XL Axiata President Director Dian Siswarini said,” A big driver of the success in upselling customers can be attributed to XL Axiata’s customer value management driven initiatives based on analytics through an omni channel platform. Some of these efforts include applying digital IT and data analytics to identify individual customers’ needs to provide product and services tailor made to each customer. Further initiatives are being planned as we continue to improve to better serve our customers.”
Dian added, the revenue increase was supported by a service revenue increase of 16% YoY and a surge in data revenue by 30% compared to the same period last year. At the same time, the company also successfully increased cost efficiency, allowing its EBITDA to increase 19% YoY, faster than the revenue growth rate and resulted in EBITDA margin increase by 3 ppts. XL Axiata booked a normalized net profit of Rp 505 billion during the period.
Dian added that along with the implementation of the "dual brand" strategy, investment in data network expansion also boosted XL Axiata's position as the brand of choice for smartphone users in Indonesia. This in turn increased smartphone penetration to around 86% or 47.7 million of the total subscriber numbers and increased data income contribution to 88% of the company's total income.
In addition, data subscriber numbers grew YoY to 88% of the total subscribers, 70% of whom are 4G customers. Thanks to this achievement, the company is now in a stronger position to face the impact in declining revenue from traditional services (voice and SMS). Total subscriber numbers increased to 55.5 million from 53.9 million in the same period last year.
XL Axiata continues expanding and improving data network capacity, especially in areas outside Java. As a result, the number of BTS surged to 129 thousand; over 53 thousand of which are 3G BTS and over 39 thousand are 4G BTS as of Q3 2019. XL Axiata's 4G service is now available in 410 cities/regencies across the nation including outside Java. In addition, XL Axiata also spurs fiber optic development in line with increasing data traffic.
In Q3 2019, XL Axiata presented a number of innovative products. XL launched a special offer of the XTRA Kuota Zero package which allows subscribers to enjoy free data to download their chosen applications. AXIS offered promotional deal for gamers. XL Prioritas partnered with HOOQ to offer on-demand video subscription for three months.
The total traffic on all networks of XL Axiata increased by 56% YoY as of 9M 2019. The increase was driven by data, especially 4G data. Since the company has been focusing on investing in networks outside Java in 2016, the company sees a strong performance outside Java. The income from regions outside Java also continues increasing and leading ahead of growths in Java, and eventually followed with an increase in the contribution to the company’s revenue.
Throughout 9M 2019, XL Axiata has repaid Rp 750 billion of bank loans using internal cash. Until 30 September 2019, the company had no US Dollar denominated loan.
XL Axiata successfully won several awards in the third quarter of 2019. Leading business magazine Forbes named XL Axiata CEO Dian Siswarini as one of Asia’s Power Businesswoman. Dian was considered as one of the three Indonesian women who have important roles in developing the business landscape in Asia. XL Axiata was also included again in the list of Top 50 of the Biggest Market Capitalization Public Listed Companies on the 20th rank, as well as receiving The Best Role of Stakeholders Award. XL Axiata also received three awards in Selular Awards 2019, namely CEO of the Year, Best B2B Service, and Best Network Transformation Initiative.