iiNet revenue boom amid legal battle

In an eventful year that included the continuance of a legal stoush with the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) and the acquisition of AAPT, iiNet has posted a massive jump in revenue, up 48 per cent to $699 million for the year to 30 June.

This figure improves on the $474 million that the company managed in the previous financial year. Excluding legal costs and the acquisitions it made, iiNet reported an underlying profit of $39 million, a rise of 12.2 per cent. However, the company reported a 3 per cent decline in net profit to $33 million, which was attributed to changes in the tax consolidation regime in 2010.

The internet service provider (ISP) reported broadband customer growth of 19 per cent, which brought it up to 641,000 customers nationally, up from 539,000 at the same time last year. iiNet contributed this to organic growth and the acquisition of AAPT's consumer division in September last year.

"Over the past 12 months, iiNet has experienced continued growth in its subscribers, even during a period of significantly increased competition. iiNet's core DSL churn is down, and the company was also able to grow its subscriber base by an additional 7700 customers," iiNet CEO Michael Malone said in a statement.

Malone said that the company's integration of AAPT's consumer division was on course, and that there had been less customer churn than expected. The integration of Netspace has now been "substantially completed", the CEO added, with a total of 64 per cent of network migrations on-net.

iiNet's long-running piracy legal battle with AFACT contributed a further $800,000 in costs for the telco in the past six months to 30 June 2011, bringing the total cost of the case to the ISP to $7.4 million. Of this, $2 million has been reimbursed by iiNet's insurers, and the Federal Court has ordered AFACT to pay 60 per cent of iiNet's legal fees; however, whether iiNet is able to reclaim these costs will likely be determined after AFACT's appeal is heard by the High Court.

Malone pointed to a number of products launched by the company in the last 12 months, including BoB, fetchtv, its terabyte plan and its Online Vault, as key factors for the company's success in the industry. He indicated that there would be more products launched in the coming 12 months.

"Whilst the 2011 financial year has been the most active in iiNet's history, we have no intention of slowing down. We will continue to invest in providing awesome customer service and expand iiNet's product and content portfolio to deliver what our customers need in an their digital world," he said.