while ensuring sales and service remain uninterrupted to deliver enhanced experience for customers. Enterprise non-mobile service grew by 20% year-on-year, benefiting from the full quarter recognition of Triple T Broadband. We continue to see strong demand from customers leveraging the digitization trend. Our emphasis remains unchanged on capturing demand on connectivity, leveraging such relationship towards high margin service led by cloud and platform solutions. Next, our P&L. Our core service revenue showed an 18% growth boost across all businesses, a continuous revival in mobile, full quarter consolidation of 3BB, organic momentum in the broadband business, and enterprise business. With a positive Triple T Broadband contribution and at the EBITDA level, continuous execution on operational efficiency, including 3BB synergies and improved margin in device subsidy optimization, the EBITDA increased by 23% year-over-year, and the margin also improved to 52%. AIS delivered a net profit of THB 8.45 billion, a growth of 25% year-over-year, reflecting an improved operating performance. With a full quarter consolidation of 3BB, our broadband revenue contribution has now increased to 18% from around 8% last year. Mobile stands around 77%, while enterprise remains around 4%. The integration is progressing according to plan. We have derived a gross synergy of THB 750 million, largely from CapEx avoidance, by leveraging the wider network footprint of 3BB. On the OpEx side, we are currently executing channel optimization to ensure seamless customer experiences. We have completed transmission network and content optimization with the added benefit of reducing churn rates and saving on the equipment write-offs. Revenue synergy is being realized as planned, with existing customer transitioning to a higher value packages. Integration costs remain low in the first quarter as we finalize internal IT requirements. The timeline remains unchanged, aiming to complete integration by mid-2025. With the Q1 performance, we acknowledge structural headwinds ahead of us, such as high household debt and geopolitical risks, that keep us cautious on consumer spending power in the subsequent quarters. ... We also had a benefit from a low base performance last year before the value-based package restructuring took effect. From the above, we keep our guidance unchanged. That's the end of the short brief, and we'll start 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 first question, we have Khun Pisut from Kasikorn. Hi, everyone. Can you hear me? Uh. Yes, thanks for the call. Congrats on your good set of results. This is Pisut from Kasikorn Securities. May I have four quick questions? The first one, if I'm correct, your gross profit margin of the handset sales was at 4.7% in the quarter, which was much higher than before. What was the reason behind, if you can say, and do you expect this good margin to continue in the following quarters? My second question, your effective tax rate in the quarter was 18.7%, down from 20% ± in the past. What was the reason? And should I assume your better tax management to continue in the next two to three years? And my third question, just noticed that your data subscribers, not... Isn't 5G subscriber came down for two consecutive quarters, and this quarter you, in fact, added a good number of subscribers. Could you please tell us the reasons? And, you know, it would be great if you can add some color on the trend going forward. My last question, your net profit growth was 25% year-on-year, exceeding your core revenue growth of 18% in this quarter. It seem to me you no longer recognize an accounting loss contribution from Triple T Broadband, and it would be helpful if you can tell us the, you know, the contributions to the bottom line from the Triple T Broadband in this quarter. That's all for me. Thank you, Krub. Thank you, Khun. Let me address number one question and number three question. If I'm not mistaken, number one, Khun Pisut asked about the profit margin from handsets. Am I getting correctly? The handset in quarter one, we have received actually a positive push from the government program, the e-Tax incentive. So a lot of customer decide to fast forward purchasing into early of Q1, during January towards the mid of February, and a lot to buy and sales at AIS Retail. So that's improved our profitabilities on distributing handset. Whether it's continue on, we aim to continue on reasonable profit margin, but the number remain to be seen, depending on model of handsets, the distribution point. So, in fact, Q1 has been good because of the incentive from the government program as a push. So that's number one. On number three, I assume you asked about the subscriber, not data subscribers. You talk about the net additional subscribers when it comes to an overall AIS mobile subscriber. Am I correct? I think I look into the number of data subscriber that you provide, you know, the percentage of total subscriber in the, you know, package that you send to us. And it's decreased? It's reducing. It's reducing, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, as the percentage number, it came down from 73% last year to 68% of total sub. I know that your total sub has been coming down, but if you look at the quarter and quarter from the fourth quarter to this quarter, actually, you add a good number of subscriber. Yeah. Maybe I get back to you on this. Let me check just now, allow me to come back slightly later. Total