This is Bruce Song speaking from the TPG Telecom Investor Relations team. Welcome to our presentation for our results for the full year ended 31 December 2023. TPG Telecom acknowledges the Traditional Custodian 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 and present. Our CEO, Iñaki Berroeta, will begin today's presentation with the results highlight and business update. Our CFO, John Boniciolli, will then present our financial performance in more detail before Iñaki closes the presentation with a summary of our strategy and outlook. Other members of the Executive Leadership team are also here for Q&A. I will now hand it over to Iñaki.
Thank you, Bruce, and good morning to everyone. 2023 was a really strong growth year for TPG Telecom. We are simplifying our business, reducing complexity, and elevating the service we offer to our customers while at the same time delivering above-market growth rates. The highlight of the year was the performance of our mobile business, where service revenue increased 9.3% driven by the subscriber growth we had coming into the year and successful plan refreshes across our premium postpaid products. In Fixed Broadband, the expansion of our fixed wireless offering helped us grow margins, and we are now shifting focus to stabilize our overall subscriber base amid intense competition. Our Enterprise, Government, and Wholesale business continues to grow its core connectivity products, and we are focused on maintaining and building sales momentum amid challenging market conditions in 2024. We are executing our key strategic priorities. Customer transformation is well underway.
In 2023, we're reducing market Frontbook plans by 40%. In 2024, we will focus on significant rationalization of our back book or legacy plans. We made significant progress on the upgrade of our national mobile network, with 5G now installed across more than half of that network. We continue to explore infrastructure sharing options to help us deliver on our commitment to bring stronger competition and value to regional Australia. The strategic review of our fiber infrastructure assets is progressing as we assess value optimizing options following our decision to cease discussions with Vocus last November. On the back of a strong result, we have a positive outlook improving over the medium term. Our 2023 EBITDA result was AUD 1.93 billion on a guidance basis, excluding transformation cost and impairment on the Internode brand, which we have stopped selling and plan to transition to our major brands.
This reflects growth of 7.6% on 2022 and was in the top quartile of our original 2023 guidance range provided in February 2023. Today, we are providing guidance for 2024 of AUD 1.950 billion-AUD 2.25 billion, but inclusive of transformation cost, recognizing these costs are likely to continue up to and including fiscal year 2026, so should not be excluded from guidance. Beyond 2024, we expect growing momentum in our cash earnings outlook. This will occur as recent working capital movements normalize, we complete the 5G rollout, transformation costs lessen, and debt reduction and potentially lower market interest rates reduce funding cost headwinds. I will now provide a summary of our 2023 financial results. Service revenue was up 4.3% to AUD 4.632 billion, driven by strong growth in ARPU and subscriber numbers compared to the previous year.
Statutory EBITDA was down 12.2% to AUD 1.875 billion, reflecting the AUD 402 million one-off gain we recorded on the sale of our passive tower and rooftop assets in the year 2022. We gave our updated guidance last August with transaction costs included and transformation cost and material one-offs excluded. On this basis, EBITDA of AUD 1.93 billion was up 7.6%. Excluding the transaction cost, EBITDA would have been AUD 1.961 billion, up 9.4%. Statutory EMPAT of AUD 49 million was also impacted by the one-off tower sale gain from fiscal year 2022. We use adjusted EMPAT as a reference for our dividend payout, removing one-offs as well as non-cash tax and amortization from spectrum and customer base intangibles. Adjusted EMPAT for fiscal year 2023 was AUD 584 million, down 6.9%, primarily reflecting higher expenses for interest, depreciation, and amortization.
Earnings per share, adjusting for customer base amortization and one-offs, was AUD 11.9 per share and was down for the same reason. Cash capital expenditure of AUD 1.126 billion was up 20.1% on 2022 and broadly consistent with our updated guidance from last August, reflecting investment in the 5G rollout and IT transformation. Now, notwithstanding higher Capex, operating free cash flow was up 81.5% to AUD 167 million on higher EBITDA and an improvement in working capital movements. The board has declared a final dividend of AUD 0.09 per share for a total of AUD 0.18 per share for the year. This holds dividends constant on fiscal year 2022 despite the reduction in the 2023 net profit and reflects our confidence in TPG's cash earnings. Return on invested capital, adjusting out goodwill and other intangibles, increased to 6.1% in fiscal year 2023, up 40 basis points, reflecting underlying earnings growth.
I will now talk about our brand positioning, which is changing in line with our transformation program. Vodafone is strongly positioned as a value leader among tier one telco brands. Our plans and products offer superior data inclusions compared to our competitors, as well as a host of exclusive benefits such as our global roaming offering and our partnership with Live Nation, allowing early access to live music tickets. We are proud to be a value leader as we evolve the brand portfolio. In December, we announced we were stopping the sale of some of our secondary brands, Internode and Westnet. This focused our value brand position to TPG and iiNet. These brands remain the home of great value high-speed internet in Australia, focused on simple, not fast offerings and with increasingly popular mobile plans.
Across our brands, customer experience simplification is progressing and will accelerate over the next couple of years. In addition to brand rationalization, we have been exiting complex legacy products such as email and, in year 2023, reduced the number of frontbook plans in market by 40% to about 110 plans. This transformation to make things simpler for the customer is supported by IT system consolidation and modernization. In 2023, we moved 37 applications to the cloud, and we decommissioned a further 43 applications. This year, we are targeting a 50% reduction in our backbook consumer plans, as well as a large reduction in plans for our small to medium business customers. We will undertake additional decommissioning of legacy systems and move another 40 applications to the cloud.
The target state of all these is a cleaner customer focus with no more than about 100 mass market plans and products, a significant improvement in the quality and reach of our digital interface, and enhanced cross-selling capabilities across products and services. This will be enabled by having a single application stack for each of consumer and Enterprise, Government, and Wholesale, and a cloud-first approach to our entire IT architecture, reducing the total cost of ownership. This focus on simplicity and modernization is supporting the strong performance of our mobile business. The combination of subscriber growth momentum and the plan refreshes we implement in postpaid at the start of the year have driven this result. Customers are paying slightly more for plans in postpaid, but they are consuming more data, so the unit cost of the consumption continues to fall.
