This is Bruce Song speaking from the TPG Telecom Investor Relations team. Welcome to the presentation of our results for the full year ended 31st December 2022. TPG Telecom acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and the land on which we and our communities live, work, and connect. We pay our respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. Our CEO, Iñaki Berroeta, will begin today's presentation with the results highlights and business update. Our CFO, Grant Dempsey, will go present our financial performance in more details before Iñaki closes off the presentation with a summary of our strategy and outlook. Other members of the executive leadership team are also here for Q&A.
Thank you, Bruce. Good morning to everyone. 2022 was a solid year for TPG. We grew service revenue and EBITDA, delivered key simplifications and transformation projects, and returned to subscriber growth in our mobile business. We added 300,000 new mobile subscribers as the impacts of COVID ease and international visitors and students return. We are now implementing a pricing refresh across our Vodafone postpaid customer base. In consumer broadband, our subscriber numbers were steady as we took actions to support profitability and reprice our NBN plans. Our enterprise business delivered customer wins with a total contract value of AUD 150 million, driven by strong demand for our on-net Fast Fibre product. We deliver our target merger cost synergies, helping to offset ongoing inflationary pressures.
Our solid financial performance enable a 9% increase in fully franked dividends for the year, including the declaration today of a final dividend of AUD 0.09 per share. Transformation remains a key focus as we continue to simplify customer offering and modernize IT systems to compete more effectively. Our 5G rollout has progressed strongly with another 1,000+ sites added in 2022. Our total 5G network footprint is now more than 2,000 sites. Our tower asset sale in July enable us to strengthen our balance sheet and a strategic review to support the growth of our Vision Network business is underway. Today, we are providing earning guidance for the first time. We expect EBITDA of between AUD 1.85 billion and AUD 1.95 billion in 2023, excluding material one-offs and transformation costs.
With growth in our mobile business, strong gains in enterprise, and a sharpened focus on executing transformation, we're in great position for the years ahead. I will now take a deeper dive into some of the highlights of 2022, starting with mobile. We recorded a strong rebound in customer growth over the year, with a net addition of 300,000 new customers and incremental gains in market share. Our products and offering continue to be recognized for the great value and service they deliver, winning numerous awards. Vodafone continued to be the key growth engine, adding more than 170,000 new customers. Our smaller brands, such as Felix, Lebara, and Kogan, also experienced strong growth, adding more than 100,000 new subscribers. TPG and iiNet also posted gains in their mobile customer base.
Overall, we end 2022 with 5.28 million mobile customers, up 6% over the year. Now turning to ARPU. In postpaid, the contribution from international roaming increased from AUD 0.40 in the second half of 2021 to AUD 2.20 in the second half of 2022. Roaming was at approximately 85% of pre-pandemic levels in the second half, and we expect a near full recovery through 2023. Postpaid ARPU was up 3.1% from a year earlier. Excluding the impact of new intercarrier MMS access fees, postpaid ARPU was up 5.5%, while prepaid ARPU was up 2.2% in a very competitive market.
We expect postpaid ARPU to continue to improve over the rest of 2023 as we complete our pricing refresh, which I will talk about in more detail in the next slide. In January this year, we simplified postpaid plans for new Vodafone customers. This reduced the number of plans to three, making it easier for customers to match their pricing and data needs. Last week, we began notifying existing Vodafone postpaid customers of plan changes to align with these new simplified plans. The monthly plan fee on most of our existing postpaid mobile plans will increase by AUD 5. This is consistent with the need to offset rising costs from inflation and target a fair return on capital for shareholders.
The increase will also help provide more value for our customers by supporting ongoing capital investments in our products, services, and network capability. We expect this plan refresh to affect 70%-80% of the existing Vodafone postpaid base of 2.9 million customers, and to be completed by the second half of calendar year 2023. Increasing prices is not a decision that we take lightly, and this is the first time Vodafone has done so for its existing postpaid mobile customers in more than 10 years. Being price competitive remains key to our ambition to be Australia's best telco. Now moving on to our fixed broadband business. Over the past year, we focused on improving margin through target price increases across our NBN base and increased migration to on-net fixed wireless services.
We adjusted prices on our 12 Mb, 25 Mb, and 50 Mb per second NBN retail plans for the TPG and iiNet brands, exceeded our growth target in fixed wireless to finish the year with 171,000 subscribers. The chart on the left shows how the combination of these initiatives helped us grow average margin per user by 8% from the prior corresponding period. Rising NBN wholesale costs and new non-telco operators' entrance, such as banks and energy companies, present some pressures. We continue to mitigate these impacts while targeting customers with fixed wireless and other on-net products. Our enterprise business had a great year for new customer growth. We delivered double-digit growth in our on-net Fast Fibre product offering and added total contract value of AUD 150 million spread over an average contract life of three years.
Our ambition to reach AUD 1 billion of enterprise and government revenue remains, The ACCC decision not to authorize our proposed regional sharing arrangement with Telstra means this is not likely to occur by 2025. We continue to build solid foundation in our wholesale business with the relaunch of our wholesale residential access business as Vision Network. We also launched a new MVNE platform to help small mobile providers compete more effectively. As we have communicated previously, our margins across enterprise, government, and wholesale will continue to be impacted as we consolidate legacy products, simplify our offerings and technology platforms. Approximately AUD 88 million or 70% of the segment's revenue come from legacy products in the second half of 2022. This will continue to roll off in coming years.
