Telstra has reported full-year profits of $1.8bn off the back of a strong performance in its mobile business, just a month after announcing price rises for mobile plans of up to $4 a month during a cost-of-living crisis.
Profits were down 13% at Australia’s largest telecommunications company, as it reported $23.5bn in total income for the 2024 financial year, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $7.5bn.
Telstra put the drop in profit down to the one-off $715m cost incurred as a result of cuts to its enterprise business, which it flagged could result in 2,800 job losses.
The chief executive, Vicki Brady, said the company is in the final stages of implementing those changes. Underlying profit is up 7.5%.
Much of the company’s results, Telstra indicated, was driven by strong performance in its mobile group, with mobile services revenue growing by 5.6% and revenue per user growing about 2.1%. The company added 560,000 customers in the last financial year to the 26m mobile services on its network.
The results do not reflect the extra revenue from the price increases – which go into effect for postpaid mobile plans from 27 August – but show the company is already benefiting from more customers paying more on Telstra’s network.
Brady said Telstra was aware of the cost-of-living pressures customers were facing but noted its mobile plans are month-to-month, meaning customers are not locked in and can move to another plan or telco.
“There’s a wide range of choice on the Telstra-branded offering, postpaid, prepaid. We have a multi-brand approach with our Belong brand, with Boost, and we also have our [resellers] who operate on our network as well,” she told reporters on Thursday.
“We make these choices in a very careful and considered way. But given the demand, the amount of investment in our network, the experience that people rightly expect, we do need to get these balances right.”
She said the company helped 1.4 million customers in vulnerable circumstances remain connected in the last financial year.
Asked about whether the company was pushing prices up to improve shareholder returns, Brady said 16m Australians benefit from dividends.
“They’re either shareholders directly, more than 1.2 million direct shareholders in Telstra, and then through superannuation funds in the country,” she said. “So we’ve got to balance all of those things.”
Brady said Telstra invests large amounts of capital expenditure in its network infrastructure to keep offering value in the services Telstra provides.
“But we’ve got to be able to do it on a sustainable basis. And so that means we’ve got to make choices and decisions on where to set the price. It means we’ve got to make choices and decisions on the cost base of our business so that we can keep investing in what customers rely on and depend on.”
Australia’s largest telecommunications company reported $23.5bn in total income for the 2024 financial year, with reported earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $7.5bn. The company made a net profit after tax of $1.8bn and underlying net profit after tax of $2.3bn.
