The New Zealand economy. Through the year we've made good progress and laid the groundwork for the change in strategy and execution that we'd outlined at our investor day. We've driven innovation through our recent boost speed upgrades and repositioned ourselves in market to drive greater awareness of fiber's superiority. We're shifting focus to simplicity and efficiency with our organization redesign and investment in new capability, and we're seeing the potential for favorable regulatory shifts in the near term. From a results perspective, total fiber connections were subdued but up 3% to over 1.1 million, with uptake lifting to over 72%, and with a further 26,000 addresses passed and now over 1.5 million, we've continued to grow fiber revenue across the year by 7% even with a deferral on annual price increases and the offset of our ongoing exit in copper services.
Our simplification program and disciplined cost management has held operating expenses at NZD 309 million, slightly better than last year. This was achieved despite cost inflation, higher regulatory levies, and one-off costs relating to operating model changes and the exploration of new strategic opportunities. This resulted in EBITDA of NZD 705 million in line with our guidance range and NZD 5 million ahead of the prior year. Gross CapEx was down 3% to NZD 415 million, with sustaining CapEx flat at NZD 205 million. Operating cash flows of NZD 559 million were strong and 9% up on prior year. We've also confirmed an unimputed final dividend of NZD 0.345 to deliver on our guidance of a NZD 0.575 dividend for the FY2025 year in total. Finally, we're also pleased with our sustainability efforts, with our electricity use down 5% and a 25% reduction in scope carbon emissions.
At our investor day we outlined a strategy reset, shifting our operating model from the great network builder to being the great network operator. This was based over three distinct horizons and a key focus on Horizon 2 out to 2030. As noted, I'm very pleased with the progress we've made over the year and we remain on track. To recap, we have a clear purpose reflecting the intergenerational role we play in enabling better futures for our people and country, up 4% to 62%. The right-hand chart also shows we're seeing more net connection growth in our fiber areas. Whilst copper migration now comes to an end, we've seen accelerated demand for data, average monthly usage at 671 GB in June, up from 623 GB the prior year, and this lifted again to 684 GB in July.
Across our base, 19% of fiber customers now use more than 1 TB of data, up from 16% the year before. As the chart on the right shows, the higher the plan speed, the more data is consumed. Trends post our boost speed upgrade are relatively new. However, we can point to a significant increase in throughput for 50 Mb, now 100 Mb, plan customers at peak evening time of 14% versus pre-boost. That tells us again if you provide larger pipes and speed, customers will use it. We also know the shape of consumer behavior continues to evolve and plays to fiber's strengths. Annual network usage was up almost 10% with a 70% increase in peak traffic events. To put that into context, the usage increase is the equivalent of 29,000 years of high definition streaming. This again highlights the resilience and scalability of the network.
We continue to forecast average monthly customer usage of over 1 TB by 2029 and believe fiber to be the only resilient technology to support this. We're continuing to shift as a market challenger, lifting consumer awareness and deepening understanding. As an example, our TV campaign highlighted the potential shared limitations of wireless broadband where neighborhood traffic competes with your living room at peak times versus that of a dedicated connection on fiber. Consumer surveys also confirm the growing awareness of these differences, with fiber well ahead of 4G and 5G fixed wireless on net promoter scores. Turning to our Expand pillar, while the property sector has been subdued as a result of the economy, we're stabilizing NPD volumes to pre-COVID levels with 24,000 lots over FY2025 and we expect circa 20,000 lots- 25,000 lots per year ongoing. Meanwhile, we've seen steady growth in connectivity.
Cell site connections reached 3,400 by year end while smart locations grew 23% to more than 2,500. Data center development is also creating emerging growth. We've launched Express Connect, a new solution that simplifies and accelerates data center connectivity, enabling remote provisioning in as little as four hours with no extra equipment or on-site support. Finally, an update on the potential Tasman Ring subsea project with Datagrid. Our MOU and engagement has ended as the project did not meet our investment criteria. We'll continue to monitor opportunities in the sector, but this is no longer an area that we are actively pursuing. Our Adapt pillar is about driving operational excellence as part of getting future fit. We refined our operating model in the second half of the year. This involved realignment of teams, roles, and processes to better reflect the acceleration of our shift to an all fiber business.
