TIME dotCom Berhad (5031.KL): Research Report

Reporting-period check: TIME's financial year ends on 31 December and it reports every quarter on Bursa Malaysia. Last year's Q3 results came out on 26 November 2025, so Q3 FY2026 results are expected around late November 2026, after today's date. The most recent period that is due and verified is Q2 FY2026 (quarter ended 30 June 2026), released on 27 August 2026.

1. What the Company Does

TIME dotCom owns fibre-optic cable and rents out the capacity it carries. The cables run under Malaysian streets and into apartment blocks, between cities, and across the ocean floor to Singapore, Japan, the US and Europe. Households pay TIME a monthly fee for home internet. Banks and government agencies pay for private, guaranteed links between their offices and the cloud. Other telecom operators, content companies and hyperscale cloud providers pay to carry their traffic on TIME's lines. The company describes itself as an infrastructure investment holding company headquartered in Malaysia, with a strategic focus on expanding high-performance connectivity infrastructure and adjacent energy solutions. Its core business is anchored in its ownership and operation of high-performance terrestrial and submarine fibre optic networks, enabling high-speed domestic and international connectivity.

How it got here. The company was established 25 October 1996 as TIME Telecommunications Holdings Berhad, the company was renamed TIME dotCom Berhad on 17 January 2000, and in 2000, Khazanah Nasional acquired a 30% equity stake in the company. For most of the 2000s it was a struggling state-linked telco. The turning point came in October 2008. Khazanah Nasional Berhad entered into conditional agreements with Global Transit International Sdn. Bhd. ("GTI"), a local telecommunications entity, to improve the operational performance of its investee company, TIME dotCom Berhad ("TdC"). The conditional agreements will, among others, see GTI's former chief executive officer ("CEO"), Afzal Abdul Rahim, assuming the position of CEO at TdC that was previously vacant. Under that deal, Khazanah will transfer its 30.04% stake in TdC to a separate investment company, Pulau Kapa Ventures (PKVSB), in which the state investment arm will hold a 61.2% stake; GTI will take the remaining 38.8%. If performance targets are met, it is understood that GTI will be given the option to increase its holding in PKVSB to a majority stake. In other words, an outside operating team was given an equity incentive to fix the company. That arrangement still shapes who controls TIME today (Section 10).

The new team cut the business back to what worked. Afzal led the company's recovery strategy starting with the sale of Time's public telephone business to the prepaid fixed-line telephone company Paycomm for RM8.3 million. Within 1 year and for the first time in 6 years, Time was finally in the black. In 2011, the company's minority shareholders approved a proposal to acquire four regional telecommunications companies valued at over RM322 million. Among others, it acquired stakes in companies such as Global Transit companies, which invests in submarine cables, and AIMS Group, which owns data centres. That move added international bandwidth and data centres to a domestic fibre business. The consumer product that later became the growth engine followed: the company went on to introduce the country's first high-speed broadband, Time Fibre Broadband, in 2012.

The second big decision was to sell control of the data centre arm while keeping exposure to it. In 2023 TIME completed the deal with the US digital infrastructure assets firm DigitalBridge Group Inc, which entailed the divestment by Time of 49% of the ordinary shares and 100% of the irredeemable convertible preference shares in AIMS, as well as 21% of the shares in AIMS TH. About half of some RM2 billion in proceeds from the sale of the data centre business was paid out in dividends, and that cash pile has driven capital returns ever since. In 2024 the company added a small energy business, launching Emit Solar for home solar solutions and acquiring Charge N Go, later renamed Time Charge N Go, to provide EV charging infrastructure. In 2025 the founder-era CEO stepped up to the board (Section 10).

The value proposition. TIME's edge is simple. It builds its own fibre into dense urban buildings, so it does not rent the last mile from the incumbent the way most rival internet providers do. That lets it sell faster speeds, with upload as fast as download, at prices that undercut the competition, to households where its fibre reaches. RAM Ratings has described TIME as one that directly owns its entire fibre-optic network, focusses on high-density, high-rise buildings that have enabled the company to yield better profit margins and enlarge its customer base in a very targeted manner. On the enterprise and wholesale side, it is one of very few Malaysian companies that combines a cross-peninsula fibre backbone, landing stations and ownership stakes in trans-Pacific and Asia-Europe cables. A customer can buy one contract that runs from a Kuala Lumpur office to a Los Angeles data centre.

Why it is hard to copy. Fibre is capital-heavy and slow to build. It needs rights of way, building-by-building access agreements with property managers, and years of capex before a new footprint fills with paying users. Subsea capacity is bought through consortia that form only once every few years. Section 3 covers the detail.

A customer example. A family in a Klang Valley condominium signs up for a gigabit plan. TIME's fibre already runs into the building's riser, so a technician installs an optical terminal and Wi-Fi router in the unit. Traffic leaves on TIME's own fibre to its core network. If the family streams a US-hosted video, the traffic may cross the Pacific on capacity TIME owns. In the same week, a hyperscaler leasing space at a new Malaysian data centre might order a dark-fibre or wavelength link from that campus to its other facilities and to Singapore. TIME delivers this on the same backbone, from the same ducts.

The new CEO summed up the logic of the business when she took over:

"TIME's growth has been driven by our coverage footprint, and this will remain the core engine for delivering future success." - Loh Jenkim, incoming Group CEO, Q2 FY25 results, 27 August 2025

2. Business Segments

TIME reports revenue for three customer segments: Retail, Enterprise and Wholesale. It also holds equity stakes in data centre and regional telecom businesses that are not consolidated into revenue. In 9M FY24, the bulk (86%) of its revenue emanated from recurring data services, and voice, cloud and other revenue made up the rest.

