Annual profit of Australia’s Telstra soars

SYDNEY, Australia – Australia’s dominant telecommunications company Telstra reported a 36.6% jump in annual profit Thursday, August 11, as it vowed to invest billions in boosting its network after customer frustrations over numerous outages.

Telstra said net profit rose to Aus$5.78 billion (US$4.46 billion) for the year to June 30 from the previous corresponding period, boosted by the Aus$1.8 billion sale of its stake in China’s major car sales portal Autohome.

The company added that it would return Aus$1.5 billion to shareholders in share buybacks following the Autohome sale.

Despite the profit surge, Telstra’s chief executive Andrew Penn said his company had not done enough to improve customer experience after a series of mobile phone and broadband network failures over the past year.

“Work still needs to be done to improve our systems and processes that can cause customer frustration and delay, and to ensure that we consistently deliver a great service experience,” Penn said in a statement.

“We know that customers expect more from us as their reliance on smart devices continues to grow… network interruptions in the second-half were particularly disappointing.”

Total income rose 11.5% to Aus$29.7 billion, while revenue increased by 2.7% to Aus$26.7 billion.

Telstra said its retail mobile customers grew by 560,000 to a total of 17.2 million as retail broadband customers expanded by 235,000 to 3.4 million.

The company announced a final dividend of 15.5 cents to take the full-year payout to 31 cents.

The shift towards a domestic focus came after Telstra last year bought Pacnet, Asia’s largest private owner of submarine communications cables, and established a joint venture with Telkom Indonesia. (READ: San Miguel Corp, Telstra end joint venture plan)

Shares in Telstra slipped 0.18% to Aus$5.59 in early trade in Sydney. – Rappler.com