Mobile service revenue was up 9.3% in total, 9.9% to AUD 1.673 billion in postpaid, and up 7.3% to AUD 482 million in prepaid. This reflected ARPU growth of 8.5% to AUD 45.80 in postpaid, and a slight reduction in ARPU to AUD 18.90 in prepaid. Subscriber numbers were up 17,000 in postpaid, following growth of 86,000 the year before and 167,000 in prepaid with growth across all our brands. Our key focus on 2024 is to rationalize plans and products, with total service revenue growth expected to continue at a lower rate as subscriber growth momentum slows. We have recently commenced notifying customers of our plan updates on some of our Vodafone postpaid and prepaid plans, as well as Lebara. Access fees have risen, but we are increasing the monthly data allowance for most affected plans, and we are confident our new plans offer great value in the market.
Price adjustments support our ongoing investment in technology, security, and network capabilities to provide a greater customer experience. In our fixed broadband business, our focus in the last couple of years has been on driving profitability against a backdrop of higher NBN wholesale costs. We have delivered on that objective with very strong growth in our on-net fixed wireless offering and targeted NBN pricing updates, delivering average margin per user of 13.6% to AUD 25.90 in 2023. However, total subscriber numbers have fallen. We grew in fixed wireless by 56,000 subscribers to 227,000 at the end of last year, making us the largest provider of fixed wireless services in Australia. But our net subscriber numbers were still down 91,000, primarily reflecting the impact in the NBN market and on-net products of aggressive competition from smaller and non-telco entrants. In 2024, we are focused on stabilizing our overall fixed broadband base.
We have had a strong uptake on our NBN Fiber Connect offering since introducing that product last year, and we expect our fixed wireless customer base to continue to grow. Plan refreshes remain very targeted. We have recently commenced notifying customers of plan updates on some of our TPG and iiNet NBN plans. Those changes reflect a range of factors, including the updated Special Access Undertaking, but generally, some lower and mid-speed plans will see a price increase, while prices for some higher speed plans are coming down. Our fixed wireless and on-net fixed products remain great value alternatives to NBN. In enterprise, government, and wholesale, we have continued to grow revenue and gross margin despite challenging market conditions. Service revenue in enterprise and government was up 2.8% to AUD 732 million.
This reflected ongoing strength in sales of our on-net fast fiber and NBN enterprise Ethernet products, as well as bespoke managed services such as software-defined wide-area network products. Gross margin was up 6.1% to AUD 537 million, following a concerted effort to deliver direct cost efficiencies on top of revenue growth. Our focus is on our range of connectivity and network products, on growing sales in the small to medium business segment, and on maximizing value through increased utilization of our fixed infrastructure base. In wholesale, the decline of non-core products using older voice or fixed access technologies remains a drag on revenue growth. Wholesale revenue, excluding Vision Network, was down 3.5% to AUD 276 million, with gross margin down 6.4% to AUD 204 million. There remains a significant opportunity to grow our wholesale mobile business, noting the intense competitive landscape.
Vision Network was reported as part of the wholesale segment for the first time in 2023, following the completion of functional separation from the retail operations and the relaunch of the business and brand. Sales revenue was up on a pro forma basis to AUD 108 million, reflecting the introduction of new wholesale rate cards early in the year. In 2024, Vision is targeting subscriber growth through competitive pricing plans and credits for new retail service providers. The ongoing investment in our mobile network remains a key feature of our strategy and an increasingly powerful aspect of our value proposition to customers. We have now upgraded more than 3,000 sites to 5G. That's over half of our network sites, and we intend to complete the Metro 5G upgrade in fiscal year 2026. Huawei transmission equipment has been decommissioned and upgraded in all metro areas.
We were the first Australian telco to shut down our 3G network nationally and the first to implement a dual-core network enabling 5G. We continue to explore infrastructure sharing options to increase our mobile network reach in regional Australia, which would enable a step change in value and competition for people in these areas. Our people are thriving as we nurture a strong company culture around our vision to be Australia's best telco. This slide shows just two examples of initiatives that are making a strong contribution. Our Leading with the Spirit program has now been attended by 831 leaders over three years, supporting a strong increase in leadership scores across our employees' surveys. I'm also really proud of the Accelerate Health program, launched in 2023, targeting female employees in technology and engineering roles.
We have seen a 7% increase in engagement in that cohort and will continue to invest in the development of this important group in the coming years. We are also progressing with our sustainability goals. Information security is a major component of our social contract. In addition to investing heavily in our internal cyber capabilities, we are increasingly participating in cross-industry collaboration initiatives to protect customer information. In 2023, this included intelligence sharing partnership with Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange. We are working towards our target to power 100% of our operations with renewable energy by 2025. An important step in our emission reduction program in 2023 was having our emission reduction targets validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, the first Australian telco to achieve this validation.
We launched our supplier engagement program to address key issues including energy use, greenhouse emissions, human rights, modern slavery, nature and biodiversity, and waste reduction across our supply chain. We received conditional endorsement from Reconciliation Australia for our Reconciliation Action Plan under the Innovate RAP framework. In the area of gender diversity, female representation in our Australian workforce increased to 34.9%, just below our 2024 target of 35%. We were also awarded HRD's Five Star Employer of Choice Award for the second year in a row. I'm delighted that we are making strong progress on these goals for our people and community at the same time as we deliver improving financial performance and accelerate our business simplification. I will now hand over to John to talk in depth about the financial results.
Thank you, Iñaki, and good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here to present my first results as TPG Telecom CFO. I want to say thank you to Grant Dempsey and the whole TPG finance team for their support in the transition. I'm looking forward to spending more time with investors and analysts over the next couple of weeks. I will start with the EBITDA results for the year. The FY23 statutory result of AUD 1.875 billion was, of course, lower than FY22 due to the gain on the tower asset sale of AUD 402 million that occurred in FY22. We achieved FY23 EBITDA of AUD 1.93 billion on a guidance basis despite incurring higher transaction costs. This strong year-on-year result was primarily driven by operating performance in mobile, as Iñaki has already noted, where service revenue grew 9.3%.
