Good morning, everyone. This is Paul Hutton, speaking from TPG Telecom's Investor Relations team. Thank you for joining us for the presentation of our 2025 full year results. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and the lands on which we and our communities live, work, and connect. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present. Our CEO, Iñaki, will present our results, highlights, and strategy update. Our CFO, John, will then present a detailed review of our financial performance. Iñaki will then discuss our outlook before we open for Q&A.
Thanks, Paul, and good morning, everyone. 2025 was a milestone year of transformation, simplification, and most importantly, the delivery of our best-ever network for customers. We launched the regional network sharing arrangement with great success. We completed the sale of fiber infrastructure and EGW fixed operations, and we used the proceeds to execute capital management initiatives, delivering a stronger and much lower risk financial position. It was a year of market-leading trading performance in our core mobile business, despite a significant slowdown in the broader market. Our subscriber growth accounted for the majority of the net adds in the industry as we increase our market share, led by our digital-first subscription brands. On top of this, we are delivering cash flow and ROIC improvements.
This is driven by more infrastructure sharing and efficient asset utilization by the cost benefits of continuous business simplification and the conclusion of the transformational investment cycle of recent years. Customer well-being is our priority. Every day, our networks are essential to how Australians live, work, and connect. We are committed to investing to ensure we are there when our customers need them. Our industry needs regulatory policy that incentivizes that investment, not stifles it. We are providing guidance for 2026 for continued EBITDA growth, driven by mobile service revenue growth and operating cost discipline. We are positioned strongly to deliver shareholder value in 2026 and the years ahead as more streamlined and focused business. Our strategy has four pillars: to run networks smarter, invigorate brands and services, make it easier for customers, and become faster, simpler, and stronger.
Customer and network experience is thriving, and customers are responding positively to our more distinct, simpler range of brands and plans. We are delivering growth with a more controllable, predictable, and de-risk cost base. We are confident these trends will continue in 2026. It has been a journey of material investment to transform our network, platforms, and capabilities, delivering a simpler, more dynamic business. We are seeing the results, and we expect to see ongoing improvement in the years to come. Nowhere is transformation more apparent than in customers' network experience. Let's start with the physical changes we have made. The regional mobile expansion doubled the area we cover, increased our national sites by 35%, and lifted our population coverage to 98.5%.
In addition, 81% of the sites in the TPG-owned network are now converted to 5G, covering 91% of the population. Third-party research tells you there is increasingly little difference between networks in Australia. TPG Telecom delivers ours with a significantly lower cost structure. Network consideration among non-customers is also rising, and importantly, churn is down for both consumer and business customers. This churn reduction was one of the main objectives of the regional sharing arrangement, and we are achieving it. Consistent delivery of network and customer experience means consistent delivery of financial results. Simply, we are winning a growing share of the mobile customers available at higher ARPU, so we are growing mobile service revenue consistently. Leveraging our lean cost base, we can then grow profit, offsetting the impact of initiating the regional sharing arrangement in the year.
The way we are managing our assets and our capital is delivering a growing cash yield for our shareholders from a transformed financial position. This year, we returned more than AUD 3.3 billion to shareholders, including our ordinary dividend and de-risked future profit by paying down AUD 2.7 billion of debt. Dividends, now frank at 30%, are targeted to grow from here in line with sustainable growth in profit and cash flow. We will move toward increased dividend franking over time. Let's now look at mobile performance in more detail. This was a very strong result as we consistently increase our share by providing the products that customers want across a deliberately differentiated multi-brand portfolio. Our expanded regional network has unlocked competition and choice in parts of the market that were previously underserved.
That impact is clearest in our digital-first subscription brands, where latent demand for simple, value-led plans has translated into a strong subscriber growth. Mobile service revenue was up 4.2% to AUD 2.423 billion, with gross margin up 1.7% to AUD 2.002 billion. Excluding the cost of regional sharing arrangement, which we expect to more than make up through revenue in the future years, gross margin was up 3.6%. Growth accelerated in the second half, reflecting the timing of planned refreshes and the strong momentum in our digital-first subscription brands. We always said 2025 would be about focusing on market share growth of the back of the expanded network. We still deliver solid growth in ARPU. The greatest growth, at 10.7%, was in the digital-first subscription brands.
felix, where we see customer upgrade to higher tier plans using the app, TPG and iiNet, where we saw the flow-through benefit of planned refreshes from late 2024. We recently undertook a tranche of price increases on some backbook plans in Vodafone postpaid, as well as in TPG and felix mobile. The digital-first subscription segment also led our subscriber growth, with 113,000 net adds, while there was also solid growth in traditional prepaid segment. Our total subscriber growth of 228,000 customers, or 4.1%, was approximately three times Australian population growth in 2025, higher than the other two MNOs combined. We are winning a record share of customers relative to our competitors, that's against a reduction in international migration, where we are historically strong.
Vodafone continues to play a critical role as a, our full service brand, anchored by handset offers, international roaming, and exclusive offers and partnerships like Live Nation. At the same time, our digital-first subscription brands are capturing growth where the market is expanding fastest. This portfolio approach allows us to grow share, protect margins, and follow customer demand, and it's working. Now, turning to home broadband. Gross margin and ARPU increased in fiscal year 25, supported by mix shift to on- net fixed wireless and higher tier NBN plans. The market remains structurally challenged, but our 5G Standalone launch should expand our fixed wireless addressable market by at least 15%. That will support base growth in fiscal year 26. Our subscriber numbers in NBN were again down year-over-year, reflecting the ongoing impact of non-telco players and aggressive volume-driven resellers. This decline is low in the second half.