Despite these headwinds on legacy products, the enterprise, government, and wholesale segment has returned to growth. We will continue to grow our customer base through our leading connectivity product offering. The relaunch of Vision Network coincides broadly with the completion of the functional separation from our retail business and our announcement of a strategic review to support its growth. Vision Network is our standalone wholesale residential access business. It delivers super fast and super competitive broadband services to retail service providers across a footprint of more than 400,000 premises. During 2022, we roll out gigabyte-capable G.fast technology across most of Vision's fiber to the building network. We have received strong interest from a range of parties interested in investing in Vision as part of the ongoing strategic review process.
We are very confident of the future of this business as market demand for super fast broadband increases. There is significant value to unlock, whether under TPG's ownership or an alternative structure. Moving on to our mobile network. Our 5G network now covers more than 96% of the Australian population across the nation's 10 largest cities. 2022 was another year of strong network growth with 1,040 new 5G sites, taking the total number of 5G sites to 2,055. We will continue rolling out 5G upgrades at this rate until 2025. This has been a great achievement by the team against the backdrop of supply and labor constraints. As you are aware, in December, the ACCC chose not to authorize our proposed regional network sharing agreement with Telstra.
This was a disappointing outcome for us and for the many customers and businesses in regional Australia who support the proposal. We are continuing to fight for the interest of regional consumers and are challenging the ACCC decision in the Australian Competition Tribunal with an outcome expected in late June 2023. We remain committed to bringing greater mobile competition and choice and believe network sharing will play a key role in the future. Infrastructure sharing will allow more mobile operators to offer their products and services in regional areas. It will deliver greater choice to regional communities and drive price and product competition. The proposed sharing arrangement with Telstra is the best way to deliver those benefits and would put TPG Telecom and its family of brands on a close coverage footprint with Telstra and Optus.
Cybersecurity and resilience are always top priorities for TPG and were brought into sharper focus in 2022 by the significant attacks against Optus and others. This highlighted the importance of ongoing need to invest in and modernize IT infrastructure to protect customers and continuity of operations. Like any organization, we are not immune. This is why we continually review our cyber defense and make the necessary investments to keep up with evolving threats. We are also working hard to keep our customers safe from the constant deluge of scams. In 2022, we blocked more than 440 million scam text messages and more than 50 million scam calls. 2022 was also an important year for our sustainability commitments. We established greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets and commit to a 95% reduction in scope one and two emissions.
We also commit to a 30% reduction in scope three emissions by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050. Verification of these targets by the Science Based Targets initiative is expected later this year. We are planning to incorporate sustainability-linked features in our upcoming debt refinancing. We also published our first climate risk report under the TCFD framework this year. In addition, we became a signatory of the 40:40 Vision, enhancing our commitment to gender diversity. Before handing over to Grant, let me share with you how proud I am of the values and culture of this business. As an industry, the role we play helping communities to connect during challenging times has been demonstrated during the pandemic. Even as life has returned to something like normal in Australia, other countries continue to be affected by war or natural disasters.
The nations shown here Ukraine, Iran, Tonga and Pakistan, are all examples of territories deeply affected during 2022. Sadly, Syria and Turkey have already been affected in 2023. We were pleased we could move quickly on each occasion to provide free calls and help local Australians connected with family and friends in these regions. Such contributions are important to our people who embody the spirit of TPG. I will now hand over to Grant.
Thank you, Iñaki. Good morning all. We entered 2022 with negative momentum, reflecting continued volatility from the pandemic, the ongoing margin squeeze from NBN, and the significant merger integration workload. However, during the year, we saw the return of positive underlying momentum as those headwinds eased. The 2022 financial performance reflected these shifts in momentum, creating somewhat a tale of two halves. Annual service revenue growth of 1.5%, while modest, was reasonably broad-based and trended higher in the second half. OpEx, excluding one-off restructuring costs, were broadly flat. A statutory EBITDA of AUD 2.135 billion was bolstered by the AUD 402 million gain on the tower asset sale, for which we received net cash proceeds of AUD 892 million in July.
Excluding the tower sale gain and restructuring costs, we delivered EBITDA of AUD 1.793 billion, an increase of 3.8% over 2021. Net profit after tax, excluding the tower sale gain and customer amortization, was broadly unchanged at AUD 222 million. Capital expenditure, excluding spectrum of AUD 961 million, was slightly below our guidance of AUD 1 billion-AUD 1.5 billion. Operating free cash flow was impacted by temporary working capital movements, which I will discuss in some more detail shortly. The solid underlying cash generation supporting the significant investment we are currently making in our business. Adjusted Net PAT, the metric we use for our dividend calculation, was up 10.6% in 2022, enabling a 9% uplift in annual dividends to AUD 0.18 per share.
Turning now to the consumer segment, where a return to service revenue growth supported a 2.1% increase in gross margin to AUD 2.09 billion. Growth in both mobile and fixed wireless contributed strongly in the second half, reflecting successful execution of a number of growth initiatives, as well as improved overall operating conditions. Lower telco costs were driven by improvements in network efficiencies and lower intercarrier access fees, which decreased broadly in line with a reduction in incoming intercarrier revenue. NBN costs, while considerably higher for the full year, stabilized somewhat in the second half, supported by the migration of customers to fixed wireless. Handset accessories and hardware margin remains a challenging area, with higher device and logistic costs in a highly competitive promotions-led market.
