No One-Off, No Asterisk - Just Growth
Every quarterly post this site has written about Indosat since the 2022 merger has needed some kind of asterisk - a tower sale-leaseback gain here, a deconsolidation gain there, a mismatched comparison base somewhere. Q1 2024 is the first that doesn't: revenue grew 15.8% YoY to Rp13,835.3 billion, the company's own EBITDA grew 22.1% to Rp6,509 billion, and net income attributable to owners grew 39.3% to Rp1,294.8 billion - with neither this quarter nor its prior-year comparator carrying a material one-off item large enough to need adjusting for. Q1 2023's own coverage had to strip out a Rp722.4 billion tower sale-leaseback gain to get to a normalized profit of roughly Rp287 billion; measured against that clean base, Q1 2024's growth is closer to 350%, not 39.3%.
The one governance thread worth flagging surfaced in the commitments and contingencies note, not the headline numbers: Lintasarta's directors and several employees were summoned as witnesses by Indonesia's Attorney General's Office in 2022-2023, in connection with a national corruption investigation into the BAKTI (Badan Aksesibilitas Telekomunikasi dan Informasi) 4G BTS tower program - a large, publicly reported case. Management states it believes the case has no legal or financial impact on the Group as of this filing, and Lintasarta's staff appear only as witnesses, not defendants, at this stage. See Beyond the Usual for what else the same note discloses about a related billing dispute with BAKTI.
The Prescription
Indosat should continue the trajectory this quarter represents - genuinely organic growth without leaning on one-off gains - and should proactively update investors each quarter on the BAKTI corruption investigation's status regarding Lintasarta, rather than leaving it to a single, easy-to-miss paragraph in the commitments note. What it should keep doing: the clean, itemized normalized-profit and EBITDA disclosure in the investor presentation, which this quarter required no adjustment at all - a genuinely good sign for disclosure quality, not just business performance.
Key Financial Metrics
Q1 2024 (quarter ended March 31, 2024) vs Q1 2023, consolidated
FX: Rp15,860 = US$1 (March 31, 2024) - period-end market quote, used only to convert the USD columns.
| Metric | Q1 2024 (Rp) | Q1 2024 (US$) | Q1 2023 (Rp) | YoY (Rp) | YoY (US$) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | Rp13,835.3B | ~$872.3M | Rp11,945.0B | ✅ +15.8% | ✅ |
| EBITDA» (company-disclosed) | Rp6,509.0B | ~$410.4M | Rp5,329.0B | ✅ +22.1% | ✅ |
| Operating Income» (pre-financing subtotal; no one-off this quarter) | Rp2,766.0B | ~$174.4M | Rp2,359.2B (incl. Rp722.4bn one-off) | ✅ +17.3% (reported); ✅ +69.0% (vs. Q1 2023 excl. one-off) | ✅ |
| Net Income (attributable to owners, no one-off) | Rp1,294.8B | ~$81.6M | Rp929.1B (reported, incl. one-off) | ✅ +39.3% (reported); ✅ +351.0% (vs. Q1 2023 normalized ~Rp287bn) | ✅ |
| ...of which, consolidated total (incl. non-controlling interests») | Rp1,391.6B | ~$87.7M | Rp993.9B | ✅ +40.0% | ✅ |
| Free Cash Flow» (operating cash flow - capex) | Rp3,580.9B | ~$225.8M | Rp2,966.3B | ✅ +20.7% | ✅ |
| Total Cash | Rp7,849.5B | ~$494.9M | Rp11,863.1B (Q1 2023 close) | ⚠️ -33.8% | ⚠️ |
Total debt (loans, bonds, sukuk, excl. leases) continued its slow decline to Rp14,549.4 billion from FY2023's Rp14,803.0 billion (-1.7% QoQ), a more moderate pace than Q1 and H1 2023's sharp tower-sale-funded reductions, but still a fourth straight period of net debt decline since the merger. Total cash grew to Rp7,849.5 billion from FY2023's Rp5,189.6 billion (+51.3% QoQ), as operating cash flow (Rp6,279.5 billion, +24.8% YoY) comfortably outpaced both capex (Rp2,698.6 billion, +30.6% YoY) and the modest debt paydown.
Q1 2024 is the first quarter since the merger with no material one-off gain on either side of the YoY comparison - net income grew a real 39.3% on a reported basis, or roughly 350% against Q1 2023's one-off-adjusted normalized profit. See Beyond the Usual below for a new governance thread worth tracking.
Key Operational Metrics
Indosat's presentation discloses blended ARPU of Rp38,000 for Q1 2024 (up from FY2023's full-year Rp35,600, continuing the ARPU-over-subscriber-count trade-off tracked since Q1 2023) and net subscriber additions of +2 million for the quarter - the first period since that trade-off began that the company has reported net subscriber growth rather than decline, though a precise total subscriber count wasn't available in text-extractable form this quarter.
Segment Comparison
| Segment | Revenue Q1 2024 | Revenue Q1 2023 | YoY | Share of Revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Selular (cellular) | Rp11,656.7B | Rp10,258.0B | ✅ +13.6% | 84.3% |
| MIDI (enterprise/data/internet) | Rp1,971.3B | Rp1,454.9B | ✅ +35.5% | 14.2% |
| Telekomunikasi Tetap (fixed) | Rp207.2B | Rp232.1B | ⚠️ -10.7% | 1.5% |
| Total | Rp13,835.3B | Rp11,945.0B | ✅ +15.8% | 100% |
Selular
Grew 13.6%, its strongest quarter this site has tracked since the merger's immediate aftermath, and continued to gain net subscribers for the first time since the January 2023 pricing shift - the subscriber-value trade-off appears to be transitioning into genuine base growth alongside ARPU growth.
