Good afternoon, and welcome to Spark's 2021 annual meeting of shareholders. My name is Justine Smyth and I'm Chair of the Spark New Zealand Board. On behalf of the board, it is my pleasure to update our shareholders on Spark's progress over the last year. While the board and I were hoping to hold our AGM in person this year, it was not to be. We appreciate your support and understanding as COVID has once again disrupted our plans and we've had to move to a virtual only meeting. Although we are fully virtual, you'll still be able to vote and submit questions at any time during the meeting. Based on the information conveyed to me that there is a quorum of shareholders online, the meeting is duly convened. Today, you'll hear from me as Chair of the board and from our CEO, Jolie Hodson.
I'll then put forward the resolutions as described in the notice of meeting and respond to any questions on those resolutions. We then will have time to respond to any general questions put to us by shareholders. Joining me virtually today, each from our own location, is our CEO and director, Jolie Hodson. My fellow directors, Alison Barrass, Charles Sitch, David Havercroft, Paul Berriman, Pip Greenwood, Warwick Bray, and our future director, Anna Wright. Also present today are our finance director, our general counsel, company secretary, auditors from Deloitte, lawyers from Russell McVeagh, and our share registrar, Link Market Services, who will act as scrutineer for the purpose of the polls. Now let me turn to Spark's progress over the past year. In Aotearoa, 2021, like 2020 before it, was a year defined by COVID.
New Zealand's economy fared better than expected during the year when we saw GDP return to growth, consumer spending increase, and unemployment hit all-time lows. Since that time, COVID has once again thrown us a curveball, triggered by the arrival of the Delta variant on our shores. It remains to be seen how our economy will recover from our latest lockdowns with Auckland now in its eleventh week of some of the toughest restrictions in the world. I want to recognize how challenging this has been for our Spark whānau in Auckland and to express my gratitude on behalf of the board for the perseverance and commitment of all of our Spark people. Turning to our FY 2021 results. Closed borders continue to impact roaming revenues and contributed to lower overall growth in the broadband and prepaid markets. Despite this, Spark's core business proved resilient to the pandemic headwinds.
With a stable execution backbone and a highly adaptive workforce, Spark was able to maintain momentum in key markets and adapt at pace to our changing competitive landscape. The loss of NZD 38 million in roaming revenues led to a revenue decline of 0.8% to NZD 3.6 billion. This masked a strong underlying performance in mobile, cloud, security, and service management. Mobile service revenue grew 0.5% or 4.3% when adjusting for the impact of roaming, with market share also growing 1.1 percentage points. Cloud security and service management revenue grew 5.5%, with demand increasing from businesses looking to digitize and transform. In broadband, revenue declined 1.5% in a market that remains highly competitive, with continued pricing pressure and overall market growth.
When combined with our long-term focus on disciplined cost reduction, EBITDA grew 1% to NZD 1.12 billion. Pleasingly, this was towards the top end of our guidance range. Net profit after tax declined by NZD 36 million or 8.6%, which was primarily driven by higher depreciation and amortization costs. With the resilient customer demand for our core services, we generated NZD 433 million of free cash flow, which supported a total FY 2021 dividend at NZD 0.25 per share, 100% imputed for our shareholders. Spark, like many other businesses in Aotearoa and globally, is operating with a high degree of uncertainty.
The board and I take comfort in the fact that our FY 2021 performance has demonstrated that Spark is resilient with a strategy that is geared towards the macro trends such as the rapid shift from physical to digital. This will continue to support our future growth. Today, I am pleased to reaffirm earnings and dividends guidance for the financial year ended 30 June 2022. EBITDA guidance of between NZD 1.13 billion and NZD 1.16 billion. Dividend guidance of NZD 0.25 per share, 100% imputed. As we navigate the year ahead, we recognize we have a shared responsibility with the broader business community to help Aotearoa transition out of COVID-19 and head towards a low carbon economy. In this context, we must do our part by focusing on sustainability of our own operations.
During FY 2021, we undertook a significant program of work to assess climate change risks and opportunities across our business, aligned to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. We established and verified a science-based emissions reduction target to ensure we are supporting global efforts to keep warming below 1.5 degrees. We've committed to reduce our absolute scope one and two greenhouse gas emissions by 56% by 2030, and we will focus on our supply chain to ensure that at least 70% of our suppliers by spend also have science-based targets in place by 2026. This is an ambitious target, but we believe it is achievable over time. Another core sustainability focus for Spark is championing digital equity, which is the singular focus of our Spark Foundation.
By focusing on digital access, digital skills and pathways, and digital wellbeing, we are supporting more equitable access to the digital world. A notable example from FY 2021 was the growth in connections to our not-for-profit broadband product, Skinny Jump, which surpassed 15,000 connections by the end of that financial year, an increase of 58% on the year before. We also continued our long-term commitment to diversity and inclusion. Our ambition is to achieve 40-40-20 representation Spark-wide by the end of FY 2023. This means 40% women, 40% men, and 20% of any gender. We're currently sitting at 35% female and 65% male across our workforce, and both our board and leadership squad have a 50-50 split.
