Optus risks losing its second place market position say Hutchison

Just eight months after its creation the third largest telecommunications company in Australia, Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) has said that it is now putting serious pressure on its second place rival Optus.

Following its merger with Vodafone back in June 2009 that gave it a profit of $587.3 million the other half of VHA, Hutchison Telecommunications (Australia) Ltd recently announced a net profit for the year up to December 31st of $467.7 million.

When compared to the loss of $163.1 million it made in the same period the previous year HTA’s net loss was up to just $119.6 million excluding the money it had made from the 50 percent sale of its 3 business.

By 31st December 2009 VHA announced that its customer base has now increased to 6.9 million having gained a total of 584 000 new customers in the second half of 2009. VHA’s annual service revenue, of which HTA has a 50 percent share, increased by 25.7 percent to $2.04 billion compared to last years figures.

Mobile service revenues for the first half of the year were recently announced by Optus showing a total figure of $1.18 billion by 31st December and 8.2 million mobile customers.

The current leaders in the telecoms market, Telstra recently reported that it currently had 10.4 million mobile customers and for the six months up to December 31st it had revenue for mobiles of $3.624 billion.

In a recent statement the chief executive for VHA, Nigel Dews said “Optus had a decent momentum in the year and I think we’ve given them a good run for their money particularly in the post-paid market.”

He also added “That contracted post-paid market is a source of great value and growth for us going forward. I’m very pleased with our performance relative to both Optus and Telstra.”

Source – Ninemsn