Our plan refresh across postpay is in part a response to broad inflationary cost pressures and significant capital investments in our network and customer offerings. Our enterprise government wholesale segment also grew in 2022, delivering a modestly higher gross margin of $724 million, despite the continued impact of legacy products rolling off. Growth was driven by our onNet Fast Fibre and NBN Enterprise Ethernet offerings. As with the consumer segment, we delivered efficiencies in telco costs despite higher NBN wholesale costs. The margin impact of legacy products rolling off was $53 million for the year. Given the high margins on many of these legacy products, this will remain a headwind over coming years as we consolidate our technology and offerings and as customers upgrade in-market solutions.
This slide looks at costs and totality across the business since merger, illustrating that recurring costs are below 2020 levels, despite significant cost pressures from energy, handsets, and general inflation. This is due to both our strong cost management culture and the delivery of AUD 140 million of cost synergies from the merger. The company initially targeted AUD 125 million-AUD 150 million of synergies by the end of 2023. Delivery a full year earlier is a great outcome and creates a strong base from which we can continue our transformation and build on our position as a low-cost operator. I'll now turn to our balance sheet, which is also in a much stronger position. The chart on the left contrasts our total external financing position at the time of the merger with that of the end of 2022.
Over that time, we have reduced net bank debt by almost AUD 1 billion to AUD 3.69 billion, and more than halved our use of handset receivables financing to AUD 543 million. This is a result of the strong underlying cash generation of our operating business and the proceeds from the tower asset sale received last July. Taking into account the increases in leases arising from that transaction, we have reduced total external financing by AUD 712 million, while at the same time paying AUD 613 million of dividends to our shareholders since merger. Despite our strengthened position, like everyone, we're exposed to rising interest rates. The chart on the top right of the slide shows the movements in debt balances, interest rates, and financing costs for 2022, and provides some commentary on the outlook for this coming year.
We currently expect bank debt increase by about AUD 200 million-AUD 300 million in 2023 as we continue to unwind the handset receivables financing position in order to optimize our overall funding costs. Varying interest rates have continued to rise, and our all-in interest rate is likely to end up around 5% for the quarter. We do not anticipate any material changes in lease balances in 2023, but our lease financing costs will be higher as we cycle a full year of the new tower leases that came into effect from July. Coming months, we intend to refinance the bank debt, which is due to mature in 2024. This creates an opportunity for us to improve the diversity and tenure of our borrowings and to look to adopt some Sustainability-Linked Financing elements.
Cash flow performance was generally robust in the year, albeit there were significant one-off negative working capital movements. There were two key drivers. Firstly, the change in our approach to financing handset payment plans, secondly, the buildup of inventory due to supply chain pressures. On handsets, we have changed to use bank debt to fund this activity, driven by our increased balance sheet capacity, lower overall cost, and easier execution. We plan to continue this in the short term, we'll always assess the most effective and efficient way to fund our growth. The AUD 265 million cash outflow in 2022 relating to no longer factoring the receivables is accounted as a negative working capital within cash flow from operations. The corresponding cash inflow from financing those receivables with drawn debt is accounted in cash flow from financing activities.
We have shown the operating free cash flow adjusted for this working capital movement. As previously noted, there is an overall cost saving in our financing activities from funding these receivables on our balance sheet. The other working capital movement of AUD 217 million largely reflected higher inventory levels driven by inconsistent supply chains, a trend that appears to be common across the sector. In the longer term, we expect operating free cash flow to be strong as working capital movements normalize and CapEx reduces after we deliver on our accelerated network and IT transformation programs. Adjusting for these long-term trends would result in a pro forma conversion ratio of around 40%-45% from EBITDA to operating free cash flow as defined here.
As noted, CapEx for 2022, excluding spectrum, of AUD 961 million was slightly below our guided level of AUD 1 billion-AUD 1.05 billion. Our elevated CapEx program reflects the swap out of Huawei equipment and the upgrade of our mobile sites to 5G, as well as significant investment in IT modernization and simplification. The projects will continue for the next few years. We expect CapEx to remain around the AUD 1 billion per annum level until the middle of the decade. Thereafter, we expect CapEx excluding spectrum to be in the order of 13%-15% of service revenue, or around AUD 700 million-AUD 800 million. The final dividend is increased to AUD 0.09 per share, taking the total annual dividend to AUD 0.18 per share, a 9.1% year-on-year increase.
To finish, I'll recap the capital allocation framework we introduced at our Investor Day in June last year. Our recurring capital management priorities remain focused on investing to sustain our critical assets, maintain a strong balance sheet, and support an annual dividend to shareholders. As I've set out, we have strengthened our balance sheet with a reduction of more than AUD 700 million of external financing since the merger. While at the same time distributing over AUD 600 million of fully franked dividends. We're also focused on levers to maximize value, the ongoing investment in transformation and growth of the business, and the reshaping of the portfolio where it makes sense. The sale of the tower assets was a great outcome for the business in 2022, and our ongoing review of Vision Network also has the potential to unlock material value. I will now hand back to Iñaki.
Thank you, Grant. I will now take a few minutes to talk about our strategic focus and outlook for 2023. In June last year, we talked at our inaugural Investor Day about our ambition to be Australia's best telco for our customers, our shareholders, our people, and the community. We are focused on this aspiration, guided by our three key principles of integrate and simplify, win smart, and maximize our potential. At Investor Day, we talked through our 10 key strategic initiatives. I'm pleased with the progress we made in 2022. We continue to work on the development of these programs and long-term targets. We anticipate sharing more detail of these targets over the course of the year. I'm particularly pleased with the return to positive momentum we are seeing in mobile revenue and with the progress we have made on profitability in fixed.