Our original FY23 guidance provided in February 2023 was for EBITDA of AUD 1.85 billion-AUD 1.95 billion after removing an estimated AUD 50 million of transformation costs. We upgraded this guidance at the half-year results to AUD 1.925 - 1.950 billion despite absorbing AUD 20 million-AUD 25 million of estimated transaction costs. At that time, we also provided an updated outlook for transformation costs at AUD 35 million-AUD 40 million. Transaction costs grew beyond our estimate to AUD 31 million owing to the attempted Vocus deal, adding to costs already incurred on the Vision Network strategic review and the attempted MOCN with Telstra. Adding back the FY23 transaction costs incurred translates to an EBITDA of AUD 1.961 billion above the original guidance range, that is, if transaction costs were not absorbed into guidance. This represents 9.4% year-on-year growth in EBITDA.
Capital expenditure of AUD 1.13 billion in cash terms and AUD 1.08 billion in accrual terms came broadly in line with the updated guidance we gave at the half-year. I'll return to EBITDA when I discuss our FY24 guidance. I'll first get into more detail on the FY23 result, starting with revenue. This slide shows total revenue, which grew 2.2% in FY23 to AUD 5.533 billion. Total service revenue growth was AUD 193 million, or 4.3%, to AUD 4.632 billion. This compares with FY22 service revenue growth of 1.5%. The FY23 result was driven by strong performance in consumer mobile. This was a result of subscriber-based growth in prepaid in FY23, as well as the cumulative effect in FY23 of the subscriber-based growth in both prepaid and postpaid that took place in FY22, combined with plan refreshes in postpaid, which supported RPU growth. Total mobile service revenue growth was 9.3%.
Consumer fixed service revenue was flat year-on-year. The decline in our NBN subscriber base in the year was offset by the benefit of the increase in our fixed wireless base as well as RPU growth. Our focus in FY24 is on stabilizing and optimizing the fixed broadband customer base. Enterprise government and wholesale service revenue, excluding the Vision Network business in wholesale, grew 1.7% in FY23 despite challenging market conditions. Good growth in mobile, on-net fast fiber, and NBN enterprise Ethernet was offset by declines in older technology voice and connectivity products. Revenue from these older technology products was AUD 149 million in FY23, down from AUD 187 million in FY22. The AUD 15 million growth in other service revenue was driven by Internet of Things and growth in roaming revenue from inbound visitors. In FY23, inbound and outbound roaming revenues returned to and now exceed pre-COVID levels.
Hardware revenue was down AUD 79 million, or 7.7%, to AUD 901 million. This was primarily volume-related, with lower sales as the customer upgrade cycle for personal devices continues to lengthen. Margins on hardware are, of course, small, so there is minimal gross margin impact from this reduced volume, as shown on the next slide. Our total gross margin growth was AUD 264 million, or 9.3%, to AUD 3.105 billion, a significant step up on the FY22 growth rate of 1.9%, excluding the tower sale gain. This demonstrates operating leverage as both gross margin and EBITDA growth were stronger than both total revenue and service revenue growth. The FY23 result reflected the strong mobile service revenue growth in both consumer and EGW, as per my previous slide, combined with a AUD 56 million reduction in direct telco costs.
This reduction in costs was due to reduction in NBN subscribers from migration of TPG's existing NBN base to on-net fixed wireless, increasing fixed wireless as a percentage of our total broadband mix, as well as lower subscriber numbers because of continued intense competition in the NBN market. This was offset slightly by an AUD 14 million reduction in wholesale gross margin, excluding Vision, as we continue to cycle out of older, high-margin voice and connectivity products. Vision revenue of AUD 108 million reflects Vision being recognized in wholesale for the first time following the FY22 functional separation from consumer. Vision's retail customer revenue was flat year-on-year as ARPU improvements offset subscriber declines. In hardware, gross margin improved AUD 15 million despite the reduction in handset volumes. This was because of the change in the way we finance consumer handset debt.
As we have explained in the past, TPG has suspended selling handset receivables to third parties and is instead funding them on our balance sheet with our own bank debt. The cost of third-party handset debt sales was previously absorbed in handset margin. In FY22, we incurred approximately AUD 30 million of such costs. Hence, in FY23, the avoidance of these costs was a benefit to gross margin of AUD 30 million. While the benefit to gross margin will persist as we continue with our current approach, the year-on-year uplift we saw in FY23 will not repeat. Other gross margin declined AUD 7 million in FY23, including a AUD 3 million reduction due to the cessation of spectrum lease arrangement with Telstra in the fourth quarter. Total revenue from this arrangement was AUD 13 million in FY23. Operating costs are an area of particular focus for me as an incoming CFO.
I have been impressed by TPG's deep commitment to position itself for medium-term growth by creating a dramatically simpler business that enabled us to maintain a low-cost structure. However, given the scale of investment and transformation across the business, employee and IT support costs have had to go up over the last two years, and that is reflected in our FY23 result. Please note, for simplicity, the numbers I am discussing on this slide map to our statutory accounts with no adjustment for transaction costs or transformation costs. The overall operating expense increase of AUD 105 million, or 9.5%, includes the AUD 31 million of transaction costs incurred in FY23 on the attempted mock-in arrangement with Telstra, Vision Network sale process, and VOCA's transaction process. The growth in OPEX was 6.7%, excluding these transaction costs.
Working from the left of the chart, you can see that total employee expense was up AUD 51 million, or 13.5%, in FY23. This reflected the importance of pay rises at this time of cost-of-living pressures for our people. Investments have also been made to build capability and capacity to support business simplification and IT modernization, and in specific critical areas to support long-term performance. For example, in FY23, we added 40 FTEs to uplift IT and network security for our customers. This employee cost investment was offset only partially by the non-recurrence of the redundancy costs we incurred in FY22. The other main area of operating cost growth has been in technology costs, which were up AUD 42 million, or 11.6%, in FY23. Approximately half this growth was transaction costs associated with the mock-in and transformation costs associated with the retirement of the email platforms we were offering customers.