There has been considerable fragmentation in the NBN market, but recent industry deals suggest signs of maturation. Our role in that will be to remain disciplined, offering simple, great value plans, focusing on the convergence value of NBN while continuing to grow fixed wireless. Our customer wellbeing strategy is integral to our success and how we build long-term trust with customers. We have an industry-leading approach in areas like domestic and family violence, First Nations support, accessibility, financial hardship, and responsible selling. We are also leading the industry with the introduction of customer wellbeing specialists across our stores and in our main contact center in Hobart. These specialists are trained to support more vulnerable customers, helping ensure the right outcomes for them and for our people, and we are extremely proud of the work they are doing. I will close on the regulatory environment before handing to John.
We support policy settings that sustain network investment and competition. For the spectrum renewals, we are advocating efficient revenue link structures and renewal timing aligned to license dates, rather than the large upfront payments that can divert capital from network investments and improving customer experiences. I will now hand to John.
Thank you, Iñaki, and good morning, everyone. FY 2025 marked a year of structural change with a simpler asset base, materially stronger cash generation, and a significantly strengthened balance sheet. My first slide shows a positive trend across our key financial metrics. I will be talking about continuing operations unless I say otherwise. When I talk about pro forma, that's as if the new commercial agreements with Vocus were in place for the whole year, which provides the most relevant baseline for FY 2026. Service revenue continues to grow despite slowing industry growth and was up 2.2% to AUD 4.179 billion. This comes off the back of strong mobile subscriber growth across the consumer, business, and wholesale segments, and ARPU growth. Gross margin and EBITDA were both up despite the first-year costs for the expansion of our regional mobile network.
As we noted when we gave guidance for the year, those costs came ahead of the additional revenue growth we are seeing from the bigger network. Adjusting for those costs, pro forma gross margin would have been up 3.6%, with growth of 4.2% in the second half. EBITDA on our guidance basis, which is pro forma and excluding material one-offs, was up 2% to AUD 1.637 billion, above the midpoint of our guidance range. That would have been 5.7% without the regional expansion costs, and again, this was stronger in the second half at 6.8%. Our EBITDA performance also highlights discipline in operating costs, which were flat, excluding one-offs associated with capital management and restructuring.
Underlying NPATA and EPS, which are pro forma and exclude material one-offs and customer base amortization, were AUD 69 million and AUD 0.037, respectively. Turning to dividends, this slide shows ordinary dividends declared of AUD 0.18 per share for the year, and that's now franked to 30% for the final dividend. We declared AUD 0.27 per share in the year, including the special dividend. ROIC was up a solid 0.66 percentage points to 5.42% on a pro forma basis, primarily driven by greater capital efficiency. Through the Vocus transaction, we sold highly depreciated assets with very little growth. As a result, we expect strong growth in ROIC, because we retained our higher growth business just after the high point in its investment cycle. Cash flow outcomes of the year were extremely strong.
This reflects proceeds from the Vocus transaction and the new handset receivables financing program, as well as lower CapEx, spectrum, and borrowing costs. My next slide is a profit summary. A quick note on hardware revenue, which is up 5.6%, while we maintained overall hardware margin. That's consistent with our objective to retain our natural share of handset customers and is positive for the lifetime value of our post-paid base. I also draw your attention to operating costs halfway down the table, which at AUD 1.031 billion were up just 0.5%. That's a strong outcome against our objective to keep OpEx below inflation in FY25, given the average trimmed mean CPI was 3.3%.
We are on track to deliver our target of AUD 100 million of real terms cost savings in the 4 years to FY29. Savings reflected the benefit of lower network and maintenance and support costs, a lower FTE base as we deliver continuous business simplification and IT modernization. This was with a very deliberate increase in marketing cost. I'm very pleased with our track record in operating cost discipline. Turning to depreciation and amortization, the modest pro forma growth results from an increase in the depreciable asset base due to peak CapEx reached in 2024. We expect similar D&A growth in FY26 on a pro forma basis. Turning to EBIT and financing costs, where it's important to understand the difference between statutory, continuing operations, and pro forma.
Pro forma shows the impacts in both direct costs and lease depreciation and interest of the new commercial arrangements with Vocus as if they'd been there all the time. Continuing operation includes these impacts for only five months in FY 25, with obviously no such impact in FY 24. The FY 25 pro forma EBIT growth was 3.8%, with total net financing costs down 0.9%. The financing cost run rate for FY 26 will, of course, be much lower. That's firstly because bank borrowings are now materially lower. It's also because of the new handset receivables program, on which financing costs for the back book sale were recognized upfront in October, whereas we only got one quarter of savings in FY 25 from the bank borrowings we repaid.
It's also important to note there were income tax credits in FY 2025, arising from R&D tax credits and previously unrecognized tax losses. Turning to cash flow, where momentum is very positive. This slide includes both continuing and discontinued operations as that's cash that was available to shareholders. Growth of 25.5% in cash flow from operating activities reflected the proceeds in working capital of AUD 687 million of the new handsets receivable financing. This more than offset the loss of earnings from the assets sold to Vocus from August onwards and the commencement of payment of cash tax. Operating free cash flow almost doubled to AUD 1.291 billion, reflecting the additional benefit of lower CapEx.