We're beginning to make real progress in the transformation of the business. We are streamlining customer platforms, payment gateways, and IT systems, investing in our network, and managing our portfolio to strengthen our balance sheet. We are building on the strong foundations of integration and cost synergies established since the VHA TPG merger as we continue to transform our product offerings, platforms, and systems. We have a strong portfolio of brands, all of which are playing a role in our growth. Some streamlining is logical over time as we look to make things simpler for our customers. We have made good progress simplifying our products and offerings, we still have too many and create too much complexity, both for our customers and for our systems.
IT system simplification has begun, but we need to accelerate to ensure that we have the flexibility and agility to respond to customer needs and maintain an efficient cost base. Delivering on these priorities will provide us with enormous potential to leverage the cost advantage that is part of our DNA and deliver increased capital efficiency. This is an ambitious but necessary program of work, and we look forward to talking about it more in the year ahead. Finally, to our outlook for 2023. Like I said before, we are providing guidance for the first time, recognizing the solid foundation we have put in place since completing the merger and the return of more normal market conditions in the height of the pandemic. We are well-positioned to execute on our strategic initiatives, to continue to grow, and to deliver improving returns for shareholders.
Assuming no material change in operating conditions, we expect EBITDA for 2023 to between AUD 1.85 billion and AUD 1.95 billion, excluding material one-offs and transformation cost. Our CapEx guidance of approximately AUD 1 billion, excluding the spectrum, is unchanged. As Grant has explained, higher interest rates mean financing costs will continue to rise despite ongoing deleveraging. Now, before we go into the questions, I would like to thank all the dedicated people at TPG Telecom who work to achieve our strategic goals while also making our organization a great place to work. Now we will take questions.
Thank you, Iñaki. If you have questions, please press star one. Our first question comes from Eric Choi from Barrenjoey. Eric, please go ahead.
Thanks, Bruce. Hey, Bruce, do you want me to ask them all at once or one by one?
All at once, please.
All at once. Okay. Cool. I'll rapid fire. The first one is just on FY 2023 guidance. I guess you're guiding to an AUD 50 million-AUD 100 million increase in group EBITDA next year. We can work out postpaid price increases drive AUD 50 million of that. My question is: Can I just confirm the other major pieces are subscriber growth on the positive side and maybe fixed cost escalation on the negative side? I ask because if those are the three main moving parts now. It sort of provides better confidence that earnings may be back to growth now. That's the first. Second one, just on interest, we can work out net interest could increase by about AUD 100 million to AUD 290 million next year.
Just for free cash flow, though, are you expecting roughly the same step up in cash net interest and lease repayments? Then the third one, just on Vision, I'm just wondering if there's anything that might complicate that sales process. I'm asking because of what's happened to some of the other transactions in the space. Specifically, I'm wondering if you guys have enough losses to offset any tax, you know, and is it easy to disentangle those Vision systems from the rest of TPG, and that's before you get to any loss of strategic benefits. Sorry about all that. Thanks.
No, thanks, Eric. It's Grant here. I'll take most of those. All good questions. I think, yes, on guidance, I think the fact that we're giving guidance reflects a great confidence in sort of the underlying growth of the business, coming out of the pandemic, as you said, in the first half this year. The range is, you know, as you say, AUD 100 billion is largely around. There's still some, you know, a little bit of uncertainty left in the macro market. Obviously we are, as I say, putting some price refresh through, which is, as I know you said in your speech, the first time in 10 years.
There is some uncertainty about that as well in terms of the competitive market, which is a very competitive market still. In terms of the other drivers, you're right. They're the two major drivers in terms of subscriber growth underlying and obviously, you know, the cumulative effect of that. You know, in terms of inflationary pressures in our cost base, look, it's there. It's not greater than it was this year. It's relatively small in the scheme of the overall cost base. At some stage, you know, I think we are expecting some of those pressures to ease. You know, all of those factors sort of at this stage require us to have sort of a wider range in guidance. Hope that would narrow throughout the course of the year.
In terms of impact on, of interest, you know, your calculations are sort of about right in terms of the information we've given you and really cash does pretty much mirror the PNL impact. I think in a material sense, that's a reasonable assumption to make. On Vision, look, we will continue to be cautious about what we say on Vision. It's a strategic review we're going through. We do think there's value to be unlocked. It doesn't necessarily mean a sale. No decision's been made at all on that. We're going through a process to understand how best to do that. And it's not simple, as you point out, but it's certainly. There's nothing that's stopping us looking at all options at this stage.
You know, over the next two or three months, we'll update the market as we get more information.
Thanks, Grant, and thanks for the guidance.
Thank you, Eric. Our next question comes from Darren Leung from Macquarie. Darren, please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks, guys. I have three as well, please. Just one on that consumer gross margin waterfall chart, please. If we compare this chart six months ago, it looks like the last six months to December 2022 have had a pre-seasonal level of success in terms of converting NBN customers, instead of what was previously greenfield customers. I'm curious just on a little of color as to what's accelerated this change, customer take-up? That's question one. Question two is, what's a bit more color around the remaining 20% or 30% of the mobile customer base that isn't transitioning to the new plan structure? Any detail here, is it enterprise or is it, you know, systems that we should think about?
The third one was pretty mechanical, but just that AUD 50 million of one-off NBN restructuring costs. If my memory serves me correctly, I thought these were largely complete as of the end of 2022. I'm curious as to what these costs are given the success you've had in terms of the synergies achieved so far. Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Darren. Let me start in the consumer, margin growth. Look, I think that fixed wireless has definitely helped us on that. Fixed wireless, we had a couple of years of quite intense commercial activity. We have reached, like we announced today, 171,000. That's roughly almost reaching, you know, half of our estimate capacity for the network. I think that now this becomes a bit more of a business as usual for us. Probably not so intense promotional activity, but the product remains highly attractive for customers in terms of the price point and the performance.