subs. In terms of total sub, it's just been increasing from actually two prong. The first one is healthy growth in terms of the quality sub, help us continue on growing from the, from last year. The second piece is actually came from the inbound tourists that has been coming more in quarter one as well. So that's the reason why we be able to add into the base. But the penetration of data sub, I'll get back. Let me check now, please. Let me take your second question and your last one. Your second question about the effective tax rate. Basically, in this quarter, we also recognized share of profit from 3BB IF. So that's the effect that caused a lower effective tax rate. Excluding that number, our effective tax rate should be close to 20%, so we expect to maintain within that range. Your last question is on the NPAT growth. Despite of the NPAT growth, 3BB as an entity still giving dilution to our NPAT, despite- ... what's quite significantly smaller quarter by quarter? As mentioned from the previous call, what we'll try to do is we minimize the impact from 3BB acquisition. In the end, whether the whole year contribution will be positive or not, I think you look at each entity, it will be difficult, because we manage it combined. So far, what we have done is I think we maintain the revenue momentum, plus we realized some of the opportunity early. So, I mean, on a combined basis, then we believe that we you know, minimize the impact from the 3BB operation, that we can grow the business. It is hard to pinpoint whether the operation from 3BB is positive or negative. I don't think it's relevant right now. Yes, it's very clear. Thank you, Krub. We have Khun Virapat from CGSI. Hi, [Foreign language]. This is Virapat from CGSI. I have three questions. The first question, with sluggish consumption and slow economic growth, our government asked commercial banks to lower lending rate to help their customers. For telecom sector, how do you assess the possibility that NBTC would intervene the price structure for telco services or ask operators to do national services? My second question, do you see if there is any difficulty in raising package price for mobile and broadband services in this year? And my last question, regarding 5G subscribers and data usage, I noticed that data usage has seen slow growth in the past one year. Are you confident that the more 5G subscription will drive more data usage and ARPU? Thank you. I answer your first question. NBTC as a regulator, they try to always come up with a, a... ask for the operator to offer the best service and best offer to the customer all the time. However, if based on today, their criteria, we can support them on the criteria that they set up. I don't think they will get more serious ask for us to down the pricing again, because our price, when we give their information, our price plan in this region is also very low. However, they also see some group of people, like the disabled people, who cannot have the effort to do some tennis plan, something like this. They may ask for AIS, and/or or operator give very good package. However, they will support by their USO Fund also. This is the one project that they try to help the some group of segmentation that not affordable on the mobile service. On your second question, if I get it correctly, you talk about how difficult would it be to raise the price. So I like to emphasize here that, we has been stopping the unlimited low plan, which is more on unlimited size, is unreasonable and not sustainable to provide, is not we raising price. So we, by taking out unlimited, low plan, which is not sustainable, so we're getting more reasonable usage, toward the price point. The pricing is, the more they use, a little bit more they pay. So that's how rationalized we put in. It's not exactly raised price, so we kill the unsustainable, not feasible to provide one. So, so, so I think that's number two, is not that we're raising price. For number three, when it come to 5G data usage, your question is, data usage are not growing. Part and parcel of that is to eliminate or to discontinue the unlimited low plan, help us be able to manage the overflow of data in unlimited. That is why the average has not been growing badly. It's not that customer use less, but those super heavy unsustainable one source of disappear. The 5G coverage, 5G quality, we truly believe it will help. It's much better technology for customer who use internet to go for. Now, the key main one is to continue on bringing in more 5G device for customer to adopt. The network is ready, and we truly believe that 5G will help out, continue on driving the uplift in consumption and revenue. Okay, got it. Thank you very much, Krub. No more question from me. Next, we have Piyush, HSBC, please. Yeah, hey. Good evening. Congratulations for a great set of numbers. A few questions. Firstly, you have seen a strong EBITDA growth. If I look at your top end of the guidance, you're already tracking 26% of your full year guidance. So what is stopping us to raise EBITDA guidance? Is there any headwind that you expect in the, you know, remaining nine months period? That is the first question. Secondly, on spectrum auction, next spectrum auction, any kind of update which you can provide based on your discussions with the regulator? Thirdly, I, you know, Pisut asked earlier about the government, you know, tax stimulus and how it helped device sales. Can you clarify, like, is it still sustaining that stimulus, which is