Free cash flow to equity was AUD 5.751 billion, enabling the extensive bank borrowings repayment and capital return in the period. Please note the subordinated note component of the handset receivables financing, which is the part that stays on our balance sheet, comes through investing cash flow. In net terms, the impact on our free cash flow to equity of that program was AUD 594 million. From here, the year-to-year impact of the handset receivables financing program should not be material. Of course, this all depends on the overall handset market and supply chain conditions. In summary, while this year's one-off Vocus transaction and handset proceeds are not recurring, the underlying business is now generating materially higher recurring cash from a smaller asset base.
Momentum is projected to be strong from expected growth in service revenue, continued tight cost control, lower CapEx, and much lower borrowing costs. The balance sheet changed a lot in 2025, delivering an efficient asset profile on which we expect to grow returns over time. The highlight, of course, was the material reduction in our bank borrowings from AUD 4.1 billion to just AUD 1.361 billion, significantly reducing our financial risk. Trade and other receivables were down as a result of the handset receivable financing program. PPE and intangibles were down almost AUD 4.4 billion on aggregate, reflecting the transfer of assets to Vocus or derecognition of non-cash intangibles such as goodwill. The increase in deferred tax assets in the period may seem counterintuitive, as we utilized historical revenue losses against the gain on sale for the Vocus transaction.
Outside of normal movements, we disposed of a net deferred tax liability and recognized a new net deferred tax asset associated with the new fiber access agreement with Vocus. This was also reflected in the right of use assets and lease liabilities. I will now cover cost management. This is about structural cost removal, not short-term restraint or deferral, supporting operating leverage as the business grows. Direct telco costs have increased because of the regional mobile network sharing with Optus and the non-lease component of the fiber network access with Vocus. These make up less than 10% of the run rate of our direct telco costs, and they are non-volumetric. They won't increase as we add customers or data volume. We have operating leverage as we grow, and we avoid OpEx and CapEx over time.
The majority of our direct costs remain NBN costs, which we manage tightly. OpEx is a very positive story, as I have already covered, and we have good momentum to remove AUD 100 million in costs in real terms by FY 2029. Inflation has, of course, been running ahead of the RBA's target of 2%-3%. If that persists, our OpEx may still go up in nominal terms. Turning to CapEx, the pro forma outcome in addition terms was AUD 771 million, and we expect that to be about AUD 750 million this year. Our targeted CapEx range remains AUD 550 million-AUD 650 million from FY 2027 onwards, although we expect to be at the upper end of that range in FY 2027 itself.
That's because the IT transformation will be largely complete after this year, but we still have about 1,000 Huawei sites to change out. Additional mobile network infrastructure sharing would result in even greater CapEx efficiency, benefiting customers across the industry. My next slide covers financing costs, where the change reflects the strengthening of our financial position. Net bank borrowing costs were down 37.8% in FY 2025 due to debt repayment and holding cash prior to the capital return, and will be materially lower again in FY 2026. If you assume a cost of borrowing of 5.5%-6%, you would forecast FY 2026 bank financing expense of about AUD 80 million using our net bank debt today as the base. Note, we are 66% hedged.
Financing costs from the handset receivable program were AUD 95 million in FY 2025 on about AUD 900 million face value sold due to the size of the back book. The average of the two quarterly sales since would suggest annual sales of about AUD 600 million face value in FY 2026. Annual financing costs of this program will not be as high in FY 2026. As noted earlier, this will depend on overall handset trading and supply chain conditions. On a pro forma basis, lease financing costs would have been AUD 175 million in FY 2025, and we expect those to be broadly flat year-on-year in FY 2026.
All of the above, of course, is subject to interest rate movements, but our current expectation is that financing costs will be roughly AUD 100 million lower in FY 2026 than the FY 2025 pro forma total of AUD 426 million. My final slide covers our medium-term outlook for cash flow and leverage. The trajectory was positive in FY 2025, and we expect momentum to continue to build. The left-hand chart shows our free cash flow to equity, excluding the AUD 4.7 billion in proceeds from the Vocus sale. We have also shaded out the AUD 594 million benefit from the handsets program, as the back book sale was non-recurring. After these normalizations and excluding separation costs, the total would have been AUD 396 million, which reflects solid growth on AUD 247 million in FY 2024.
In FY 26, we expect to make up, mostly through EBITDA growth and lower bank borrowing costs, for not having 7 months of cash flow from discontinued operations and for having a full year of the new Vocus arrangements. That is excluding separation costs. We expect FY 26 cash CapEx to be broadly the same as FY 25. Into FY 27 and FY 28, earnings growth and lower CapEx should translate to higher cash conversion, and the lower borrowings base has de-risked our exposure to interest rates. We don't believe the ACMA's latest proposals regarding spectrum license renewal payments are a good idea, but even if they remain, we would not expect to have to fund renewals until later in FY 27, which is very manageable. Rating agencies understand that the inherently lumpy nature of spectrum funding may cause short-term spikes in leverage.
We have momentum with leverage reduction, dropping below the upper end of our S&P net debt to EBITDA target range of 2x-3x at the end of last year. We expect to reduce leverage further in coming years. We plan to de-risk our financial position again this year by refinancing the AUD 1.67 billion of bank debt we have maturing in July 2028. Thank you. I'll now hand back to Iñaki.