Over FY 2021, it was also pleasing to see an increase in females in other senior roles outside our board and leadership squad of 3%-42%. Our focus on diversity extends beyond gender to creating a culture where all our people feel they belong. Over the coming year, we will also work to improve our cultural and ethnic diversity and reduce our gender pay gap. Finally, I'd like to touch on our health and safety obligations as New Zealand transitions away from alert levels to a world of living with COVID in the community. We strongly support the government's vaccination program and will continue to do whatever we can to encourage our people to participate.
High vaccination rates are critical to protect the health and safety of our people, partners, and customers to avoid an outbreak impacting our ability to deliver essential services to New Zealand and to support Aotearoa's recovery from the pandemic. We have completed a thorough health and safety risk assessment across our business to understand the risk profile of our different working environments. This assessment has shown we have a higher risk of COVID in some areas of our business, such as our retail teams or our essential services teams who are not able to perform their roles remotely. We are currently consulting with these teams on moving to a requirement for those roles to be vaccinated. Doing so will keep our people safe, our partners and our customers safe, and our essential services online. Now I will turn to an overview of the board changes.
Today, shareholders will be voting on the re-election of David Havercroft and Alison Barrass. David joined the board in October, bringing skills and experience from a career in technology industry that has spanned more than 35 years. With their broad range of skills and experience, both David and Alison enhance our decision-making as a board, and I offer my full support for their re-election. As we announced recently, Pip Greenwood will be stepping down at the close of this annual meeting. I'd like to acknowledge Pip for the valuable contribution she has made to Spark during her time on the board, and we will miss you, Pip. To finish, I am enormously proud of how Spark has navigated the past year. Despite the challenges, the business stepped up and delivered for our customers and our shareholders.
This is a testament to Jolie's leadership and to the capability and commitment of all our people at Spark. On behalf of the board, I'd like to thank Jolie and the Spark team for their hard work and dedication. I'd also like to acknowledge and thank my fellow directors and you, our shareholders, for your support over the year. I now invite Jolie to address the meeting.
Thank you, Justine, and good afternoon, everyone. As Justine has shared, Spark delivered a strong financial result in FY 2021 despite the headwinds presented by COVID. This was the first year of our new three-year strategy, delivering what we said we would to our shareholders while also laying the foundations for future growth. We continued to grow our established markets of wireless and cloud. Our strong underlying mobile performance was supported by an 89% increase in our pay monthly endless plans as our customers seek to do more with devices and use more data. The broadband market remained highly competitive with consumers having a wide range of providers and technologies to choose from. While our wireless broadband performance was impacted by lower overall market growth, we finished the year with connections up 19,000.
We have recently released our new broadband plans, which offer even better value for our customers, a simpler lineup, and average speeds displayed across both our fiber and wireless broadband products. Around one in four of our broadband customers choose wireless broadband because it meets all of their usage needs, it's easy to install, and it's available in many areas where fiber is not. Our ambition to achieve 30%-40% of our broadband base on wireless remains, and we will continue to compete strongly across both our Spark and Skinny Broadband portfolios by focusing on delivering the best possible experience for our customers, regardless of the technology they choose. In cloud security and service management, we maintained our strong momentum as we help businesses to digitally transform, adapting to the new environment we all find ourselves in. We also accelerated our future markets growth.
Spark Health is supporting the digital transformation of the New Zealand healthcare sector and delivered cloud, telecommunications, and collaboration revenue growth of 10.6% during the year. We grew our Internet of Things or IoT connections to over 450,000, an increase of 83% year- on- year. Spark Sport delivered its first season of New Zealand Cricket with 99.9% platform availability and widespread positive reception to our production. We made strong progress building the four core capabilities we believe will differentiate Spark and support us to grow in both our established and future markets. We're a simpler business than a year ago with a 32% increase in the number of customer journeys completed digitally and through retiring 30% of our legacy mobile and broadband plans.
We've developed deeper customer insights through data and analytics, allowing us to offer our customers more relevant products and services and improve marketing efficiency by 16%. We continue to build a smart, automated network with our 5G rollout continuing at pace. We now have 5G available in nine locations across the country. We completed the first stage of our infrastructure asset review, identifying opportunities to invest to support our future growth and initiatives to drive greater capital efficiency, increased resilience, and better experiences for our customers. Lastly, our focus on our people and building a growth mindset across our business remained a priority. This has never been more important than in the current environment where ability to adapt at pace is so critical. Our success as a business relies on our talented and diverse team, and feedback from our people over the year has been very strong.
