Latest / Investor Exchange / StarHub Is Entering What Leadership Calls The "Harvest" Phase – FY2025
Transcript
- 0:02Time for another Investor Exchange podcast. Here are your hosts, Matt and Sally.
- 0:07You know, I actually had a bit of a moment the other day. I was walking past
- 0:11one of those mobile kiosks at the mall.
- 0:14You know, the ones, bright lights, loud pop music pumping.
- 0:17And I saw a digital billboard for a mobile plan. It just said $10.
- 0:23$10 for a massive amount of data. Oh, it is wild, isn't it?
- 0:27I mean, I remember distinctly when $50 or $60 was the standard entry fee just
- 0:33to have a smartphone with a decent connection. Exactly.
- 0:35And, you know, as a consumer, I'm standing there looking at that $10 sign thinking,
- 0:38this is fantastic. My monthly phone bill is practically a rounding error now.
- 0:42But then the other half of my brain, the part that looks at businesses and stocks kicked in. Right.
- 0:47The math doesn't quite add up. Yeah. I thought, wait a minute,
- 0:50if I'm paying them peanuts, how on earth is the company running the massive
- 0:53power hungry network behind this actually keeping the lights on?
- 0:57That is the multi-billion dollar question.
- 1:00And it's exactly why we're looking at startup today, because that $10 sign isn't
- 1:04just a good deal for you. It's a...
- 1:06It's a warning shot for the whole telecommunications industry here in Singapore.
- 1:11So welcome to the deep dive. Today, we're unpacking the full year financial
- 1:15results for Starhub Limited, specifically for the financial year ended December 31st, 2025.
- 1:22And we've got the whole stack of sources for this one, the official financial
- 1:25statements, the investor presentation slides, the media release.
- 1:29Right. And our mission is simple. We need to strip away the corporate gloss.
- 1:33We're looking at this strictly from an investor perspective.
- 1:36We want to figure out if this company is actually growing, where the money is
- 1:39coming from, and honestly, if that brutal price war is slowly bleeding them dry.
- 1:44Exactly. Because Starhub has been telling a very specific story for the last
- 1:48few years, a story about tech transformation and pivoting to new business lines.
- 1:53Today, we find out if that story is actually translating into cold,
- 1:56hard cash in the bank account.
- 1:58I have to admit, I picked at the headline numbers before we started,
- 2:01and mixed bag feels like a generous understatement.
- 2:03Honestly, it looked a bit scary. It does look dramatic at first glance, I'll grant you that.
- 2:07But, you know, financial statements are rarely as simple as the bold text on page one.
- 2:12There are ghosts in these numbers. Ghosts from years past and some one-off hits
- 2:17that really distort the picture.
- 2:19All right, well, let's start at the very top. The money coming in the door. Revenue.
- 2:23For the full year, 2025, Starhub brought in 2.35 billion Singapore dollars.
- 2:31On the surface, billions sound great, but how does that actually compare to last year?
- 2:36It's effectively flat. It's down 0.6% year on year. Now, in a normal sable year, flat might be okay.
- 2:44But remember, we are living in an inflationary environment. Everything costs more.
- 2:49Wages, electricity to run the towers, equipment.
- 2:52So if your revenue is flat in nominal terms. Your purchasing power as a company
- 2:56is actually shrinking slightly. Yes.
- 2:58And if we dig a little deeper into what they call service revenue,
- 3:01which is the money they make from actually providing connectivity and solutions,
- 3:05not just selling iPhones or Samsung devices over the counter, it's down 1.3 percent.
- 3:09Right. So the cop line story is really one of stagnation. The business isn't
- 3:13falling off a cliff, but it is definitely not in a massive growth phase at the
- 3:18top line either. Which brings us to the bottom line.
- 3:20And this is where I got genuinely worried when I first looked.
- 3:24Net profit attributable to shareholders and patent.
- 3:28It came in at eighty six point four million dollars.
- 3:32Scary number. Because in twenty twenty four, that number was one hundred and
- 3:37sixty eight point one million.