Retail (about 40% of FY2025 revenue)

What it does. Retail sells fibre home broadband under the Time brand to households in its footprint: high-rise condominiums, apartments and, more and more, landed homes. Plans are speed-tiered subscriptions with optional add-ons. Since 2024 the segment has also included the small renewables businesses. The annual report notes that Retail includes revenue from renewable energy (Solar and EV charging businesses), but RHB estimates their actual contribution remains minimal (c.1% of revenue).

Core capability. Picking which buildings and townships to wire, then selling heavily into them. Management attributes stable ARPU to TIMECOM's 'micro-targeting' strategy, which tailors offerings to specific customer profiles and usage behaviors, enabling the company to maintain a strong ARPU despite stiff competition.

Why it is separate. It has a different buyer (households), different economics (cost per premise passed, take-up rate and churn) and a different competitive set from the business segments.

Role in the group. This is the growth engine and, since 2024, the largest segment. HLIB noted after the June 2025 analyst day that TIME's retail segment has now overtaken other divisions to become the group's largest revenue contributor, accounting for 38% of total income, with net additions on a par with peers despite limited infrastructure reach of only around 20% nationwide. The subscriber base was 524,000 fibre subscribers, up by about 6,000 from the previous quarter at the end of Q2 FY26.

Main rivals: TM's Unifi, Maxis, CelcomDigi, U Mobile and YTL's Yes.

Enterprise (about 31% of FY2025 revenue)

What it does. Connectivity and IT services for corporates, financial institutions and the public sector: dedicated internet access, multi-site private networks, cloud, cybersecurity and project-based service integration. Kenanga reports that management is repositioning its enterprise offerings by emphasizing dedicated internet access and multi-point connectivity solutions to align with the cloud-first shift among corporate clients.

Core capability. Delivering service-level-guaranteed links quickly, because TIME owns the fibre to the building, combined with a local cloud offering. TIME took full control of its cloud subsidiary in early 2026: it acquired the remaining 33% stake in AVM Cloud Sdn Bhd for MYR 32 million.

Why it is separate. Long B2B sales cycles, tender-driven public-sector demand, and a lumpier revenue line because of system-integration projects.

Role. A steady, if lumpy, contributor that adds utilisation to the same fibre built for retail. Kenanga notes that capacity during these network expansions is shared and can be utilized interchangeably to serve both retail and enterprise customers. It has also been the weakest segment recently. In Q1 FY26, enterprise revenue narrowed for the second consecutive quarter on lower service integration revenue, before a 14% increase in enterprise revenue on higher service integration income in Q2 FY26.

Main rivals: TM One (Telekom Malaysia), Maxis Business, CelcomDigi Business and the global cloud platforms.

Wholesale (about 29% of FY2025 revenue)

What it does. Sells domestic and international capacity to other carriers, over-the-top content providers, ISPs and hyperscalers. TIME defines Wholesale as other telecommunications providers, over-the-top ("OTT") content providers and Internet Service Providers ("ISP"), both domestic and international.

Core capability. Owning both the subsea and terrestrial legs of a route. The 2024 annual report highlights cross-border connectivity via the UNITY, FASTER, APG and AAE-1 subsea cable systems, which TIME pairs with its Cross Peninsular Cable System.

Why it is separate. The customer base is global, pricing is set in US-dollar capacity markets, and the long-term trend is per-unit price deflation.

Role. Once the legacy core, and now the swing factor driven by data centres. Kenanga notes that demand from global carriers is softening as MNCs migrate to cloud-based networks. However, this is offset by rising demand from hyperscalers and OTTs, particularly for terrestrial fiber and DC-to-DC connectivity. In Q2 FY26, year-on-year revenue growth was driven by an 11% increase in wholesale revenue amid stronger connectivity demand and a 9% rise in retail revenue.

Main rivals: TM Global, the Singapore-based carriers and the hyperscalers' own cables.

Equity-accounted investments (no revenue line)

AIMS Data Centre. TIME keeps 51% of AIMS's ordinary shares, jointly controlled with DigitalBridge. Because DigitalBridge also holds the convertible preference shares, the filing describes TIME as maintaining its shareholding in AIMS at 51% of the issued ordinary shares and its effective interest at 30%. AIMS is the strategic option in the portfolio: a colocation business now building an AI campus (Sections 3 and 7). Management said in February 2026 that it has no immediate plans to sell its 30% stake.

Regional associates. TIME's associates are Symphony Communications Public Company Limited ("SYMC") in Thailand and CMC Telecommunications Infrastructure in Vietnam. Kenanga carries them at CMC Telecom (45.27%) and Symphony (46.84%).

Shares are our tally of the company's quarterly segment disclosures for FY2025 and are consistent with HLIB's FY2024 retail figure.

Geographic mix

TIME is overwhelmingly a Malaysian business with a regional network. The geographic breakdown shows Malaysia at 1.72B ringgit of FY2025 revenue against 72.14M outside Malaysia, which is roughly 96% domestic and 4% overseas. The overseas share has been flat for five years. The network has a physical presence and network assets in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, and its regional strategy goes back over a decade: it first invested in Vietnam's CMC Telecom when it was investing $12 million USD in 2015. The footprint is still growing. In February 2025, an indirect subsidiary incorporated a fully owned subsidiary, TIME Global Connect (Thailand) Limited, which is primarily engaged in the provision of voice, data, video and image telecommunication services. Overseas operations matter more for network reach and wholesale routing than for revenue. Most regional economics come through the equity-accounted associates, not consolidated sales.

