CITIC Telecom International Holdings Limited has reported that the Group’s total revenue was HK$9,573 million for the year ended 31 December 2024 (FY2023: HK$9,987 million) and the profit attributable to equity shareholders of the Company was HK$910 million (FY2023: HK$1,231 million). Basic earnings per share was HK24.6 cents (FY2023: HK33.3 cents).
The Board has recommended a final dividend of HK12.8 cents per share for 2024. Together with the 2024 interim dividend of HK6.0 cents per share, total dividends per share for 2024 amounted to HK18.8 cents (FY2023: HK25.3 cents). The annual dividend payout ratio for 2024 was 76.4%.
Mr. LUO Xicheng, Chairman of CITIC Telecom, said, “In 2024, we continued to face complexity and uncertainty in the macro-economic landscape. Our colleagues tackled the challenge head-on with solid and pragmatic efforts, speeding up the process of our transformation towards digitalisation and intelligentisation to increase the proportion of new businesses while consolidating the traditional businesses in close tandem with our development strategies and annual operational goals, as we continued to optimise our business mix in persistent pursuit of qualitative development guided by technological innovation. We established our presence in strategic novel businesses whilst increasing our effort in overseas market expansion, in a full effort to promote the corporate development.”
Business Highlights
Companhia de Telecomunicações de Macau, S.A. (“CTM”) has realised potential value through strong 5G penetration and explored new scenarios for applications in vertical industries. By the end of 2024, CTM’s market share in Macau’s mobile market increased to 53.3%, maintaining its leading position. The number of 5G users reached nearly 760,000, with a penetration rate of 98.4%. In July 2024, CTM launched 5.5G commercial services, making Macau become one of the first 5.5G commercialised cities in the world. CTM also actively collaborated with leading telecom operators in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to launch 5G Standalone (5G SA) roaming services, promoting seamless and high-quality communication services across the three regions.
In addition, CTM actively empowers clients to achieve digital transformation in multiple industries including government affairs, enterprise, education, medical care, and finance. In 2024, CTM has launched “Dr. Easy”, the one-stop smart healthcare solution, and “Macau Tourism Smart Customer Service APP” in association with the Macao Government Tourism Office.
Mobile sales & services revenue increased by 9.8% year-on-year to HK$2,618 million, including the revenues from sales of mobile handsets and equipment and mobile services. Besides, mobile services revenue increased by 12.7% to HK$1,090 million when compared to the previous year due to the increase in the number of mobile customers and mobile market shares as well as 5G penetration rate.
CTM has actively advanced intelligent upgrades in technology and services, further expanding the scale of internet services business. During the year, CTM continued to advance the upgrade of our capabilities and the large-scale penetration of Gigabit Network to cement our leading position in Macau’s broadband market. As at 31 December 2024, the Group stayed firmly at the top of the Macau market with a 96.8% market share. There is also a stable growth in the demand for data centre services. The CITIC Telecom Tower Data Centre expansion and renovation project was completed on schedule and is now operational. The Group continues to steadily expand its data centre business and enhance its service capabilities in Hong Kong, Macau, and other key economic regions. Compared to last year, the revenue from internet services has grown by 5.0% to HK$1,499 million.
The Group has enhanced competence in platform servicing on all fronts to cement position as international telecommunications hub, with an emerging rise in the business of voice services and “DataMall 自由行自由行”. We continued to explore platform application scenarios. In 2024, the Group completed the upgrade of its “Greater Bay Area SIMN Service Platform” to support VoLTE, as well as the online connection and commercial application of “G2G Sponsored Roaming Service Platform”, to enhance the competitiveness of its mobile value-added mobile services. Furthermore, we advanced the upgrade of our “DataMall自由行自由行” servicing capabilities to expand the coverage of our roaming services and users. There has been a sustained growth in the revenue from “DataMall 自由行自由行” services with an increase of 10.7% to HK$145 million when compared to last year.
The Group has actively addressed challenges facing enterprise solutions business, while accelerating AI-driven empowerment. Enterprise solutions revenue decreased by 3.9% year-on-year to HK$2,958 million as a result of the marginal drop in revenue from both the Chinese mainland and Southeast Asia market. The Group actively embraced the concept of “Safe Access Service Edge” (SASE) as it innovatively forged the integrated “network+security” service complemented by customer-end management tools on the back of its technologies in stock and product advantages in the area of information security. The Group was stepping up with the construction of SD-WAN gateways. By the end of 2024, more than 60 SD-WAN gateways had commenced operation, covering Greater China, Southeast Asia and major overseas commercial regions.