- 3:39That is a drop of nearly forty six percent. They almost halved their profit.
- 3:43I mean, if you're a shareholder looking at your screen, you're panicking.
- 3:46And that panic would be completely understandable, but also a bit misplaced.
- 3:50This is where we have to put on our detective hats, that 46 percent drop.
- 3:54It's not because the business operations suddenly collapsed overnight.
- 3:57It's heavily influenced by two very specific, very large items that have nothing
- 4:02to do with selling broadband or mobile plans.
- 4:05OK, later, mommy, what ate the profit? The first one is a penalty.
- 4:09Well, essentially a forfeiture payment. In the first half of 2025.
- 4:13Starhub had to pay $14.1 million to the regulator, the IMDA. Why?
- 4:21Did they break a rule or something? Not exactly.
- 4:24They decided to return a specific slice of the airwaves, the 700 megahertz spectrum lot.
- 4:29They essentially gave those rights back to the government because they didn't need them.
- 4:33But there was a forfeiture fee attached to handing it back early.
- 4:37So they hand back the spectrum and they have to write a check for 14 million bucks. Ouch. Yeah.
- 4:42But it's a one-off hit. It won't happen again next year. Okay,
- 4:45so that's 14 million explained. But the profit dropped by way more than that.
- 4:49So what's the second factor? The second factor is a ghost from 2024.
- 4:53In 2024, their profit looked amazing. But part of the reason it looked so amazing
- 4:58was a dare plus provision reversal.
- 5:00I always hate that term, provision reversal.
- 5:03It just sounds like accounting magic.
- 5:06Give it to me in plain English. Think of it like this.
- 5:09In previous years, Starhub set aside a chunk of money in the cookie jar,
- 5:14saying, we are going to need this to pay for our big IT and network transformation.
- 5:19That counts as an expense on the books when they put it in the jar.
- 5:22But in 2024, they looked in the jar and said, hey, we didn't actually need to
- 5:27spend this $22.6 million.
- 5:29Ah. So they took it out of the jar and put it back into the profit column for
- 5:342024. So 2024 was artificially boosted because they found money in their own
- 5:39pocket, like finding a $20 bill in a winter coat you haven't worn in a year.
- 5:44Precisely. So 2024 was artificially high because of the winter coat money and
- 5:472025 was artificially low because of the spectrum fine.
- 5:51The double whammy of bad comparison. Got it. So if we play the what-if game,
- 5:55if we strip out the $14 million fine and we ignore the $22 million cookie jar
- 6:00money from last year, what does the real underlying profit look like?
- 6:05The underlying net profit comes in at $100.5 million.
- 6:08Okay. So $100 million versus the headline $86 million. That's better.
- 6:14But let's be honest, it's still lower than last year's underlying profit,
- 6:17isn't it? It is. Even on an underlying basis, profit is down.
- 6:21And that brings us to what I consider the most honest metric we have in these documents.
- 6:27EBITDA. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization.
- 6:32This measures the actual operational efficiency of the machine itself.
- 6:36And that number is $403.6 million, down 12.3%. That is the number you should
- 6:43actually worry about as an investor.
- 6:44Ignore the net profit noise for a second. The fact that EBITDA,
- 6:48which is a proxy for operating cash flow, is down double digits tells us that
- 6:52the core business is under severe pressure.
- 6:54The engine is running hotter and producing less power.
- 6:57Which loops us right back to my $10 mobile plan at the mall,
- 7:00because that pressure has to be coming from somewhere.
- 7:02And looking at the segment breakdown in the presentation slides,
- 7:05it feels like Starhub is essentially two completely different companies right now.
- 7:10You have the old Starhub and the new Starhub. That's the perfect way to frame it.
- 7:13It really is a tale of two businesses. Let's look at the old business first, the consumer segment.
- 7:18This is what you and I use, mobile, broadband, TV.
- 7:22It's bleeding. I mean, there's no other way to say it based on these numbers.
- 7:26Mobile revenue alone is down 7.7% for the full year.
