Dear Valued Clients and Partners,

Let me begin by wishing everyone New Year! I hope you had a joyous celebration with your loved ones.

Thank you everyone for being part of our incredible journey throughout 2022. While the past year remained a challenging one for many businesses as we gradually moved beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, it also brought us numerous significant achievements and positive developments.

Without a doubt, one of the biggest highlights of our year was that REDtone received two incredible awards at The Edge Malaysia Centurion Club & Corporate Awards 2022. The awards were for the “HIGHEST GROWTH IN PROFIT AFTER TAX OVER 3 YEARS” and “HIGHEST RETURN ON EQUITY OVER 3 YEARS” categories in the joint sector of Telecommunications, Media & Utilities. These prestigious awards are a reflection of our resilience and strong foundation, as well as our ability to deliver exceptional results despite a challenging business environment. Our heartfelt gratitude to all of you for your continuous support and for helping us achieve this recognition. 

Business transformation continues to accelerate at a rapid pace. The abrupt shift exacerbated the need for businesses to have the right, high-performing network. In the past year, we helped many businesses with their tech refresh plans and modernise their IT infrastructure, mainly with SD-WAN technologies that enable them to re-architect their WAN and branches’ networks by establishing a unified network plane across disparate networks and providing a central hosted solution for WAN management. These companies are leaders in the retail, FSI and F&B industries with up to thousands of outlets nationwide, complex network architecture and the most stringent requirements. Our ability to deliver is a real testament of our skills and know-how, as well as our commitment to pushing boundaries to bring best-in-class services to our customers. 

We continue to see positive growth in our MTNS business, amidst the ongoing large scale telco engineering projects. While we maintain our position as the largest 3^rd Party Neutral MORAN/MOCN Operator in Malaysia, we are not resting on our laurels. We constantly review our operational procedures to anticipate what needs improving. We invest in skillset development in the areas of RF design and network optimisation, equipment installation, fibre network planning and deployment, as well as civil material engineering work. We also constantly review our safety training and policies. We will never compromise on job quality and the safety of our workforce.

There were many interesting developments in our Smart Farming business over the past 12 months. For one, we just launched the “Satellite IoT Solution’ (SIS), a digital precision agriculture tool that utilises the latest satellite data, combining our telco and IoT capabilities with custom algorithms. Currently, there are few POC sites being deployed nationwide, from large scale plantations and farms to forest monitoring. We strongly believe SIS will potentially help the Malaysian government meet its food security and sustainability goals while delivering massive benefits to farm owners. This is part of our continuous efforts to strengthen our position as a leading smart farming solutions provider in the country while expanding market coverage in the region in the near future.

Another remarkable achievement is our completion of a VR Engineering project recently, utilising flexiCraft VR solutions to transform the new train design process and engineering showcase for a rail operator. With the integration of state-of-the-art simulation and animation technology, we helped their design engineers create full-sized 3D models of train components (both exterior and interior) before the physical train sets are built. Moving forward, it will be an ongoing effort to further explore the technical capabilities and our team’s know-how in advancing the use of VR in product/design engineering.

To me, corporate success is not just about what we’ve accomplished. It’s about who we’ve positively impacted and lifted up along the way. Ultimately, it is about how we give back to the community we serve. To this end, REDtone is truly honoured and happy with our strategic partnership with SRAFT in the noble initiative of promoting youth squash to foster positive development among the youth. The 14^th REDtone KL international Junior Squash Open ended on a high note recently, with the esteemed presence of our Youth and Sports Minister, YB Hannah Yeoh, during the finals. This year, which marked the 9th time that REDtone has been title sponsor, is especially meaningful as we emerge from a challenging period in which the COVID-19 pandemic had forced most sporting events to be suspended since early 2020.

REDtone is also honoured to have been the Silver Sponsor of “The Laksamana Run” for the 3^rd consecutive years since 2020. Organised by the Tunku Laksamana Johor Cancer Foundation, this wonderful annual fundraising event helps spread awareness of cancer while raising vital funds for the foundation to assist financially-challenged cancer patients in their fight against the disease.

The next 12 months look set to be a bumpy year for many global markets, and service providers will not be insulated from the volatility. Nevertheless, I am excited about year ahead and the new initiatives in the pipeline, which will be enriching our solution offerings and benefiting our clients significantly. Also, I’m certain that by continuing to work closely with all of you, our clients and business partners who have stood by us throughout the years, and by standing firm on our principles and commitment to meeting our customers’ need and providing greater value, we will realise our growth ambitions together.

Cheers to a healthy, safe and successful 2023 ahead. 

Yours sincerely,  

Lau Bik Soon