Australia's TPG Telecom reported revenues for its fiscal first half to June up 71 percent year-on-year to AUD 2.63 billion and reported EBITDA increased by 67 percent to AUD 886 million. The growth was driven by the merger with Vodafone, which the company said was on track for integration. On a pro forma basis, revenues and EBITDA were both down 3 percent, amid pressure from the Covid-19 crisis, NBN migration and broadband levies.
Net profit fell 8 percent to AUD 76 million, impacted by a AUD 226 million one-off tax accounting credit in the year-earlier period. The underlying net result was down 6 percent to AUD 132 million, and the board declared an interim dividend of 8 cents per share.
The company also announced plans to review its tower infrastructure, amid strong demand in the market for such assets. TPG operates a mobile network of 5,800 rooftops and towers, and owns the passive infrastructure on around 1,200 of those sites. The majority of those 1,200 sites are in metro areas and have a high average tenancy ratio, the company said.
More on-net customers
TPG said it achieved in the first half AUD 38 million of the targeted AUD 70 million in merger synergies for this year and is on track to reach its long-term targets. The customers of iiNet were migrated to the Vodafone network, amid a wider push to bring more customers on-net, as well as optimising network backhaul and transit and streamlining other operating costs.
On-net broadband subscribers rose by 12 percent to 154,000 in the six months, including home wireless, FTTB, HFC and VDSL networks. The total fixed broadband customer base increased by 23,000 to 2.20 million, including 1.95 million NBN customers. The NBN customer base increased by 48,000 in the period.
Fewer mobile customers, more 5G coverage
The mobile base totaled 5.11 million at the end of June, with postpaid customers down 1.8 percent to 3.19 million and prepaid falling 3.4 percent to 1.91 million. TPG said postpaid declines were starting to flatten, with new price plans launched for all three brands.
Excluding the impact of reduced international roaming revenue and interconnect rate changes,
postpaid ARPU dropped 1.6 percent year-on-year to AUD 36.0, and prepaid ARPU was up 12.7 percent to AUD 17.7.
With over 750,000 5G devices on the network already, TPG said it expects to surpass its network coverage targets for this year. The company is now expecting to reach 85 percent population coverage on the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, NSW Central Coast and in Wollongong by the end of the year, in addition to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra.
The company said its key strategic focus areas for the second half of 2021 are bringing more fixed customers onto its own infrastructure, lifting its impact in the enterprise and government market, improving mobile performance and achieving its merger cost synergy target for 2021.