We are certainly experiencing a higher cost of doing business in technology generally, particularly in software and security, as well as third-party contract rates. These increases were partly offset in FY23 by gross productivity savings across our network and IT spend base. Other operating expenses grew due to transaction costs, as previously noted. We expect operating cost growth to continue in the mid to high single-digit growth range in FY24 due to the full-year impact of investments made in FY23, combined with the ongoing higher costs of doing business. This is inclusive of our expectation that transformation costs are going to continue around FY23 levels of about AUD 40 million a year up to and including FY26. We will, of course, be continuing to seek to deliver OPEX efficiency across the business where it is prudent.
There has been immense effort across all areas of the business to offset cost pressures through efficiencies. We will continue to deeply consider discretionary spend while making the investment required aligned to ensure we drive sustainable, high-quality, medium-term cash earnings growth. You may have seen an announcement last week from Tech Mahindra that we have partnered with them to run our Manila contact center and shared services operations. This partnership will result in some OPEX currently recognized in employee expenses transferring to outsourced services. Now turning to capital expenditure as well as depreciation amortization expense, both our FY23 results and our outlook to FY26 reflect a stage in the investment cycle when expenditure is high on both network infrastructure for 5G upgrades and on business simplification and IT modernization. Cash CapEx was AUD 1.126 billion in FY23, while accruals CapEx was slightly lower at AUD 1.082 billion.
The different directions of cash and accruals CapEx versus FY22 reflects timing differences, with some capital expenditure incurred in FY22 having been paid for in FY23. Another change from FY22 to FY23, which will continue in FY24, is CapEx mix and the resulting impact on our depreciation and amortization profile. CapEx mix in FY24 will comprise lower levels of network modernization and an increase in IT modernization, as well as data and analytics and security investment. As we continue to ramp up the IT modernization, software-related CapEx will be a greater share of total CapEx. Given the lower useful life of software relative to network infrastructure, this capital investment is amortized at a faster rate. This mix shift, as well as the broader cumulative impact of higher CapEx over the past two years and the recognition of new leases, resulted in a 6% increase in FY23 depreciation amortization expense.
We recognized new leases in FY23 after we executed new tower arrangements. We also had a full 12-month lease accounting impact from the July 2022 tower asset sale. We expect depreciation and amortization expense to grow at mid-single-digit rates again in FY24. We are guiding for total cash CapEx of AUD 1.05 billion in FY24. We continue to expect annual accounting CapEx of about AUD 1 billion up to and including FY26 when the 5G rollout and the business simplification and IT modernization will be completed. It remains our expectation that beyond that year, CapEx should trend back towards 13%-15% of service revenue or between AUD 700 million and AUD 800 million a year. In FY24, we'll also be funding the AUD 128 million of expenditure on the new 3.7 gigahertz spectrum licenses as we announced in November last year. Our FY24 CapEx guidance and outlook commentary to FY26 excludes spectrum expenditure.
You'll note that we've split out amortization of spectrum and customer-based intangibles from other depreciation in the chart. This is to align the comparison with CapEx, which is excluding spectrum and because customer-based amortization is a non-cash item on which we don't incur any CapEx. My next slide covers interest costs. The team completed a AUD 2.5 billion refinancing in FY23, which has set us up with a flexible borrowing platform, very competitive borrowing rates, and no refinancing until FY26. Nonetheless, our total interest costs grew substantially in FY23 to AUD 341 million from AUD 187 million in FY22. The biggest driver was the doubling of the effective interest rate on our bank debt over the course of the year due to higher market interest rates. The addition of new leases, as I mentioned on the previous slide, led to an increase in lease interest costs.
The year-on-year impact of higher market interest rates will again be felt in FY24 with our prevailing cost of bank debt currently about 6% and the need to fund spectrum and other investments preventing us from deleveraging until next year. In addition, as I've discussed, we have also made a deliberate decision in FY23 to increase bank debt by bringing handset receivables back on balance sheet, delivering lower cash funding costs overall for this activity. This meant gross bank debt was AUD 386 million higher at the end of FY23 than at the end of FY22. We continue to work actively to seek an optimal solution for handset debt.
From FY25, as working capital movements normalize and operating cash flow continues to grow, we expect to start deleveraging, a process that should accelerate as the benefits of IT modernization and business simplification accelerate over the medium term and Capex investment begins to reduce post-FY26. Our operating free cash flow result for FY23 was pleasing with strong EBITDA and improved working capital trends enabling growth of AUD 75 million, or 81.5%, to AUD 167 million. This was despite FY23 being the peak year for the negative working capital impact of bringing the handset receivables financing back on balance sheet. That impact increased AUD 111 million to AUD 376 million in FY23. That leaves a remaining balance of approximately AUD 165 million still to unwind, about AUD 150 million of which will be in FY24, translating to a reduction in impact year-on-year of AUD 226 million.
The AUD 223 million year-on-year improvement in other working capital movements was due to lower trade receivables as a result of lower handset sales, reduction in inventory levels from stabilization of our supply chain post-COVID, and other working capital movements. The movements in cash Capex and lease payments are consistent with trends I've already discussed. We expect continued improvement in operating free cash flow in FY24 with continued EBITDA growth, a flat Capex profile, and the reduction in the impact of handset receivables financing movement, as I just mentioned. Our final dividend of AUD 0.09 per share is a reflection of our confidence in the medium-term cash earnings outlook for the business. It makes total FY23 dividends of AUD 0.18 per share and a payout of 57% compared with our policy to pay at least 50% of adjusted NPAT.
