Profit increase of 10.3 percent posted by Telstra

Following strong revenues from its broadband and mobile service the Australian telecoms giant Telstra recently reported an annual increase in its net profits of 10.3 percent.

The original market forecast for Telstra had been 3.8 billion, which the operator beat with profits of $4.07 billion for the 12 months running up to June of this year. This also exceeded the profits seen by the telco in the previous year of $3.69 billion.

A single-digit growth was expected by the company in this financial year following a 2.7 percent increase in revenues to $25.5 billion recently announced and David Thodey, the company’s chief executive said that there would be “significant challenges” presented by the market as it currently stood.

In a recent statement he said “On the economic front, we expect an extended period of slow growth… competition remains intense.”

The growth in revenues for mobile services, which saw an increase of 10 percent for to $6.1 billion and an increase in fixed broadband services of 15.9 percent to $1.5 billion were given as the reason given for the results that were much better than it had expected.

The latest plans by the government to build a National Broadband Network costing $43 billion have seen Telstra currently “engaging constructively” with Canberra according to Thodey, who replaced Sol Trujillo back in May.

Although the company’s previous CEO Sol Trujillo had fought against the new NBN network it appears that at the moment Thodey has taken a different approach and has even said that the telco may sell part of its assets to whoever is brought in the build the network.

He advised “We are working to find the right way to deliver the objective of a world-class communications infrastructure for Australia, while protecting Telstra shareholders.”

Source – Google