For the current year to March 2015, NTT expects growth in revenues of around 2.5 percent, helped by expansion abroad and at Docomo. However, operating and net profit will be little changed year-on-year, as it continues to invest in subscriber growth at the mobile unit and fixed-line results remain under pressure. The dividend should rise again, to JPY 180 per share, and the company plans to spend JPY 250 billion buying back shares from the government.
NTT said it will reduce capex slightly this year, to JPY 1.750 trillion from JPY 1.796 trillion last year, taking the ratio to sales to 15.9 percent. It aims to bring this down further to 15.0 percent in the following year, helped by a targeted JPY 600 billion in cost savings on its access network. This target was increased by JPY 100 billion and compares to the cost base in 2011 when it started the network rationalisation programme.
In the last quarter of the fiscal year, NTT added another 178,000 customers for its Flets Hikari fibre service, to take the total to 18.05 million at the end of March. The Hikari Denwa VoIP service grew by 305,000 to 16.26 million, while DSL customers fell by 89,000 in the three months to 148 million. By the end of March 2015, NTT expects to have 18.75 million fibre customers, 17.11 million on Hikari Denwa and 1.20 million still using DSL. Subscribers to TV services grew to 3.984 million at the end of the fiscal year and are projected to reach 4.546 million by March 2015.