This has seen a roughly 10% reduction in roles and we're now adding new capability in customer retention, data and analytics, and AI integration. Our Frontier team has also evolved, having extended fiber to more than 9,000 new premises. Their scope now covers the full copper retirement, including simplifying property and legacy infrastructure assets and supporting optimization of our non-core footprint. Regulatory settings also remain critical, and we now have that clarity for the next four years. Our ID reporting in May showed we were very close to earning the maximum allowable revenue in 2024, with the core RAB continuing to grow. Finally, our Pioneer pillar, we've made strong progress towards retiring copper. By 2030, total lines fell 41% over the year to 92,000.
That also meant 16,000 fewer copper faults, with the left-hand chart showing reactive fault spend that fell another NZD 7 million to NZD 19 million across the three zones. In our fiber area, just 13,000 lines now remain and we expect to retire this part of the network by mid-2026, with all customers having now received notifications. In non-fiber areas, lines declined 24,000 to now 68,000. The shutdown progressively enables copper cable recycling. We've completed an initial trial with roughly 1,100 tons of copper recycled and at a NZD 3 million net benefit. More important, frankly, were the learnings taken onto fiber. With our Frontier Initiative, 51% of customers have registered their interest. Already, 4,500 premises have been passed and are ready to connect, with 1,200 connected by end of June and around 2,000 connected by the end of July, showing the strong momentum and uptake of fiber.
As a summary, therefore, of the six strategic opportunities that we'd noted for exploring, four remain on track and are either delivering benefits now or still forecast to do so in future. One, as IoT, is under further review for scalability and one, as subsea, we've made a conscious decision not to actively proceed with. I'll now hand over to Drew to take us through the financials.
Thank you Mark and Kia Ora everyone. As Mark mentioned, it is great to be presenting a solid result underpinned by strong growth and net cash flows from operations and positive net profits after taxes, given the pressures in the macroeconomic conditions throughout fiscal year 2025. Turning to the income statement, we've reported EBITDA of NZD 705 million, up NZD 5 million over fiscal year 2024. Revenues of NZD 1.014 billion were up NZD 4 million, driven by 7% growth in fiber revenues that were partly offset by our strong strategy to transition out of copper, resulting in the continued planned decline in legacy revenues. For operating expenses, we made good progress on reducing legacy cost and this helped us absorb inflation in a number of cost lines as well as NZD 9 million of one-off spend.
This was made up of NZD 5 million operating model changes and NZD 4 million for subsea cable new revenue exploration costs as we've discussed previously. DNA increased due to the acceleration of depreciation on our copper assets, which was NZD 99 million in the current year, up NZD 9 million from the prior period. Net finance expense was down NZD 7 million as our weighted average interest rate on debt reduced from 5.77% to 5.39%. Overall, this meant we recorded NZD 4 million of net profit after taxes for the year. Looking at the movements in our revenue categories, our fiber broadband revenues were up 7% or NZD 48 million from fiscal year 2024, driven by fiber connections numbers up 32,000 lines annually along with an increase in ARPU, which was up NZD 3.27 to NZD 58.98 across the year.
This outcome was achieved even with our annual price changes delayed from October 2024 to January 2025, which meant our fiber revenues were reduced by roughly NZD 10 million in year. Fiber premium revenues were down NZD 5 million as we moved customers from a legacy platform and they transfer connections to alternate services. At core, we continue to see growth and demand for mobile access and backhaul connections. As Mark mentioned, we continue to execute our copper exit strategy with connections down 41% and our combined copper broadband, voice, and data revenues down NZD 39 million in the year. Looking to this next fiscal year, we expect copper revenues to continue to reduce at a similar rate over the next 12 months before the tail stabilizes. Field services revenues were down slightly, driven primarily by lower new property development activity, which was offset by more roadworks project activities.