3. Products and Operations

The physical network

The network has three layers.

1. Last-mile and metro fibre. TIME runs fibre-to-the-home into buildings and townships, mainly in the Klang Valley, Penang and Johor. The 2024 annual report says the Group expanded its network footprint by 16% year-on-year, bringing the total number of premises passed to 1.78 million. The footprint reached 2.05 million premises passed by the end of 2025 and c. 2.1m as of end-1QFY26.

2. Domestic backbone and domestic subsea. The backbone is the Cross Peninsular Cable System (CPCS). TIME also funded and owns a portion of the domestic submarine cable system Sistem Kabel Rakyat 1 Malaysia (SKR1M) in 2015. The 3700km optical fibre submarine cable system links up Cherating, Kota Kinabalu, Miri, Bintulu, Kuching and Mersing, connecting Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak.

3. International subsea. TIME has stakes in UNITY, FASTER, APG and AAE-1, and is an AAE-1 landing party at Butterworth (Butterworth, Malaysia | TIME dotCom). It owns and operates a Malaysia-wide network via two submarine cable landing stations in Malaysia, and expands to four international submarine cable systems connecting Malaysia to the United States, Africa, Europe and Asia. These are long-lived assets that it upgrades by changing the electronics at each end, not the cable itself. In March 2026, TIME dotCom Berhad has upgraded its transpacific network using new optical technology from Ciena, enabling data transmission of up to 1Tb/s across the FASTER submarine cable system.

Retail product: Time Fibre

Time Fibre's differentiator is symmetric speed on its own fibre. A 2026 consumer review highlights symmetric upload = download speeds, plans from ~RM99/mo, no-contract options, and notes the trade-off: TIME is high-rise/condo-focused with limited landed-home coverage. That trade-off is changing. In Q1 FY26, more than half of the new premises passed comprised single dwelling units (SDUs), and TIME continues to expand into secondary townships and single-dwelling units (50% of new home pass).

Enterprise and cloud

Enterprise products include dedicated internet access, multi-site connectivity, cloud and managed security. The cloud business has been hit by an outside shock. Broadcom's re-pricing of VMware led customers to cut licence renewals, and TIME responded with a second cloud stack: the group believes cloud service revenue had stabilised after customers reduced VMware licence renewals following its shift to a subscription model. TIME has partly offset this through its Time Cloud Services offering, powered by Huawei Cloud.

Data centres (via AIMS)

AIMS has grown over the years to seven data centres across Malaysia and Thailand. It runs two facilities in Kuala Lumpur, one in Penang, three blocks in Cyberjaya, and one in Bangkok that went live in 2024. Most are relatively small, which makes the planned 200MW its largest by far once fully built up. In July 2025, AIMS had announced the early completion of Cyberjaya Block 3, bringing its total potential capacity in the Klang Valley to over 100MW. The next step changes the scale of the business. AIMS has acquired approximately 10 acres of land in Cyberjaya to build a 200MW AI-ready data centre, scheduled for completion in 2027. The facility, with an estimated investment of RM4 billion, will incorporate energy and water efficiency measures. Capacity is subject to final engineering confirmation.

Energy adjacencies

Emit Solar focuses on solar energy solutions for landed residential properties, and Charge N Go provides EV charging infrastructure for businesses. Strategically, they fit with the push into landed homes: the same households are the obvious customers for rooftop solar.

Delivery process and constraints

The rollout model works in a fixed sequence:

1. Identify dense, under-served buildings or townships.
2. Secure access from developers or management bodies.
3. Lay ducts and fibre and pass the premises.
4. Sell into the footprint until take-up justifies the build.

Management's rollout target is between 200,000 and 300,000 new premises annually, with increasing emphasis on single-dwelling units, which already make up around half of new builds. The main constraint is cost per premise. Landed homes are less dense, though Kenanga notes TIME is ramping up fiber roll-out to landed homes, where returns remain viable despite lower density. Equipment supply is a second constraint. On geopolitics and supply chains, management indicated some pressure on capex (eg optical cables and network equipment), but the impact has been manageable. The capex cycle has been funded internally. The FY2025 annual report puts the Group's capital expenditure ("CAPEX") for FY2025 at a fifth of revenue, and FY26 spending was mainly for network expansion and data centre investments.

The subsea assets are exposed to physical disruption and write-downs. The AAE-1 cable suffered repeated cuts in 2024-25. On 29 December 2024, the AAE-1 cable was reported to have been cut approximately 180 kilometers from Zafarana, Egypt impacting traffic to Marseille, and in April 2025, repairs on the AAE-1 cable were completed. TIME also booked a higher impairment of submarine cable in Q3 2025 by RM22.6 million.

4. Customers

Households (Retail). The buyer is a household, usually deciding on speed, price and whether TIME's fibre actually reaches the unit. Selling is fast, often a single visit or online sign-up. The key point is that TIME can only sell where it has built, which is why Section 3's rollout pace is the leading indicator for subscriber growth. Fibre plans in Malaysia usually carry contracts: most fiber plans require you to sign up for 24 months. Switching costs are modest (installation hassle and early-termination fees). Stickiness comes from having a better product in the building, not from contracts. Management believes the shift to landed homes improves retention: SDU accounts are seen as having stronger customer stickiness.

Corporates and the public sector (Enterprise). Kenanga describes enterprise customers as government agencies, corporates (eg. financial institutions). The buyer is the CIO or network team, with procurement or tender committees in the public sector. They judge on service levels, route diversity, security certification and price. Sales cycles run from months to a year for multi-site networks, and service-integration work comes in lumpy projects. Switching costs are real once a customer has multi-site private networks and cloud workloads on TIME. Migrating means re-engineering and dual-running links. The public sector also buys through tenders that reset on a fixed cycle.