We think that we still will continue to have good numbers there, improving our NBN margins, like also the price changes that we made late in the year, yesterday. I mean, late in the year, in October. This is not just about the delivery of synergies or immediate synergies on the cost side, which we have done, but it's also around the simplification, a lot of the IT systems and processes. At the end of the day, I mean, this is a work that will probably continue for next year and probably the following year as well. It also has to do with reinforcing our infrastructure.
There's a lot of activity that we've done in 2022, but we are not done with it, and this will continue to consolidate a lot of the different infrastructures and system platforms that we had from the merger.
I'm going to let... Yeah, I'll just add to that before I hand over to Kieran. I think just firstly, we did talk through last year that these would continue this year, at a similar level. They're one-off OpEx costs that as Iñaki says, you know, this is more about the planning for the next phase. They'll continue to decline, in terms of OpEx costs as we move into execution. We've also got in our CapEx plan, which again we talked about last year and reinforcing this year, the CapEx expenditure relating to the transformation fuel sets long term, and we've hired the skill sets in to help us execute the simplification process.
Thank you, Darren. Kieran here. Probably just before I jump onto the transition, on the margin growth Sean before that comes to bear in these results. One was that a greater proportion of our fixed wireless base are now on 5G, whereas in the previous year they're on 4G, and 5G is a higher margin. The second thing is, as Iñaki talked about, we are now at a point in our fixed wireless space where we can consider it more like business as usual. What that means is a smaller proportion of that base is on promotional pricing, which is by definition lower margin. On price rise and the customers that are not included in the price rise, there's a whole series of different types of customers.
As you point out, some are in the enterprise market, some are in the consumer market, but are on hardship plans. Some are on non-traditional telemetry, et cetera, plans. They're our non-mainstream plans that were not included in the price rise.
Got it. Thank you. Maybe just to clarify on the fixed wireless piece, and obviously it sounds like it's progressing well.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe an indicator on the FY 2023 guidance. Like what's in the assumption at the midpoint for fixed wireless subscribers?
Thanks, Darren, we are not going to give any guidance or numbers this year.
Okay. No, fair enough. Well, thanks, guys, and good result.
Thank you.
Thanks, Darren. Our next question comes from Lucy Huang from UBS. Lucy, please go ahead.
Good morning, Iñaki, Grant, and team. I've got three questions as well. My first question is around bundling. I think in the past you've mentioned the opportunity in the bundling strategy. Just wondering if you can give us an update on how that's going in terms of driving either more fixed or mobile customer subscriptions? Secondly, with the pricing refresh and postpaid, just wondering if you can give us some color or thoughts into kind of prepaid. Are there any plans over time to look at, you know, refreshing the pricing there as well? Thirdly, with the working capital movement, just wondering if we can expect some of those negative movements to fully unwind coming into FY 2023? Thanks.
Thank you, Lucy. Look, in terms of future pricing, we don't talk about our plans on future pricing. We happy to discuss around what we have already announced in the market. In terms of our intentions on prepaid, we will not discuss that. I'm going to ask Kieran to talk a little bit about bundling and what we have been doing there, as well as then I'll pass on to Grant around capital management.
Bundling or cross-sell or convergence remains central to our strategy and at the heart of when the companies merged. We've seen strong growth both on traditionally mobile customer bases picking up fixed, such as Vodafone picking up fixed and fixed wireless products.
Our fixed, more traditionally fixed mobile base, fixed bases such as TPG or iiNet, taking up mobile. One of the key things that Iñaki talked about and Grant talked about as we move into our transformation, at the next stage is our ability to unlock a lot of that growth through an increase in our system simplification and our data capabilities. At the moment, we're confident and we're comfortable with the growth that we've got, but we still acknowledge there's a lot more work to do.
I think on working capital, good question. There's two parts to it. The first part is the handset receivable financing, which to be honest, I see more as a financing decision, not a working capital view.
Obviously from the accounting and the cash flow balances, we flow through working capital. We've made the call, and we've been doing this for a while now. I think we talked about it last year that the best form right now of financing that is actually on balance sheet. It's not only just a cost thing, although it is cheaper, just the complexity and the risk transfer, that market's changed from what it was back at merger. At this stage our plan is only to continue that. We're always looking for other opportunities. If this is a better way of financing those, we will. At this stage I suspect, you know, we've talked about having just over AUD 500 million left.
You can expect a similar trend over the next couple of years for that to unwind. In terms of the other working capital movements, probably half of it is due to growth in the business, which I think is a normal working capital spend from a cash conversion point of view, and I think half of it's sort of one-offs. Now whether those one-offs reverse quickly or not, I don't know, 'cause they're one-offs that are driven by supply chain inconsistencies which still do exist. They certainly I don't think will be repeated and they could well reverse this year as well.
If you actually adjust for both of those just on a pure operating cash flow metric, you're sort of in the mid-nineties, not the operating free cash flow, but in the pure operating cash flow, you're in the mid-nineties conversion for from EBITDA, which is a very strong underlying cash.
Wonderful. Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Lucy. Our next question comes from Kane Hannan from Goldman Sachs. Kane, please go ahead.