Infrastructure revenues were up slightly as a result of higher colocation services. Other revenues were up slightly with a NZD 3 million net gain from copper cable recycling sales while the prior year included a property sale which was not repeated. In the next fiscal year we will revise our revenue reporting categories to provide more transparency on infrastructure revenues, which will coincide with implementing the reporting formats of the new accounting standard IFRS 18. Total operating expenses of NZD 309 million for the year are down annually by NZD 1 million as we had strong cost management practices in place to offset inflationary pressures across many areas in the business. Labor costs were NZD 85 million, which included NZD 5 million of change costs. The labor capitalization rate has reduced from 47% to 44% as network build activities decline versus prior periods such as fiber rollouts and connection activities.
For network maintenance, the general trend remains reducing fault volumes, partly offset by inflation and service company costs. Other network costs were flat and included NZD 4 million of network and property optimization spend as we retire copper network assets. Electricity costs were also flat year-on-year with a 5% reduction in consumption offset by higher electricity charges. Consultant spend was up NZD 3 million as we invested to explore potential new revenue opportunities such as the subsea cable. We presented a view on fiscal year 2024 direct copper expenses at our investor event in December, and the table on the left gives an update on the breakout by category. Overall, it shows a reduction of NZD 9 million to NZD 45 million in costs, primarily from network maintenance and IT expense savings with the shutdown of urban copper.
We do expect to see copper optimization spend in the other network cost line to increase as we shut down cabinets and exit sites in the future. Meanwhile, the chart on the right is our copper asset depreciation profile. As we've shown before, there is a NZD 50 million step down in fiscal year 2026 now. The copper cables in our fiber areas are fully depreciated and will continue to step down in the future periods. Moving now to CapEx, gross CapEx for the year was NZD 415 million, down NZD 12 million from fiscal year 2024. Within gross CapEx, NZD 205 million was sustaining CapEx and NZD 210 million was for growth. Gross CapEx was supported by NZD 4 million of crowdfunding and NZD 36 million of customer contributions for roadworks, new property, and rural broadband activity. This slide shows CapEx using regulated categories for the fiber regulated asset base (RAB).
CapEx attributable to the fiber RAB, which excludes capital contributions, is estimated to be about NZD 340 million. H1 allocations have been audited, but H2 are yet to be audited for the 2025 calendar year. For the non-RAB CapEx, you can see copper CapEx was NZD 9 million, of which NZD 6 million was third party funded. Leverage net debt to EBITDA lifted slightly to 4.52 x on an unadjusted S&P methodology. With borrowings up by NZD 245 million, we remain well below our S&P threshold of 5 x. S&P has recently introduced some new digital infrastructure rating criteria covering tower companies, fiber companies, and data centers. They are currently considering how the new criteria applies to Chorus. The new rating criteria introduced by S&P is an acknowledgement of the stable regulatory environment and utility-like nature of our fiber business.
During the year, we repaid our first tranche of Crown financing in June and the debt replacement was very successful with strong domestic demand for the NZD 170 million of capital notes. We have NZD 514 million of euro notes to refinance in fiscal year 2026 and we're currently looking at our refinancing options. Lastly, about 70% of our interest rate exposure is fixed for the next three years. Finally, on dividend and guidance, we've announced a final dividend of NZD 0.345 unimputed to be paid in October. The DRP is not available. Dividend guidance for fiscal 2026 is NZD 0.60 unimputed and reflects the ongoing positive trend in cash flows. Fiscal year 2026 EBITDA guidance is NZD 710 million - NZD 730 million.
We base this range on continuing growth in our fiber connections base along with the next fiber price change applying from January 2026 and also continuing to execute our strategy to exit copper services with similar reductions in copper revenues as seen in fiscal year 2025. We would be in the bottom half of this range if the current macro-economic conditions continue longer into the 2026 calendar year. With the Fibre Frontier expansion program at an end, gross CapEx guidance for fiscal year 2026 is in the range of NZD 375 million - NZD 415 million. We've reduced the sustaining CapEx range to NZD 195 million - NZD 215 million for fiscal year 2026. This reflects the decline in copper spend and in the near term coming in lower than the range we provided at the Investor Day in December.
Overall, the numbers are tracking well, and we're pleased with the strong foundations we've set the business on for the future. I'll now hand back to Mark to run through the outlook.