Carriers, OTTs and hyperscalers (Wholesale). Buyers are capacity-planning teams at carriers and cloud companies. Contracts are long-dated capacity leases or IRUs priced in US dollars, and renewals are where prices reset. Kenanga's view: the outlook for the wholesale segment is mixed, as high demand for certain submarine cable routes are offset by price erosion for new contracts due to competitive pressures. The new buyer is the hyperscaler building in Malaysia. TIME sees growth opportunities from the rising presence of fiber and submarine cable landing stations to support: (i) half-circuit connectivity between Singapore and Malaysia, and (ii) data center-to-data center (DC-to-DC) connectivity.

An unusual feature of TIME's wholesale book is that its retail competitors are also its customers. Mobile operators without their own high-rise fibre rent TIME's. Under a renewed agreement, CelcomDigi will again leverage on Time's fibre broadband infrastructure to extend its CelcomDigi fibre offerings to more Malaysians, especially those residing in condominiums and apartments. U Mobile's home fibre plan reaches over 1 million more homes, especially homes in high-rise buildings along the Western coast of Peninsular Malaysia, through TIME dotCom's fib er infrastructure footprint. This hedges TIME's retail exposure: when a rival wins a subscriber inside TIME's footprint, TIME may still earn the wholesale access fee.

Concentration and predictability. TIME does not disclose customer concentration. With over half a million retail subscribers and a diversified B2B book, no single customer is likely to be decisive, though individual hyperscaler and carrier contracts can be large. Revenue is mostly recurring subscription and lease income, with the enterprise service-integration line as the main source of quarterly noise.

5. Competitive Landscape and Moat

Structure

Malaysia's fixed broadband market is dominated by a former state incumbent that owns most of the national last mile, with challengers either renting that network or, like TIME, building their own in selected areas. HLIB's June 2025 share estimate puts TIME currently third in the broadband market share with 10%, behind Telekom Malaysia Bhd's (KL:TM) Unifi at 68% and Maxis Bhd (KL:MAXIS) at 17%. TIME's share of new customers is about double its share of the base: in 2024, TIMECOM captured an impressive 20% share of total industry subscriber net adds.

The mobile operators are now the main threat, because they can bundle home broadband with mobile plans. Kenanga flags that "we remain concerned that competitors may hold an advantage given their converged mobile and broadband offerings". Management's counter-argument is that the mobile operators' broadband ARPUs are diluted by lower-priced fixed wireless access (FWA) offerings, and that it expects a more cautious approach to pricing from competitors, particularly mobile network operators (MNOs), as aggressive discounting could dilute their margins.

Competitor table

Market caps: TM 30.32 billion as of October 5, 2026. Maxis valued at RM27.9 billion, while CelcomDigi is about RM1 billion bigger in market value as of 30 October. YTL Power MYR 44.70B on 30 October 2026. Data centre rivals per a 2026 industry ranking listing Telekom Malaysia (TM One), Bridge Data Centres, NTT Global Data Centers, AIMS Data Centre, and EdgeConneX.

How TIME wins and loses

• Against TM. TIME wins inside its footprint on speed per ringgit and symmetric upload. RAM once found TIME's gigabit plan the fastest Internet speed package of up to 1Gbps in the domestic market at the most competitive price (by RM/Mbps). It loses wherever its fibre does not reach, which is most of the country, and on bundled TV and mobile. In wholesale, TM's broader landing-station estate is a structural edge: Kenanga notes TM has five SCLS sites across Malaysia, which serve as key gateways for its major international subsea cables.
• Against Maxis and CelcomDigi. These operators mostly rent the last mile and compete on bundles and FWA. TIME's product is better on fixed lines, but they own the customer relationship through the phone. Because CelcomDigi and U Mobile rent TIME's fibre in high-rises, part of this competition turns into wholesale revenue for TIME.
• Against YTL and FWA. 5G home broadband is cheaper and needs no installation, which sets a low price ceiling for basic users. TIME's defence is quality: latency and upload speed matter more as households run video calls, cloud backup and gaming.
• AIMS against hyperscale developers. AIMS is a mid-sized colocation provider facing well-funded campus developers. Its 200MW Cyberjaya project is its attempt to compete at their scale.

Barriers to entry

These are moderately high. A new fibre builder needs building access, rights of way and years of capital at risk before take-up comes in. But they are not insurmountable: TIME itself got in this way, and power and data centre groups such as YTL have both the capital and the motive. In wholesale, new terrestrial fibre players have appeared on data centre routes. Kenanga lists competition from new entrants in the wholesale fiber lease segment as a risk.

Structural shifts

Three things are changing the landscape.

1. Convergence: mobile operators are bundling fixed broadband.
2. Mobile consolidation: HLIB has flagged that a Maxis – U Mobile merger as a live risk weighing on both Maxis and CelcomDigi, which would reshape both the bundling battle and TIME's wholesale customer list.
3. Data centres: the hyperscale build-out is turning terrestrial fibre between campuses into a scarce, valuable route asset (Section 6).

Moat: Narrow - scale / cost advantage (owned dense-footprint fibre), intangible assets (subsea consortium stakes and landing rights)

TIME's advantage is real but local. In buildings it has wired, owning the fibre lets it beat rivals who rent theirs on price and speed. That explains a share of industry net adds roughly double its subscriber share, and the way rival operators rent its high-rise fibre instead of building their own (Section 4). It holds where TIME has built, not nationally, and has not yet been tested by a sustained price war from well-funded convergent mobile operators. The thing most likely to erode it is mobile-plus-broadband bundling, especially from a consolidated mobile operator, combined with cheaper FWA, which would weaken TIME's pricing in exactly the footprint where its edge lies.

