NEW STREET RESEARCH ASIAN TELCO INVESTOR TOUR

FINAL ITINERARY, WITH ALL MEETINGS CONFIRMED. ALL TIMINGS ARE BASED ON LOCAL TIME.

There is nothing like visiting the major telcos across an entire region to a get a real sense of the direction of the industry, so following last September's trip, we look to return again in March. In our last trip, three themes had stood out to us: like-for-like price increases, consolidation remaining as a key driver for rational competition and AI as a driver for Data Centre demand. In addition to the improving core topline, we had earlier concluded that the 5G capex cycle has peaked and as short term cost pressures are beginning to ease, ROIC should start improving. Finally, shareholder remuneration through buybacks and increased dividend payouts, is also moving in the right direction.

In March, we plan to visit Japan, South Korea and Thailand. We highly recommend investors to come to see for themselves the trend inflections occurring in these large, liquid markets. For Japan, we are expecting a major inflection as operators are now integrating financial services into Mobile, driving more take ups in Unlimited plans. We continue to a bear a positive view on Thailand and Indonesia as both countries are benefiting from consolidation; Indonesia seeing like-for-like price increases whilst venturing into FMC while Thailand is effectively down to a duopoly and coupled with merger synergies, should be a boost to TRUE. Meanwhile, South Korea's governmental pressure is likely to remain as an overhang for mobile, which we think could be offset by higher growth Enterprise/DC/Content assets.

As before, investors are welcome to join for all or part of the tour.

The tentative schedule as it currently stands is as follows.

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Monday, 4th March: Tokyo, Japan

Tuesday, 5th March: Tokyo, Japan

Wednesday, 6th March : Seoul, South Korea

Thursday, 7th March: Seoul, South Korea

Friday, 8th March: Thailand, Bangkok

​​​*denotes lunch

If you are interested in joining us on the tour, please reach out to me directly on the email below, or your NSR Sales representative.