Thank you, Drew. If we turn to the start of Horizon 2 and our journey out now to 2030, we expect to see the benefits of change realized progressively with Chorus reflective of a simpler, more efficient, innovative, and competitive business. First, under lead, our proposed pricing changes are with retailers for consultation now and come into effect from January 1st. However, we'd note a number of retailers have already changed pricing earlier, in part driven by other local fiber company changes. We retain our ambition for 80% uptake and already have several initiatives underway to target fiber-ready homes. With a stronger economy and shifting technology trends, we're confident our uptake goals are within reach.
I'd also note this includes our digital equity trial aimed at 1,500 low-income households, but it's clear this is a complex issue and as we've consistently said requires broad collaboration across telcos and governments to scale on the right. Ongoing multi-year research continues to highlight the gap between fiber and fixed wireless. Awareness of both is very high, but consideration and particularly preference as first choice remains strongly in fiber's favor. The scalability of fiber makes it attractive for evolving technologies like AI, where industry forecasts anticipate a step change in demand. The rapid evolution of AI will only further cement fiber's technological superiority, with Nokia forecasting that AI will generate almost 40% of global consumer broadband traffic over the next decade. Separately, recent Venture Insights research noted six key takeaways when considering and approaching AI revolution, of which align with our medium-term outlook.
Essentially, these recognize AI timing and scaling might be uncertain, but the direction is not, where the debate on fiber versus fixed wireless will be reframed and AI applications will likely shatter the good enough performance threshold. Symmetry and latency, the strengths of fiber, will become the critical performance indicators, with a new lens needed on valuation of telco assets based on their readiness for the AI era. Frankly, fiber networks are crucial in an AI-driven world where ultra-fast, low-latency speed matters, where reliability counts, and where massive data transfers are the norm, and we believe those demands will come sooner than we think. In our Expand pillar, NPD remains a key growth driver for connections. We've recently streamlined our processes and refreshed our market proposition to make it even easier for developers to access the benefits of open access fiber.
As the chart on the right shows, fiber activation builds year-on-year as homes are constructed, reaching around 80% activation as connections within five years of passing a lot, and remember a lot can represent multiple connections separately. Infrastructure demand continues to grow through backhaul, smart locations, data center connectivity, and mobile infill. Our third pillar, adapt, continues our focus on operational excellence. We've spoken to changes made in our second half, and simplification of systems and processes will continue in the new year. We're also seeing a positive pathway to regulatory simplification that we talked about at the Investor Day. Encouragingly, the Commerce Commission recommended deregulation of copper services to the Minister last week. The decision strongly recognized that all rural consumers had access to alternative technologies for voice and broadband services and highlighted the continued decline in copper demand. This is a great step forward.
We're also pleased with the Ministry for Regulation's Telco sector review that provides the potential to streamline the multiple layers of regulation. The review should be completed by early 2026 and, encouragingly, is reviewing outdated legacy constructs such as the TSO and the restrictive Chorus shareholder cap. To our last pillar, Pioneer, it continues our plans to retire copper completely. We expect full retirement in UFB areas by mid-2026 and within LFC areas by the end of 2026. There's no question in our minds that copper will need to be fully withdrawn by 2030, given global trends and the cost to maintain it. Spain is the latest country to shut down their entire copper network, with the wider EU targeting 2030 for their own shutdown. Urban retirement underpins our copper recovery program.
Having completed the initial trial in FY2025, we're now selecting an extraction partner to scale up as more exchanges become copper free from early 2026, and this remains a NZD 30 million - NZD 50 million opportunity over the next three to seven years. Retirement also enables us to optimize other property assets as they become non-core. As we've said, this will happen progressively over our Horizon 2 time frame, and finally back to fiber. We were pleased to recently have the Government's National Infrastructure Commission endorse our proposal to expand fiber to 95% of New Zealanders. It was one of 17 projects and the only private sector endorsement. Our proposal has a benefit cost ratio of 6.3, based on an expected NZD 17 billion in economic benefits for a cost of less than NZD 3 billion.