6. Industry

Demand drivers. Fixed broadband demand in Malaysia now depends on upgrading existing users more than on adding new ones. The market is a near-saturated market where growth comes from value rather than new subscribers, at least for mobile. Fixed penetration is still uneven: it is high in urban areas but thinner in rural ones. Government policy has pushed coverage. Under JENDELA, the number of fibre-passed premises has hit 7.74 million which is above the target of covering 7.5 million premises by the end of 2022, and Phase 2 aims to achieve 9 million fibre premises passed by the end of 2025. As a rule of thumb, typically, there are 300,000 premises passed with fibre each year nationwide. Set against that, TIME's 200,000-300,000 annual target is very aggressive.

The data centre wave. This is the biggest industry force for TIME's B2B and associate businesses. Kenanga cites DCByte forecasting that DC capacity in Malaysia is forecast to surge 11-fold from 280MW in 1QCY24 to more than 3.2GW by 2028, and that Johor's DC growth potential of 6.4GW—over 3x its current 1.9GW capacity—anchors multi-year growth in connectivity demand from hyperscale campuses and enterprise co-lo sites. Regionally, APAC's data centre development pipeline reached 26.5 GW in the first half of 2026, with SEA accounting for around half of the region's under-construction capacity. Subsea routes are being redrawn around these hubs. The new AI hubs — Johor, Batam, Bangkok and Vizag — is driving a fundamental re‑architecture of submarine cable networks. The policy logic behind the Johor corridor is that Johor assets can serve Singapore's demand at Malaysian cost structures, pairing Singapore-grade connectivity with land and power that the city-state itself cannot provide. Kenanga expects fixed operators to capture this demand. Its view is that fixed operators (TM and TIMECOM) stand to benefit as providers of international and terrestrial connectivity to hyperscalers and CAPs, and that hyperscaler connectivity contracts should materialize from 2026 onwards, coinciding with the ramp-up of cloud regions in Malaysia.

Data residency. Kenanga argues that local cloud demand gets a boost from compliance, driven by local enterprises undergoing digital transformation to comply with data protection and sovereignty regulations.

Regulation. MCMC regulates wholesale access to the incumbent's network through the Mandatory Standard on Access Pricing (MSAP). The 2023 determination sets out new access price ceilings for regulated telecoms services under the Access List for the next three years effective March 1, 2023, and new HSBB access prices were lower by between 6.4% and 64.7% compared with existing prices. The 2023 schedule was set to run until Dec 31, 2025, so the next access-pricing cycle is a live variable. Cheaper access to TM's network lowers the cost base of operators that rent it, which narrows TIME's own-network cost advantage. Retail prices also feel political pressure. Kenanga lists pricing pressure in the retail segment driven by policy directives and heightened competition as an industry risk. On the mobile side, the 5G wholesale model is unsettled. DNB is shifting to equity accounting with its owners, and analysts expect DNB associate contributions will begin appearing in Maxis, CelcomDigi, and YTL Power's financial statements from the fourth quarter of 2026. That matters to TIME only because it puts pressure on the convergent rivals' finances.

Supply chain position. TIME is a network owner and capacity seller. It buys optical equipment from global vendors and subsea capacity through consortia, and sells capacity downstream. It does not manufacture anything.

Cyclicality. Consumer broadband behaves like a utility and is fairly resilient through downturns. Enterprise IT projects and wholesale capacity are more cyclical, and wholesale has a built-in price-per-bit decline. The data centre build-out is the most cyclical element: it depends on hyperscaler capex, and AI-driven spending could slow.

Tailwinds: data centre construction, cloud localisation, landed-home fibre conversion, and new subsea systems landing in Malaysia. Headwinds: FWA substitution, bundle-led price competition, regulated access-price cuts for renters of the incumbent's network, and wholesale price erosion.

7. Growth Triggers

Ranked by potential impact. Sources are results announcements, performance guides and analyst briefings (TIME holds no public earnings call; see Section 9).

• AIMS's 200MW AI data centre in Cyberjaya, targeted for 2027, funded partly by TIME capital calls. AIMS plans to develop a US$1bil AI data centre on a 10-acre site in Cyberjaya by 2027. TIME has said it will keep funding its share: further investment contributions are expected in FY2026 to support AIMS' data centre expansion requirements (Q4 FY25 performance guide, 26 Feb 2026). Management repeated this in May: it would continue to participate in the latter's cash calls as not to dilute the 30% stake (Q1 FY26 briefing, 26 May 2026). Repeated across two periods.

• Hyperscaler and data centre connectivity in Wholesale and Enterprise. Management highlighted Singapore-Malaysia half-circuits and DC-to-DC links as new demand at the June 2025 analyst day (Analyst Day, ~12 June 2025). It pointed to data centre connectivity again in Q1 FY26, when wholesale growth benefited from data centre (DC) connectivity services (Q1 FY26, 26 May 2026), and in Q2 FY26, citing stronger wholesale demand from hyperscalers (Q2 FY26, 27 Aug 2026). Repeated across three periods.

• A further 200,000-300,000 premises passed a year, tilted to landed homes and secondary townships. First set at the June 2025 analyst day. In August 2025, management expects a future tilt toward SDUs as it expands into areas with higher concentrations of landed homes (Q2 FY25 briefing, 27 Aug 2025). Reconfirmed in Q1 FY26 with SDUs at about half of new homes passed (26 May 2026). Repeated across three periods.

