BIRD FY2019: Profit Down 31%, But the Acer Fight Is Finally Over

A Full Year of Deceleration, Capped by a Spending-Driven Cash Burn

FY2019 net revenue fell 4.05% YoY to Rp4,047.7 billion from Rp4,218.7 billion, but the story that matters is below the revenue line. Operating income fell 33.37% YoY to Rp371.9 billion, operating margin compressed to 9.19% from 13.23%, and net income to owners fell 31.21% YoY to Rp314.6 billion - a materially steeper full-year decline than Q3 2019's already-brutal 50.80% single-quarter YoY drop suggested on its own, because that quarter was comping against 2018's strongest period. Full-year EPS fell to Rp126 from Rp183, down 31.15%.

The more consequential number this filing adds is free cash flow. Capex jumped 32.19% YoY to Rp1,355.6 billion (from Rp1,025.7 billion in 2018) - a full-year fleet-renewal acceleration, not a single-quarter spike - while operating cash flow fell 30.85% YoY to Rp739.0 billion (from Rp1,068.9 billion). The result: FY2019 free cash flow of -Rp616.6 billion, versus +Rp43.2 billion in 2018. That's the widest annual cash gap this site has recorded for Blue Bird, and it lands in the same year the company also paid out Rp182.7 billion in cash dividends (+43.14% YoY from Rp127.6 billion) - a spending year on two fronts at once, funded partly by drawing down cash (period-end cash fell 19.61% YoY to Rp462.9 billion) and partly by more debt (total liabilities up 19.30% YoY to Rp2,016.2 billion, driving the debt-to-equity ratio to 0.373x from 0.321x a year ago).

Two threads carried through several quarters of this site's coverage both got resolved in this filing - one favorably, one not. See Beyond the Usual for both.

The Prescription

Blue Bird needs to explain why it chose to accelerate fleet capex by a third in a year when operating cash flow was already falling by a third - the combination is what turned a merely weaker year into a cash-burning one. Financing that capex increasingly through a single lender relationship (see Beyond the Usual) compounds the concentration risk rather than diversifying away from it, and nothing in this filing explains the capital-allocation logic behind ramping fleet spend and dividends in the same year profit fell 31%.

What it should keep doing: TAN (the Cititrans shuttle business) and CAR (the vehicle-auction house) both closed their first full year as subsidiaries, and Non-Taxi's full-year revenue growth reasserted itself at +3.92% YoY despite the single ugly quarter recorded in Q3 - worth watching whether that's durable or a one-year artifact of the acquisitions layering revenue on top of an otherwise-shrinking base.

Key Financial Metrics

FY2019 vs. FY2018, full year

FX: IDR 13,901 = USD 1 (Bank Indonesia middle rate, December 31, 2019, as disclosed in this filing).

Metric	FY2019 (IDR)	FY2019 (USD)	FY2018 (IDR)	YoY
Net Revenue	Rp4,047.7B	~$291.2M	Rp4,218.7B	⚠️ -4.05%
Adjusted EBITDA» (Operating Income + D&A)	Rp893.2B	~$64.3M	Rp1,123.6B	⚠️ -20.50%
Operating Income»	Rp371.9B	~$26.8M	Rp558.2B	⚠️ -33.37%
Net Income» (attributable to owners)	Rp314.6B	~$22.6M	Rp457.3B	⚠️ -31.21%
Free Cash Flow» (Op. CF minus capex)	-Rp616.6B	-~$44.4M	Rp43.2B	⚠️ Swung from positive to the widest annual gap this site has recorded
Total Cash (period-end)	Rp462.9B	~$33.3M	Rp575.9B	⚠️ -19.61%
EPS (basic, full year)	Rp126	~$0.009	Rp183	⚠️ -31.15%

Operating margin came in at 9.19% (FY2018: 13.23%), and net margin at 7.77% (FY2018: 10.84%) - both a fifth straight period of YoY compression when read alongside every quarterly filing this site has tracked through 2019.

Balance sheet metric	Dec 2019 (IDR)	Dec 2019 (USD)	Dec 2018 (IDR)	Change
Total Assets	Rp7,424.3B	~$534.1M	Rp6,955.2B	⚠️ +6.75%
Total Liabilities	Rp2,016.2B	~$145.0M	Rp1,690.0B	⚠️ +19.30%
Total Equity	Rp5,408.1B	~$389.0M	Rp5,265.2B	⚠️ +2.71%
Debt-to-Equity Ratio» (total liabilities / total equity)	0.373x	-	0.321x	⚠️ Up YoY

The DER of 0.373x is actually a slight sequential improvement against Q3 2019's 0.39x - the one quarter where leverage growth stalled rather than accelerated in 2019 - but it's still up meaningfully against Dec 2018's 0.321x, meaning the three-quarter leverage build documented through Q3 didn't reverse for the year, it just paused in Q4.

