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President & GCEO’s Business ReviewThe year also saw strong growth innon-voice services, with data nowcontributing about 30% to revenue,from 22% a year ago. Mobilebroadband saw particular traction,surpassing 500,000 customers. Withan overall growth of 124.1%, Celcomis the undisputed leader in theindustry with mobile broadband, itcontributed close to 6% to Celcomrevenue, from only 2% last year.Focus on network cost and efficiencyresulted in savings as evidenced inthe decline in network costs from11.7% to 10.3% YoY as percentage ofrevenue.Celcom closed the year with 10.1million subscribers, a growth of15.8%.IndonesiaMaximisation of yield and strict costmanagement, saw strong performancein all financial metrics at XL. Thefocus on quality subscribers, whichbegan in early 2009, delivered a14.2% hike in revenue.Diligent focus on cost management,which included direct expenses aswell as sales and marketing, sawimpressive margin improvement to44.7%, from 42.2% last year. Thatplus strict cost management sawEBITDA growth of 20.9% YoY. PATturned profitable, IDR1.7 trillion(RM578.0 million) from a loss ofIDR15.1 billion (RM4.7 million) in2008.XL has outperformed many of itsrivals during the year, and subscribersgrew from 26.0 million to 31.4 million.T h e g r o u p ’ s f o c u s o n a c t i v ecustomers saw improved AverageRevenue Per User (ARPU), throughbetter quality customers.Furthermore, XL also strengthenedits Balance Sheet in 2009. Healthyoperational momentum, combinedwith smart Capex spending, resultedin positive FCF for XL. XL has usedboth the proceeds of the IDR2.8trillion (RM1.0 billion) Rights Issue,completed in December, as well asthe generated internal free cash torepay a significant amount of debt,reducing outstanding debt by nearly30%. Net Debt to EBITDA ratio hassignificantly improved from 3.4x in2008 to 2.0x in 2009, putting XL inexcellent shape to continue growingits business.Non-voice revenue saw stronggrowth with a 32.3 % increase YoY.Revenue from data services increased269.2% while SMS revenue grew18.9%. Alongside the emphasis onyield, moving forward XL will befocusing on this new growthsegment.Turnaround Plan Gains TractionBangladesh2009 was a turnaround year forRobi, with double digit growth of36.3% YoY in revenue. This was froma successful focus on distributionchannels via a brand focus andregional push strategy. Robi has nowrecorded five consecutive quartersof growth, with the last quarter of2009, the highest to date.We are particularlypleased with the excellentresults of Celcom, XL andRobi. All three companieshave increased market shareand profitability, with Celcomand XL performing the best in theindustry.Annual Report 2009 • 021