After two years of rationalisation and internal restructuring, the results are slowly peeking for Celcom. The second largest mobile network operator in the country in terms of infrastructure has managed to halt customer loss and turned the losses around with new acquisition.
Dropping to an organisation low of 9.56 million subscribers end 2017 after starting the same year with 10.24 million, the telco has stemmed the drops and gain new users ending the second quarter with 9.62 million. Being the whipping boy for new players, the likes of Digi and U Mobile have been inching away into Celcom’s user base for the past two years. The inaction from Celcom and slow response to address market changes, resulted in the telco being regraded as a laggard during these period. Both operators at that time recorded substantial prepaid user growth. With Malaysian mobile penetration already at 140% the only way telco’s can acquire users is by eating into each other and strategies for incumbents to adopt is to first defend and attack. Celcom under Michael Kuehner (former CEO who has just recently departed) worked on revamping the internal operation and solidifying the products rolling out from the factory floor. More importantly he managed to re-engineer the team and their thinking philosophy weaning them off the “GLC Mentality” and operate like an aggressive mobile company swimming in a pool of sharks.
Axiata board will be pleased with the numbers apart from the increase in both postpaid and prepaid users as the ARPU shows a major leap to RM48 from RM43 in 2017. While Maxis enjoys the highest Average Revenue in the industry, the RM5 bump is exceptional given the market condition and challenging environment with price cutting happening on a regular basis. Everyone is upping their ante and there is no time to rest or celebrate, Celcom has realigned itself and need to stay true to its course no matter how bitter that is. The proof is in the pudding and the dessert is tasting really sweet for now.
There is two more quarters for the year where usually competition gets really intense and heated, Celcom and the rest will be releasing new plans to arrest more subscribers and trying to increase consumption from existing users. With wind on its sails, the momentum is with the oldest cellular operator and the new CEO has an unenviable task of keeping the ship steady.
