TELECOMMUNICATION companies in quarter four calendar year 2025 (4QCY25) under MBSB Research’s coverage largely performed within their expectations.
The local leading Multi Number Operators (MNOs) namely Celcomdigi and Maxis’s full year financial year 2025 (FY25) normalised earnings made up 96.8% and 101.0% of their earnings estimates respectively.
“Meanwhile, Telekom Malaysia (TM) has a subdued 4QCY25 earnings, caused by thinner profit margin, which led to full year FY25 normalised earnings only making up 92.4% of our full year FY25 earnings estimates,” said MBSB.
Celcomdigi remains their sole Buy call for the sector with a slight adjustment in target price to RM3.54 from RM3.67 previously as they carried out some housekeeping adjustments.
Meanwhile, MBSB retains their Neutral call for Axiata, Maxis and TM with marginal change in the target price.
For the MNOs, revenue contribution from the consumer mobile segment remains the primary contributor to the total revenue.
The proportion of postpaid revenue will continue to rise steadily as the MNOs continue to push the pre-to-post migration.
Compelling plans and/or incentives are being offered to the prepaid and/or prospective customers. This led to continuous expansion in the postpaid subscriber base.
Note that having higher mix of postpaid customers is more favourable to the MNOs as there is higher, more predictable monthly revenue and better customer retention due to device and data bundling.
For 2025, the home fibre segment continues to show steady growth across the telcos.
“Moving forward, we anticipate the segment revenue to continue to improve, supported by the continuous expansion of the subscriber as opposed to ARPU improvement,” said MBSB.
As seen in 2025 financial performance, the telcos’ revenue growth remains in the low-single digit domain of around 1% to 2%.
Thus, it is vital to maintain a favourable cost structure. For 2025, MBSB sees minimal profit margin improvement from both Maxis and TM, owing to operational efficiencies.
However, there was a let down from CDB which saw a slight contraction in profit margin to 12.9% from 13.3% a year ago.
“Nonetheless, as the group shifts its focus from capital expenses to operating expenses saving, we would anticipate the profit margin to rise steadily from FY26 onwards,” said MBSB. —Mar 17, 2026
Main image: ALIX Partners