Segment Performance

Blue Bird still reports the same two operating segments - Taxi and Non-Taxi - unchanged since Q1 2016's two-segment collapse.

Taxi

FY2019 net revenue Rp3,217.0B (-5.87% YoY), operating income Rp238.1B (-34.37% YoY), operating margin 7.40% - down from FY2018's 10.62%. Taxi's revenue and profit both declined for the full year, consistent with every quarter this site tracked in 2019.

Non-Taxi

FY2019 net revenue Rp835.7B (+3.92% YoY), operating income Rp132.8B (-32.05% YoY), operating margin 15.89% - down sharply from FY2018's 24.31%. This is the important reconciliation with Q3 2019's finding that Non-Taxi's revenue fell YoY for the first time that quarter: read across the full year, Non-Taxi's revenue growth streak actually held - the segment grew revenue 3.92% YoY for FY2019 as a whole, meaning Q3's single-quarter decline was offset by growth in the other three quarters (most likely Q4, helped by the TAN/Cititrans acquisition completed March 1, 2019 contributing a full year for the first time). The margin story is unambiguous either way: Non-Taxi's operating income fell nearly a third YoY even as revenue grew, a materially worse margin decline in percentage-point terms (24.31% to 15.89%, -8.4 points) than Taxi's (10.62% to 7.40%, -3.2 points).

Segment Comparison

Segment	Revenue (FY2019)	YoY Growth	Operating Margin
Taxi	Rp3,217.0B (79.5%)	⚠️ -5.87%	⚠️ 7.40%
Non-Taxi	Rp835.7B (20.6%)	✅ +3.92%	⚠️ 15.89%

Non-Taxi's share of consolidated revenue rose to 20.65% for FY2019, up from 19.06% in FY2018 - the mix shift toward Non-Taxi that this site has tracked since Q2 2017 continued for the full year, even though one interim quarter (Q3) showed the share dipping sequentially. Both segments' operating income fell YoY for the full year, and by a similar percentage (Taxi -34.37%, Non-Taxi -32.05%) - the margin erosion this site has tracked since Q1 2019 is now clearly an economy-wide pressure on the business, not a segment-specific one.

Key Operational Metrics

• Permanent employees (Group): 3,547 (Dec 2019), down 2.90% from 3,653 (Dec 2018) and down 11.01% from Q3 2019's 3,986 - a sharp Q4 headcount reduction that reverses the growth this site flagged as a divergence-from-revenue concern as recently as September, and takes headcount below the year-ago level for the first time in this site's 2019 coverage.
• Weighted average shares outstanding: 2,502,100,000, unchanged since the IPO.
• TAN's disclosed ownership: 91.57% (Dec 2019), flat against Q3's 91.57% - no further movement since the dilution that happened in Q2.
• CAR's (PT Balai Lelang Caready) disclosed ownership: 51.00% (Dec 2019) - the auction-house subsidiary established alongside TAN in January 2019, its first full year in the Group.
• Cash dividends paid to parent-entity shareholders: Rp182.7 billion for FY2019, up 43.14% YoY from Rp127.6 billion in FY2018.
• Goodwill of Rp61.0 billion appeared on the balance sheet for the first time, from TAN's March 1, 2019 acquisition of the Cititrans shuttle business (PT Citra Tiara Global) for a total consideration of Rp106.3 billion.
• Geographic revenue split (Jadetabek vs. outside Jadetabek) is still not disclosed, matching every prior 2019 filing.
• Still not available: any Go-Jek/Go-Car integration volume or revenue metric.

Beyond the Usual

The Acer arbitration is over - Blue Bird won, after two and a half years

The cassation appeal this site tracked as unresolved through Q1, Q2, and Q3 2019 has finally been decided. On December 2, 2019, the Company received Formal Notification of Indonesian Supreme Court Verdict No. 491 B/Pdt.Sus-Arbt/2019, which accepted PT Acer Indonesia's memorandum of appeal for review but sustained the South Jakarta District Court's September 20, 2018 verdict - the ruling that had already denied Acer's lawsuit to cancel the original BANI arbitration decision - and ordered Acer (as the losing petitioner) to pay court fees. Blue Bird wins, more than two and a half years after Acer first filed the underlying arbitration petition on May 12, 2017, alleging breach of a January 2015 cooperation agreement. Neither the original claim amount nor the contract's value was ever disclosed across any filing in this dispute's life, so the financial stakes this resolution removes remain unquantified - but the multi-year contingent-liability overhang this site has flagged five times running is gone.

