From hilltop links to the board of directors

Mandate

Fund the move from towers to fibre without leaving the company exposed to currency or lease obligations it could not explain.

Outcomes

• Sold 1,640 towers for Rp 2.79 trillion and kept 740 needed by the network
• Held the first fibre wave within Rp 50 billion of budget through a weakening rupiah
• Removed dollar bank debt through Rp 2.3 trillion of rupiah funding
• Tightened the paying-connection definition and disclosed its reconciliation

Decisions in context

As finance director I am a member of the board of directors, so I share collective responsibility for management decisions as well as leading the finance function. That changes how I argue. I cannot simply object to a proposal; I must set out an alternative that the company can carry out. The past five years have been dominated by three questions: what to do with towers we no longer needed to own, how to pay for fibre priced largely in dollars, and how to fund the business in its own currency. I work closely with the audit committee, which is chaired by an independent commissioner, and with our external auditor. I have learnt to bring difficult numbers early, including a smaller subscriber figure that colleagues disliked. Each of those numbers was easier to defend because the commissioners heard it from us first.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; considering one compatible non-executive seat with my board's approval.

Mandate

Finance the fibre build and prepare the company for public ownership.

Outcomes

• Arranged a US$260 million syndicated loan in 2018
• Raised hedge cover on dollar debt above the lenders' minimum
• Led financial preparation for the December 2019 listing
• Wrote the first public definition of the subscriber count

Decisions in context

I joined a company that was changing what it was. Its towers produced steady rental income, but the founders had decided that fibre to homes was the larger opportunity, and fibre needed far more capital. My first task was funding. We raised a syndicated dollar loan in 2018 because domestic rupiah funding of that size was harder to arrange at the time. I argued for more hedging than the banks required and won only part of that argument. I then led the financial work for our listing: three years of audited accounts, the prospectus figures, and the first written definition of a paying subscriber. Looking back, that definition was looser than it should have been, and I corrected it later as finance director. The listing also introduced me to public investors, whose questions were sharper than any lender's.

Reason for the move

Appointed finance director when my predecessor retired.

Mandate

Give the shareholder a consistent view of currency risk in operators that earned in different local currencies.

Outcomes

• Built a common currency-exposure report for three operating companies
• Supported refinancing of US$400 million of operator debt
• Proposed hedging minimums later adopted by two of the operators

Decisions in context

Tembavari Holdings was the Singapore shareholder of my previous employer, and it invited me to join its regional treasury team. For the first time I saw telecom finance from an investor's chair. Each operator presented its results in local currency, while the shareholder thought in dollars and the lenders in covenants. My task was to make currency exposure comparable across three markets and to support each operator's refinancing. Living in Singapore also gave me access to lenders and investors who looked at Southeast Asia as one region and asked blunt questions. The experience confirmed a lesson I had first learnt from equipment budgets: a cheaper dollar loan is not cheaper if the business that repays it earns only in a weakening local currency. It also showed me how differently a shareholder and an operator read the same quarterly report.

Reason for the move

Returned to Jakarta to lead treasury at a growing fibre operator.

Mandate

Connect network investment and spectrum obligations to a funding plan the company could sustain.

Outcomes

• Built a five-year view of spectrum and licence payments
• Introduced regional site-count reviews with network directors
• Reduced budget-to-actual capital variance from 18 to 7 per cent

Decisions in context

Financial planning at a mobile operator meant living with obligations that never ended. Spectrum licence fees were payable every year under a formula set by the communications ministry, and the company had also committed to an upfront payment for additional spectrum. I built a plan that showed those payments years ahead, so that each budget began with what we already owed rather than with what we hoped to spend. I worked with the network directors on how many new sites each region actually required, and on why the capital budget was so often underspent in one quarter and overspent in the next. My engineering background helped me challenge assumptions without pretending to make engineering decisions myself. I also learnt that a plan is only as credible as the colleagues willing to defend it with me.

Reason for the move

Invited by the majority shareholder to join its regional treasury team in Singapore.

Mandate

Track network spending by project, currency and timing rather than only by annual total.

Outcomes

• Separated dollar and rupiah commitments in the capital budget
• Reconciled purchase orders with installed sites across four regions
• Shortened asset capitalisation after installation from five months to two

Decisions in context

I moved into finance because I wanted to understand the budget that governed my engineering work. Capital-expenditure control was a natural bridge. I could read a network plan and talk to the engineers who had written it, but I now had to answer different questions: when the money would be paid, in which currency and when the asset would start to depreciate. Most network equipment was priced in dollars, so I split our commitments by currency for the first time. I also studied accounting part-time for three years, which gave structure to what I was learning on the job. The role taught me that finance and engineering were not opponents; each held only half of the facts a sound decision required. Reconciling the two records site by site was slow work, but it built trust on both sides.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead financial planning.

Mandate

Plan microwave and leased-line links between cell sites and switching centres.

Outcomes

• Planned about 160 microwave hops in West Java
• Compared microwave and leased-line costs over five years for twenty routes
• Documented site power and rental costs omitted from link estimates

Decisions in context

My career began on hilltops rather than in an office. As a transmission engineer I designed the microwave links that carried traffic from cell sites back to the switching centre, and I visited many of the sites I planned. The technical work was satisfying, but I noticed that our cost estimates covered the radio and the antenna while leaving out the land rent, the generator fuel and the visits needed to keep a link working. I started keeping my own comparison of microwave and leased lines over five years, and my manager shared it with the finance team. That small spreadsheet led to my move into capital control, and it is still the habit I rely on: count the cost of owning something, not only of buying it. Field engineers taught me more about cost than any accounting course did.

Reason for the move

Moved into network capital control to work on the budget behind the network.