The team mentioned at the last result that our outlook for franking was challenged in the context of TPG's continued utilization of revenue tax losses, meaning we aren't generating new franking credits. The chart on the right highlights the franking and tax loss balances disclosed in our financial statements. The franking balance as at 31 December 2023 was AUD 133 million, which after payment of the final FY23 dividend will reduce to AUD 61 million. That is a reduction of AUD 72 million. For illustration only, if FY24 dividends were to continue at a similar level to FY23, the current franking balance would be insufficient to fully frank this year's dividends. A period of unfranked dividends would then be likely until we have utilized all tax losses currently recognized on the balance sheet.
I've mentioned already that we expect trends from working capital, CapEx, transformation, OpEx, and interest costs to improve over the medium term. All these factors support our outlook for cash earnings, for our dividend outlook, and for our ability to start to reduce debt from FY25 onwards. This slide sets out some of the trends we have seen in recent years and the direction in which they are heading, starting with working capital, where we will see a more than AUD 200 million improvement in FY24 now that we have passed the peak of the impact of the suspension of handset receivable sales to third parties. Next is CapEx, which has risen above AUD 1 billion but is expected to step down post-FY26 to recurring levels in the AUD 700 million-AUD 800 million range as we complete the 5G rollout, IT modernization, and business simplification.
OPEX is also elevated in the medium term as a result of business simplification and IT modernization but is expected to normalize from FY27 once the transformation is complete. Along with growing EBITDA, the improvement in these cash drivers will enable us to begin to reduce bank debt, with recent growth in lease interest also expected to stabilize. That is before any benefit we might get from lower interest rates in coming years. This all points to a reduction in borrowings, a strongly improving trend in the free cash flow available to equity holders, and the achievement of our objective of having net debt, including leases, within the range of two to three times EBITDA. In FY24 specifically, free cash flow to equity, as defined here, is expected to improve from FY23 due to growth in operating earnings and the improvement in working capital trends discussed.
We expect this to more than offset slightly higher CapEx, including spectrum, plus expected higher lease payments and bank interest costs. I will close with our guidance for FY24. FY24 guidance is on a slightly different basis to FY23, with transformation costs now included in the guidance range because of our expectation that these costs will continue at around FY23 levels up to and including FY26. EBITDA guidance is subject to no material change in operating conditions, as always. It excludes any impact of material one-offs such as transaction costs, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, disposals, impairments, and any such other items as determined by the board and management. Our guidance range for FY24 is AUD 1.95 billion-AUD 2.025 billion, the midpoint of which implies a lower growth rate than we delivered in FY23.
EBITDA in FY23 was AUD 1.923 billion on a comparable basis, that is, with the AUD 38 million of transformation costs included but AUD 31 million of transaction costs and AUD 17 million iiNet brand impairment excluded. I'll now provide some color to this FY24 EBITDA guidance. We are cycling lower mobile subscriber growth than we were this time last year, and we do not expect the kind of growth in inbound and outbound roaming revenue we had in FY23, which was AUD 35 million, to reoccur as roaming has now fully recovered beyond pre-COVID levels. We expect to see lower service revenue growth in consumer fixed broadband this year given the lower fixed NBN customer base. Offsetting this is our focus on stabilizing the fixed subscriber base, and we expect to continue to grow fixed AMPU, including through continued growth in fixed wireless.
In addition, market conditions are a little uncertain in the enterprise government and wholesale segment, and the high cost of doing business continues across the whole industry. I noted earlier the reduction in FY23 hardware margin costs of about AUD 30 million after we suspended the sale of customer handset debt to third parties and financed this activity where they were in bank debt. While this gross margin cost avoidance persists in FY24, the FY23 year-on-year benefit to EBITDA will not repeat in FY24. Finally, late in FY23, we ceased to receive revenue under a short-term arrangement we had to sublease some 3.6 gigahertz spectrum to Telstra. This amounts to about AUD 30 million accounted for in other income, which will not be realized in FY24.
Our focus remains on delivering EBITDA growth in FY24 as we continue on our journey to position TPG for medium-term growth by creating a dramatically simpler business. I'll now hand back to Iñaki.
Thank you, John. To summarize, we are positioning TPG for long-term growth and creating a simpler, smarter company. In 2024, we expect growth in mobile subscribers and service revenue, stabilization of our subscriber base in fixed broadband, and continued growth in our enterprise business. We will focus on progressing the 5G network upgrade and on our exploration of mobile network sharing options in regional Australia. Our strategic review of our fiber infrastructure assets is continuing and may present several value-enhancing alternatives. As we look beyond 2024, the underlying trends of a growing population and increasing data consumption support underlying growth for our business. We are delivering ever simpler and smarter offerings and experiences for our customers and will maintain an ongoing emphasis on infrastructure sharing to drive capital efficiency.
Importantly, we expect improving cash earnings over time as trends for working capital, Capex, transformation OPEX, and interest rates begin to normalize. We will now take questions.
Thank you, Iñaki. If you have a question, please press star one now. Our first question comes from Eric Choi from Barrenjoey. Eric, would you ask all your questions at once? Eric, please go ahead.
Thanks, Bruce. Thanks, team, and good to have you on board, John. I'll fire three. First one, John, you're going to feel like you're talking to a brick wall given you just gave us a million drivers for guidance. But using my very, very simple logic, I sort of see you guys diving to a AUD 55 million EBITDA increase at the midpoint. And then if I just do follow up on what this prepaid and postpaid did last week means, maybe they're worth 100% by themselves. I guess you're hiding ahead of everything else being negative, which would be conservative. I've mapped that right. That's the first one. Second question, just on postpaid churn, I think you've disclosed it for the first time, which is helpful, and it's earlier back at 15%.
So I'm just wondering how much of this was driven by price increases versus other things such as I think you've previously called out travelers leaving. But if it is the price increases, does that have any implications for any future price increases that you're going to do? And then thirdly, just on strategic review, I understand you're limiting what you can say, but we want to do our own math on this. So hypothetically, if you were to do a simpler transaction and exclude that EGW, how much would that reduce the 550 EBITDA that you previously disclosed? Thank you.
