New Zealand's largest listed company Telecom Corp said on August 05 that its net profit for the year to June rose 21.5 percent due to strong growth in its mobile and high speed Internet businesses.
Telecom said the net profit of 916 million dollars (633.2 million US) amounted to 806 million dollars after taking out one-off gains, which was up four percent on the previous year and in line with analysts' estimates of 807 million dollars.
The company also announced a special dividend of 10 cents a share, costing a total of 195 million dollars, on top of its ordinary dividend of 10 cents and said it would pay another 10 cents special dividend in the current year.
Total operating revenue was up 4.6 percent at 5.61 billion dollars for the full year and net profit for the fourth quarter amounted to 266 million dollars. Telecom chief executive Theresa Gattung said the mobile business recorded its strongest quarterly revenue growth for several years in the fourth quarter. Telecom introduced its third generation (3G) network in November, beating its rival Vodafone which had 55 percent of the market at the end of March but is yet to introduce a 3G service.
"We have comfortably exceeded our target of 50 percent of the new revenue growth by gaining about 60 percent," Gattung said of the mobile market.
Telecom's total mobile revenues rose 15.8 percent to 709 million dollars for the year.
Forsyth Barr analyst Jeremy Simpson said Telecom's growth strategies appeared to be on track, boosted by a "very good mobile number". Internet growth also boosted the result, with residential broadband numbers quadrupling from 52,592 to 205,927 during the period. Data revenue rose 14 percent to 588 million dollars, with broadband revenue 61.7 percent higher at 152 million dollars.
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