- 7:30That is a massive chunk of change to lose. And management is remarkably blunt
- 7:35in the documents about why.
- 7:37They explicitly blame intense competition and price erosion.
- 7:41They actually mention value players driving prices down to that $10 mark you saw.
- 7:46They even highlight offers targeting seniors that are as low as $5 or $6 a month.
- 7:51It's a race to the bottom. I mean, if you're Starhub and you're used to charging
- 7:54$30 or $40 for a postpaid plan, and suddenly an MVNO competitor offers basically
- 7:59the exact same data allowance for $10, what do you do?
- 8:02You either lose the customer entirely or you cut your price to match and just eat the margin loss.
- 8:08And they're eating the margin loss. They're trying to hold on to their subscriber
- 8:12base, but they are making significantly less money from each individual user.
- 8:18They also noted that roaming revenue and international direct dialing didn't
- 8:22bounce back the way they hoped. That part surprised me.
- 8:25Everyone is traveling again. The airports are packed. I saw the departure lines
- 8:28at Changi just last week.
- 8:30True. But think about how you travel now compared to five or ten years ago.
- 8:35Do you pay your home telco $20 a day for their roaming package?
- 8:39Or do you just buy a local eSum online for five bucks?
- 8:42Or hop on the hotel Wi-Fi and make calls over WhatsApp? Yeah,
- 8:46guilty as charged. I usually just grab a travel eSIM or use Wi-Fi.
- 8:50I haven't paid my telco for roaming in years. Exactly.
- 8:53Structural consumer behavior has fundamentally changed. The old cash cow of
- 8:57international roaming is drying up because the technology has just made it too
- 9:01easy to bypass the traditional telcos. And it's not just mobile that's suffering.
- 9:05Broadband is down slightly, 0.5%. And entertainment, which is their TV and streaming
- 9:11bundles, is down 7.1%. The entertainment drop is interesting.
- 9:16Management noted they deliberately stopped some tactical promotions.
- 9:20Basically, they stopped giving
- 9:21the TV packages away for dirt cheap just to pump up subscriber numbers.
- 9:25And as soon as the price went up to a normal level, subscribers left.
- 9:29The classic cord-cutting phenomenon. Right.
- 9:31People would rather just subscribe to Netflix and Disney Plus directly on their
- 9:36smart TVs than pay for a bundled cable box.
- 9:39So the old business, the consumer side, is shrinking. It's like a melting iceberg.
- 9:45So where is the growth supposed to come from? Why isn't the whole company collapsing?
- 9:49Enter the new star hub, the enterprise business. Right.
- 9:52Selling to companies and the government, not everyday people.
- 9:55Correct. The regional enterprise business is actually growing.
- 9:58It's up 2.9% year on year. Hold on, though.
- 10:012.9%. That's pretty modest. That's barely keeping pace with inflation.
- 10:05I thought this was supposed to be the rocket ship that saves the company's margins.
- 10:09It's not a rocket ship yet. It's more like a steady, heavy-duty diesel engine.
- 10:13But the composition of that growth is what investors need to focus on.
- 10:17Look at managed services within that segment. That is up 5.3%.
- 10:22What does managed services actually mean in this context?
- 10:25Is that just, you know, IT tech support?
- 10:27Think of it this way. The old way of selling to a business was,
- 10:30here is a fiber optic cable to your office. Good luck.
- 10:34That is low margin, highly commoditized. Everyone sells cables.
- 10:38Managed services is, we will run your entire cloud infrastructure.
- 10:42We will manage your internal corporate network. We will handle your data center operations.
- 10:47Ah, so it's deeply integrated. Once you are managing their core network,
- 10:51it is incredibly painful and expensive for them to rip you out and fire you. Exactly.
- 10:55It's sticky revenue. It moves you from being a replaceable vendor to an essential partner.
- 11:00And then you have the cybersecurity division. That's up 4.3%.
- 11:03They mention higher project recognition, which basically means they are successfully
- 11:07finishing and billing for more complex, high-value security projects.
