New chief wants to add zest to TM

Facing the media: Shazalli (left) and Bazlan at a media briefing to announce the company’s first quarter results.

PETALING JAYA: The new man at the helm of Telekom Malaysia Bhd (TM) wants to add zest and sweat the assets of the dominant telecommunications company in his drive to improve earnings.

Datuk Seri Mohammed Shazalli Ramly, in his maiden press conference since assuming the post of managing director and group chief executive officer (CEO) of TM, indicated that there would not be much changes to the business strategies.

Shazalli said that he and his deputy (Datuk Bazlan Osman) had agreed that they would not change the existing business plan crafted by their predecessor Tan Sri Zamzamzairani Mohd Isa.

However, he said what TM needs is speedier execution. It needs to focus on consumer behaviour to create products the market demands rather than rely on the age-old technology-driven approach, and improve on service quality.

Shazalli took over the helm on May 1. On the same day, Bazlan, who is the long-serving chief financial officer of TM, was made executive director and deputy group CEO.

Cloud-based services will be a priority and Shazalli wants to introduce that in the next quarter.

“We will continue with the business plan and not make changes to it, but what I bring to TM is zest. We are talking about faster execution so that we can celebrate many wins in these challenging times,” Shazalli told reporters when announcing TM’s first-quarter financial results yesterday.

“The business plan needs to be achieved faster, given the market challenges. So, it is a race to push for higher data revenues in the ever-challenging landscape, given the competition, unpredictable regulations and changing consumer behaviour,” he said.

He said bringing zest to TM is not “because TM is slow, but we have so many things to do” and we need to inspire and push for faster execution.

Shazalli said it was about “selling moments” rather than focusing on the average revenue per user to get a bigger slice of the consumer wallet.

“I hope to see the TM Unify subscriber base surpassing the one million mark soon from 979,000 now. We have to double and triple our effort in some areas,” he said.

Just two weeks into the job, Shazalli made some changes to the organisational structure to prepare the company’s journey to the next level.

TM reported a 3.8% rise in revenue for the first quarter ended March 31 to RM2.96bil from RM2.85bil in the previous corresponding quarter, and the higher income was from its Internet, voice and data services.

Net profit, however, fell 28.5% to RM230mil from RM322mil in the same period last year, led by higher operating cost and lower foreign-exchange gains.

Earnings per share was lower at 6.13 sen a share from 8.58 sen a share a year ago.

“It is a promising start, given TM’s resilience and challenging landscape and we have to maintain and improve the growth trajectory,” Shazalli said.

TM’s capital expenditure for the first three months of the year reached RM352mil, of which about half was used for access, 23% for core network and 24% for support systems.

Webe, TM’s mobility solution, achieved a penetration rate of 4.2% of TM households from 2% in the previous quarter, and the aim is to reach 8%-9% by year-end.

TM’s share price fell six sen to close the day at RM6.44 yesterday.