helping? Also, Khun Tee, on the tax side, so those tax benefits will continue? I didn't quite, sorry, but if you can clarify how, why it was lower again in first quarter, and would it sustain going forward? Thanks. Okay. So let me address the EBITDA and also the tax, and then later on, second auction, maybe to the CEO, ka. On the EBITDA side, if you look through last year, we started to see rising of utility costs toward the second half of the year. So that's one of the major item that drives up our network OpEx in the second half. Apart from that, I think despite that revenue growth in quite nicely in the first quarter, but partly we believe that is both direct and indirect impact of the government tax campaign that helps for the spending. I think overall economy on the ground, as the government announced and as well as we've seen, is not yet strong. I think the recovery has been very slow, so we are quite cautious on that. And for that reason, we do not yet raise our guidance for the full year. Clarification on the tax campaign, this is the tax campaigns implemented for the month of January up until mid of February, so that is, short term in nature. There's no any further, incentive announced by the government at this point in time, so we are also, quite cautious for the upcoming second quarter, which is usually a lower season comparing to the first quarter. And the last point that I mentioned about the effective tax rate, that Khun Pisut asked earlier. The effective tax rate now seems to be lower than 20%, because there is a recognition of share of profit from our investment in 3BB Infrastructure Fund, which is not subjected to tax. That's why we see a lower effective tax rate, and that should be ongoing, because we'll continue to recognize this share of profit on a quarterly basis. On the spectrum auctions, we will have unclear and informal timeframes from the NBTC. As you follow the news, in the beginning, NBTC are willing to auction 3.5 GHz, because this is the standard frequency for the 5G. But after they announce, there are some problem, because this frequency also used in the broadcast today, that we have to return this frequency back. So I think NBTC have to reconsider on their original plan to have the 3.5 to be auctioned in this year, when they announce in the public. However, from our observation, there are another two frequency from NT. 2.1 that AIS learned from TOT in the past, and 2.3 that DTAC learned from CAT in the past. This frequency may be auctioned next year, so they may come to have the plan to auction. If they auction, I think 2.1 and 2.3 should be the first priority rather than 3.5, but still have no plan from NBTC yet. Got it. This is helpful. Thanks a lot. She answers it. One day. Sir, you from Macquarie, please. Hi, good evening. Yeah, just one question from me. I recall in the previous call, management guided that you were targeting around three years for the balance sheet, as in the net debt to EBITDA, to go back to pre-3BB, levels. Can you just, give us some color, how do you plan to do that besides the enlarged EBITDA? And is that target still three years, or you think you can do it in two years, at this point? We only into this journey for about three to four months. Give us some more time, to make sure that, you know, the whatever progress we make can continue. Okay. But, can you just give some color besides the enlarged EBITDA, how do you plan to reduce your debt? I think on debt side, right, it's. It relates to the expanded EBITDA as well, because as we expand our operating cash flow, we have the capacity to deleverage. And that's why we talk about the three-year outlook, that we don't think that the high leverage will sustain at this level. So it has a lot to do with expanded EBITDA in order to deleverage. As Khun Somchai mentioned, we are also looking at potential upcoming spectrum auction in the next two, three years' time. So that will comes into play of how our debt will look like due to the auction. Other than that, I think in terms of CapEx, as you already see, that we started to lower our CapEx, especially on mobile, because we completed majority of the corporate work on 5G. Ongoing basis, it's capacity-driven, whereas on fixed broadband, as we integrated with 3BB, we can also utilize the footprint of 3BB, which help us save the CapEx. So trajectory, you know, additional cash flow that comes in will help us to support deleveraging as well as to spare for spectrum auction, if any. All right. Yep, that's clear. Thanks. Hi, this is Wasu from Maybank. Can I start asking questions? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the call, and congratulations on the impressive performance in the first quarter. So I have five questions in total. The first question is about the integration cost. Do you have any guidance on the integration cost, impact on P&L, going forward in the coming quarters? So that's the first question. The second question is about competition. So far this year, have you seen any adjustment of data quotas or data pricing in the prepaid market segment? The third question is about the postpaid ARPU. Although the competition has been easing and 5G adoption has been rising, I've noticed that postpaid ARPU has remained below THB 450 per month since the first quarter of 2023. So what is the management expectation for the postpaid ARPU going forward? The fourth question is about the marketing expense. So the marketing expense in the first quarter of this year was 3.4% of the