Morning, guys. I've got three as well. Firstly, just guidance. Can you just give us a sense of how quickly you're moving on those backbook price rises, you know, during this half? Just so I can get a sense of what the delta is sort of in FY2023 versus FY2024 from that reprice. Secondly, just remind me the handset receivable unwind. Does that have any impact on your handset margins and sort of EBITDA this year? Finally, just that billion-dollar enterprise revenue target. I appreciate MOCN delay is outside your control, but just helpful if you could wrap a few numbers around what you're expecting from regional mobiles, you know, if the MOCN wants to get the green light in June 2024, you know, when you think you'd be able to hit that billion-dollar revenues, is that a 2026 sort of number?
Cheers.
Thank you, Kane. I think on the first one, look at, you know, we have basically given you the, you know, with the starting point is last week, we probably see the impact of this more on the second half of the year of this growth. Like we said, we probably reach about 70%, 80% of our postpaid. I think that, you know, of course, we need to be vigilant of market conditions, but in principle, I think that the estimates that you are making around half year is probably correct. In terms of the handset receivable, of course, it does have a benefit on our EBITDA because we are reducing that cost from our operation.
On the last one, like I said before, you know, we maintained our ambition. I think that a lot of that has to do with the growth that we have on Fast Fibre, and we have talked about that, and that is something that remains. We also have some very strong wins on the segment. We are very comfortable on the way that the fixed side of the business is evolving. You know, where there are some headwinds on the legacy products, we do see a strong growth on our core business. The mobile side is more of a timing issue, and I think that we will have to wait for the Tribunal. But definitely we see a huge opportunity to leverage of increased coverage on our enterprise business mobile.
Perfect. Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Kane. Our next question comes from Harry Turner from Evercore Partners. Harry, please go ahead.
Just firstly, going back to the mobile price rises, just wondering if you can give an idea of the potential ARPU impact from the backbook price rise, and perhaps sort of before and after your expected spin down to lower plans. What is the percentage total mobile subs, including non-Vodafone there? That's the first question. Just on fixed wireless, you know, can see good progress in the half. Appreciate your pulling back on the sort of promotional activity, but can you give any current idea of the sort of run rate there? Just what's happening with the Vision Network subs, which didn't move in the half.
Also just then on the ACCC decision for MOCN, just wondering if depending on the appeal outcome, what your strategy is and alternatives if the appeal is unsuccessful. You know, would you look at some sort of roaming agreements? Then just finally on the debt refinancing in 2024, what sort of fixed rate percentages could you be targeting, and any sort of improvement in cost of debt versus the status quo? Thanks.
Thank you, Harry. Let me just on the ARPU impact, we're doing, we said that it's on average a AUD 5 raise, so you can make your own calculations on that. In terms of how customers are going to take a look, at the end of the day, we continue to provide great value in the market. We have done some serious investment on our mobile product, and customers are perceiving that. I think that we are well positioned to reflect that incremental value that we are providing through this minor price increase. That's pretty much the way we see it. I mean, we'll have to monitor market conditions, but in principle, that's the proposition that we are doing.
In terms of fixed wireless, like I said before, we have good run rate, but we are not going to provide any numbers for next year. This becomes like Kieran was saying, becomes more of a business as usual. We did want to ramp up this base early in the last couple of years, and I think that now we're in a different situation where the product is already performing well, and we have a decent customer base. We will continue as it goes. There are some things to be defined in the market around NBN pricing, et cetera. For the time being, we continue to bid on this price and position it as a, as a good entry point for broadband market.
In terms of the ACCC, our thinking is that there is a lot of public benefit on what we are doing with immediate implementation. We are confident in the sense of this being a very competitive arrangement for regional Australia. For that reason, we are concentrated on getting this Tribunal decision in June on our favor. We're not really thinking on alternative options at this stage.
On refinancing?
Yeah.
Yeah. On the refinancing, look, obviously we're all going out to market, focused on the three normal things you do in refinancing, tenor diversity and margins. The actual interest rates in the lap of the macro environment. You know, we're very confident we've got very supportive lenders and very interested parties. That's just those three will be weighed up as we work through the RFP.
Thanks, guys. Can I just ask one follow-up? Just wondering if you could give an idea of what the EBITDA tailwind from the move from handset receivables financing is in 2023.
Look, it's not. It, again, obviously in our guidance there. We've been unwinding these for since merger. If you think we unwound about 265 this year, you know, we've unwound a similar amount over the year and a half before. It's, you know, and I suspect we're gonna. Depends on how much we unwind this year, we'll work through. It's there, but it's not significant. It's not noticeable in the, in the overall scheme of things. Obviously we've made an assumption in our, in our guidance. Guidance has got a fairly decent range in it, but it's not one of the driving factors.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Harry. Our next question comes from Entcho Raykovski from Credit Suisse. Enzo, please go ahead.
Thanks. Sorry. Morning all. To answer this question, well, it's been asked in different ways, so I might have a go as well. I'm just interested in your view on specifically the likely impact on churn from the postpaid price increase in January, as you reprice the back book, and obviously as you take into account the competing environment. I don't know if you can give us any specific numbers, but are you essentially factoring in a significant churn increase as you put through the new pricing? Perhaps if you can also, as part of that answer, talk about what was the benefit in the second half to your postpaid subs from the Optus data breach. I'm sure you've got a good sense based on polling data.
I don't know if you can split out what was the Optus data breach benefit versus your underlying growth? That's the first one. Second question. Given the monetization process for Vision Network, what are your thoughts around how any proceeds are going to be applied? Could you primarily looking at debt reduction to offset the impact of handset financing? Thirdly, your submission to the ACCC in relation to the NBN SAU. I think that makes it pretty clear you don't agree with the proposed SAU. I guess I'm interested in what you think is the likelihood that the current form of the SAU is adopted and how you see it impacting NBN access costs, if it was to go ahead in its current form?
