Tuesday, 27 March 2012

Telekom Malaysia - Unifi take-up could run ahead of expectation BUY


- It was reported in local dailies today that Telekom Malaysia (TM) aims to hit its 400,000th  customer base mark for its high-speed broadband service (HSBB), Unifi, by year end, citing executive vice president, consumer, Imri Mokhtar.

- It is understood that Unifi customer base has been growing rapidly, surpassing the 300,000 mark yesterday. Unifi is currently enjoying take-up rate of over 20% of premises passed (1.2mil premises), surpassing the group’s expectations of 8%-10%. 

- TM’s HSBB service is currently available at 79 exchange areas which include 62 in the Klang Valley, 3 in Penang, 2 in Kedah, 9 in Johor and one each in Melaka, Negeri Sembilan and Perak. It was also mentioned that TM expects Unifi take-up rate to continue to increase to 50% of premises passed within the next 3 to 5 years. 

- The news comes as a positive surprise to us. At this juncture, we have conservatively modelled in 369,000 Unifi subscriber base at year end (+56% YoY). Our assumptions imply net addition of circa 11,000/month. At ARPU assumption of RM180/month, we estimate HSBB revenue of circa RM650mil for FY12F. 

- If we raise our assumptions closer to management’s target of 400,000 subscriber base by year end, our HSBB revenue forecast increases by 5% to RM688mil. In turn, this increases groupwide earnings forecast by 1.5% to RM692mil. 

- Management’s target of a 400,000 customer base by year end implies net addition of 14,000 subscribers a month. This is a slight slowdown versus FY11’s net addition rate of circa 17,000 a month. However, we note that since 4Q11, Unifi net addition has accelerated to circa 24,000/month. 

- We re-affirm our BUY call on TM at unchanged DCF derived fair value of RM5.50/share. However there is upside risk to our fair value should Unifi take-up remain strong and exceed our current conservative expectation. As a yardstick, if we raise our target Unifi subs base to 400,000 by year end, our fair value increases to circa RM5.60/share (+2%).   

Source: AmeSecurities

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