However, the Commission's endorsement is independent of any government funding decisions and has highlighted, though, the absence of a government connectivity strategy for rural. We know the benefits of network expansion will be realized in the communities where fiber reaches rather than by the network builder, and that therefore necessitates some form of public input and investment. There are significant merits in this proposal and we look forward to discussions with the government on solutioning to bring this to life together. To wrap up, over the year we've continued to show that both digital infrastructure and our earnings are resilient despite ongoing economic headwinds. Whilst conditions will improve, that is realistically from early 2026, innovation will continue to be a key differentiator with the need to drive greater awareness of fiber's superiority over other technologies.
We believe the rapid evolution of AI will only continue to highlight the advantages of fiber. In parallel, we'll continue to explore strategic opportunities and while these look to the medium term, some are already delivering benefits and in others we have the clarity of not progressing in regulation. Emerging pathways create the potential for favorable shifts in the near term. Dealing with outdated constructs and copper retirement in fiber areas is in sight and will increasingly unlock opportunities for non-core assets. Finally, I would again recognize the groundwork we've laid for the reset in strategy and execution that are enablers as we transition into our horizon two with a focus on growth, simplicity, and efficiency. Our fundamental belief in fiber both now and for the future is unwavering. In our minds it is technologically superior in every way that matters. Thank you.
Let's go to the questions on the phone line, please. Operator.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question today comes from Arie Dekker with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning and thanks for a very clear presentation. First one, just on the guidance and Drew, you did mention that could be at the bottom end if macro-economic conditions continue. Yeah, I mean just in terms of those price rises that you've got proposed for the second half, I mean the mid single digit. Against that I guess the guidance does look a bit soft. Is that because you are factoring in mix shift down to continue even withstanding economic conditions? Can you also just talk a little bit about the introduction or proposed introduction of the new low speed plan at 4010 and what motivated you to put that into the mix?
Let me start, Arie. What I meant by the lower half of the guidance range, and if the macro-economic, what Mark talked to earlier was subdued growth at 32,000 connections in the last year. Right. We've said before we typically would see 40,000 to get to our aspiration of 80% by 2030 penetration. If we continue to see less movement in market and so forth, that people are not going out there and changing buying and so forth, that's where we see net connection growth be at the lower end again in the sense of in the 30,000 range. Net net, we're not factoring in more down trades or anything like that. It's more of a macro connection number. Mark, do you want to talk to the lower speed plan?
Yeah. Morning Arie. On the low speed plan, really it was to provide some optionality versus the mass market products. I think if you look at the growth in the 50 Mb plan that's now obviously become the 100 Mb plan, 50% of that growth were actually from premises that had either been off the network for greater than 30 days or that had never joined. We're conscious that actually there's a segment for market growth there that previously wasn't being tapped. It's really for the optionality. I think it's out to consultation at the moment, and to be frank, I'd say there's mixed reviews around ranging or the need to range an even lower speed plan versus just starting with the entry at 100 Mb. In some cases, there are actually retailers that quite like the idea of having that as an option.
No, thanks. I mean, because just, and again it sort of comes to the guidance. I mean you've called out NZD 9 million in the operating cost base in 2025 associated with exploring the fiber ring and, I guess, cost of changes. That sort of comes out, I presume, a decent chunk of that sort of comes out in the FY2026 cost base and you have further reductions in costs associated with copper switch off. Can you just talk me through, am I reading that wrong? Are these costs going to continue or are you going to feel more of the costs hit OpEx as the labor capitalization rate continues to come down?
Yeah, I think Arie, let me speak to that. NZD 309 million is what we reported and you're correct there's NZD 9 million of one offs, so it gets to an underlying of NZD 300 million. What we would say is we would have low single digit increase from the NZD 300 million on a net basis. That's reflective of we are increasing the one off retirement expenses for copper. You're seeing that step up as we kind of come out of our UFB areas and turn off cabinets and so forth. You have that. In addition, there's some other inflationary pressures, some rates and rents, but we would base it off of that number of NZD 300 million + very small single digit increase.