- 11:11And I see a note here in the presentation about a strong order book.
- 11:15That is the safety net for this side of the business.
- 11:17An order book means signed, legally binding contracts. They have future revenue
- 11:22locked in. The consumer business doesn't really have that anymore.
- 11:25You or I could cancel our SIM-only mobile plan tomorrow with no penalty.
- 11:29But a three-year enterprise cybersecurity contract.
- 11:34That is guaranteed money in the bank. So we have the consumer business dragging
- 11:39the anchor and the enterprise business trying to row the boat forward.
- 11:42But right now, the anchor is just really heavy. It is.
- 11:47The growth in enterprise isn't quite fast enough yet to fully offset the massive
- 11:51bleeding in the consumer segment, which is why the total company revenue is stuck at flat.
- 11:55Let's shift gears and talk about the actual bank account. We talked about accounting
- 11:59profit, but in the telco game, cash is king.
- 12:02And there was one number in the cash flow statement that really made my eyes water.
- 12:06$188 million. Spectrum payment. Yeah.
- 12:10In June 2025, they paid $188 million in cash for spectrum rights.
- 12:16That single payment pushed their free cash flow for the entire year into the red.
- 12:20They reported a deficit of $24.7 million.
- 12:24That sounds terrible. A telecom company with negative cash flow.
- 12:27In isolation, yes, it looks bad.
- 12:30But you have to view spectrum like buying land if you're a property developer.
- 12:35You can't build the house. You can't run the 5G network without owning the land first.
- 12:40This is a massive, lumpy capital expense that only happens once every decade or so.
- 12:45So it's the ticket to ride. You have to pay the tool to stay in the game.
- 12:48Exactly. And the documents make a very clear point here.
- 12:51If you strip that $188 million out because it is not a recurring everyday operating
- 12:56cost, Their underlying free cash flow would have been a surplus of $163.3 million.
- 13:03So the day-to-day business operations are generating plenty of cash.
- 13:06They just had to make a massive down payment on the future this year.
- 13:08Okay, that context definitely helps. But speaking of cash, let's talk about
- 13:13the thing our listeners who might own this stock care about the most. The dividend.
- 13:20The payday. This is where things get really interesting from an investor psychology standpoint.
- 13:25Starhub declared a final dividend of 3.0 cents.
- 13:29That brings the total declared dividend for the year to 6.0 cents per share.
- 13:34And this is the part that confuses me mathematically.
- 13:37We just established that earnings per share dropped significantly.
- 13:40The net profit was only 86.4 million. But based on the share count,
- 13:45paying out 6 cents a share costs them more than $100 million.
- 13:48Correct. The payout ratio for FY25 is 113%. They are paying out more money to
- 13:53shareholders than they actually earned in profit this year.
- 13:56How is that remotely sustainable? Are they eating their seed corn here?
- 13:59It is a totally valid concern, and it's the first question any analyst would ask.
- 14:04But this goes back to the difference between accounting profit on a spreadsheet
- 14:07and actual cash in the bank.
- 14:09Remember, the net profit was dragged down by non-cash items like depreciation
- 14:14and those weird provisions we talked about.
- 14:17But their actual cash position, it's incredibly strong. How much cash are they
- 14:21actually sitting on right now?
- 14:23$857.1 million. Whoa! Almost a billion dollars in cash. Yes.
- 14:30It is a massive war chest. They also noted their net debt to EBITDA ratio is
- 14:35at 2.0 times, which is higher than last year's 1.29, mostly because of that spectrum payment.
- 14:41But 2.0 is still considered a very healthy leverage level for a telco.
- 14:45So when management looks at the dividend decision, they are basically saying,
- 14:48look, we know the accounting profit looks terrible this year because of the
- 14:51fine and the weird year-on-year comparisons, but we have nearly a billion dollars sitting in the bank.
- 14:57We can afford to pay you the six cents to keep you happy while we finish fixing
- 15:00the underlying business.