core service revenue. Is this a comfortable number for the management going forward? And can the number actually rise in the coming quarters, given that Khun Montri used to say that 4% of core service revenue is actually the ceiling for the marketing expense budget this year? And my final question is on the finance cost. The finance cost was THB 2.3 billion in the first quarter. How much of the finance cost in the first quarter came from 3BB? That's all my questions. Thank you. Creation cost. I think number one, integration cost, in the end, it would net off with the synergy that we make. So I don't think you'll see the impact of integration cost, unlike what happened to our friend. I think we started to recognize synergy early, and that would cover the integration cost, so you won't feel the impact there. Allow me to take number two, three, and four. Number two, you asked about competitions, quota on prepaid on the data plan. What we kind of see for this past quarter as the quota for prepaid data remained fairly stable. The unlimited, as I mentioned, unlimited unsustainable plan has been taking out. We believe, for quarter two onwards, we kind of think it would be rather stable or just positive, negative, depending on, the promotion in the markets. So that's number two. For question number three, when we talk about postpaid ARPU, the postpaid ARPU for, this quarters, came out not so high in term of growth, were rather stables. The major driver for postpaid ARPU is a combination of device bundling plan, as well as the normal postpaid subscription, the combination of that. In the market as we proceed, it tends to be more pure device sales together with financing plan. Installment plan is much less of the device bundling plan. That has a bit of effect to the top line ARPU in postpaid, in term of top line. But as a result, means also that we have spent less for the handset subsidy. As a result, it improved the productivities, profitability at the end. So postpaid ARPU in top line there, it may not be so easy to see, but this has been driven by that piece of less of the device bundling plan. For the third, the fourth question regarding marketing expense, as we described from previous call as well, that marketing expense will highly linked the two seasonalities, and where we wanna push of the good timing, where we need to spend and when we need to spend. We keep a fairly flexible in term of timeline to match the demand and supply. There are upcoming new model of the product, so that we will be probably uplift the spending of marketing, making sure that customer receive the full benefit of what we have. So I would say it's seasonalities. Your last questions around the finance cost. Finance cost has two portions. First portion is the interest expense. Second portion is the deferred interest, based on the ROU. So the interest expense, I would assume that that comes up because of the acquisition of the 3BB. But if you look purely at the ARPU, within the addition per quarter coming from 3BB, that's close to about THB 600 million. That's very clear. Thank you. Next, we have Khun Thitithep from KKPS. Hi. Thank you. Can you hear me? Sure. I have three questions. The first two questions are regarding the 3BB. First question is that you start consolidating 3BB since sometime in November. Have you already started cost redundancy? Because, you know, if we look at consolidated costs in this quarter, it look like it's very well contained. And isn't there much more room for you to squeeze costs from 3BB acquisition? The second one, your fixed broadband business added more than 70,000 net adds in this quarter. Right now, you have a much larger footprint, so going forward, should we expect net add to increase? The third question is regarding the payout ratio, because the spectrum auction is coming. Do you think that you may adjust the payout, payout ratio to be more conservative ahead of the auction? you think that, you know, the competition auction should be mild, so there's no need to adjust the payout ratio? Thank you. On the payout ratio, we are very committed to that, and not less than 20%, I think is our guidance. However, when the dividend call, we try to have the dividend more than that, as much as we can, as our two major shareholder also really, really support us in this matter. However, like Khun Nattiya said, we have to check in detail across the environment and situation, and also coming up of the new opportunity also. That's why we still don't change the guidance. On, thank you. Ask about whether we have done some- The cost redundancy and- ... Let me see. In short, yes. I think we combine a few operations, then I think we can reduce certain costs. How to expect that? I think we used to give you some guidance on the total synergy per year. I think we are on track for that. There's progress to be made quarter by quarter. I think that's part of the integration roadmap that we're gonna carry on for the next 18 months to 24 months. Second, 70,000 net add, expect to increase. My answer to that is, broadband is quite a physical business. To increase something significantly, I think there's need to be a change in terms of resources and everything. So I think we'll be happy to be able to maintain that level of net add. To increase it much more or not, I think it's hard to say. For now, I think we'll be happy at that level. Right. Okay. Thank you. We have Arthur from Citi, please. Hi, good evening. Yes, several