I think maybe the other point on that too, Arie, is you picked up on sort of capitalization, the transition as we move from great network builder to great network operator. The simplification in here, there's less of the focus on the mass build that there has been in the past. A lot of the role reductions that we've had are indicative of that transition to being the great network operator. Capitalization actually comes down. Whilst there's savings, they don't necessarily transition into OpEx, but they do come through and lower CapEx and obviously into cash flow.
Great, thank you. Just on a couple of the other things. The extraction partner, will there be revenue sharing proposed there, and then also, you've given a range and it's over a period of time, but just so that we can sort of get a bit of a sense of what's required and sort of monitor it, what sort of market price for copper is required, say, to support the low end of that NZD 30 million- NZD 50 million range?
Look, Arie, I think in terms of revenue share, we're looking at a range of options. As I said, one of the key takeouts from the trial was more about the learnings. It's great to have a NZD 3 million net benefit, but it was more the learnings and looking at how easy it was to extract, looking at accuracy of data records, where cables were, the gauges, the large gauge, small gauges of copper, the cables that we can take out. Some really great learnings. Realistically, we'd look to stand up the second phase in the second half of this fiscal year and we're looking at an extraction partner and how we might be able to do this to improve the margins around that in terms of the, you know, the range.
I think where we are at the moment from a market price on copper is favorable, but it's a fine balance of actually doing the extraction, which even if we can improve that or lower that extraction cost and improve the margin, there is a degree of complexity associated with it. We'd need to be able to see a pathway where that copper market price is still holding up around where it is now.
That's helpful. Thank you. Last one from me, you've had a process underway, I think, for the high sites and that's what you were going to look at first on the asset optimization. Can you just give any guidance as to the timing of potentially releasing some capital from those high sites?
Yeah, I mean, we are progressing and we have a number of things in flight right now, and obviously we haven't announced anything today. There may be something in the first half of this current year, but if anything it would be very small, and we're not going to be rushed on it. I think it's going to be more in the second half of next year, if not longer.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Ari.
Your next question comes from Aaron Ibbotson with Forsyth Bar. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Good morning. Thanks for a clear presentation, Mark. I'm just curious to get you to add some color to your confidence on reaching 80%. Just looking at some of the moving parts here. If you know you got 32, if I got it right, residential from business, new connections, new property developments. I'm not sure. How many you got? But 25 lots, 24 lots passed. 24,000 lots passed. Presumably, if you look at the sort of loss of copper connection or broadband connections in Chorus fiber area, that's probably another 10 or so. It seems to be pretty much plus, minus zero of genuine new connections of the existing base. You need to hit at least 20,000 a year, maybe more, to be anywhere near your sort of 80% target. It seems to be sort of zero at the moment.
Can you talk a little bit more to what gives you, what sort of underlying trends you're seeing that gives you the confidence that you're on track?
Yeah, sure. Morning, Aaron. I think we'd noted in the Investor Day that, broadly speaking, we needed about 200,000 + connections, 240,000 connections to get to that 80%, half of which we had recognized coming from previous NPD development. That's part of showing the chart in the presentation, that over the course of five years, you see that naturally build, obviously, with property sector slowing down some of that development from outside boundary to then inside boundary where the developments are completed. That's actually been a bit suppressed, obviously, but we see that coming back on as the economy improves. Half of that growth would come from work that's already been either completed or in train. The other half, we have big pools of opportunity. So, 240,000 in active ONTs, and that's where windback plays a key role from other technologies.
It's why we are pushing to be really clear on the technological superiority of fiber over other broadband forms like wireless or satellite. Indeed, there are segments like retirement villages. There is 200,000 ONTs that we have passed, or premises—sorry, that we have passed, that are therefore in the denominator when we calculate 80% that are not connected. That's an opportunity for us to go back again and look at those. Essentially, the cost of passing fiber is a sunk cost. Right. There are 200,000 premises that are currently passed but not connected. We do see large pools available.
Thank you. I understand all of that, but if you look over the last 12 months-1 8 months, you can cut the numbers different ways, but certainly the way we cut numbers there seem to have been very limited, if any, progress outside of converting copper lines and new developments. Why haven't you been able to tap into that?
No.