Thanks, John. This slide sets out the drivers of shareholder value in our business and shows how we are tracking against the key metrics we have committed to grow. Across these metrics, progress was strong in fiscal year 2025, and we are confident of delivering further progress in fiscal year 2026 and beyond. Our stronger network and enhanced customer propositions are driving continued mobile service revenue growth. We expect that to translate to continued operational leverage and higher margins and return on capital as we execute cost discipline and capital efficiency. The outlook for cash flow and dividends is positive. My final slide covers out our formal guidance for the year.
We expect EBITDA to be between AUD 1.665 billion and AUD 1.735 billion, which is growth of just under 4% on a pro forma basis at the midpoint of AUD 1.7 billion. We are guiding for CapEx on an additions basis of AUD 750 million, with significant CapEx reductions to come in fiscal year 2027 and beyond. Thank you. We will now take questions.
Thanks, Iñaki. Just a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one to join the queue, or star two to exit. Joining Iñaki and John for our questions today are members of the TPG leadership team. Our first question comes from Eric Choi of Barrenjoey. Go ahead, Eric.
I had a few questions. Do you want me to ask them all at once, Paul, or just one by one?
Yeah, go or run through them first, please.
All of them. Okay. First one's just on FY27 capital management thinking, and obviously, there's been changes to the spectrum and the CapEx outlook since we last spoke. Just wanted to confirm if maybe AUD 600 million of free cash flow or touch under by FY27 is still a fair estimate, and obviously you just did under AUD 400 million this year, and you're going to see EBITDA growth and CapEx reduction, so that feels fair. If you did do AUD 600 million, that would put you on an 8% free cash flow yield. Then I'm just wondering how much of that free cash flow yield do you return to shareholders versus how much do you keep in case spectrum needs to be paid in lump sums? Are you sure you want the two and three?
Well, we'll go through that one first.
Yeah.
In some detail.
Eric, why don't I take that one? firstly, your first question regarding calendar year 2027, free cash flow to equity. I'd like to start with how we look at 2026 free cash flow to equity. If you just take the numbers we've provided is...
That does get you to broadly around AUD 400 million. If you take the midpoint of EBITDA guidance at AUD 1,700 million, you take off cash CapEx and same as 2025. Let's assume for now, working capital is neutral. Let's also assume, tax, cash tax in 2026 is similar to 2025. Lease costs, of course, will be slightly up because you've got the full 12 months of the TOFA. We've already commented on how borrowing costs come down. That gets you to, you know, around that AUD 400-AUD 430 mark. If you add to that the reduction in our CapEx, which we've already noted, we expect on additions basis to be AUD 650 million in 2027.
You add whatever you assume on mobile services, revenue growth, and revenue growth overall, you can absolutely get to that sort of AUD 600 million mark that I think you're sort of provocating. That's the first question. On the second one, we've been really consistent over last year, describing the strengthening of our balance sheet position, including the significant reduction in bank debt. As a result of that and the growth in cash flows that I've just stepped through, we've stated unequivocally, we expect to grow profits and cash flow, and with that, we expect to grow the dividend. That still holds 100%. Noting our strong balance sheet position, and as I noted, we will go through the slides.
We're absolutely comfortable in being able to absorb whatever spectrum outcomes will be finalized with the ACMA.
Gotcha. Quick follow-up, nice jacket, by the way, John, in the preso. Someone told me to comment on that. Number two, just on mobile subs. At an aggregate level, that actually accelerated this half versus last half and when last time you guys gave an update, you told us it would slow down. I'm just wondering if you're seeing the same trend into early CY 2026, especially on that MVNO result. Like, we just want to confirm there's no one-offs in that MVNO acceleration, and it's literally all on better distribution and organic performance.
Thank you, Eric. I'll take that one. I mean, to your question on MVNO, there hasn't been any one-off, so it is all organic growth. Like you pointed, it has to do with improvements on distribution, the weight of online, I think, is also playing well in this segment. We see, you know, that brands that are moving more and more activity to online tend to perform better than the ones that are relying a bit more on the physical channels. I think that has helped the MVNO performance. Yeah, I think that the performance overall on the second half was good, not just on MVNO, but also our digital first brands have continued to perform strong.
You know, looking at the beginning of the year, we think that the trend continues.
Thanks, Iñaki. Just the last one. Just on your mobile ARPUs. If you look at your digital first ARPU, it was up 11%. My question is: Do you have plans or drivers in the next 2-3 years to continue to lift that DFS ARPU faster than postpaid? If you combine that with the fact that the lower cost to serve on DFS, do the economics of DFS and postpaid gradually become more similar?
I mean, that is the idea is twofold. I mean, if you look a little bit into felix, which is, you know, one of the digital first brands that we have. Last year, we didn't really do any kind of movement in pricing. We did have a significant increase on the ARPU, and that is on the back of customers using the app to get incremental value plans. That is a model that works very well. That is a model like you said, it's very low cost, and we think that is the model that, you know, will continue to help improve the overall ARPU of the business.
On a year like 25, where, you know, we did the goal for customer growth, and we did get customer growth, we still obtain significant ARPU gains across the brand. I think that that's something that we'll continue to do, and definitely when you look at the discount, the digital brands, which are subscription brands, and some of our competitors will report that under postpaid. It's getting a little more difficult to really do comparative analysis in the market. This segment is a very interesting segment because it has huge growth. We still think that postpaid is the performance of postpaid when you look at what we report, postpaid, which is the premium brand, Vodafone comparatively again, has done really well on customers and in ARPU.
I think that this model of being able to address the different segments through different solutions is really working very well for us.
Thanks, Eric. Our next question comes from Lucy Huang at UBS. You there, Lucy?
