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Telkom Indonesia saw increases in revenue, earnings and net income during the year ending 31 December 2020, with broadband demand pushed to new heights due to the ongoing pandemic.
In its financial results for the year ending 2020, the state-backed Indonesian multinational telecommunications provider reported consolidated revenue of IDR136.46 trillion, equating to a year-on-year increase of 0.7 per cent compared to 2019.
The company's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for the year, meanwhile, came to IDR72.08 trillion, with a net income of IDR20.80 trillion, the two tallies reaching double digit growth of 11.2 per cent and 11.5 per cent, year-on-year, respectively.
The company told shareholders that these increases indicated optimism that digitalisation could become a driving force for the handling COVID-19 and national economic recovery.
Telkom president director Ririek Adriansyah said that 2020 was a “very challenging year” during which pandemic-induced changes had shifted people's needs and lifestyles, with a significant increase in consumers adopting a digital lifestyle.
However, there were upsides.
"The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation [a] couple [of] years faster and for Telkom, this is a valuable momentum for acceleration,” Adriansyah said. “In line with the company's transformation into a digital telco, Telkom continues to actively support the government's efforts in handling COVID-19 and recovering the national economy through connectivity, platforms and digital applications, as well as social assistance.
“We are committed to continuing to provide ease for people who because of the pandemic have to carry out their activities digitally from home, including to work and study," he added.
With COVID-19 providing an impetus for a greater need for fixed broadband access, the telco said it seized the moment to meet the increasing demand throughout 2020 by having more than 1.01 million new subscribers to IndiHome, Telkom's fixed broadband flagship product.
By the end of 2020, the number of IndiHome subscribers grew to 8.02 million, the company noted, an increase of 14.5 per cent compared to the end of 2019. IndiHome posted a significant increase in revenue of 21.2 per cent, to IDR22.2 trillion compared to last year.
It is expected that IndiHome's growth will remain promising, given that the fixed broadband penetration rate in Indonesia is relatively low, at around 15 per cent of Indonesian households.
In the mobile segment, Telkom's subsidiary Telkomsel recorded a significant increase in data traffic, to 9,428 petabytes, an increase of 43.8 per cent compared to the same period last year, with the growing demand for data services, particularly due to changes in people's lifestyles triggered by the pandemic.
As at the end of 2020, Telkomsel claimed 169.5 million subscribers, of which 115.9 million were mobile data users, an increase of 5.2 per cent compared to last year.
Additionally, Telkomsel's digital business revenue grew by 7.0 per cent during the year to IDR62.33 trillion, with the company flagging this as a catalyst of the consumer behaviour shift from the legacy business to digital business services.
Indeed, the digital business revenue contribution increased to 71.6 per cent out of Telkomsel's total revenue, from 63.9 per cent in the previous year.
Telkom Indonesia’s enterprise segment, meanwhile, posted IDR17.7 trillion in revenue, with the fourth quarter of 2020 alone seeing revenue from the segment reaching IDR6.3 trillion, representing growth of 67.9 per cent compared to the third quarter of 2020.
The company’s wholesale and international business segment also did comparatively well, with revenue increasing by 27.3 per cent, year-on-year to IDR13.5 trillion.
The company pointed to improvements in its telecommunications tower business, voice wholesale, data centres and inorganic initiatives as being behind this positive figure. In 2020, Telkomsel built 27,700 new 4G LTE Base Transceiver Stations (BTS), bringing its total to more than 231,000 by the end of 2020.
"Amidst the pandemic that we still have to face, we would like to thank the Indonesian people for their trust to TelkomGroup various services,” Adriansyah said. “We will continuously strive to offer the best digital solutions to assist customers to face the pandemic and revive the national economy, in line with our commitment to become the driver of Indonesia's digitalisation.
“We believe that with the digitalisation, we could face the pandemic hand in hand and make Indonesia better,” he added.
In February, Telkom rolled out new Nvidia technologies to bolster artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities at an application level, in an Indonesian first for the local market.