- 15:02So they are actively dipping into the savings account to smooth things over
- 15:06for the investors. It's a confidence signal. Exactly.
- 15:09They are aggressively defending the stock price.
- 15:11Telcos are traditionally bought for their yield. If they cut the dividend to
- 15:15match the lower profit, the stock would likely tank.
- 15:18They are using the cash pile to build a bridge over this rough patch.
- 15:22But that bridge can't last forever.
- 15:24Which brings us to the future outlook. What is the actual plan to fix the operational profit problem?
- 15:31Because I noticed a very distinct change in their language in the presentation slides.
- 15:35For years, all we heard was dare plus invest, build, transform.
- 15:40Now, the slides prominently feature the word harvest. That is the critical strategic pivot for 2026.
- 15:47Harvest is corporate speak for we are done spending massive amounts of money
- 15:50on new toys and platforms.
- 15:52Now we need to squeeze money out of them. It implies reaping the rewards of all that investment.
- 15:56But reading the fine print in the strategy section, Harvest mostly seems to
- 16:00be a polite code word for aggressive cost cutting.
- 16:03You hit the nail on the head. They've largely finished building the new cloud
- 16:07networks and the new IT back-end platforms.
- 16:10Now, they want to turn off the expensive old ones. They explicitly call it legacy decommissioning.
- 16:16It's like moving into a state-of-the-art new smart home, but realizing you're
- 16:19still paying the electric and water bills on your old apartment.
- 16:22You have to finally cut the cord on the old infrastructure to actually realize the savings.
- 16:28And management has quantified this. They have identified approximately $60 million
- 16:32in cost savings that they expect to realize between financial year 2026 and 2028.
- 16:39They are going to shut down legacy servers, optimize the physical network,
- 16:43and run a much leaner ship.
- 16:45$60 million is a serious number. If they can drop the majority of that straight
- 16:49to the bottom line over the next couple of years, that fixes a lot of their
- 16:53margin problems. If they can.
- 16:55Executing deep cost cuts without degrading network quality or customer service
- 16:59is always vastly harder in reality than it looks on a PowerPoint slide.
- 17:03And this is where the rubber really meets the road for investors.
- 17:06Because despite this entire harvest plan, despite the promise of $60 million
- 17:10in savings, the actual financial guidance for next year for FY2026 is essentially a bucket of ice water.
- 17:17It's probably the most sobering part of the entire document stack.
- 17:21They are forecasting EBITDA to be only 75% to 80% of FY2025 levels.
- 17:27Let that sink in for a second. We just talked about how EBITDA was already down
- 17:3212% this year and management is flat out telling us it is going to drop another
- 17:3620 to 25% next year. I don't get it.
- 17:39If they are officially in harvest mode and cutting 60 million in costs,
- 17:44shouldn't operational profits start going up?
- 17:47Why is the guidance pointing so sharply down? This seems entirely contradictory.
- 17:51Because the revenue erosion in the consumer business, that brutal price war,
- 17:55is happening faster than they can cut the costs.
- 17:58Ouch. So the retail prices are falling faster than they can turn off the old
- 18:02servers in the basement.
- 18:03That certainly seems to be the implication. And there is a very specific phrase
- 18:07in the guidance notes that explains their mindset.
- 18:09They state that the lower EBITDA guidance is because they decided to retain
- 18:14commercial flexibility.
- 18:15Retain commercial flexibility. That sounds incredibly polite.
- 18:18Translated. Translated.
- 18:19It means we're going to fight. It means they recognize they might need to lower
- 18:24their own prices even further to match the $10 plans.
- 18:28They might need to double their marketing budget. They might need to heavily
- 18:31subsidize new phones again.
- 18:33They are reserving the right to spend whatever operational cash is necessary
- 18:37to defend their market share from the budget competitors.
- 18:40So they are fully engaging in the price war. They aren't just going to sit back
- 18:45and let the MVNOs steal all their customers.
- 18:47They can't. If they do, they lose the critical mass of the subscriber base entirely,
- 18:52and then the network becomes financially unviable.
