By Adeline Paul RajPublished: 2010/05/19
TELEKOM Malaysia Bhd (TM) (4863), the country's largest telecommunications company, will not need to raise funds to meet its capital expenditure (capex) requirements of about RM2 billion this year, its chief said.
It has a healthy level of internally-generated funds that it can draw from and doing so would not affect its dividend payouts to shareholders, group chief executive officer Datuk Zamzamzairani Isa said.
TM has a cash balance of RM3.5 billion as at the end of last year.
"Our total capex will be about RM2 billion this year and all of it will be internally generated," he told Business Times yesterday during a visit of TM's senior management to The New Straits Times Press office in Kuala Lumpur.
Half of the RM2 billion it needs would go towards further developing the country's high-speed broadband (HSBB) service, known as "UniFi", which was launched on March 24 this year.
TM indicated last month that its investments in the 10-year HSBB project would peak this year as it seeks to wire up some 750,000 premises nationwide by year-end to meet its 1.3 million target by end-2012.
To date, it has wired up about 370,000 premises, Zamzamzairani said.
"Our balance sheet is very strong, we have enough funds to (finance) both the investment in HSBB and the business as usual. Dividends would still remain," he said.
The HSBB service, which is now available only to home users and small to medium enterprises in certain areas, is expected to include bigger enterprises and the government on July 1.
"That's our next milestone. We're ramping up to make sure we meet the expectations of the market," he remarked.
Meanwhile, TM's broadband service for the general public via Streamyx has seen good take-up this year as the group has been marketing the product more aggressively.
The group has been adding over 40,000 subscribers a month this year compared with under 30,000 a month before November last year, he said.
Zamzamzairani said activities around broadband in the industry have also helped create more public interest in the service.
http://www.btimes.com.my/Current_News/BTIMES/articles/telkie/Article/
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