Thank you, Eric. Look, I'm going to ask you to repeat the first question if you don't mind because there was part of it that we couldn't hear on the third one before you do that. Look, we continue to do the review, and I think that this is not the time for us to talk about these things. It is an active process, and when we have some of those answers, we'll come back to all of you. But for now, it remains a review, so we are not going to talk about any of the hypotheticals of the review.
Got it. The first question in our, sorry, is your FY2024 guidance, EBITDA guidance, conservative just because it's such a AUD 65 million EBITDA increase midpoint? But if I look at the mobile price increase last week on prepaid and postpaid, they're worth AUD 100 million by themselves.
Yes, clear. So look, I think it's cautious, but rather than conservative, I'm going to ask John to get into the details of that, and then I will ask Kieren to talk a little bit about churn.
Hi, Eric. Thanks for your question on EBITDA. You're right that the implied midpoint of the FY24 guidance delivers a lower growth rate than what we delivered in FY23. Certainly, in my commentary, I try to give color to 7 factors that were driving that, including lower mobile subscribers sort of cycling this year versus this time last year. The roaming has fully recovered and now exceeded pre-COVID the lowest service revenue in consumer fixed broadband. On this point, just to give you a bit more color on that, in FY23, excluding the vision wholesale charge, consumer fixed gross margin grew about AUD 56 million. While we expect to continue to grow AMPU in nominal total dollar terms, we don't expect that similar year-on-year increase in absolute fixed gross margin, largely due to the intensity of market competitiveness.
Added to that is uncertainty in the market conditions in the enterprise, government, and wholesale. And then, of course, I referenced mid to high single-digit OPEX cost growth. And then, of course, the AUD 30 million or thereabouts benefit we got in 2023 on handset margin, taking the receivables back on balance sheet, that will persist but we won't get that same year-on-year growth. So I'm sort of restating the points I raised, perhaps giving you a bit more color on consumer fixed gross margin outlook.
Thanks, team. That makes sense.
Thanks, Eric. Kieren here. To the second question on postpaid churn, it's difficult to give a simple answer as at any time, there are numerous and there are always overlapping factors behind why a customer would choose to join, stay, or leave. One of the factors that bears repeating is what Iñaki covered and then John also repeated is just the intensity and the increasing intensity of competition in the market. And just as evidence of that, I look at just the current handset offers in the market. Look, in fact, there are tier-one telcos that are currently offering 100 GB for AUD 39. So it's although it's difficult to say what is the isolation impact of churn as a result of the plan refreshes. Clearly, what we did do is we carefully monitored changes in our customer base over that period and the period afterwards.
It's probably fair to say that churn was within what we were expecting.
Thank you, Eric. Our next question comes from Entcho Raykovski from Evans & Partners. Ancho, please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. So I've got a question on fixed and then a couple of hopefully more straightforward ones on numbers. Firstly, on fixed, I'm interested in what you've seen in the fixed market since late last year when a number of the other RSPs increased prices, obviously following the NBN SAU changes. So have you seen any benefit to subs in that period? You've obviously given us the full-year numbers, which are down, but just interested in whether there was a benefit to you at the end. And then your decision to put prices up from 20th of March for the lowest-speed tiers, is that just a reflection of the impact on margins in the NBN SAU? Are you factoring in high churn when that comes in and sort of the rationale for you waiting for a number of months since the 1st of December?
I know there's a few in there, but I think it's interesting the dynamics in the fixed market. And then secondly, just your level of comfort that the AUD 40 million of annual transformation costs will drop down post-FY 2026. It's obviously a few years away, so what level of comfort do you have they'll reduce? And finally, lease interest into FY 2024. Should we just take the second-half run rate of AUD 71 million as indicative of what the FY 2024 number is going to be? Thank you.
Thank you, Entcho. What I'm going to do is first, I'm going to ask Kieren to talk to you a little bit about the way we see the fixed market and some of the things that we are doing. Kieren?
Thank you, HO. So just maybe one point to clarify. At the end of last year, there were price changes across the market, and you described them as price increases, but some plans generally went down and some went up. And what you saw was higher-speed plans were often coming down and lower-speed plans are often going up across the market. That was in conjunction with you will have seen changes in that NBN had rolled out around Fiber Connect. And so what we saw was really a movement towards higher-speed plans over that period. We rolled out Fiber Connect with the end of last year. And since that period, what we've seen is a market increase in the proportion of sales that are going to the higher-speed plans.
With the price changes that you mentioned that have been announced recently from us, which also saw some of those higher-speed plans come down in price, we expect to see that volume increase as well.
Thank you, Kieren. Thank you, John. Number two, so related to transformation, our level of comfort around past 2026 is good in the sense that it is a strong program. It is a program that is company-wide, so it's looking into everything that starts from customer journeys, customer proposition, products, going all the way to the consolidation of our IT stack. And it does have a very strong governance around it. So we're really looking at it very closely to make sure that this investment, which is multi-year investments of this calibre, are risky. So from our perspective, and we're putting a lot of emphasis on making sure that we do it at a reasonable cost. But we are seeing already some of the benefits, and we do see a lot of the decommission of platforms reduction.
There are significant things that we are seeing as we go and we are able to manage before the completion of the program. For that reason, the level of comfort in the organization on concluding this by 2026 and also getting the benefits of it is quite high. Maybe John can go into a question related to lease costs.
Yeah. Thanks, Ancho, and the nuances of IFRS 16 accounting. The way I would describe it is lease costs in FY24 on an annual basis should be flat to FY23 on an absolute basis and therefore down on annualizing after 2023. And what I would say, though, is to give you a bit more color is given the nature of the amortization schedule, while lease interest will be flat year on year or flat each year on year, actual lease payments, i.e., principal and interest, will be slightly up.
Right. Thank you.
Thank you, Ancho. Our next question comes from Darren Leung from Macquarie. Darren, please go ahead.
Great. Thanks, guys. I might just ask three as well, and I might just fire them off upfront in the interest of time. So operating cost base, can I just confirm when you provide FY24 guidance, are you including the AUD 15 million-AUD 20 million of customer value reinvestment as well that you guided through six months ago? And does this drop off by the end of 2025, or will that continue until 2026? So that's the first question. The second one says in relation to the dividend. And so you're calling out higher transformation costs, obviously handset refinancing payments, and there's some higher interest costs in there. But is it fair to conclude that the dividend's probably unlikely to change from the current AUD 0.18 per annum until 2026 at earliest?
