Telstra's Chief Executive Officer Vicki Brady recaps our half year results ending 31 December 2024.
A message from our Chief Executive Officer Vicki Brady following the release of our half year results presented on 20 February 2025.
Vicki Brady:
The telecommunications sector has a vital role to play in Australia’s future resilience and prosperity, and that role will only grow as technology continues to evolve.
Turning now to Telstra’s performance for the half. These are a strong set of results, delivering a fourth consecutive year of first half underlying growth, reflecting momentum across our business, strong cost control and disciplined capital management.
Financial performance in 1H25 included:
Our FY25 guidance remains unchanged.
We grew underlying EBITDA across our mobiles, InfraCo Fixed, Fixed C&SB, Fixed Enterprise and International businesses.
Cumulatively, we have reduced our core fixed costs by $283 million since FY22 and are on track to achieve our $350 million ambition by the end of FY25.
On the back of earnings growth, the Board resolved to pay a fully franked interim dividend of 9.5 cents per share, representing a 5.6% increase on the prior corresponding period.
This outcome is consistent with our capital management framework principle to maximise the fully franked dividend and seek to grow it over time.
Today we also announced an on-market share buy-back of up to $750 million, which has been enabled by our fiscal discipline and the strength of our balance sheet.
Our ongoing focus on portfolio management further strengthens our balance sheet and our ability to return capital.
The buy-back supports earnings and dividend per share growth over time, and along with the increased interim dividend, demonstrates the Board and management’s strong confidence in our financial strength and outlook.
We are approaching a significant milestone as we finish one strategy and begin a new one, and we are in a good position with strong momentum in the business.
The more than $40 billion in capex and spectrum we have invested over the last decade has radically transformed the connectivity Australia relies on, and we continue to invest.
On digital infrastructure, we have seven fibre routes between Australia’s major capital cities under construction as part of our new intercity fibre network. We are pleased to announce that the first two routes, from Sydney to Canberra, and Melbourne to Canberra, will be ready for service later in 2025.
We also continue to invest in our mobile network, and we have expanded our coverage to more than 3 million square kilometres, now reaching 99.7% of Australia’s population.
We will increase our mobile network investment by around $800 million over the next four years within our business-as-usual capex. This is to extend our network leadership and deliver customers the most advanced, resilient and reliable 5G mobile network in the country.
In January we announced a collaboration with SpaceX’s Starlink to deliver direct to handset outdoor text message capability to parts of the country that are beyond the reach of our mobile network.
But just like mobile networks have not replaced fibre, satellite does not have the capacity to replace mobile in the majority of areas. Terrestrial mobile networks will remain the primary form of connectivity for most people.
We will continue to invest to maintain our terrestrial network coverage advantage, so that our customers can have that richer experience from more areas before they handover to complementary satellite coverage.
To close out FY25 strongly, we remain focused on:
Let me close by reiterating that there is no version of Australia’s future that does not rely on technology, in some form, and it will all need to be connected.
Telstra’s digital infrastructure and network will be increasingly important to Australia’s future prosperity, and we will continue to invest sustainably to deliver for our customers, our shareholders, and for Australia.
Caption: To access more information, including a glossary defining all the terms we use, please visit www.telstra.com.au/aboutus/investors.financial-results
Telstra's Chief Executive Officer Vicki Brady recaps our full year results ending 30 June 2024.
A message from our Chief Executive Officer Vicki Brady following the release of our full year results presented on 15 August 2024.
Vicki Brady:
Today, I'd like to share a summary of our financial performance for FY24 and outlook. I'm pleased to say that consistent and disciplined execution of our strategy has delivered our third consecutive year of underlying growth and positive momentum across many of our key indicators.
As a result, the board resolved to pay a fully franked final dividend of $0.09 per share, bringing total dividends for the year to $0.18, and representing a 5.9% increase compared to last year.
Underlying EBITDA is a key measure and it grew by almost $300 million, or 3.7%, to $8.2 billion. The underlying EBITDA growth flowed through to underlying net profit after tax, which grew by 7.5% to $2.3 billion.
Our mobile and infrastructure businesses, including Infraco Fixed, Amplitel and International, continue to perform strongly and comprised 96% of our underlying EBITDA. However, our enterprise business under-performed. We commenced action during the year to address challenges in our enterprise business, and took additional action on cost overall. Our reported earnings reflect these decisions and combined with other adjustments resulting significant one off net costs totalling $715 million.
As a result, reported EBITDA decreased by 4.2% to $7.5 billion and our reported net profit after tax reduced by 12.8% to $1.8 billion. The reset of our enterprise business will take time, but I am confident in the initial actions we have taken. These, together with our additional action on cost, meaning we are confident in achieving our $350 million cost reduction ambition by the end of FY25.