• Balance-sheet re-leveraging to fund capex and distributions. Management targets net debt/EBITDA of 1.0-1.5x and reiterated plans to raise leverage to between 1.0 and 1.5 times net debt-to-EBITDA over the next three to four years, primarily to fund capital expenditure and working capital requirements (company update, May 2026). This sits alongside the new ordinary dividend policy of 50% to 75% (previously up to 50%) of the Group's Normalised Profit after Tax and Minority Interests (Q4 FY25, 26 Feb 2026), with specials reviewed every six months. Repeated in Q4 FY25, Q1 FY26 and Q2 FY26.

• A second cloud stack to replace lost VMware revenue. Management says cloud revenue has stabilised, helped by Time Cloud Services on Huawei Cloud (Q2 FY26, 27 Aug 2026), now with full ownership of AVM Cloud (Q4 FY25, 26 Feb 2026).

• Regional expansion led by the executive directors. The 2025 reorganisation gave the executive directors the job of advancing Time's international expansion and leading one-off major projects (leadership announcement, 3 Jul 2025). TIME Global Connect (Thailand) was set up as the vehicle (Q3 FY25 interim report, 26 Nov 2025). One line: in practice, the regional expansion is the AIMS and associate story.

• Energy bundles for landed-home customers. Kenanga says the bundled offerings could improve customer stickiness through unified billing and discounted charging rates tied to broadband subscriptions (company update, May 2026).

8. Key Risks

8.1 Convergence and FWA squeeze retail growth. Mechanism: mobile operators bundle home broadband with mobile plans, and 5G FWA puts a low price ceiling under basic broadband. TIME's net adds slow and ARPU stalls even as the footprint grows. This is already visible: fibre subs net-adds have decelerated to 6k from 7k from 4Q25 and 8k in 3Q25 due to competition, down from its recent peak of 12k in 4QFY24. A Maxis-U Mobile merger (Section 5) would create a stronger bundler but also remove a price-cutter, so the net effect is uncertain. Calibration: high probability, moderate drag. Retail is the growth engine, so a slowdown here hits the whole equity story.

8.2 Footprint economics worsen as expansion moves to landed and secondary areas. Mechanism: the dense high-rise sites have largely been built. Landed homes and secondary towns cost more per premise and fill more slowly, and equipment costs are rising (Section 3). If take-up in new SDU areas trails the high-rise pattern, returns on each tranche of capex fall. Nothing breaks visibly; the damage shows up slowly in returns. Calibration: medium probability, moderate. Management's claim that SDU returns remain viable despite lower density has not yet been tested through a full take-up cycle.

8.3 AIMS execution, funding and gestation losses. Mechanism: a RM4bn, 200MW build is many times the size of AIMS's existing estate. Delays (power, cooling, supply chain), weak pre-leasing or cost overruns would mean larger TIME capital calls and a longer loss-making period. This is already showing: AIMS reported sharply lower earnings YoY/QoQ due to accelerated depreciation and higher financing charges from its capacity expansion, and HLIB warned that earnings could become volatile and potentially turn negative during the initial gestation phase. TIME is a minority economic partner in a vehicle controlled jointly with a private-equity-style infrastructure owner, so its influence over timing and funding is limited. Calibration: medium probability. Significant for the "data centre option" part of the thesis, but limited for the core business.

8.4 Wholesale price erosion and subsea asset risk. Mechanism: hyperscalers increasingly build their own cables, and new contracts reprice lower. TM's research flags that traffic is increasingly dominated by Tier-1 hyperscalers leveraging their own submarine cable networks. Older cable stakes risk write-downs (the Q3 FY25 impairment in Section 3), and cuts like AAE-1's disrupt service. Calibration: high probability, small-to-moderate impact. Offset by data centre route demand, but a persistent drag on the legacy wholesale book.

8.5 Capital allocation shifts from excess cash to borrowing. Mechanism: the record payouts of FY24-25 were funded by the AIMS-sale cash pile (Section 1). That pile is mostly spent, and the company is now borrowing: short-term borrowings increased to RM281.9m in 1QFY26 (1QFY25: RM2.9m). Management has warned that distributions will shrink. HLIB reports management had acknowledged that dividend growth is expected to moderate over time as its gearing increases, and RHB that TDC expects dividend payout going forward to taper off from record distributions in FY24-25. If growth slows (8.1, 8.2) while leverage rises to fund both capex and AIMS calls, the balance sheet loses flexibility just as the AIMS build needs it. Calibration: medium probability, moderate.

8.6 Enterprise lumpiness and cloud platform dependence. Mechanism: service-integration revenue swings from quarter to quarter (Section 2). The cloud business depends on third-party stacks: first VMware, whose re-pricing hurt demand, and now Huawei Cloud. Some enterprise and public-sector buyers may be reluctant to use a Huawei-powered stack for sensitive workloads, which limits how far it can replace VMware revenue. Calibration: medium probability, small impact at group level.

8.7 Regulatory reset of access pricing and retail price directives. Mechanism: the 2023 MSAP schedule ran to end-2025 (Section 6). A new determination that cuts HSBB access prices again would lower costs for operators renting TM's network and narrow TIME's own-fibre cost edge. Ministerial pressure on retail prices could cap ARPU across the industry. Calibration: low-to-medium probability, moderate impact on retail.

