XL Axiata's Profit Ambles Nearly 50 Percent In 2020, Managing Director: Our Business Is Not Disturbed By Pandemic

JAKARTA - Telecommunication operator PT XL Axiata Tbk posted a decrease in net profit in 2020. In fact, the company's profit grew last year.

Based on XL Axiata's financial report, which was quoted on Monday, February 15, the issuer coded EXCL shares recorded a net profit attributable to the owners of the parent entity amounting to Rp371.59 billion. This figure or down 47.85 percent compared to 2019's profit of IDR 712.57 billion.

The decrease in net profit is inversely proportional to XL Axiata's revenue which recorded growth. XL Axiata's revenue was recorded at IDR 26 trillion throughout 2020, or an increase of 3.4 percent compared to 2019's revenue of IDR 25.13 trillion.

XL Axiata President Director & CEO Dian Siswarini said, throughout 2020, his party focuses on operational excellence to encourage business digitization by implementing automation and simplicity. At the same time, XL Axiata also continues to build intimacy with customers, by ensuring that both brands, namely XL and AXIS, achieve a strong NPS (net promoter score) in targeted customer segments through a variety of products that suit their needs as well as continuous improvement of network quality. .

"Regarding the pandemic, we ensure that the company's business continuity is not disrupted by implementing adaptations to new norms," said Dian Siswarini in her written statement.

The data sector is still the biggest contributor to XL Axiata's revenue with a score of IDR 21.38 trillion, up from the previous year's IDR 19.28 trillion. Meanwhile, non-data revenues amounted to IDR 2.82 trillion, down 22.95 percent compared to revenue at the end of 2019 worth IDR 3.66 trillion.

The third largest contributor to XL Axiata's revenue contributor sector was interconnection services which collected IDR 773.28 billion, also a decrease compared to 2019's revenue of IDR 1.11 trillion. Meanwhile, company expenses increased from Rp21.85 trillion in 2019 to Rp23.37 trillion at the end of last year.

In terms of liabilities, XL Axiata was able to reduce short-term liabilities to IDR18.85 trillion from IDR21.29 trillion at the end of last year. This cannot be separated from the reduction in trade payables from third parties to Rp7.24 trillion from the previous Rp7.92 trillion.

Meanwhile, total long-term liabilities increased from Rp.22.31 trillion to Rp.29.75 trillion at the end of 2020. Rental liabilities were recorded to have increased from Rp12.12 trillion to Rp.19.61 trillion in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not prevented XL Axiata from continuing to build a network. Until the end of 2020, XL Axiata was recorded to have a total of more than 144 thousand BTS.

This number increased by about 11 percent year on year (yoy). Of that total, 54,297 are 4G BTS.

When viewed from the wide coverage area, XL Axiata's 4G network has served customers in 458 cities / districts in almost all provinces in the Republic of Indonesia.

In order to prepare the network towards 5G, XL Axiata also continues the network fiberization process. This fiberization is to support the improvement of data network quality in each area because one of the benefits of this process is that the transport network capacity becomes larger.

Fiberization has proven to be able to improve network quality to support a number of data services with large capacities, such as live video streaming.