Other than a few funding tweaks the bid by Optus is now ready

Paul O’Sullivan, the Optus chief executive said that the group it was leading was still “revisiting” its structure for the funding of the governments national broadband network but that fundamental changes would not be occurring.

He recently told The Australian Financial Review “They’re only mechanical,” advising again that when the November 26th deadline came the Terria consortium would be ready to submit its bid.

Michael Simmons, the bid manager for Terria’s national broadband network bid, had revealed previously that because the credit market had tightened it would be revising the groups funding model of 50:50 debt-equity with a smaller proportion being taken up by debt.

A request was apparently made for industry partner to take on a larger role by Terria group and confirmation was given by Mr O’Sullivan that these parties would still be included in the bid. The equity contribution split was, however, something he refused to discuss.
Mr O’Sullivan made the comments as results of the subscriber growth of Optus showed it beating rivals Telstra and Vodafone for the quarter ending on 30th September. The figures release for Telstra showed an increase of 90 000 to its subscription base recently whereas Optus gained more than 100 000 new customers on its mobile broadband service.

Optus did, however, only showed a small earnings increase in the half year up to September even in light of its strong increase in customers for the quarter. It showed $973 million in earnings before tax, interest, amortisation, and depreciation with gave is an increase of just 1.5 percent with a drop from 25 percent to 24.2 percent in its EBITDA margins. It also saw a rise of 1 percent in its net profits which totalled £247 million. The company did say that with regards to EBITDA and revenue it was still on track with a “single figure” growth.