Telekom Malaysia group chief executive officer Amar Huzaimi Md Deris.
KUALA LUMPUR: Telekom Malaysia Bhd
is allocating a significant portion of the company’s capital expenditure (capex) for 2025 on enhancing the fibre network to support the expansion of unified broadband services.
TM group chief executive officer Amar Huzaimi Md Deris projects capex for 2025 at RM1.6bil or 14% to 16% of revenue.
Amar added the company would also be allocating part of the planned capex to strengthen its international connectivity, including investments in submarine cable expansion. “Secondly, we will continue to enhance our international connectivity. We are not only connecting Malaysia with the world, but we are also bringing the world to Malaysia.
This is evident as most of our data centers are occupied by hyperscalers. To support this, we require continuous investment for the expansion of our submarine cable system.
“In the last few years, we have announced two major cable developments that we will be undertaking,” he said during the media briefing for its financial results, for the year ended Dec 31, 2024 (FY24).
Further, another key focus of TM’s capex will be on the expansion of its data centres. Last year, the company announced plans to expand its Klang Valley Data Centre (KVDC) in Cyberjaya and Iskandar Puteri Data Centre (IPDC) in Johor.
The second phase of both facilities has been slated for commercial operations in 2025, and would be expected to deliver a combined IT load of about 20 megawatts (MW).
TM has also joined hands with Singapore Telecommunications Ltd to develop a hyper-connected artificial intelligence-ready data centre campus in Iskandar Puteri, Johor. This facility, which can be scalable up to 200MW would be TM’s largest data centre project.
“For the expansion of our own data centres, we anticipate that it will be ready by the end of the third quarter this year, if not earlier,” Amar said. The company’s capex for 2024 stood at about RM1.59bil, or 13% of its revenue, in line with its guidance range.
On TM’s data centre development, Amar said the company remains very optimistic with respect to the services and offerings it provides.
“Our offerings go beyond data centres. We provide the whole ecosystem, which entails data centres along with the peripherals that come together with it. This included fibre connectivity and submarine cable capabilities. These strategic advantages position TM strongly in the market,” Amar said.
For the fourth quarter ended Dec 31, 2024 (4Q24), the company’s net profit rose by 69% year-on-year (y-o-y) to RM730.6mil or earnings per share of 19.04 sen.
This was due to the recognition of remaining one-off tax credits in the current year quarter. Revenue for the quarter was up by almost 2% y-o-y to RM3.05bil underpinned by higher contributions from data services, other telecommunication services and education segment.