- 18:55But fighting a price war is incredibly expensive. That is exactly why the EBITDA guidance is so low.
- 19:02They are consciously sacrificing short-term profit margins to survive the battle for market share.
- 19:08And yet, despite predicting that their core earnings are going to tank another 20% next year.
- 19:13They made a promise about the dividend again, didn't they? They did.
- 19:16Right there in the FY2026 guidance, they stated their target to distribute at
- 19:21least 6.0 cents per share next year.
- 19:24Or their formal dividend policy of 80% of net profit, whichever is higher.
- 19:29That is exceptionally bold.
- 19:31They are essentially telling the market, hey, next year is going to be absolutely
- 19:35brutal for our day-to-day operations.
- 19:38Profits are going to drop significantly again. But don't worry,
- 19:41your six-cent check is safe. It is a massive vote of confidence in their balance sheet.
- 19:45They are effectively saying, we have enough cash in that $850 million pile to weather this storm.
- 19:52Stick with us. It feels like a high wire act, honestly. They are walking across a canyon.
- 19:56On one side, you have the rapidly declining, highly competitive legacy consumer business.
- 20:02On the other side, you have this efficient, high-tech, enterprise-focused future
- 20:06they're trying to build.
- 20:07And the steady dividend is the balancing pole they're using to keep the investors
- 20:12from panicking while they cross.
- 20:14And the cash pile is the safety net down below. But you're right.
- 20:18They have to make it to the other side before the net runs out.
- 20:20So let's wrap this up and distill it for you, the listener.
- 20:23Starhub is clearly a company in a very messy transition. Absolutely.
- 20:29The consumer business mobile broadband TV is under siege.
- 20:33The price war is very real and it is visibly hurting the top and bottom lines.
- 20:39The enterprise business is the lifeboat. It's growing, it has sticky revenue,
- 20:43but it is still ramping up and isn't quite big enough to carry the whole company yet.
- 20:48They have finished the heavy lifting of building their new tech platforms.
- 20:51Now they need to relentlessly execute on cutting costs the harvest strategy
- 20:55to try and stabilize those shrinking margins.
- 20:58And while all this operational chaos is happening, management is acting like
- 21:01a steady bank for their shareholders, paying out a high yield backed by a massive
- 21:05cash reserve to keep everyone calm.
- 21:08It's a fascinating dynamic. You rarely see a company with shrinking operational
- 21:12profits projecting further declines while simultaneously paying out such a confident dividend.
- 21:16It is a testament to their conservative balance sheet management in the past.
- 21:20They saved a lot of cash for a rainy day. Well, it is pouring rain in the telecom sector right now.
- 21:25So here is a final provocative thought for you to chew on.
- 21:30Management is betting the farm on this harvest phase. They are promising you
- 21:34six cents a share next year.
- 21:36Even though they openly admit their actual operations will likely make significantly
- 21:40less money than that. It's the ultimate trust me trade.
- 21:44Exactly. So the real question you have to ask yourself is this.
- 21:47Are they cutting costs fast enough to outrun the severe price deflation in the mobile market?
- 21:52Because if that enterprise turnaround takes just one or two years longer than
- 21:56management expects, that $800 million cash pile isn't infinite.
- 22:00At what point does that generous dividend stop being a reward for your loyalty
- 22:04and start becoming a financial liability that threatens the company's ability to invest and compete?
- 22:09That is the ultimate risk every investor needs to weigh when looking at these
- 22:13numbers. Is the immediate yield worth the long-term structural erosion?
- 22:17Thanks for joining us on this deep dive. It is always fascinating to see what
- 22:21is actually happening behind the scenes of our monthly phone bills. Indeed.
- 22:24It puts that $10 mall kiosk in a whole new light.
- 22:28Until next time. This content is intended to serve strictly and only as an informational,
- 22:33independent, objective summary of recent events and should in no way be interpreted,
- 22:38construed, or relied upon by any party as inside information or financial advice.
- 22:44Thank you.