Chapter 2

Look-Through Earnings

Figures converted from Indonesian rupiah at historical FX rates — see data/company.json.fx_rates for the rate table. Ratios, margins, and multiples are unitless and unchanged.

Metrodata's distribution engine — 76% of group revenue — runs almost entirely through PT Synnex Metrodata Indonesia (SMI), a subsidiary the company owns 50% of but consolidates in full. On a look-through basis that engine delivers only about 40% of the profit that belongs to Metrodata shareholders; the higher-margin, wholly-owned Solutions business supplies the majority. The minority's half is real cash: $11.8 million left the group in FY2025 dividends to the partner alone [1].

The engine sits in a half-owned subsidiary

Metrodata reports through two segments — Distribution and Solution and Consultation — but the Distribution business does not sit inside the parent [2]. It runs through a set of subsidiaries led by PT Synnex Metrodata Indonesia, the ICT-distribution vehicle Metrodata formed with Taiwan's Synnex Technology International (now part of TD SYNNEX) [3]. Metrodata holds 50% of SMI's shares and 50% of its voting rights [4].

That a 50/50 arrangement is consolidated in full — rather than equity-accounted as a joint venture — rests on a judgment the company flags as critical. Metrodata controls SMI because the current composition of SMI's board of directors, which holds decision-making authority over its planning, operating and financial policies, gives the parent the power to govern those policies and exposure to variable returns [5]. The consequence is arithmetic: SMI's entire $1.26 billion of revenue and $424 million of assets are consolidated at 100%, while half of its equity and half of its profit belong to the partner [6].

The non-controlling interest on the balance sheet is almost entirely SMI: of $96.2 million of NCI equity at end-2025, $95.7 million — 99.5% — is the distribution partner's half of SMI, with two small subsidiaries making up the rest [7]. That NCI is a quarter of the group's $378.9 million of total equity [8]. A second distribution subsidiary, PT Synnex Metrodata Technology and Services, is also 50%-owned, so the half-ownership pattern is specific to the distribution side of the house [9].

Source: FY2025 Annual Report, Note 20 Non-Controlling Interests [10].

Revenue optics versus owner earnings

On the segment page the two businesses look lopsided. Distribution sold $1.24 billion to external customers in FY2025 against Solution and Consultation's $388 million — roughly 76% versus 24% of revenue [11]. But the two segments earn at very different rates. Distribution's gross margin is about 6% ($76.6 million of gross profit on $1.29 billion of segment revenue); Solutions runs near 15% ($57.0 million on $388 million) [12]. Pre-tax, the gap narrows: Distribution contributed $50.6 million of segment profit before tax and Solutions $35.5 million — 59% versus 41% [13].

The ownership overlay changes the picture again. Because the Distribution engine is half-owned and Solutions is wholly owned, the share of profit that actually reaches Metrodata shareholders tilts toward the smaller, higher-margin business.

Sources: revenue split per FY2025 segment note [14]; owner-earnings split derived from Note 20 and the consolidated profit split [15].

The look-through works from the group's own numbers. SMI earned $39.4 million of net profit in FY2025 [16]. Of the group's $68.6 million of profit for the year, $48.8 million is attributable to owners of the parent and $19.7 million to non-controlling interests [17]. That NCI line is, within a rounding error, the partner's half of SMI — meaning Metrodata's own half is roughly the same, about $19.7 million. The rest of owner profit, roughly $29.2 million, comes from the wholly-owned Solutions business, its associates and the parent [18].

Source: derived from FY2025 consolidated profit split and Note 20 [19]; [20].

Sources: FY2025 segment note [21]; consolidated profit split [22]; Note 20 [23].

So the headline that Distribution is three-quarters of the business is true of revenue and roughly true of pre-tax segment profit, but on the profit that reaches shareholders the weight flips: the wholly-owned Solutions layer and the parent are the majority, and the commodity distribution engine — for all its scale — is the minority contributor to owner earnings.

The minority's half is cash, not just an accounting line

The partner's share is not a paper adjustment that nets out below the line; it is settled in cash. SMI paid $11.8 million of dividends to its non-controlling interest in FY2025 and $12.5 million in FY2024 [24], following $9.3 million in 2023 and $16.4 million in 2022 [25]. Across those four years roughly $50 million of cash left the group for the distribution partner. For scale, the parent paid its own shareholders $17.7 million in FY2025, so the partner's draw runs at about two-thirds of Metrodata's own dividend [26].

Sources: FY2025 Note 20 for 2024–2025 [27]; FY2023 Note 20 for 2022–2023 [28].

SMI's distribution profit has ground higher — from $37.2 million in 2022 to $39.4 million in 2025 — but the retained share still accrues half to the partner, whose balance-sheet stake rose from $77.6 million to $95.7 million over the same window [29]. One footnote in the same disclosure is worth carrying into a later cash chapter: SMI generated only $3.5 million of operating cash flow in FY2025 against its $39.4 million of profit, the mark of a working-capital-heavy distributor [30].

What the split means for the thesis

The look-through cuts both ways against a simple reading of the multiple. The bear framing — a thin-margin distributor of which shareholders own only half — is accurate about revenue and the balance sheet, but overstated about earnings: the profit shareholders actually keep is majority the higher-margin, wholly-owned Solutions business, not the 6%-gross-margin distribution flow. The compounding a bull would pay up for lives in the part of the group Metrodata owns outright.

Two facts sit against reading this as hidden value. First, the reported multiple is not fooled by the structure. Per-share earnings of $0.0040 and the roughly 7.7-times multiple are struck on the $48.8 million that belongs to owners, not on consolidated profit, so the minority's half is already netted out of the valuation [31]. The open question is whether a stream that is roughly 60% higher-margin solutions earnings should carry the distributor's multiple the shares trade on today. Second, the full consolidation of a 50/50 venture depends on a board-composition judgment rather than a majority stake [32]; a change in the TD SYNNEX relationship is a governance dependency that a look-through investor should price, even if the arrangement has been stable for years and both sides keep reinvesting in it [33].

The read that would change is a shift in either lever: SMI's ownership moving toward a majority stake — which would pull the distribution engine's earnings fully to owners — or the Solutions share of look-through profit continuing to climb, which would keep re-weighting shareholder earnings toward the business that compounds fastest.