The Sumitomo Mitsui-affiliated lender - now legally PT Bank BTPN Tbk - crossed 70% of all bank debt

The concentration this site first flagged in Q4 2018 and tracked to 69.7% at Q3 2019 kept climbing: the combined balance across the original Bridging Loan facility (Credit Agreement No. SMBCI/NS/0491, Rp767,986 million) and the smaller Cititrans-acquisition-related facility (Rp3,696 million) reached Rp771,682 million at December 31, 2019, against total bank loans of Rp1,090,265 million - 70.78% of all outstanding bank debt, up from 35.61% a year earlier and from Q3's 69.7%. Two structural notes worth flagging for readers tracking this thread: first, the credit agreements still carry "SMBCI" (Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Indonesia) numbering, but the counterparty is now named PT Bank BTPN Tbk throughout this filing - Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation's 2019 merger of its Indonesian unit into Bank BTPN means the same lender relationship this site has tracked since 2018 now appears under a different legal name. Second, collateral kept pace with the balance growth this time: 6,103 fleet units pledged against the main facility at Dec 2019, up from 1,916 units at Dec 2018 - a proportional increase, unlike the mismatch Q1 2019 first flagged.

The land-purchase commitment shows its first realized-area increase in this site's coverage

The purchase-commitment-of-land footnote this site had tracked as frozen at 125,427 square meters through every 2019 interim filing - most recently Q3 2019 - shows a different comparative in this annual filing: this report states realized area of 125,427 square meters at December 31, 2019 against 119,682 square meters at December 31, 2018. Taken at face value, that implies roughly 5,745 square meters of additional realization occurred at some point during 2019, which would be the first movement in this commitment this site has recorded since it began tracking the freeze from FY2017's report - though it's not possible from this filing alone to tell whether that reflects genuine in-year realization or a restated comparative figure, since every interim 2019 filing described the balance as unchanged from Dec 2018. No cancellations of the unexecuted remainder are disclosed, matching every prior filing.

Related-party rent fell in absolute terms even as total rent expense grew a quarter

Q3 2019 flagged related-party rent to the family-owned entities (PT Pusaka Bumi Mutiara, PT Pusaka Citra Djokosoetono, PT Blue Bird Taxi, PT Golden Bird Metro, PT Golden Bird Bali, PT Big Bird, and PT Pusaka Buana Utama) growing 31.9% YoY through nine months. The full-year picture reverses that: related-party rent expense was Rp45,708 million for FY2019, down 3.29% YoY from Rp47,262 million in FY2018. What changed is the denominator - this filing discloses related-party rent as 66.33% of the Group's total rent expense in 2019, down from 86.32% in 2018, implying total rent expense grew roughly 25.9% YoY (to an estimated Rp68,910 million from Rp54,752 million) while the related-party share of it shrank. Read together with Q3's 31.9% related-party growth figure, the implication is that Q4 alone saw either a related-party rent decline or accelerated growth in third-party leases (or both) - this filing doesn't attribute the shift to new sites, renegotiated related-party rates, or a change in leasing strategy toward external landlords.

Target Valuation Range

Enterprise value ~Rp7,784B (~$559.9M), implying ~19.81x P/E and ~1.17x P/B - still trading above what FY2019's weaker earnings support, but on every measure this site tracks, the multiple is now cheaper than it was at Q3 2019's already-improved level. A business earning less, priced only slightly higher, for a stock that's now less expensive per unit of both earnings and book value than a quarter ago.

Against FY2019 actual full-year numbers (2,502,100,000 shares outstanding, unchanged), using the December 30, 2019 closing price of Rp2,490:

Market cap → enterprise value	FY2019
Share price (period-end)	Rp2,490
Shares outstanding	2,502,100,000
Market capitalization	~Rp6,230.2B (~$448.2M)
Total liabilities	~Rp2,016.2B
Less: cash and equivalents	~Rp462.9B
Enterprise value	~Rp7,783.5B (~$559.9M)

Market cap is up 2.05% from ~Rp6,105.1B at Q3 2019's close - tracking the stock's modest Q4 rebound from Rp2,440 to Rp2,490.

Peer-multiple sanity check	Q3 2019 (annualized)	FY2019 (actual)
P/E	~21.5x	~19.81x (FY2019 EPS Rp126)
P/B	~1.17x	~1.17x (book value/share ~Rp2,122)
ROE	~5.46%	~5.99%
ROA	~3.91%	~4.38%

Every multiple this site tracks moved in the stock's favor this quarter relative to Q3's annualized estimates - P/E fell, ROE and ROA rose, and P/B held flat - continuing Q3's finding that price and fundamentals are back to moving in a coherent relationship after two quarters (Q1-Q2 2019) where they diverged. That's a healthier read than earlier in 2019, but it doesn't make the stock cheap in absolute terms - a ~19.8x P/E against a business whose full-year net income just fell 31.21%, free cash flow just went deeply negative, and bank debt is now over 70% concentrated in one lender relationship is still a demanding multiple to defend, even with the Acer overhang now resolved.

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