Stephen Rue (NBN Co)
NBN Co has posted a 21 per cent year-on-year increase in revenue, totalling $4.6 billion for the year ended 30 June 2021.
The revenue increase comes as the company saw its net loss after tax improve by 27 per cent, or $1.4 billion, reducing the loss from $5.2 billion in FY20 to $3.8 billion this year.
The company behind the build of Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) also managed to end its period of pre-tax losses, posting a final earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of $1.35 billion, a rise of $2 billion year-to-year from the previous tally, which was $648 million in the red.
According to NBN Co, the EBITDA improvement stemmed from both its revenue and a reduction in subscriber payments to Telstra and Optus, which halved in the 12 months to 30 June to $1.2 billion.
As part of its FY21 financial results, NBN Co claimed that 75 per cent of its customers were on retail plans based on wholesale download speed tiers of 50 Mbps and above as of 30 June.
Following the completion of the network's initial build by 30 June 2020, capital expenditure for FY21 was $2.8 billion, down 45 per cent on FY20. Throughout the financial year, capital was allocated to 933,000 new connections, design and construction activity to make an additional 233,000 premises ready to connect, NBN Co claimed.
By 30 June 2021, the company had also repaid $6.3 billion of its $19.5 billion Commonwealth loan, lowering interest payments.
“The last 12 months have been very challenging for most Australians, but our purpose has never been clearer,” said Stephen Rue, NBN Co chief executive officer. “NBN Co exists to lift the digital capability of Australia and we reiterate our commitment to provide a secure, reliable, high-speed broadband network to our residential and business customers across the country.
“As the nation faces new challenges with the lockdowns that were recently imposed in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, we will continue to support customers and internet retailers through these uncertain times. The NBN network is the digital backbone of the nation that will continue to keep Australians connected and productive, educated, informed and entertained today and in the future.”
NBN Co recently put $5.2 million in “relief credit” on the table for retail service providers to mitigate the increasing bandwidth costs of recent COVID-19 lockdowns.
However, NBN Co has declined to bring back last year’s additional 40 per cent free Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC) capacity boost, which lasted from March 2020 until January, leading to criticism from TPG and Telstra.
NBN Co’s results also claimed the company was making “good progress” on its $4.5 billion network investment plan.
The network investment plan brings forward $4.5 billion of incremental funding to accelerate network investments that would have been required to commence in future years, based on the pre-COVID-19 trajectory for broadband demand, but which now make financial and economic sense to commence immediately.
Announced in September, the move includes a pledge to pump $3.5 billion into making NBN Co’s highest wholesale speed plans available, as demand arises, to up to 75 per cent of households and businesses in the fixed-line network by 2023.
Also under this funding, NBN Co is to establish 240 new 'Business Fibre Zones' over the next three years, spending $700 million along the way.
This week it announced it was to offer business-grade broadband speeds to more of regional Australia, adding 44 more Business Fibre Zones to cover up to 60,000 businesses.
