KUALA LUMPUR: Maxis Bhd, in a move to gear up for future growth, today announced a new strategy to broaden revenue base to deliver internal service revenue target in excess of RM10 billion by 2023.
It is a significant change in strategy as it sets the foundation for Maxis to become a stronger converged player in Malaysia.
In a statement, Maxis said an incremental capital allocation of RM1 billion has been set aside for the next three years to support the new strategy and the five-year internal service revenue target of more than RM10 billion.
As for the company’s financial performance in 2018, Maxis said it was stable despite challenging market conditions.
“The year saw Maxis turning in continued strong growth and leadership in post paid, stabilising prepaid and growth in the fibre business.
“Profit after tax was impacted by one-off costs in the fourth quarter, associated with the launch of the new strategy to become a converged communications and digital services company in both fixed and mobile markets,” said the statement.
Meanwhile, chief executive officer Robert Nason was quoted as saying that the company continued to grow and lead the market in postpaid, with revenue for 2018 growing 5.1 per cent to RM4.07 billion.
Chief executive officer Robert Nason was quoted as saying: “Overall, we are happy with our 2018 results and the substantial progress made during the year.
“We closed 2018 by maintaining a strong core operating performance and we led the market with new affordable home and business fibre plans and grabbed first mover advantage through our fibrenation campaign.”
He said the one-off costs incurred in the fourth quarter of last year was a necessary investment in the interest of the customers and for long-term growth strategy.
For the year under review, service revenue dipped by 2.5 per cent to RM8.07 billion from RM8.27 billion and prepaid revenue declined 11.4 per cent to RM3.4 billion from RM3.8 billion, mainly due to SIM consolidation and migration to postpaid.
Service revenue dipped 2.5 per cent to RM8.07 billion from RM8.27 billion, nonetheless, it was a strong finish to the year as a result of the growth in postpaid and fibre which in turn mitigated lower revenue from prepaid.
Chief operating officer Gökhan Ogut said while challenging times would continue as competition remained intense, Maxis was responding well to rapid changes in the market and customer behaviours.
“We want to continue to lead the market, competing effectively in our core mobile business and expanding into converged offerings and the enterprise segment.
“The foundation of our growth continues to be our differentiated 4G LTE (Long-term Evolution) network, in which we amplified our leadership among all networks in Malaysia in terms of speed, performance and experience,” he added.
Meanwhile, Maxis’ total subscriber base improved to above 3.1 million and growth was primarily driven by the strong demand for attractive and innovative device and value-accretive share line propositions.
Maxis declared a fourth interim dividend of five sen net per share, bringing the full dividend for the year to 20 sen per share. — Bernama