questions, please. Firstly, I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on the Digital Wallet scheme in Thailand. How do you see this as impacting consumption in the mobile space? And is this in your current group guidance? Second question I had is with regard to mobile pricing. Is there any room to raise this in a more direct manner? I know you've mentioned you've been scaling down on the unlimited plans, but is there room to more directly raise pricing itself? I mean, I understand the concept on RPMB and revising that with unlimited, but that does not necessarily improve ARPUs per se. Digital wallets, we hope that it would, at the end, come out, but in any way, it remain to be seen. Once Digital Wallets and THB 10,000 get distributed by the government, it solves off the economy stipulations, and people will spend a bit more. We do hope as well that at the end, it will pass through communication at some kind, either by a bit more on the handsets or the bundling. We are hopeful, but that's remain to be seen. The second question regarding whether or not there are room on the price adjustment. I would say we continue on looking the optimizations perspective rather than putting as a price raising as mentions. Optimization in this case would mean if some plan are not still sustainable and we find out and the pattern of use has been changed, so we continue on reducing those unsustainable plan. At the end, it will improve our ARPU. Secondly, we continue on looking at more utilities and values, so customer would wanted to subscribe more. So that one would also help improve ARPU. It could be a combination of data, content, and some other value-added service as a part of it. So I believe that in that search and continue on improve product offering, will at the end help us getting stronger in term of proposition to customer, and hope customer will spend a bit more. Understood. So if I can just add another question with regard to the digital banking push, is that still something the company is looking to engage in? And what is the status of that? Thank you. I think we still engaging with the partners in preparation for that. As you may be aware, the formal regulation has come out, so now it's under the time period, all the interested parties then need to submit the applications. Any timetable for this? I think the submission has to be done by early September, but, Then they will take how long to evaluate? Right. Piyush again? Yeah, hi. Did you have your- Yeah. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, thanks for letting me ask follow-up questions. On the mobile side, do we still have customers who are on a lower-end unlimited plan, or that is already completely out of the system? And if there are, like, what percentage of contribution of customers are there? They are still some of the customers in that plan. The plan lasts about 12 months in general. There are some, but not in great numbers. And as the plan ends, it's also depending on what usage pattern they are in, and we will definitely propose to them the next best offer, as mentioned. Based on your observation, as you remove this low-end, unlimited data plan, how has those customers behaved? Like, do they start with lower usage? And because they have been used to such high data usage consumption, right? Do they, over time, move up to high-value packs, start contributing more ARPU, or what's the typical behavior? And a follow-up to that is, like, when I look at Thailand data usage, it's very high, as compared to the region. It's already, like, 30 GB. So if you are not increasing prices, then what is the other lever to improve mobile ARPU? Thank you. If the usage doesn't grow? Yeah, thanks. On the behavior side, it's so clear that customer have demand to use a lot. So when we start eliminating the unsustainable plan, mostly would make decision to buy the larger package. So that's number one. So your second question regarding, oh, because it's 30 gig, average consumptions, and you'll be not raising price per gig, so how would we do? When the average are 30 gig, it's also combinations of unlimited users as well as the quota-based users. Previous unlimited low plan has been significantly contribute to the consumption per sub. So as mentioned, we are not raising price, but we need to eliminate the one that we cannot sustainably provide, because cost to serve are not be able to give us that abilities. So, by eliminating on that, so when customer want to use more gigabytes, so they upgrade to the larger plan, is more sustainable for us, as well as the ARPU will increase, and the mixture will change. Right. And could you share with us, like, what is the usage trend on 5G customers, and how that has transitioned? Like, you know, in terms of season, in terms of as the customer become more seasoned, like one year on 5G, how is the usage pattern versus when he entered? Oh, okay. I don't have the number on top of my head. In general, 5G would kind of stretch up usage a bit more because a better phone as well as better network. Roughly, if not mistaken, it's about... Yeah, yeah, it's about 5%-10% more, as in terms of usage consumptions. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. For remaining parts that couldn't be should ask for, allow us to get back separately. We were verifying that, and we will clarify with you. Thank you very much, sir. Well, we don't have any further questions, and this is the end of the conference call. Thank you for participating. See you again next quarter, ค่ะ. Thank you.