Thanks, team. I've got 3 questions as well, and I'll ask them one by one. Just to follow on from Eric's question on prepaid. Are you able to talk through churn trends in that part of the business? Postpaid, you've seen some good churn reduction off the MOCN deal. Just wondering if you're seeing similar trends coming through on the prepaid side as well.
Thank you, Lucy. Look, the trends on churn are consistent across the brands, also across prepaid and postpaid. And also across consumer and enterprise customers. On prepaid, we have the benefit of the MOCN and the improved network performance, not just coverage. But also as we are moving more commercial activity onto digital channels, that also improves churn. Traditionally, the physical channels have been higher on churn, so we see the prepaid churn also trending in a very favorable way.
Understood. Just this postpaid mobile ARPU growth. Feels like there was probably a slight dilution in relation to the price increase you've put through. Any color, whether there's been a little bit of trading down or whether there was a bit of a drag from enterprise coming through mobile postpaid ARPU?
It is true to say that the mix shift between business and consumer dilutes the overall. That is true, but the. That practically means the consumer postpaid ARPU improved higher than the average that you saw on our slide today. It's a mix shift overall from between segments dilutes slightly. If that, hope that answers the question.
Yeah. No, that's, that makes sense. Can I just confirm, in terms of mobile postpaid, such how much is now enterprise? It feels like that's grown a bit relative to consumer.
Hey, Jonathan, maybe you want to take that one.
Lucy, it was a strong performance. I think two things I'd call out. One is clearly you saw the benefits of MOCN on churn, and I think we put that number up front to 12.5%. It was really pleasing performance on churn, and I think net adds has been very strong, surprisingly strong across enterprise, government, and small business. I think, you know, we see the benefits continuing into 2026.
Wonderful. Just my last question on Spectrum. ACMA's obviously put out their proposal, in December. Have you guys come up with an estimate of how much you're having to pay? I think we're thinking, like, AUD 1 billion-AUD 1.5 billion. Is that roughly kind of the right number over that kind of 3-5-year period?
Yeah, it is more than that, but significantly lower than what we've historically paid, but it's over a longer period of time.
Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks.
Thanks, Lucy. Our next question comes from Entcho Raykovski from Evans and Partners.
Thanks, Paul. Morning, everyone. My first question is just around the recent backbook price increases in postpaid, which Iñaki referenced. I wonder if you're able to quantify how much of a contribution you expect those backbook price increases will add to postpaid ARPU growth in FY26.
Thank you for the question, you know, this is probably a bit premature to say that. I think that we've done on some cohorts of customers, so that does not include all our strategy for the year. It is a bit premature to say anything at this second.
Are you able to, I suppose looking at the guidance and maybe talk a bit in a slightly different way. You gave the growth guidance, can you talk to some of the broad assumptions which underpin the mobile service revenue growth that you expect, particularly on subs and ARPUs?
No doubt the EBITDA growth, as it has been for the, you know, last few years, is supported by and relies on growth in mobile services revenue growth. Point one. Point two, we maintain cost discipline, as we've shown over the last couple of years, again, and we're very pleased with our outcomes on cost discipline. A combination of those two things largely drive the EBITDA to grow from client in the midpoint.
Okay, great. Sounds like you don't really want to go into specific assumptions around subs and ARPU, et cetera.
No. I mean, we've always said that, and you've seen in the material of today, that customers have responded well to our multi-brand strategy and our, you know, expanded network.
That will continue, and it's our plan to continue. Of course, you've seen, as shown, that the, you know, the importance of ARPU growth, and that still remains.
Got it. Okay, thanks, John. My next question: just looking at the postpaid consumer and enterprise churn, I mean, you've been very clear that's down, but net adds in postpaid were [flattish] over the year. I guess I'm just curious whether that reflects a smaller addressable market in postpaid, and what it means about the MNO's ability to put through price increases in that segment, given the growth is coming at the prepaid end of the market. I guess, do you still think there's pricing power within the postpaid market? Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew. Maybe I ask James to answer that one. In general, I think that we see a market in postpaid that, you know, is being again classified as a premium brand. When you look at Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone, we have performed well, but it is a market that has declined in the last year.
Yeah. Thanks, Iñaki. Yeah, I think the thing for us is that, we've improved our net adds year-on-year very significantly on the back of MOCN. Year-on-year, it's a 96,000 improvement in our postpaid performance, so we've seen a significant turnaround, and we have improved our ARPU at the same time. The biggest switching pool within the market is still within the tier ones and the branded, postpaid businesses. There's opportunity for us to continue to attack that market, but the primary market growth opportunity we see is in our digital subscription brands. That's where we're focused on subscriber growth, as Iñaki and John have talked about.
Maybe if I just add for business, I think, don't forget there's, you know, 14 million people employed in the economy, across, you know, part-time and full-time roles. Most of those are what you would consider postpaid opportunities, typically how a company buys, provides a mobile service. I think a really strong opportunity to grow share in the business segment.
Okay, great. Thank you. Just a very final one from me. You've referenced a highly aggressive NBN market. I'm curious what sort of impact you've seen on the fixed market from the Telstra introduction of the internet-only plans in November. I don't know if it's too early to comment on what you expect the impact going to be, I mean, firstly, on the market and then secondly on your operations.
Yeah, sure. It's James here again. We haven't seen a material impact from the Telstra changes. We see the big, you know, drivers in that competitive market is in the players that sometimes sit outside traditional telco category in terms of energy and banking, converged players, but also the likes of Superloop and Aussie, who are growing strongly in that space. Haven't seen an impact from Telstra directly at this point.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Andrew. Our next question comes from Bob Chen, Bob Chen at JP Morgan.