To 18 months?
Yeah, look, to clarify, of the 31,000 growth, there's actually very few that is from copper, really. Not on a large scale. We're still getting retention, but actually there is growth. It is real growth that's coming, as you know, I said from the.
Those 20,000 copper lines, if I look at the broadband only, I think you had whatever it was, 30,000 in total. Have they all gone to other technologies then? Not been converted to fiber?
Some have gone to other technologies, yep, some have gone to other technologies. We are seeing growth that's outside in fiber, that is outside of copper withdrawal and a migration back to fiber. As I said on the 100 Mb, sorry, the 50 Mb plan that is now the 100 Mb, half of that growth in the 41,000 lines were coming from premises that had either been off the network for greater than 30 days as a minimum or had never joined the network. That's indicative of win back for us, as much as we can tell.
Yeah, I appreciate that, but there's a gross and a net impact now. We're looking at the net impact, but thank you. My second question, I don't want to be confrontational, but when you talk about this preference of fiber over fixed wireless, which I appreciate and the type of questions being asked, there's a price gap as well here. If you ask people if they want to drive a Porsche versus a Volkswagen, I guess most people would say Porsche, but a lot more people drive Volkswagen. What research are you doing when it comes to price sensitivity, particularly towards the lower end of these offerings? How much more are people willing to pay to get that better or gold standard experience?
Yeah, we're obviously always looking at this. We only change prices once a year, and from a regulated basis can only do so once a year. We build in a number of factors. At the low end, when we'd put the 50 Mb plan in market originally, that was in part reflective of the economy. It was in part reflective of fixed wireless and a shift to 5G, in particular part of our boost upgrades as well, about cementing that clear difference between fixed wireless and our now 100 Mb plan and our 500 Mb plan. From a pricing perspective, we'd consider it's a little bit more for a lot more at the low end that's now become 100 Mb plan. We're already seeing a 14% increase at peak times for usage. That's in the space of only a few weeks.
At the moment, I would say actually from a pricing perspective you're getting a lot more capacity, speed, performance for a little bit more.
Okay, that was it for me. Thank you.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Phil Campbell with UBS. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning guys. Just a few from me. Just interested in the comments around S&P with this new rating definition. I'm just wondering if you can give us a little bit more color on that. It seems as though what they possibly have done with some other companies, it's like a one notch change. I'm just wondering what that possibly would mean for the dividend policy going forward if S&P was to change.
Thanks, Phil. What they've indicated for data centers, tower companies, and fiber companies like ourselves is that with the strong and continuing operating cash flows we generate, they can look at whether they move us up in terms of their down driver. Currently, S&P is a 5x down driver; it may increase that slightly higher. We haven't seen their final report. Now that we've reported our final results for 2025, we expect by the end of this calendar year they'd have their update on their report. It's too early to say any change to our dividend policy. As you know, our dividend policy is based on our operating cash flows, that sustaining CapEx, and paying out in the 70% - 90% of that range. At this point, we're really confident in what we can do, real sustaining dividend as it is.
Yeah. Is there any timing on when you would expect S&P to finalize their decision?
They do a credit review every year towards the end of the year, so we'd expect by the end of this calendar year.
Yeah, normally early in the new year, isn't it?
Usually, yeah.
Just another question for you, more of a hypothetical one. Obviously, Vector is looking at selling their Auckland fiber network. I was just wondering if you have done any strategic thinking, if that was potentially to go to an LFC, for example, what does that mean for Chorus potentially in terms of competition in Auckland?
Yeah. Morning, Phil. Look, obviously we've looked at it. What I can say is we already compete in that space already today, and there is significant overlap on the network and Vector's assets. It's not something that we would be looking to acquire.
I suppose the question was like if, if say for example an LFC was to buy it, I suppose that potentially would mean more competition in Auckland or.
I think there's already competition now, though.
Right. Right. The other one was just page 26 of the prezzo is just a bullet point there, talking about opportunities to assist MNOs with FWA high data usage migration. Is that involving kind incentives to try and get those MNOs to transfer FWA over to fiber or is there something else going on there?