Overall, our T25 strategy is on track, including our growth ambitions in underlying EBITDA, EPS and ROIC.
Our guidance for FY25 demonstrates continued underlying EBITDA growth. And we have tightened our guidance range upwards to $8.5 to $8.7 billion. Over the last 12 months we've continued to deliver on our purpose by investing in vital infrastructure for the nation, supporting more customers than ever and supporting Australia's future prosperity.
This year, we have invested $5 billion in CapEx and mobile spectrum payments. Which brings us to $42 billion invested in CapEx and spectrum over the last ten years. That investment has radically transformed the connectivity Australia relies on. Our investment has delivered Australia's largest and most reliable mobile network, and we are continuing to roll out our inter-city fibre network, which will be an important part of future proofing Australia's speed and capacity needs for the next 20 years.
We also continue to expand our subsea cable network and we remain Australia's biggest investor in digital infrastructure.
Given the extensive reach of our networks and the role they play in society today, it's hard to think of an Australian who does not benefit from the Telstra network in some way every day. For example, our network supports more than 26 million mobile services and connectivity for more than 3 million households. More than 85% of the ASX100 are Telstra customers.
I am optimistic about the opportunities ahead. Our infrastructure and network will be increasingly central to how Australians live and work. And we are focussed on investing sustainably to deliver for our customers and our shareholders.
Thank you for your continued support and investment in Telstra.
Telstra's Chief Executive Officer Vicki Brady recaps our half year results ending 31 December 2023.
A message from our Chief Executive Officer Vicki Brady following the release of our half year results presented on 15 February 2024.
Vicki Brady:
Today I’d like to share a summary of our results for the six months ending 31 December 2023.
I’m pleased to say our results showed continued growth in reported and underlying earnings, with positive momentum across many of our key indicators.
As a result, the Board resolved to pay a fully franked interim dividend of 9.0 cents per share, which is a 5.9 per cent increase from last year.
These results reflect the great progress we have made in the second year delivering on our T25 strategy, which overall remains on track.
While our momentum is good, we have some parts of the business performing well, but there are others where we see challenges.
Our mobile business remains central to our growth and continues to perform strongly. This reflects our continued investment in network leadership and delivering connectivity that is reliable, resilient and secure.
Our Consumer & Small Business Fixed business more than doubled in EBITDA, and our Infrastructure businesses also grew, reflecting continued strong demand for our assets.
Within our Enterprise Fixed business, Data & Connectivity is performing as expected, but our Network Applications & Services business – or ‘NAS’ for short – was impacted by the acceleration of negative trends over the last few months.
We have a detailed review of our domestic Enterprise business underway and we’re taking immediate and significant actions to set the business up for success.
Given the performance in our NAS business, we tightened our FY24 Underlying EBITDA guidance range to $8.2 to $8.3 billion. FY24 guidance across other measures was reaffirmed.
We also remain disciplined on reducing our costs, particularly considering the external economic environment.
Delivering the second half of our T25 strategy and setting the business up strongly for beyond T25 remains a priority.
We continue to see the positive impact of product simplification and digitisation on customer experience. In the half, we have seen customer complaints reach new record lows and Episode NPS reach new record highs.
Our network leadership and resilience remains critical, and we continue to invest in cyber security, identity and scam protections, while uplifting productivity through the use of AI.
On satellite, we’re working with a range of LEO satellite providers to enhance our fixed, mobile and voice services for customers.
We’re also Australia’s biggest investor in digital infrastructure, and outside of Australia, we operate APAC’s largest subsea cable network.
We’re investing in foundational infrastructure for Australia and the region through our new Intercity Fibre network as well as additional subsea cables and satellite landing stations to support capacity demand for our customers.
I remain very confident about the important role we will play in a more digitised future and in our ability to continue to deliver sustainable growth, while also creating value for shareholders.
You can find more information about our results at our Investor Centre online.
Thank you for your continued support and investment in Telstra.
Telstra's Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland speaks with Ally Selby from Livewire Markets on 11 October 2023 about Telstra's half year results and outlook. The interview is available below.
Telstra's Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland speaks with Tom Piotrowski from CommSec on 11 October 2023 about Telstra’s structure, T25 strategy, long-term investments, FY24 guidance and its dividend. The interview is available below.
Telstra's Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland presented virtually at the ASX CEO Connect event on 7 March 2023. The presentation is available below.
Our 2022 Retail Shareholder meeting was presented virtually by our Chief Executive Officer Vicki Brady and Chief Financial Officer Michael Ackland on 29 September 2022 at 10:30am AEST. The livestream is accessible below:
Our 2021 Retail Shareholder meeting was presented virtually by our Chief Executive Officer Andrew Penn and Chief Financial Officer Vicki Brady on 29 September 2021.