Thanks, Paul. Hi, team. A couple of questions from me. Maybe just focusing on that really strong ARPU print in the digital first. Like, can you talk through sort of the key levers you have to sustain that ARPU growth in that segment?
Thank you, Bob. Look, really the lever is to have a very simple pricing structure or plan structure. Also a very simple way for customers to choose between these alternatives. The outcome that we are getting is that, you know, even though a lot of customers come to these brands on, you know, lower price points, ultimately through the app and looking at the value that they are getting, they are on their own choosing higher tier plans, and that is really the key to that ARPU growth.
Right. Okay, more sort of mix there. Okay, that makes sense. Yep, just given there's a fair bit of noise around what handset volumes might look like this year, given increase in prices or shortages of DRAM. Like, how does that play into or potentially impact your mobile business?
Look, I think that that's an uncertainty in the market, and we're monitoring closely. You see how in 2025, the overall handset market has gone down, and that probably has to do a bit on the different performance of, you know, premium brands or brands that are attached to handset. Ultimately, when you look at our premium brand, we still do most of our connections are without handset. It is an area that, you know, it may affect the market somehow, but we don't think that it's going to be a massive impact at this stage, even though we may see some shortages on some models during the year.
Okay, great. Maybe just the final one on the broadband business. Like, how should we think about the mix of that business going longer term? Like, is it more about sort of defending NBN and really just growing that fixed wireless to grow gross margin and defend your share there?
The way we look at that business, I mean, for us, that is a very good complementary business to our mobile business. We have invested significantly on the capabilities to really leverage on that opportunity to cross-sell and upsell inside our customer base. Also, when we look at our different brands where we've been better in terms of the cross-selling have performed better than the others, and I think these are capabilities that during this year we are introducing significantly. Then, on the profitability side, I mean, we continue to look at the profitability of this business. Fixed wireless is a big part of this, and that's why we are now introducing further innovation with the 5G Standalone capabilities, and that will enhance our overall footprint on fixed wireless.
Our aim is to continue working on that and then monitoring a bit how the trends on NBN play. Yeah, I think last year we still were negative, even though we had a much better second half, so things are getting better on the NBN side. As I said, with the new capabilities around convergence, we think that that will continue to improve in 2026.
Great. Thanks, Iñaki.
Thanks, Bob. Our next question is from Liam Robertson at Jarden.
Thanks, Paul. Morning, guys. Just first one on me, just around the MOCN and revenue payback. I think you've absorbed close to AUD 50 million or AUD 60 million in the first year. I'm conscious in the accounts you're calling out more than offsetting revenue benefits in future years. Can you just tell us how you're thinking about the phasing of that net benefit trajectory moving forward?
We're already offsetting it, would be point 1. That's important to note. We just acknowledged in the earlier that the growth ex-MOCN in half 2 was greater than half 1, and that's simply because you incur the cost ahead of the revenue benefits come in. That would be point 1. Point 2, I think we've discussed this in, on other calls with, and more broadly, I think depending upon... Most analysts have sort of said, "You know, to break even, you've got to get about 100,000-200,000 net incremental subs to break even." Break even is definitely not our aspiration. It's definitely higher than that. You've seen the subs growth in year 1, which was very strong.
Yep, makes sense. Just secondly, on the FY 2026 EBITDA range, I'm conscious, Angelo, I was trying to dig into, you know, some of the moving parts there. I mean, AUD 70 million range is probably wider than you've historically guided to. Can you maybe just talk to some of the more discretionary components? I mean, for example, I think your advertising and promo spend was up AUD 40 million in FY 2025, a lot of that relating to the launch of MOCN. Can you just talk to, you know, what's actually in your control? I mean, ultimately, it all is, but just conscious, you know, you're saying too early to talk to some of the ARPU and subs trends. What are some of the key swing factors from the bottom end to the top end of that range? Thanks.
Firstly, the range is lower than prior periods, so it is a smaller range. Secondly, we would expect, as I said, mobile services revenue growth through ARPU and subs to do most of the heavy lifting. We continue to grow FWA subs base, and that is highly profitable relative to or more profitable than NBN. That would be another factor. Thirdly, you know, you've seen our results that we grew handset revenue, and slightly grew handset margin year-over-year. You know, not a big impact, but it's important that you drive handset volume profitably.
Then, three, and I think you've seen this now in our track record, but I'm really pleased with the performance that we're delivering on operating costs, and we, you know, we've been really clear on how we see, you know, the outlook for that, and that trend continuing. I think it's really the combination of those things, at EBITDA. Below EBITDA, you know, I've already spoken about how bank borrowing costs reduce, et cetera, et cetera, that further supports NPAT.
I mean, the other thing is that traditionally we've been at the midpoint of this guidance. You know, of course, we look for some risks, but at the same time, we also have visibility of some opportunities. That's why the guidance has that range.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Liam. Our next question comes from Andrew Gillies at Macquarie.
Thanks, guys. Just digging into that OpEx performance, John, if I may. On the cost out of AUD 100 million and kind of the prior commentary you've made around broadly flat sort of operating costs through 2029, there's been a lot of news flow in the market on redundancies from AI. The commentary in the deck kind of excludes that. You know, would that present further upside to this number? Are there any things you're looking at that may potentially present sort of further upside to that operating cost flat or even out?