MIDI
Grew a sharp 35.5%, its fastest pace this site has tracked for the segment - a real acceleration from FY2023's already-improved 13.0% full-year pace, likely reflecting the enterprise/data-center push this site has covered through the SMT and BDx Indonesia threads.
Telekomunikasi Tetap
Declined 10.7%, its first YoY decline this site has recorded for the segment since the H1 2021 turnaround began - worth watching whether this is a one-quarter blip or a genuine reversal of the nine-period growth streak.
Beyond the Usual
Lintasarta Directors Were Summoned as Witnesses in Indonesia's BAKTI BTS 4G Corruption Investigation
Note 28 discloses that in 2022 and 2023, Lintasarta's Directors and several employees were summoned as witnesses by Indonesia's Attorney General's Office in connection with an alleged corruption case involving BAKTI (Badan Aksesibilitas Telekomunikasi dan Informasi), Indonesia's state telecom-access agency, over its Base Transceiver Station ("BTS") 4G program - a large, publicly reported national corruption case. Management states it believes the case has no legal or financial impact on the Group as of this filing's issuance date. Lintasarta staff appear only as witnesses at this stage, not defendants, but this is the kind of item worth tracking forward given the scale of the underlying scandal.
The Same BAKTI Dispute Also Left Lintasarta Unable to Bill for Services Actually Rendered
Since January 2023, BAKTI postponed the underlying managed-services project because of the same legal case, leaving Lintasarta unable to bill for services it continued to provide. In November 2023, BAKTI and the consortium (which also includes Huawei and PT Surya Energi Indotama) terminated the original umbrella agreement and signed a new contract; BAKTI paid 50% of 2023's monthly recurring charges in December 2023, with the remainder pending a service-level reconciliation. This is a genuine counterparty-payment-risk detail connected to the same corruption case above, not a separate issue.
Indosat Confirmed a Real Cash Dividend Was Paid in June 2023, the First This Site Has Recorded
A footnote discloses Indosat declared and paid a final cash dividend of Rp255.7 per share (Rp2,061.6 billion total) related to FY2022 profit, mostly paid in June 2023 - the first dividend payment this site's coverage of Indosat has documented since tracking began with Q1 2009. This is a meaningful capital-allocation data point for a company whose post-merger story has otherwise been dominated by debt paydown and one-off gains.
Target Valuation Range
Bottom line: roughly Rp79,300-Rp121,700 fair-value enterprise range (bear-to-bull, annualized EV/EBITDA-based, implying roughly Rp9,000-Rp14,150 nominal per share) against a Rp11,175 actual nominal close - the stock traded in the middle of that range, a fair reflection of a genuinely clean, strong quarter without yet pricing in a structurally higher multiple.
Note on price data: Indosat's shares closed at a split-adjusted Rp2,793.75 on March 28, 2024 on a historical price basis - Indosat completed a 1-for-4 forward stock split in October 2024, so that historical close is stated on a post-split basis. Multiplying by 4 recovers the actual nominal price quoted on the exchange that day, the same convention used throughout this site's 2023-2024 ISAT coverage.
| Market cap → enterprise value | Q1 2024 (period-end) |
|---|---|
| Share price (period-end, nominal) | Rp11,175 |
| Shares outstanding (pre-split) | 8,062,702,739 |
| Market capitalization | ~Rp90,100.7B (~$5,681.0M) |
| Plus: total principal debt (loans, bonds, sukuk; excl. lease liabilities) | Rp14,549.4B |
| Less: cash and cash equivalents | Rp7,849.5B |
| Enterprise value | ~Rp96,800.6B (~$6,103.7M) |
| Peer/multiple sanity check | Q1 2024 (annualized) | FY2023 |
|---|---|---|
| EBITDA (annualized) | Rp26,036.0B | Rp23,938.0B |
| EV / EBITDA | ~3.72x | ~3.56x |
| Net debt (total debt - cash) | Rp6,699.9B | Rp9,613.4B |
| Net debt / EBITDA | ~0.26x | ~0.40x |
| P/E (annualized, reported EPS) | ~17.4x | ~16.8x |
| Scenario | Key assumption | Multiple | Implied EV | Implied nominal price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current (Q1 2024 close) | actual market price | ~3.72x annualized EBITDA | ~Rp96,801B | Rp11,175 |
| Bear | Growth normalizes from this quarter's unusually strong pace and the BAKTI matter escalates | ~3.05x | ~Rp79,410B | ~Rp9,024 |
| Base | Clean-quarter growth trajectory holds through FY2024 | ~3.75x | ~Rp97,635B | ~Rp11,278 |
| Bull | MIDI's acceleration and subscriber-value trade-off both compound further | ~4.65x | ~Rp121,067B | ~Rp14,152 |
Net debt/EBITDA improved further to ~0.26x from FY2023's ~0.40x, the strongest leverage position this site has tracked for Indosat since the merger. No multi-year DCF yet: this is the first fully clean quarter of merged-entity data, and this site would want at least one more clean quarter to confirm the growth rate before building a standalone multi-year projection.
PT Indosat Tbk's unaudited interim consolidated financial statements for the three-month period ended March 31, 2024, together with the accompanying notes, and the company's Q1 2024 investor presentation.