And then the third one, just on postpaid pricing, should be a pretty simple one, but can you please confirm that you intend to change the Backbook pricing as well and just the timeframe you expect to achieve this, please?
Thank you, Darren. Look, I'm going to ask John to give you a bit of clarification around our fiscal year 2024 cost. In terms of the second one related to dividend, we do not give guidance on dividends, so we just cannot get into that answer. The same applies for number three. We do not give forward-looking pricing decisions that we are making. We never have done it, and we will not do it. It's a bit of a matter of principle that we are very happy to talk about what's going on in the market today, but nothing moving forward. John?
Yeah. Yes, the 15-20 is included in our FY24 sort of commentary on cost. Yes, we do expect this to drop off, and we've previously made comment on the benefits we expect on a cash basis, and they still hold.
Thank you, Darren . Thank you, guys.
Thank you, Darren. Next question comes from Lucy Huang of UBS. Lucy, please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thank you for taking questions. I've got three as well. So just following on mobiles, are you able to remind us what proportion of the customer base is sitting on these in-market plans that would be impacted by the recent changes to the access charges? And then just secondly, as well on mobiles, did you see any downtrading from your postpaid products down to prepaid given prepaid performance was a bit stronger than expected? And then just thirdly, any color can give us on your EBA agreement. When does it come up for renewal given we've seen quite a bit of pressure on wages more recently? Thanks.
Yeah. Thank you, Lucy. So let me ask Kieren to get into the first two questions, and then I'll talk to you about EBITDA.
Thanks, Lucy. So it's about 80%-85% of the base. To the first question and to the second question, not really. There was no marked increase down into prepaid. The main drivers of prepaid up were obviously travel, return to school, etc., and an increased activity around that period. We didn't see a marked increase at the post to pre.
Yeah. In terms of our EBA, the EBA was done this year, so it's already incomplete.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Lucy. Our next question comes from Tom Beadle from Jarden. Tom, please go ahead.
Hi, guys. I might break the trend and only ask two questions. Just on postpaid mobile ARPU, I guess six months ago, you'd spoken to an expectation of having a fairly immaterial sequential move in that underlying ARPU in the second half. And obviously, that increased by about 4%, which is a great outcome. So can you just talk about the dynamics that drove that sequential growth? And I guess what was different to your expectations six months ago? And I guess then how all this sort of rolls through into first half 2024 given the, I guess, the changes that you've communicated to your base. And just the second question is you mentioned that you're seeking an optimal solution to your handset debt. So I mean, are you actively looking to potentially securitize that? Thanks.
Thank you, Tom. I'm going to ask Kieren to talk to you a little bit about the postpaid ARPU, and then John will tell you what we are doing around the handset debt, basically, of course.
Thanks, John. So postpaid ARPU, the key dynamics behind the growth are a few things. So what we saw is a big part of the plan refreshes where we increased the allowances that were included within the plans, and we saw that increased usage being used. So we started to see people more start to trade up into plans. The second thing is we saw lower-than-expected rate plan changes down over that period. So we're able to retain a lot of the value of the price increase, and we were trading quite clearly on the higher end within our Vodafone postpaid space. So we were trying to trade more new customers coming into the higher end and really limiting our lower value.
The overall element of why we always look to make sure that this isn't just about price, but it's about the value a customer gets is that we see that there's an ever-increasing demand for quality data and a volume of data, which is really behind these changes as well.
Then on your second question on handset, look, it's just good practice to look at all elements of our balance sheet, including handset receivables. Yeah. I guess securitization is one option that we'll continue to look at, and there are other options as well, but nothing concrete to update you on at this point in time.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Tom. Our next question comes from Kane Hannan, Goldman Sachs. Go ahead, Kane.
Morning, all. Three from me as well, please. Just mid-high single-digit cost growth this year. Are there any step changes coming through the base that we should think about that might not repeat into 2025, or is that just continual growth across all the different cost aspects that potentially continues beyond this year? Secondly, just a commentary around uncertainty in government and wholesale impacting the guidance. I mean, is there any more details you can give us around that, what you're seeing? Is that customers deferring spend or cancelling contracts? And then thirdly, just the gearing comments on slide 25, so the comment improving towards the target of two to three times. I mean, do I read that that you'll be above the three-times target range in 2026? Also, if you just help me understand the pathway to being back within that range. Cheers.
Thank you, Kane. So I'm going to ask John to talk to you about cost growth and also gearing. Then I will ask Jonathan to talk a little bit about how we see the enterprise, government, and wholesale.
Yeah. On costs, it's more to do with the annualisation that the impact in 2023 rather than any non-recurring items. And remember, the commentary I'm giving on that mid- to high single-digit is ex the FY 2023 transaction costs. So in that sense, I suppose that's non-recurring or assumed to be non-recurring. That's point one. On gearing, we would expect over time for the gearing level to drop, and this includes leases. So yeah, that is our outlook, and you would have seen the slide and the commentary on how we think about the go-forward improvement and how operating leverage and cash flow improves.
John, good on uncertainty, Kane. Thanks for the question. Within two things at the moment, the first one is a lot of focus on rationalization by companies, and that's across all segments. So a lot of focus around number of services and which services are provided to which employees or which branches. So we're working through that. And then secondly, we are seeing, I guess, a slower impact from sales volume in Q3 and Q4 as we've got a much more intentional focus around, I guess, segments of growth opportunities. We see Iñaki signalled small and medium business being a really good opportunity to go after. We think that's an area of the market where our proposition being low cost and very focused on value really resonates.
Perfect. Thanks, guys.
Thank you, Kane. Our next question comes from Nick Basile from CLSA. Please go ahead, Nick.