We don't really think about AI like that. We see AI as complementary to our business. You know, a great example of that might be, you know, how we monitor our network at a greater scale that complements the, you know, the humans, the people that every day run our network so well. That's how we think about it. That's sort of our approach to it. More broadly on OpEx, why have we given that 4-year outlook is, 1, because, you know, we're well through our IT modernization and business simplification. We see benefits being driven by that. We are now a simpler business post the sale to Vocus.
We continue to deliver normal productivity, and I'm not referencing AI in that, through our employee base, and we do a really good job of how we approach third-party spend with our partners. What I mean by that is how we commercially work through rate, manage demand, and also scope with third-party spend. It's really the combination of all those factors that has delivered to date that strong performance in OpEx, and we'll continue to deliver it in the outlook we've given.
Perfect. Thank you. Then just one quick follow-up as well. On sort of 000 outages post that sort of event in the market, you know, lowest plan prices among MVNOs are increasing. Appreciate you probably won't talk to wholesale agreements, but how's your competitive position in the MVNO space at the moment?
Yeah, maybe you take that, Jonathan.
Yeah. The competitive position on MVNO and the comparison to wholesale, probably the way we think of it is it accesses a portion of the market that we wouldn't reach directly through our own brands. Two things to consider. One, some of the brands we work with were already in market with competitive carriers. They're now on the Vodafone network, which is great for us. Secondly, they typically access either different segments of the market or different distribution routes that wouldn't naturally be in our portfolio. I think we view it as complementary, and we view it as a clear growth opportunity.
Thank you.
Thanks, Andrew. Our next question comes from Nick Harris at Morgans.
Thanks, guys. I think like everyone, I'm just trying to unpack the mobile momentum. There's obviously a lot of opacity there, but it was a great result, and obviously a stronger result in the second half than the first. You know, you've got lower churn, coverage expansion, digital brands accelerating, and obviously some extra own goals from some of your, well, one of your competitors. Can you just help us unpack, roughly where the bulk of the subscriber growth is coming from? Specifically, you know, are you seeing metro market share expansion for customers staying in metro, or are you seeing some really healthy expansion as a result of MOCN and those regional coverage gains, which was obviously what you're talking about?
I appreciate you've given us some of the cost of the backhaul done, but just from your perspective, that'd be helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Nick. Look, I think. First, to talk about the effect on MOCN in terms of the market growth by region, this has been something that we've been following really closely, and what I can tell you is that the growth has been across metro and region. In metro, our best performers have been Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane. That is also related to the fact that in the past we probably had a lower market share than what we had in other metro areas, so those have performed really well. When you look into more regional towns, and we've been following that also very closely, there's been growth across the board on every single one of them. There are some like, you know, Hobart or Sunshine Coast, that have been a bit outliers.
In general, what we see is the growth volume base has been greater in metro. In terms of percentage, related to our existing customer base there, has been much greater in regional. Yeah, good performance across the board.
Thank you, Iñaki. Sorry, just to make sure I heard that correctly. You said greater volume growth in regionals, but strong growth in metros as well, yeah?
Yeah. In terms of customer numbers, you know, there is 6 million people living in Melbourne, so if you get any incremental there, it's a lot of customers. Percentage-wise, those, more regional centers where our market share was sometimes single digit or low, teens, is where we've seen a percentually, a bigger increase.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Nick. Our next question comes from Roger Samuel at Jefferies.
Well, hi. Morning, all. I've got a couple of questions, but firstly, can I just double-check on my calculation for your net financing cost going into FY 2026? If your bank interest is going down to AUD 80, your lease cost is roughly the same, so AUD 175, and the handset receivable financing is about AUD 95. I'll get to a total of AUD 350. Is that roughly the right number?
Yeah. Our reported as disclosed was AUD 393. What we've said is bank interest goes from about AUD 160 to AUD 80. This is on a reported basis, Roger, lease interest will go up because you've got the full 12 months. We've said handset financing costs will come down simply because the size of the forward book will be lower than the back book.
Yep.
in 2025. That gets you the sum of those math, and I appreciate it's busy below the EBITDA line, gets you to about an AUD 80 million reduction on a reported basis. On a pro forma basis, it's obviously higher than that. It's about AUD 100 million.
Yep. Okay.
Does that?
Yep.
Is that helpful?
Yep. Yep, that's helpful. Thank you. Secondly, just on fixed broadband. It looks like the decline in NBN subscribers has moderated in the second half. You also sold the EGW business to Vocus as well. How much of that customer actually moved across to Vocus as part of that transaction?
Well, we saw a lot of customers move, but in the half, there was another 9,000 that moved.
Yeah.
Obviously, the transaction completed with a whole bunch of customers moving, much larger than the 9,000. When you look at the half one versus half two, in half two, it was a transfer of about 9,000. You're right, we materially reduced and improved our performance in half two on NBN than half one.
Yep. Okay. Just lastly on your KPIs.
You've made good progress in there. Just wondering, you know, with the number of IT applications down to 485 versus 470, what's the reason behind that? Just wondering, maybe with AI, you could accelerate the reduction in the number of IT applications going forward.
Yeah. Thanks, Roger, You can appreciate the fact that also our IT transformation had to pivot. The plan that was initially designed was not considering the Vocus transaction, and suddenly we had, in 2025, to pivot it, and definitely go for a huge separation. In some way, now, the number of systems is also counting some duplications because we had to clone a few systems in order to separate the business. This will be normalized across 2026. I would say it's a small deviation from the plan, but in the long term, the plan is absolutely the same. I would not be worried about that.