Thank you, Entcho. Look, in terms of the... Your question of churn, we do see good churn levels currently. You know, I think that as we are entering into more normal market situations with the return of international business, we see that reflection. I think that's the reality. The, you know, on the price refresh, I think it's basically the same as I said before. We are still providing great value to the customers. For that reason, we think that, you know, we continue to maintain a very strong proposition in the market. We monitor what will happen, but we do think that there is now a very different situation in this market where all operators are under strong investment cycles.
We have new technology providing much more value to customers, faster speeds, more allowances in data, at the same time that we face a significant inflation. So we do think that this is something that is very justifiable, and we don't think that this is going to generate any unusual type of churn. In terms of your question around how much did we benefit from the Optus cyberattack, I think that, you know, it's clear that, you know, there was a high churn event for Optus and that probably benefit everyone. I wouldn't be able to tell you what is the number that we benefit from on as a result. On the Vision, I'm going to let Grant take that one. Before I'm going to...
Just on the NBN SAU, we have put comments on our ideas around the current proposal. We do think that, you know, ultimately, ARPU growth on different products needs to be accompanied by some incremental value provided. We have said that, you know, making the NBN 50 more expensive year on year without adding any type of incremental speed or incremental quality is something that we don't think is good for the market, and we think that that will end up becoming more pressure into consumers to access pretty basic broadband. That's a bit our idea. In terms of what's going to be the outcome, I really don't know. I mean, that we have to wait for the different parties to agree on what is a sensible SAU for the future.
Grant, maybe you want to take the Vision question.
Sure. I'm gonna give a fairly boring answer, unfortunately. At page 25, we will apply our capital allocation framework with any proceeds that we get, which is really a combination of we're really investing quite strongly in the business right now, for good reasons. Obviously we wanna sustain a really strong balance sheet, continue to pay dividend and look for growth opportunities. We'll weigh out any proceeds we happen to get out of a strategic review if it goes that way. It may not go that way, but if it does go that way and we get some cash, we'll apply it on the framework that we have. Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you, Entcho. Our next question comes from Brian Han from Morningstar. Brian, please go ahead.
Thanks, Bruce. Just a couple from me. On enterprise and government, what percentage of that non-legacy revenue base do you think is recurring, and what's the average duration of those recurring non-legacy contracts? Secondly, how much of the EBITDA last year do you think was from roaming, and how much more to go to return to those pre-COVID levels? Finally, if I can just ask this, I know this is small B in the grand scheme of things, but the comparable underlying EBITDA a year ago, why has it changed to AUD 1,727 from AUD 1,731? Thanks.
Thank you, Brian. I'm going to ask Jonathan to go through the enterprise and government question, he can give you a better view of our legacy recurring.
Brilliant. Thanks, Iñaki. Thanks, Brian. The first thing is the main item, which is non-recurring, is the handset revenue, which you can see we've split out on slide 34 of the presentation. Handset's the predominant non-recurring item. Outside of the legacy contracts, the vast majority of the other revenue is recurring service revenue. The average duration of contracts is slightly different based on product lines. If you look at our fixed business, typically a two-three-year contract length. On the mobile business, typically a up to two-year contract length. One of the attractions of convergence, though, is we're able to secure longer-term contracts on mobile when we converge it with fixed. I hope that gives you the details you're looking for, Brian.
Thank you for that.
Yes, Brian, on the, on the EBITDA, we said that on the second half, we were up to 85% of the contribution of pre-COVID roaming. I'm going to let Kieran give you a bit more color into that.
Thank you, Brian. It turns out in ARPU for us pre-pandemic, our roaming ARPU was about AUD 2.90. A year ago, at the end of last year, it was about AUD 0.40, that's where there was a big gap in our ARPU. We're seeing only about 15% of the opportunity from roaming. At the half year it reached about AUD 1.20, we were getting closer to half of the roaming. We're now sitting, as Iñaki says, at about AUD 2.20 associated with roaming, about 85%. We've seen a steady increase, we expect that to steadily increase further through the year. On the EBITDA, it's good pick up for last year. The accounts you'll see we've restaged.
We've made a voluntary accounting policy change on government grants, which is about AUD 7 million-AUD 8 million. Basically that we apply that now against CapEx instead of into revenue. We've changed that this year, therefore, we've restated last year as well. It's just a view that it's more appropriate for us, the way we get these government grants. They're done largely to deliver a program, so we've just decided to make that voluntary change to the accounting policy.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Brian. Our next question comes from Roger Samuel from Jefferies. Roger, please go ahead.
Well, hi, morning guys. Just got two questions. First one on your fixed business. Obviously you try to offset the declining subs from NBN with fixed wireless. Are you kind of holding back the growth in NBN because you're still waiting for the proposed SAU to be finalized? Can we see a situation where your NBN subs will start to grow over time? Second question is on tax. This time in the for the full year, you recognized AUD 46 million in tax expense, but in the half year you had tax benefit. Can you explain what happened in the second half of 2022, and what should we expect for tax going forward? Thank you.
Thank you, Roger. Yes, on the NBN, before I pass on to Grant. The transition of customers from NBN to fixed wireless is something that we've done proactively. It's not that we do fixed wireless as a consequence of NBN reduction. It's that we are migrating customers from NBN to fixed wireless because it provides better margin, and we still provide a better service to our customers. That is what explains the decline of NBN base while we're still sustaining our broadband customer base. Grant.
