Australian multi-service operator TPG Telecom has reported a 4% year-on-year increase in revenues for its most recent fiscal year, which ended on 31 July 2017. The company confirmed that total turnover for the twelve-month period stood at AUD2.49 billion (USD1.9 billion), up from AUD2.388 billion in FY 2016. Revenues in both the consumer and corporate sectors were improved in the latest financial year, with turnover in the former segment accounting for just over 70% of the company total at AUD1.74 billion (FY 2016: AUD1.66 billion). Broadband service revenues made up the lion’s share of consumer turnover, standing at AUD1.37 billion, up from AUD1.25 billion a year earlier, while fixed voice and mobile services generated AUD165 million (FY 2016: AUD198 million) and AUD118 million (FY 2016: AUD120 million), respectively.
Meanwhile, EBITDA in the period under review was AUD891 million, representing annualised growth of 5%, with net profit after tax (NPAT) climbing 9% y-o-y to AUD414 million. Capital expenditures (CAPEX) in FY 2017 totalled AUD576 million, including the AUD208 million that was spent on acquiring mobile spectrum both in its domestic territory and in Singapore. The company noted, however, that there had ‘not yet been any significant mobile network expenditure’, adding that it expects this will change in FY 2018 as infrastructure rollouts get underway.
Indeed, with regards to its Australian mobile network plans, TPG confirmed that its strategy will be to deploy a primary small cell network across metropolitan areas, with this to be complemented by a traditional macro network. With network planning and site selection said to be ‘well underway’ in major metropolitan areas, the operator has said it expects ‘implementation of some initial site clusters’ in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra to be complete by mid-2018. With regards to Singapore, meanwhile, TPG said it is on track to achieve nationwide outdoor service coverage by December 2018, as required by its concession, with key vendor contracts now having been awarded and construction work underway.
In operational terms, with TPG already offering mobile services as an MVNO, at the end of July 2017 the company served a total of 445,000 subscribers, down from 475,000 a year earlier, with these split between its own-brand offerings (155,000, down from 171,000) and those offered by subsidiary iiNet (290,000, down from 304,000). More positively, in the fixed broadband sector TPG had a total of 957,000 accesses at the end of July 2017, representing an 8.1% y-o-y increase; of this figure more than half – 520,000 – were signed up to an on-net ADSL bundle, though this was down from 582,000 a year earlier. The number of fibre-to-the-building (FTTB) accesses is on the up, however, standing at 37,000 at the end of the fiscal year, up from 24,000 at end-January 2017, while the number of broadband customers served over the National Broadband Network (NBN) increased significantly, from 119,000 at end-July 2016 to 262,000 a year later.