9. Walk the Talk

Results events used. TIME does not hold public earnings calls. The six periods below rely on results announcements, the company's quarterly "Performance Guide" slides, and the content of analyst briefings as reported by brokers:

1. Q1 FY25: 23 May 2025
2. Q2 FY25: 27 Aug 2025 (results plus analyst briefing)
3. Q3 FY25: 26 Nov 2025 (results plus performance guide)
4. Q4 FY25: 26 Feb 2026 (results, performance guide, briefing)
5. Q1 FY26: 26 May 2026 (results plus briefing)
6. Q2 FY26: 27 Aug 2026 (results plus briefing; 73 days before this report)

The inaugural Analyst Day (~12 June 2025) is used as additional context.

The unusually conservative margin call. On the Q3 FY25 results, the new CEO played down the improvement:

"While it's good news, we are cognisant that this lift isn't permanent, with the operating landscape continuing to remain competitive and dynamic." - Loh Jenkim, Q3 FY25 results, 26 November 2025

The next two quarters went the other way. Q1 FY26's EBITDA margin was lifted to 47.4%, compared to 43.6% in 1Q25, underpinned by higher revenue and lower costs, and by the half-year TIME recorded a 16% increase in Ebitda in the first half, lifting its Ebitda margin to a high of 48%. Part of this was timing: Kenanga attributes the jump to costs being deferred while TIME held back on spending early in the year while reviewing its cost structure, and management said in May that "margins are expected to normalise as spending resumes and costs potentially rise due to ongoing global supply chain disruptions". As of Q2 FY26 that normalisation had not happened. The pattern is consistent: the new CEO frames good news cautiously.

The leverage timeline has drifted. The target band of 1.0-1.5x has never changed, but the deadline has varied. In February management said the target would be reached in 2–3 years. In May the same target was reported as over the next three to four years, while RHB's May note recorded target net debt/EBITDA of 1-1.5x over two years. The direction is clear, but the pace is soft. That matters because the pace of re-leveraging sets the size of future special dividends.

The InfraCo/ServiceCo idea. In June 2025, HLIB reported TIME is exploring a structural split into an InfraCo (efficiency and maximising asset yields) and a ServiceCo (service innovation and customer experience). What followed was an operating reorganisation, not a legal split. The July 2025 announcement named separate CEOs for Infrastructure, Retail, Wholesale and Enterprise as part of its move towards an infrastructure investment model. No separate infrastructure entity or outside capital raise for one has been announced. This was never a firm commitment, but investors who expected an asset-monetisation event have not had one.

Assessment. Over these six periods management has delivered on the operating commitments it controls: rollout pace, the SDU tilt, ARPU, wholesale data centre demand and the dividend cadence. Its forward framing has been conservative, not promotional. The softer spots are timelines for balance-sheet and structural changes, which have been described loosely and have moved. On this evidence the team is reliable on operations and slightly vague on capital-structure timing.

10. Ownership, Governance and Shareholder Friendliness

Part 1 - Ownership and control. No shareholder has a majority. Ownership is split between the founder-operator group and state-linked funds. After Khazanah sold a block in April 2026, Khazanah retains an approximately 10.04% stake in TIME, mainly held via its investment vehicle Pulau Kapas Ventures Sdn Bhd. The largest holder is TIME executive vice-chairman Afzal Abdul Rahim remains the group's largest shareholder, with a 20.36% deemed interest comprising a 10.09% direct stake and a 10.27% indirect stake via Megawisra Sdn Bhd and Global Transit International Sdn Bhd. Among the pension funds, recent data shows Employees Provident Fund of Malaysia | 16.94% and Kumpulan Wang Persaraan | 10.06%. Khazanah has been selling steadily; it has been paring its stake via large block sales from 2023 to 2025, including the disposal of 131.15 million TIME shares in 2025. The holding structure has been reorganised several times through Pulau Kapas Ventures. In 2025 that vehicle was described as 19.81%-owned by Khazanah and 80.18% by GTI, which is controlled by Afzal and Patrick Corso, who is also executive director at Time. There is one share class and no golden share. For a minority holder, the structure means a single operator-aligned group with about a fifth of the equity sits alongside roughly 37% held by state-linked funds. In practice no resolution passes without some mix of these blocs, and the remaining free float is reasonably large.

Part 2 - Governance. The FY2025 annual report lists a chair who is not independent: Elakumari Kantilal Chairman, Non-Independent Non-Executive Director. According to the 2015 annual report, at that time she currently holds the position of Director of Investments in Khazanah. Nasional Berhad ("Khazanah"). The same board list names a Senior Independent Director (Datuk Azailiza Mohd Ahad) and independent directors Anthony Low Kim Fui, Zainooreen Madros and Teoh Su Yin, alongside non-independent members. Executive power is shared between the Group CEO and the Executive Vice Chairman, who is also the largest shareholder, with executive directors reporting to him rather than the CEO. When the 2025 changes were announced, Corso and Datuk Zainal Amanshah will report directly to Afzal in his new role. Corso was later redesignated from Executive Director to Non Executive Director, Effective June 30, 2026. The most significant related-party exposure is structural, not transactional: TIME funds capital calls into AIMS, a vehicle it jointly controls with DigitalBridge. A detailed review of related-party transaction notes and director share pledges was not possible within this research, so those items are unverified, not cleared. KPMG PLT was re-appointed auditor at the 25th AGM, and no qualified opinion was found.

Part 3 - Capital returns

Dividends. Distributions have been very large, mostly specials funded by the AIMS-sale proceeds, and have declined each year from the 2023 peak:

• FY2023: dividends declared in the first half alone came to 70.65 sen for the first half ended June 30, 2023 (1HFY2023) on the AIMS sale.
• FY2024: TIME paid out total dividends of 56.8 sen per share or RM1.05 billion for FY2024.
• FY2025: the Group paid out total dividends of 48.69 sen per ordinary share.

