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hone and cellular voucher distributor PT Tiphone Mobile Indonesia aims to reap around Rp 3 trillion (US$228.5 million) from both syndicated loans and the bond market in the first half of this year, in a bid to ease its financial burdens.

Tiphone corporate secretary Samuel Kurniawan said after a public statement on Thursday that his firm was already in talks with the Standard Chartered Bank, HSBC, Bank Central Asia (BCA) and Bank CIMB Niaga for syndicated loans worth Rp 2.5 trillion.

'€œWe hope that we can obtain the syndicated loans in this half of the year,'€ he told reporters.

Tiphone would mainly use the loans, once obtained, for its working capital to buy both vouchers and prepaid cards from Telkomsel '€” the cellular business arm of state-owned telecommunications giant PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom).

Samuel explained that his firm, which now distributes only Telkomsel'€™s vouchers and prepaid cards, would need to make sure that its inventory of vouchers was sufficient to support Telkom'€™s double-digit sales target.

Last year, Telkom '€” through its subsidiary PT PINS Indonesia '€” acquired a 24.94-percent stake in Tiphone for Rp 1.4 trillion.

After the acquisition, Tiphone no longer sells the vouchers and prepaid cards of Telkomsel'€™s rivals, Indosat and XL Axiata.

Vouchers and prepaid cards have become Tiphone'€™s largest revenue contributors, making up 60 percent of its total revenues last year of Rp 14.59 trillion.

The publicly listed company aims to see the revenue contributions of vouchers and prepaid cards climb to 70 percent this year, with the remaining 30 percent coming from phone sales.

Samuel said that his firm aimed to book around Rp 18 trillion in revenues and Rp 360 billion in net profits this year.

Besides expanding its voucher and prepaid card business, the firm also aims to refinance part of its debts through the issuing of bonds.

Samuel said that his firm expected to issue Rp 500 billion in bonds in June as the first round of issuing
Rp 2 trillion in sustaining bonds, with Bahana Securities becoming the underwriter.

'€œThe funds raised from the bond issuance will be used to slash our interest-bearing debts. We aim to slash our loan interest to around 11 percent from between 13 and 14 percent at present,'€ he said.

The firm'€™s total liabilities stood at Rp 3.06 trillion in the first quarter of this year, with its equity hitting Rp 2.61 trillion.

Tiphone CEO Tan Lie Pin said that her firm would also launch an online store next month to keep up with growing e-commerce businesses.

'€œWe, however, don'€™t expect the e-commerce platform to become a revenue booster as it will just become another way to distribute our products,'€ she said, adding that her firm currently had 180,000 active resellers.

She said her firm would spend around Rp 38 billion on capital expenditures this year, mainly for acquiring new buildings and operational cars.

The firm, which is listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) under the code TELE, saw its net profits surge by 40.7 percent to Rp 85.46 billion in the first quarter of this year from Rp 60.74 billion in the same period last year.