Got it. Thank you.
Thanks, Roger. Our final question, at the moment, comes from Nick Basile from CLSA. Just a reminder, if you do have a question, to press star one. Go ahead, please, Nick.
Thanks, Paul. Morning, team. Yeah, I've just got a couple questions. The first one on the mobile business, I think, Iñaki talked about, you know, the strong overall subscriber net adds, and you talked about, I guess, the improving postpaid churn. Just interested, I guess, in the context of the increase in marketing spend, how we think about sort of the phasing of benefits or any updated thoughts on the phasing of benefits from network sharing and the outlook for churn over the next few years? I'll ask my second question, I guess, later.
Thank you, Nick. Well, first, in terms of our marketing spend this year, it's been good, in the sense of being able to have a good return on that expenditure. It was also an incremental expenditure that we did, virtually maintaining a flat OpEx. I think that that's also part of our discipline. In terms of the churn improvements, we don't really associate churn improvements to marketing spend. That has a lot more to do with the quality of the service and more specifically, with the quality of the network. For that reason, we, you know, we are optimistic around our churn trends, and we are also optimistic around the quality of our marketing spend as well.
Okay, yeah, that's fair. The second question, somewhat of a follow-up to Andrew's on AI. Just kind of interested to take that from a different angle. Can you talk to any ways you might be benefiting now or able to benefit on the revenue side or customer experience, onboarding, et cetera? Specifically, I guess, given you've kind of called it out, the digital strategy. Yeah, just trying to sort of think about how AI might be of a benefit going forward versus what you've sort of done to date. Thanks.
Thank you, Nick. Look, I think, we will probably discuss more around AI on a different occasion when we do an investor day. I think that, to give you a little bit where we are, we look at AI in three phases. One of them is around building capabilities. A lot of the system simplification and upgrades, also the investment we've done on structuring our data model are basic pillars for AI. That's something that has been a big part of our transformation program, as well as building capabilities on the people in the company around AI. The things that we are working, like we said before, are twofold.
One of them is around network automation operations, but also, the way to monitor in a much more individual way, the performance of our network per customer is something that we are investing and working on, and this is something that we think AI will bring greater benefits. The other part where we are also working is around improving our customer experience, and that goes, things that have to do with just a better way to handle the calls, better way to serve the customers, better way to assist our call center agents on the way that we do that, to reduce the times that customer have to call us. To be able to be better in detecting challenges on our service and being able to provide a better service.
That's also something that is work in progress. We are investing on that, and we are also quite optimistic around where that goes. Probably the, you know, the part that you were mentioning, which is more around the revenues, I do think that the industry will play a significant role in enabling AI to our customers, and that's probably more of a third phase of our AI strategy.
Okay, great. Thanks very much.
Thanks, Nick. We have a follow-up call from Entcho at Evans and Partners.
Thanks, Paul, and thanks for taking my follow-up. This will hopefully be a quick one, but it's on ROIC and how it can be driven over time by growing pricing or ARPU. I mean, I'm conscious that pro forma ROIC was 5.4% in FY 2025. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you should see an incremental 70 basis point increase into 2026 from the handset refi restructure, which gets you to just over 6%. I suppose the question is: where do you see ROIC going longer term? I think John referenced some growth over time. Within that growth, how important is ARPU growth in mobile for that ROIC improvement?
Do you expect that will be the key plank, or do you see other elements like subs growth and perhaps cost reductions as being more important?
Yeah. Firstly, the way you've described the impact of ROIC year on year from the handset receivable sale program is correct, simply because you get the full annualized benefit in 26, in the denominator of ROIC, which I think is what you were referring to. That's... I agree with that point. Look, I always, you know, there's a thin line between the numerator and the denominator of ROIC. The numerator is reliant on growth in service revenue, driven by both ARPU and subscribers, and I think we've been demonstrating that well over the last few years in our track record there. It also relies on the continued discipline and against on our operating costs, which our track record, I think, is very strong.
It also relies on continuing to manage fixed profitability overall across all our fixed products, and then on the denominator of ROIC, continue that capital efficiency. CapEx is coming down. We've made clear reference to that today in our, in our outlook. It's really those factors that drive our outlook on ROIC and why we are confident will continue to grow.
You don't have a longer-term target you can share with us?
Well, look, I mean, we wanna continue to grow ROIC above WACC. I mean, that's definitely our base case as we think about it. I mean, that's just good economic practice, and you can see the trend on that is very strong. Of course, it's, you know, we want to grow above that.
Okay. Got it. Thanks, John.
Thanks, Entcho. We have another follow-up question from Lam at Jarden. Go ahead, Lam.
Thanks, Paul. Sorry, guys. Just really quickly on mobile ARPU, I'm just conscious that the first half, you made a comment around pricing being aligned across frontbook and backbook, following the pricing refreshes. We would've seen that flow through in the second half. John, to your comments on ARPU growth, am I right in thinking that that will have to be predicated on frontbook price increases moving forward? Thanks.
Yeah. I'm not going to make any comment on future price plan refreshes. I just, we just won't do that.
Just if you can confirm that pricing across the frontbook and backbook are now more, more broadly aligned.
Well, over the last couple of years, given our actions, that is true. Absolutely true.
Thanks.
Thanks, Lam. We have no more calls at the moment, so that will conclude the call for today. Thank you very much for joining. Speak to you soon.