Aussie Broadband ends bumper year with total customers up 53%
Aussie Broadband has capped off a bumper year, with the telco saying it now has 401,000 customers in total, up 53%, consisting of 363,000 residential lines, an increase of 50%, and business and wholesale jumping 90% to 37,500.
The end result is the telco reporting revenue up 84% to AU$350 million, and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA) prior to AU$1.5 million in IPO expenses growing five-fold to AU$19 million. In the fourth quarter alone, the company reported revenue of AU$100 million.
All up, Aussie Broadband ended the year by closing last year's AU$12.3 million loss into a AU$4.2 million loss.
By segment, residential was responsible for AU$305 million in revenue, up 84%, and EBITDA jumping from basically flat to AU$12.5 million. For the business segment, revenue increased 83% to AU$45.2 million and EBITDA more than doubled to AU$6.7 million.
Average revenue per customer was AU$78 per month for residential, and just shy of AU$130 for business customers.
"EBITDA was driven by customer growth in both business and residential segments, increase in ARPU, careful CVC management, and NBN extending COVID-19 CVC credits and promotional rebates," the company said.
Over the year to June 30, Aussie Broadband said it added almost 13,000 services, and completed a network switch from Telstra to Optus. The company said it was seeing good migration numbers from Telstra base onto Optus, and would try to upsell its NBN customers onto its mobile offering in future.
In the coming year, Aussie Broadband said it would complete its 1,200km fibre build that will link up 85 NBN points of interconnect and 21 data centres with multiple 100G link, with the other 36 NBN points of interconnected hooked up with a single 100G connection. From the 2023 fiscal year, the company said the build will save around AU$15 million annually. As of June 30, the company had 250km completed.
Aussie Broadband also expects to make one acquisition in the first half of FY22, and appoint a head of mergers and acquisitions in April.
"Due to the dynamic and changing nature of the retail telecommunications market, ongoing lockdowns and the impact on CVC expense, the company will not be providing guidance for FY22," it said.