Telstra Reaps from Investments, Posts Record $1.5 B Net for H1 2011-12
Telstra Corporation's investments on new technology started paying off as the company reported on Thursday a significant boost of more than 22 percent on its half-year net income for fiscal 2012.
The profit numbers registered a whopping $1.468 billion for Australia's biggest telecommunication firm in the last six months leading to the end of December 2011.
And Telstra chief executive David Thodey happily admitted that his company's renewed success, which came despite disappointments on its fixed-line and directory divisions, was anchored on rising customer numbers in the past year.
"We recorded one of our best years for customer growth. This momentum has continued into the first half of fiscal 2012," Thodey said in a statement released on Thursday.
He indeed intends to ride on that wave of success as Thodey allowed that "we will continue to focus on improving customer satisfaction, growing customer numbers, simplifying the business and taking advantage of new growth opportunities."
Telstra's planned dividend payment of 14 cents, fully franked, is supported by it latest earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) that in the last six months soared by 3.7 percent to $4.75 billion.
Its stronger customer based also delivered for Telstra total sales of $12.42 billion, improving by 1.1 percent from the same corresponding period in the previous year.
The company's mobile division realised sales growth of 10.9 percent to $4.39 billion on the back of new mobile customers that reached 958,000, almost equally distributed on subscribers that availed of Telstra's cutting-edge broadband services.
The internet's integration into the Australian lifestyle also contributed to Telstra's expansion on its wired broadband services, which welcomed more than 260,000 new subscribers in the same period.
Yet the accelerating advent of faster internet access and mobile connectivity appeared to further contribute to the impending demise of fixed-line telephones, which in Telstra's case again recorded loss of nine percent to $2.49 billion in the first half of 2011.
Along with that, Telstra posted too a huge revenue decline of 24.1 percent to $528 million for its directory operations, Sensis, which the company has been trying to reinvigorate by consolidating its last year into a new outfit called Telstra Digital Media, Reuters wrote.
Notwithstanding some disturbance, Thodey is upbeat that Telstra is well on its way to meet its targeted results for the full-year 2012, with cash fluidity that runs up to $5 billion.
Those numbers will be able to support a full-year dividend of 28 cents per share, Telstra said.
According to Peter Esho of City Index, Telstra is bound to reap the benefits of its earlier investment decisions, with more to come once its deal with NBN Co gets the final green light from government regulators.
"The momentum is clearly there and shows the benefits of investing in better technology. The strategy to continue stripping out costs is working well and when adjusting the accounting treatment of future staff liabilities, labour expenses were actually down despite higher salaries," Esho told The Australian.