No, I think it's just more a recognition again of where we talk about win back from off net connections. As you know, the market is primarily 4G fixed wireless, capacity constraints, capital requirements, and particularly at the high end of mobile users for broadband that are using a significant amount of that network capacity. Just that there's an opportunity to look for an addressable market for us to do a win back back to fiber and actually provide some relief for the mobile operators at the same time. All of whom have fair use policies anyway.
Right. Just the last one for me, just on pricing, I'd just be interested in, you know, obviously the price changes you're proposing for next year. I'd be interested in the kind of, you know, the pricing principles that you adopt with respect to that. Obviously you've almost assuming you've got to take into account what some of the competitive offerings are out there in terms of potentially what people can afford, and then obviously you've got your revenue cap to consider as well. I'd be interested to kind of how you came up with those kind of price changes.
I think you've probably just picked up on it, Phil. It's a range of things that is looking at our MAR headroom, which in our ID reporting we were pretty close to last time for 2024. CPI is obviously a factor, but we also look at the broader investment and expansion of the network as well. We are looking at competitive products. I think from a fixed wireless perspective as well, you'd recognize there's probably some subsidy that's from the higher margin mobile products there. We're comfortable with the superiority of fiber as a technology. I think too often they get compared as though they're apples for apples. For everything that we see today and where this market is evolving to and technology is evolving to, consumer behavior is evolving to actually will play into fiber's strength.
As I said earlier to one of Aaron's questions, I think that little bit more for a lot more, we are reiterating and qualifying again the superiority of fiber in market over both 4G and 5G fixed wireless at our two mass market level plans for now, 100 Mbps and 500 Mbps.
Okay, great, thanks.
Thanks Phil.
Thanks Phil.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from Wade Gardiner with Craigs Investment Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi guys. In the latest op stats we saw there was a level of down trading to that 100 Mb plan, but the speed uplifts were really only put through in mid June. Two months on from that, what have you seen? Has it been stimulatory in terms of driving more of that down trading?
Hey Wade, look, it's really early days. We're looking at both sides and whether we're seeing any down trade activity. What I can say is we're also not seeing up trading activity, that 500 Mb now into 1 Gb. That's something to monitor. We're not seeing significant downtrades, and actually when we're doing research of the 500 Mbps customers, that intention to move is actually really low single digit. It's cemented really. We'd noted that a couple of the retailers have already put through price changes, in part again I think because other local fiber companies, excuse me, have put their own annual price increases through. We've seen some movement there, but I think that's equally because the market's rebalancing. There are a few retailers that have done pricing changes.
There are some that we're aware of that are coming online now, and maybe some that are waiting when we're actually changing our own prices on 1st of January. The main point is we're not seeing a significant downtrade. We saw about a quarter of the home fiber starter or the 50 Mb plan growth that came from down trades. Principally, three quarters came from off net and either legacy retail plans or from premises that had never joined the network.
Okay, the other question I had just in terms of the fiber ring, can you give a bit of color as to why that didn't proceed? What was missing?
Yeah, sure. I mean look, along the six strategic opportunities that we put forward on that Investor Day, they were all exploratory, and for the Tasman Ring it was always predicated on a reasonable level of pre-sales demand and being able to secure that commitment. As we said, we haven't been able to meet that investment criteria. I think what we've also learned is timing has shifted to the right. I think manufacturing, as you know, we all see it pretty much every other day. There's activity around either data center connectivity or builds and or subsea cables being built. There are some limitations around supply. If you think about manufacture, depending on the number of fiber pairs that you're looking to build, there's equally some limitation around deployment on shipping given the limited number of boats or vessels that are actually out there to lay the cable.
Things are moving to the right. It hasn't met the criteria for us in terms of timing or having those commitments. It's something that we'll still keep an eye on and observe, but passively. I think we want it to be clear that we're no longer actively pursuing it.
Okay, thank you. That's all from me.
Thanks, Wade.
Thank you. There are no further phone questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Mark Aue for closing remarks.
Thank you, Ashley, and thanks everyone for attending today. Thank you for those that have joined and asked questions. We look forward to catching up with you again in the future. Thanks very much.