Friday May 7, 2010
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia’s largest telecommunications company Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) aims to stick to its dividend payout policy of a minimum of RM700mil, or up to 90% of normalised profit after tax and minority interests, whichever is higher, for the financial year ending Dec 31, 2010, said the company’s group chief executive officer Datuk Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa.
“The dividend payout would be maintained from the previous financial year,” Zamzamzairani said, after telling reporters that the company had obtained shareholders’ approval to pay a final gross dividend of 13 sen per share less tax of 25%, or a total of RM348.8mil, at the group’s AGM yesterday.
Together with the interim dividend of 10 sen tax exempt amounting to RM357.7mil that was distributed last September, TM’s total dividend payout for FY2009 stood at RM706.5mil, or a net of 19.75 sen per share.
“This means TM has successfully fulfilled its dividend obligation to shareholders in the last financial year,” TM chairman Datuk Dr Halim Shafie said.
TM posted a marginally lower operating revenue of RM8.608bil for FY2009, compared with RM8.674bil in the previous corresponding period. Net profit stood at RM643mil for FY2009, compared with RM791.9mil for FY2008.
Undoubtedly, 2009 was a challenging year for TM. Halim said this was due to the intense competition in the country’s broadband market amid a contracting economy.
Meanwhile, Zamzamzairani revealed that 10,000 would-be subscribers had registered their interest in the company’s recently launched High Speed Broadband (HSBB) service, UniFi, and that they were in line for service installation.
“We are encouraged to see that the UniFi service has been received positively by Malaysians,” he said.
The company has so far signed up around 1,700 customers under the UniFi service since its launch less than two months ago.
According to Zamzamzairani, TM is currently focused on ramping up its customer base for the UniFi service, and such effort would be more intense in the second half of this year.
“We expect the take-up rate to improve, but we cannot give you any forward-looking number,” he said.
“All we can say is that we are on track to achieving our targets,” Zamzamzairani added.
TM aimed to complete 750,000 UniFi home passes by the end of this year and to deliver 1.3 million premise passes by 2012.
It also planned to roll out the UniFi service in 18 new exchange areas nationwide by July. The areas include Selangor, Kuala Lumpur, the Multimedia Super Corridor, Johor, Kedah and Penang.
UniFi service is presently available only in four exchange areas in the Klang Valley, namely Shah Alam, Subang Jaya, Taman Tun Dr Ismail and Bangsar.
On content development for the UniFi service, Zamzamzairani said that partnering with others who are already competitive in the field would be ideal and most effective solution for the company at this juncture. However, he said it was still early days to name any potential partner for such venture, but maintained that the company would continue to explore opportunities in content development.
He said that TM would adopt a balanced and careful approach when it comes to acquiring content.
“We are not overly aggressive so as not to negatively impact our budget,” Zamzamzairani explained, adding that the company had allocated about RM300mil over the next three years for content development.
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/5/7/business/6207853&sec=business
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