Optus books solid profit rise

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This was published 14 years ago

Optus books solid profit rise

By Dan Oakes

Optus recorded a solid increase in profits over the past 12 months, but its Singaporean parent company suffered a sizeable drop.

Optus's net profit was up 5.6% to $583 million for the financial year (which in Singapore finishes at the end of the March), and 17% in the last quarter to $193 million.

In contrast, SingTel suffered a 12.9% slump in profit from last year, and a 17.3% fall in the final quarter as it was forced to write down the value of intangible assets and cope with a weak Australian dollar.

Without the write-downs, SingTel said, the profit fall over the past 12 months would have been 6.1%.

"Optus delivered strong results in all areas despite the tough economic climate with a robust performance in Mobile, including mobile outgoing service revenue growing a record 15% which strengthened our number two position,'' Optus chief executive Paul O'Sullivan said.

"Optus is committed to protecting its strong scale position in mobile and will aggressively pursue and invest in opportunities to capture market growth while customer demand remains strong - however we will continue to prudently manage costs.''

SingTel was anxious to direct analysts, investors and journalists towards its 13.1% rise in revenue over the last 12 months to, and Optus' corresponding rise of 7.2% to $8.32 billion.

"Singapore and Australia operations put in resilient performances by achieving solid revenue and EBITDA growth in local currency terms despite the slowdown in both economies and demonstrated good cost management,'' the company said.

Mr O'Sullivan credited the company's 17.1% rise in net profit in the quarter to strong growth in its mobile phone business, which grew its revenue 16.7% for the quarter. Mobile revenue accounted for 60% of Optus' total revenue in the quarter.

Optus said it added 156,000 new mobile and wireless broadband customers in the fourth quarter, although its mobile earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation margin fell 31%, which it said was due to the high number of post-paying customers it acquired with the launch of the iPhone.

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SingTel warned the exchange rate movements of the Australian dollar will impact upon revenue and earnings for the current financial year, which ends in March 2010.

''With the global downturn, the economies of Singapore, Australia and the region are expected to slow in 2009. The latest official GDP forecast for Singapore is a contraction of 6% to 9% in 2009, in contrast to the 1.1% growth last year,'' the company said.

''In Australia, the GDP forecast is a contraction of 1.0%, compared to the 2.1% growth achieved in 2008. In countries where the regional mobile associates operate, growth is expected to be 2% to 5% and, for Thailand, a contraction of 2% to 3% is expected.''


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