Dear Shareholders,
In 2016 we saw ongoing advances in technology and constant innovation continue to reshape the telecommunications and technology markets and transform customer experiences. As the world continued to digitise, more and more people took advantage of the exciting and empowering possibilities of new technologies and being connected.
For Telstra, this was a year of considerable progress and we continued to attract new customers across our key products.
Our financial performance in 2016:
- on a reported basis from continuing operations, total income1 increased 3.6 per cent to $27.1 billion and EBITDA decreased 0.6 per cent to $10.5 billion
- on a guidance2 basis, total income increased 6.3 per cent to $28.3 billion, EBITDA increased 2.6 per cent to $11.0 billion and free cashflow was $4.8 billion
- net profit after tax increased 35.9 per cent to $5.8 billion, including $1.8 billion from the sale of Autohome shares. Earnings per share increased 37.4 per cent to 47.4 cents
- we delivered on our guidance for FY16
- we added 560,000 domestic retail mobile customer services and 235,000 domestic retail fixed broadband customers
- impairment of Ooyala intelligent video subsidiary of $246 million
- final dividend of 15.5 cents per share taking total dividend for FY16 to 31.0 cents per share, distributing $3.8 billion to shareholders
- we will return $1.5 billion to our shareholders through off-market and on-market buy-backs in addition to the FY16 final dividend.
We are pleased to deliver another solid result for shareholders, growing revenue and EBITDA on a guidance basis, adding new customers and again providing consistent shareholder returns.
There is no doubt that competitive intensity has increased across our segments and products. The rollout of the nbn™ network has progressed and the pace of technology innovation has continued to accelerate.
This highlights the importance of our vision to become a world class technology company and our continued efforts to deliver on our strategy.
While we performed well in the market and added new customers, we did not make as much progress as we would have liked on improving the experiences our customers have with us. Work still needs to be done to ensure we consistently deliver a great service experience.
Shareholders will also be aware we experienced a series of network interruptions in the second half of the financial year.
Notwithstanding our long track record of leading network performance, these interruptions were disappointing given the impact they had on our customers, something for which we sincerely apologise. We continue to address these issues and are implementing the recommendations from our core network and IT system review, addressing sources of potential risk and building the durability and capability of our network. Our response to the network interruptions is discussed further under Driving value and growth from the core.
Telstra is fiercely proud of its networks and we will continue to invest in providing the network of the future and the best possible experience for our customers.