On the tax, just a timing between the first and second half in terms of the tower asset sale. We'd agreed the deal just before year-end. We didn't settle till July, so we recognized a tax benefit for losses, capital losses, we hadn't recognized at that stage, but they were obviously certain, so we recognized that in the P&L and balance sheet at the half year, and we've used those tax losses in the second half. That's what flows through both the balance sheet and the tax expense. Going forward, it'll just be back to normal.
Okay. Just going back to the first question, I mean, do you still push the NBN products, from now on, or are you just gonna keep migrating people, to fixed lines?
No, I think that the strategy is to, like I said, to continue to manage the margin of our fixed broadband business while we maintain our position. That we are, you know, still doing significant commercial activity on NBN. We do think that there is a place for all the products. I think that we are using probably a smart use of our technology to improve the margins while we offer more choices to customers. That's really the strategy. There are a number of products that we continue to market on NBN, including enterprise, which we are still, I think, the number one provider of Enterprise Ethernet.
I think that there is a place for both, and we have the privilege of being able to use our own infrastructure where it makes more sense.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you, Roger. Our next question comes from Nick Ellis from Morgan. Nick, please go ahead.
Thanks, and good morning, everyone. Just two questions from me. Just obviously the price, sorry, the post-paid price rise in January of this year. Just trying to ask the same question in a slightly different way. Did you get a meaningful increase in churn when you pushed that through? I know it's only early days, but curious churn or spinning down, or do you think the value gap that you have versus your competitors is big enough that it didn't really change much at all? The second question was just to ask Grant, could you please repeat what you said, I think on page 22, something about medium-term EBITDA, ops free cash flow conversion, just so I've got that right. Thank you.
Thank you, Ian. I'm going to let Kieran answer the first question because I probably didn't explain myself well. We'll get it again, and then, Grant, we'll go to your question.
In January, we increased the prices for new customers. Last week we began the notification of the prices to existing customers. From January through to now, what I've, it's been a very vibrant market that's been happening, and we still maintain, we think, a leading proposition in the market when you look at the value equation we're providing our customers. We're really comfortable with the trading results we've had through that period. It's very early days. Clearly, it's only a few days in since the notification of our to our existing base, but it's not something we did lightly. As Iñaki mentioned, it's the first time in 10 years. We're very careful to make sure that the offering we are providing to our customers we felt was still market leading.
We're heading into that now.
On page 22, we have what we define as operating free cash flow. We use it for our Remuneration report, that's operating cash flow, taking out CapEx and lease payments and interest. With that definition, what I was calling out is if you exclude the handset receivable financing, which will unwound, and we back to normalize, both the CapEx to the sort of long-term guidance we've given, and some of those higher inventory, which were one-offs this year, which I talked about, you're in the sort of 40%-45% conversion from free cash flow after CapEx, after lease payments, which is very consistent with industry participants in that definition.
Obviously, if you go to just operating free cash flow, I think I also called out that for 2022. If you exclude handset receivables and your account for sort of half the other capital working movements is a one-off, you're in the sort of mid-90s% as a operating cash flow conversion ratio, which I think, you know, if we keep growing in the growth mode, that's a very strong, reasonable cash conversion.
Thank you very much. I think I'm interpreting the, I guess, the churn as not a material change. The market's moving that way, and you've still got pretty compelling value. Thanks.
Thank you, Nick. Our last question comes from Ian Martin from New Street Research. Ian, please go ahead.
Thanks, Bruce. Iñaki, I'm interested in your view on the move or the interest shown by the cloud service providers in the telco sector. I mean, they're quite well capitalized, and you've probably seen AWS's announcement of local zones in Perth, and I think Adelaide and Brisbane are on their target as well. Interesting to see the focus has brought a private LTE player. That's. I just wonder how you see that in terms of growth versus, you know, new competition, if you like, in that enterprise and government sector. Secondly, those same cloud service providers seem keen to play a role in core network services, and I think have had some success with new entrants in overseas markets.
If you'd love to hear your views in terms of how you see that playing out in terms of opportunity versus versus competitive threat.
Yeah. Thank you, Ian. Look, we actually see this as an opportunity, and in fact, we are working closely with AWS on several fronts. In terms of, you know, I think that, you know, hyperscalers are definitely bring in huge computing power, huge storage. You also need the low latency that the networks provide. We really see that as an opportunity to collaborate, and that's really where we are exploring. In terms of our network, before I go into the mobile virtual private networks. In terms of our network, we have done a significant work around the virtualization of the core network, which means that our core network, for the most of it is already operating in a virtualized environment. We're doing that on our private cloud.
Definitely there are opportunities in the future to move this to a public cloud. For the time being, we are more concentrated on the virtualization, which is really what gives the flexibility. It's really what allows us to be able to be more agile, implement things quicker. Then, you know, for the time being, like I said, the economics still don't are not the trigger for us to go into a public cloud. We are more comfortable on our private cloud. But that's something that is always the option. You know, we will, we will see how this develops. In terms of mobile private networks, that is something that we are doing in-house. We do have access to significant resources in that front, through some of our strategic shareholders.
You know that we've done already a number of. I think we already announced the mobile virtual private network with [Jancor], and we are working on some other prospects. It is something that we would do internally. We haven't seen the need to any type of acquisition to provide that product.
Thanks, Iñaki.
Thank you, Ian.
Thank you, Ian. There are no more question on the call. This concludes our call. Thank you for listening. You may now disconnect.