The Group is determined to deepen our “AI+ Cloud, Network, Security” strategy and accelerate the integration of new elements such as AI and large model into our products, with a view to enhancing our product competitiveness, business value and service standards. In the cloud computing segment, the cloud-edge heterogeneous large-model management platform was launched to lower the cost of large-model applications for corporate clients, thereby enhancing the value of the cloud computing business. In the information security segment, the Group put AI technologies such as image identification to creative applications complemented by information security large models to analyse, identify and manage abnormalities. The Group’s competence in “Cloud, Network, Security” was well recognised by the market as it continued to expand in the Hong Kong market, signing up reputed clients in the banking and hotel sectors during the year to establish sound business relationships.
The Group has continued to enhance its competence in international business, in a bid to drive qualitative development of its overseas operations. By the end of 2024, the Group operated nearly 170 PoPs worldwide, connecting with more than 600 partner carriers worldwide, covering 160 countries and regions across five continents and offering robust support to service delivery capabilities that “serve locally and connect the world” as a reliable digital and intelligent partner to enterprises that seek overseas expansion and international cooperation. Furthermore, as of the end of 2024, the Group held internet service license from five countries, namely, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.
Development Strategies
In 2025, the new-quality productivity integrating new technologies such as cloud computing, big data, and AI is rapidly coming into shape, as the digital economy becomes an important pillar supporting the formation of a new pattern for development. To address the new landscape and new opportunities, the Group will focus on “internationalisation” and the “technology-driven approach” as its new directions and ascertain the development into a “leading digitalised and intelligentised comprehensive telecommunications enterprise in Asia Pacific” in line with its new positioning of “connecting the world from the foothold in Hong Kong and Macau with the backing of the Chinese mainland”, consistently enhancing its core competitive strengths as it drives ongoing growth in its enterprise value and achieves new heights in qualitative development.
The Group will continue to optimise the existing business setup whilst cultivating driving force for the development of novel businesses. On the one hand, we will advance the upgrade of traditional industries in a coordinated manner to reinforce our position as an international telecommunications hub by enhancing construction of network infrastructure and driving upgrades in existing customer services. We will cement our advantageous leading position in the Macau market with deeper efforts to explore segments such as mobile communications, broadband services and enterprise solutions, among others. On the other hand, we will deepen our effort to strengthen our enterprise through technology in a vigorous effort to seize new opportunities arising from the GSMA Open Gateway Initiative, “AI+” and “data elements ×”, as we integrate the combined technological strengths of various parties to bring into play our advantage as a market-oriented company not bound to any particular carriers. We will focus on strategic novel sectors such as AI, network as a service, data element circulation and low-altitude economy to enhance the Group’s competitiveness in digitalisation and intelligentisation and impart new driving force for the qualitative development of the enterprise.
CITIC Telecom will increase efficiency of the innovation regime to enhance the technology-guided approach. We will proactively position ourselves in the macro-landscape of national technological development and take full advantage of Hong Kong’s favourable strengths in innovative technological research to embark on deep cooperation with renowned tertiary colleges and technological research institutions in a joint effort to advance frontier research fundamental technologies and applications such as AI, financial technology and data element, integrating with the international ecosystem chain for innovation to create opportunities for strategic cooperation. We will further deepen reform and highlight the technology-guided and innovation-driven approach. We will enhance the driving force behind the commercialisation of achievements in technological R&D to drive the commercial application of patents and award-winning projects. The technological research regime will be optimised to inspire vigour in technological research innovation. We will also
bring into play the advantage of integrated development in Hong Kong and Macau and consolidate our resources to enhance utilisation of the combined strengths of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau in technological research.
Mr. LUO Xicheng, Chairman of CITIC Telecom, said, “At present, the information and communications industry is embracing a new cycle of growth. The Group will enhance global business and seize opportunities in the overseas market. With a special focus on overseas countries or regions such as the Belt and Road and BRICS nations, we will leverage the brand influence of the CITIC Group as a trusted partner to domestic businesses seeking to overseas expansion as well as overseas businesses seeking access to China, such that we will also become the preferred digitalised and intelligentised partner to domestic companies, planning for international development or overseas companies, looking to enter the Chinese market, and empowering global development for companies across all sectors.”