The ordinary component has grown and been formalised. FY2025's final ordinary interim was 17.32 sen, compared with 10.42 sen for FY2024, and the payout policy was raised to 50-75% of normalised profit. Specials, decided every six months, have shrunk: FY2026 so far has brought a special interim tax exempt (single-tier) dividend of 5.41 sen per ordinary share. Total payouts have exceeded earnings. Maybank argued in January that TIME could sustain a 150% payout, providing dividend yields of up to 7.0% in 2026, before it turns net debt, and management has since signalled that payouts will taper (Section 8.5).

Buybacks and dilution. No share buyback programme was found for the last three years. The Q3 FY25 interim report states the Group did not undertake any other issuance and/or repayment of debt and equity securities, share buy-backs, share cancellations and resale of treasury shares during the current nine months period ended 30 September 2025. The only market purchases were by the share-grant trustee to fund employee awards, which it bought for the purpose of granting the shares to eligible employees in accordance with the Company's SGP. That is not a capital return. MoatMap records no buybacks in the most recent window (10 August 2026 to 8 November 2026). The share count has been essentially flat at about 1.85 billion over the period; each recent special dividend works out to roughly the same number of shares, so there has been neither shrinkage nor visible dilution.

Verdict: Returns Capital. TIME has paid out the AIMS-sale proceeds and more through special dividends and is now borrowing to keep up regular distributions, although the scale of payouts is clearly falling.

11. Insider Activities

Source: MoatMap disclosure database (Bursa substantial-shareholder change notices), data as of 8 November 2026. The window contains 306 transactions by 6 insiders: 196 buys, 105 sells, 5 other. The extract available for this report covers 22 September to 3 November 2026 and shows only the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and KWAP. Rows for the other four insiders are not shown here. Khazanah's April 2026 block disposal is covered under ownership in Section 10.

Recent material transactions (most recent first; shares at or above roughly 0.9m, or notable sells)

Values are estimated at prevailing market prices; the notices carry no transaction price.

Reading the buys. In the six weeks shown, EPF bought about 28.6m shares and sold about 3.4m, a net addition of about 25m shares, or roughly 1.4% of the company. KWAP was a net buyer of about 1.7m shares. Purchases by two state pension funds at the same time look like cluster buying, but the signal is weaker than it seems. These are institutional portfolio managers holding hundreds of Bursa stocks. They trade daily, often on both sides on the same day (as on 12-13 October), and their buying reflects asset allocation and index weight more than inside knowledge. No director or executive bought or sold in the rows shown. TIME's executive vice-chairman and largest shareholder does not appear in this extract.

Reading the sells. EPF's sells (2.0m on 13 October, 1.4m on 12 October) were outweighed by purchases in the same days or weeks. They look like routine rebalancing; no reason is disclosed. KWAP's small sells in late September were reversed within days.

Net assessment. Substantial shareholders were net buyers over the window, almost entirely through EPF steadily adding in October 2026 after the Q2 results. The activity comes from one or two pension funds, not company insiders, and fits long-horizon institutional accumulation. Read: neutral to mildly positive. It shows large domestic funds are comfortable adding at current levels, but there is no management buying to read as an informed vote.

12. Scenarios

Bull case. The data centre build-out turns TIME's terrestrial routes into some of the most sought-after fibre in the country. Hyperscaler campuses in Cyberjaya and Johor sign multi-year DC-to-DC and half-circuit contracts, and wholesale stops being a deflating legacy line and becomes a second growth engine. In retail, the landed-home push works: SDU take-up matches the high-rise pattern, ARPU holds because quality matters more as homes run heavier cloud and video workloads, and a Maxis-U Mobile combination makes the mobile market calmer on price. AIMS delivers its Cyberjaya AI campus close to schedule with strong pre-leasing, and the market starts valuing TIME's stake in it as a separate asset. Leverage rises in an orderly way to the target band, and the six-monthly special dividends become a predictable feature. In two to three years, TIME looks like a regional infrastructure owner with a consumer business attached, not a challenger ISP.

Base case. Management keeps doing what Section 9 shows it does reliably: passing 200,000-300,000 premises a year, holding ARPU flat and growing the subscriber base, though net adds keep running below the 2024 peak as convergence bites. Hyperscaler demand partly offsets carrier softness in wholesale. Enterprise stays lumpy, and cloud stabilises without returning to growth. AIMS's AI campus arrives around 2027 and contributes little or nothing to group earnings during its ramp, while absorbing capital calls. Gearing drifts toward the target over three to four years. Ordinary dividends follow the 50-75% policy, and specials shrink as the cash pile runs out. TIME stays a steady, moderately growing fibre owner with a smaller distribution profile than investors got used to in 2023-25.

Bear case. Risks 8.1 and 8.2 compound. Convergent bundles and FWA take most of the growth in TIME's dense footprint just as expansion moves into landed areas where each premise costs more and fills more slowly, so returns on new capex fall sharply. Risk 8.7 makes it worse: a new access-pricing determination lowers the cost base of rivals renting the incumbent's network. Meanwhile 8.3 develops. The 200MW campus slips or pre-leases slowly, AIMS's losses deepen, and TIME has to meet larger capital calls. With growth weaker and calls larger, 8.5 tightens: borrowing that was meant to fund distributions now has to fund capex and AIMS, and specials stop. Wholesale repricing (8.4) and another subsea impairment add to the pressure. TIME ends up as a lower-growth, more indebted challenger whose main attraction, large capital returns, has gone.