Morning, Tim. Just two questions from me. Maybe first, just a follow-up on the gearing. Just wanted to confirm whether we should expect it to increase in FY2024, and then with that, sort of how you plan to manage increasing competitiveness or competition with the need to balance or manage the balance sheet and gearing. And then the second one on mobile, can you talk about the postpaid subscriber momentum through the second half? Was there any acceleration in the final quarter relative to, say, September quarter?
Maybe, John, can you clarify the gearing, and then Kieren will tell you around the momentum on postpaid?
Yeah. So cash flow to equity before borrowing and dividends was negative in 2023, and we expect that to actually go positive in 2024. So there's a year-on-year improvement. That would be point one. Point two, I would say like prior years, though, including 2023, given the cash Capex profile in half one versus half two and the additional spectrum costs regarding the outcome of November's spectrum auction that we notified the investor base of, we'd expect cash flow to equity in H1 to be negative and then improve in H2 and then give us the overall improvement in cash flow to equity for the full year. So that's kind of the answer to that question.
Kieren?
Thanks, Nick. So the question on, was it changed across the second two quarters for postpaid momentum. Generally speaking, the fourth quarter has greater momentum in it naturally throughout the year. It has some key events, a number of really important handset launches, which tend to drive a lot of activity into the postpaid market. And also, you see the lead-up to Christmas with Black Friday, etc., which becomes a big sales period. Christmas itself, not so much postpaid. It does drive, but it's more a prepaid activity, but really the lead-up to it. So we did see an increase, and that would be normal to what we'd expect in the end of the year.
Sorry, Nick. I missed the second part of your first question, which was how's gearing impacted by competitiveness? Well, we always manage for the medium term, the drivers of high-quality future cash earnings growth. So I guess that's starting point one. And then how we trade that given market conditions is something we consider every day, every week, every month. But we assess that by always understanding the drivers of future medium-term, high-quality cash earnings growth.
Okay. Thanks. Just to clarify, it sounds like first half, as you sort of said, is going to be impacted by the spectrum option spend, and then it's going to improve through the year as far as free cash flow is concerned.
Correct. And that's very similar to if you look at the 2023 profile, very similar in terms of the front ending of the cash Capex.
Yep. I mean, just with that, though, at the same time, in the short term, you're going to have higher interest costs. So as far as the actual gearing is concerned, you're expecting it to rise slightly before hitting a sort of peak point in the first half, or?
Correct. Remembering, we've got that positive working capital improvement that I mentioned that is on the not sort of the working capital. And that's partly offset by spectrum, higher lease principal and interest, and higher bank interest. But the net of all those combined with improvement in EBITDA and cash capex is a positive to cash flow to equity for the full year.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you, Nick. Our next question comes from Brian Hahn from Morningstar. Brian, please go ahead.
Oh, thanks. Just a couple of questions, please. On fixed wireless, are you seeing a slowdown in subgrowth relative to your prior expectations? And if so, can you talk about the dynamics that you're seeing between your ARPU and subgrowth in that fixed wireless space? And John, can I please ask whether TPG's debt leverage covenant is still 3.5 and that that covenant relates only to the corporate debt and not the total debt as you calculate it with the lease liabilities? Thanks.
Thank you, Brian. Look, on fixed wireless, I'm going to answer that one myself really quickly. I think we did talk last year about it. We continue to really take advantage of this product. It's a product that is very competitive in terms of the proposition and the pricing. But it is a product that we never intended to be a full substitute of what we do on NBN and other technologies. So from that perspective, we started with probably 60,000 adds on the first year, and we continue at that level. I think last year, we did 50-some thousand. It is a product that performs well. A lot of the ARPU trends that you see have to do more with the wind-down of the sign-up discounts. And as the base of customers on this product increases, it does have a mechanical ARPU connectivity.
But that's really what we see. And the other thing as well is that initially, a lot of the so the mix of these products was very much 4G over 5G. And I think that as we deploy more of the 5G network, we are also able to monetize these incremental speed products. John?
Yeah. On the leverage for bank covenants, it's actually 3.75. It excludes leases, and in short, there's loads of headroom.
Thank you.
Thanks, Brian. Our last question comes from Fraser McLeish, MST Marquee. Fraser, please go ahead.
Yeah. Great. Thanks. Could I just try again on, I think, the question Darren asked around your mobile price increases? I think you confirmed, Iñaki, that you are notifying existing customers. It would be helpful to get some idea of how that's going to flow through to ARPU in terms of those increases for the backbook. And then just also on fixed broadband, you're talking about stabilising that base. Can you just give us some idea of the things you're doing that you think will stabilise that base? Thanks.
Thank you, Fraser. Look, on the mobile plan refreshes, you can expect something similar to last year in terms of the amount of customers. So last year, I think we did 80%. I think this year, probably going to be about 85% of our customer base. How that flows into ARPU is not just a matter of where those plans go. There is a lot of movements during the year. The market versus last year, I would say that it's more competitive, especially around device subsidy and some of the discounting that we see. So it's something that we also need to take into consideration. And I would say that that's primarily the difference to the numbers that you saw from 2023.
In terms of the fixed, and I will let Kieren talk a little bit, but last year, we did have a delay on the introduction of FiberConnect at a time where the market was quite competitive. That is a bit the price of having too many billing systems. That's why we are investing heavily on simplification to react quicker in the market. The performance we see with FiberConnect in our base is good, but we do see significant competition in this area in the market. Kieren, I don't know if you want to add something there.
Thanks, Iñaki. Thanks, Fraser.
The only thing I'd add to build on top of the point around FibreConnect is that we've launched two of our engines in TPG and iiNet, and we're just launching Vodafone. So one will start to see that growth. The second point, and picking up on the comments before around the plan refreshes that were happening in TPG that were happening in NBN across many of the OpCos, including us or the RSPs. So what that will do is that will make our, as you will have seen, our high-speed plans considerably more competitive. So now we'll have a fantastic high-speed plan, a fantastic product across all three of our engines.
Thank you.
Thank you, Fraser. We have no more questions on the line. This concludes our call. We may now disconnect.