Our employee net promoter score reached +76, so it was up 10 points from last year. With the uncertainty brought about by COVID, we evolved our wellbeing strategy to ensure it's responsive to the new challenges our people face, and it's holistic in its approach. As Justine touched on, we continue to embed diversity and inclusion into our business. We want our workforce to be reflective of Aotearoa, and we will achieve this by maintaining our momentum on gender diversity while creating the same kind of movement on ethnic diversity. As I look to the future, and as I consider the challenges we face as a nation, it is clear that technology will continue to play a critical role in how we adapt and transition to a more prosperous future.
The emergence of the Delta variant on our shores has changed the game for all New Zealanders in one way or another. Technology has helped us adapt, keeping us connected from a distance, enabling working from home, homeschooling, e-commerce, and entertaining us. It'll also help us to adapt to what is to come next. As vaccination rates climb, we need to transition to a new world where we are able to live with COVID while still protecting our vulnerable. We will regain freedoms and many of the things we miss from the days before COVID, but life won't go back to the way it was. When we look around the world, it's clear to see COVID has driven around five years' worth of digital transformation in the last two years alone. You will no doubt have seen this through the businesses you interact with every day.
New Zealand's digital future has already arrived and will only grow from here. At the same time, we're faced with one of the greatest challenges of our generation in climate change. It will take system-wide change across the economy to deliver the kind of emission reductions we need to see, and we can't achieve this without addressing our long-term productivity challenges. New Zealanders must work smarter, not harder. What's exciting to Spark is that technology is an enabler of this kind of change. As we continue to grow our business, we will also be focused on growing the digital economy and ensuring Aotearoa can reap the full benefits it will bring. We're investing in the critical infrastructure that enables businesses to innovate and improve efficiency, including emerging technologies like 5G, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence.
Imagine a world where healthcare is democratized because patients can access specialists usually only available in major centers from any corner of the country through technology. Imagine if businesses could monitor the energy and water usage in real time and adjust and plan accordingly. Imagine a time when rubbish bins can tell councils when they're full, optimizing the time trucks are on the road, or when lights adjust to conditions to save power. These are not futuristic examples. They all exist to some degree in Aotearoa today, underpinned by our 5G and Internet of Things networks. In FY 2022, we are accelerating our 5G rollout by investing an additional NZD 35 million and bringing our total investment in mobile to NZD 125 million for the year.
This will deliver nationwide coverage by the end of 2023, provided we can secure the necessary long-term spectrum rights from the New Zealand government. We will upgrade our Mayoral Drive Exchange, and we intend to invest in approximately 10 MW of additional capacity at our Takanini data center, which will make it one of the largest in New Zealand once completed. We will continue to invest in our rural connectivity through our joint venture, the Rural Connectivity Group, which turned on its 261st cell tower and through our partnership with the Marae Digital Connectivity program where 445 maraes were connected over the last year.
Combined, our investments into 5G, data center capacity, and rural coverage mark a significant contribution to New Zealand's connectivity and resilience, and they position us to capitalize on the strong momentum we have in our established markets of mobile and cloud.
Our rapid digitization will also require robust trust frameworks to underpin the safety and security of the digital economy. The increase in cybersecurity incidents in New Zealand over the last year is testament to this. Our subsidiary MATTR provides the infrastructure to solve historically difficult challenges facing digital security, privacy, and data verification, and is leading the conversation on the role of digital trust in Aotearoa and globally. As our economy continues to digitize, we must also be upskilling, reskilling, and building a talented pipeline locally. It's not the case today. We've seen acute skill shortages due to the closed borders. Fewer students are taking up STEM subjects, and so as we expect. We also must support our small to medium businesses to take this journey as well. It's why we need a just transition to a high-tech, low-carbon economy for businesses and Kiwis alike.
Up to one in five New Zealanders may be digitally excluded in some way right now. Over 200,000 households are not connected to the internet. Technology has the power to break down barriers, but it can also create barriers for those who can't afford the connectivity or devices they need to access it, or who don't have the skills to use it or just don't trust it. It's incumbent on us, the broader New Zealand business community, and on the government to work together with the community sector to bridge this divide. When I look ahead, more than ever before, I see a strong alignment between our aspirations as a business and the needs of our country. When I spoke to you at our AGM last year, I shared our FY 2023 ambition for Spark.
That we will have made it easier for our customers to work, learn, connect, and be entertained. Enabled businesses big and small to transform and grow through technology. Invested in our people and built a high-performing inclusive culture that attracts the best talent. Helped to lift digital equity, playing our role in creating a fairer and more inclusive New Zealand. Delivered consistently strong returns for you, our shareholders. This remains our focus. We're on our way, and we believe that doing so will help all of New Zealand to win big in a digital world. I'd like to close by thanking you for your continued support of Spark. We have a significant role to play in the years ahead, and we're only able to fulfill that purpose with the support of our shareholders, our customers, our people, and our communities.
I now turn to matters requiring resolution as outlined in the notice of the annual meeting with a poll to be called on each resolution. Each of resolutions one to three set out in the notice of annual meeting are to be considered as ordinary resolutions. To be passed, they require the approval of a simple majority of the votes cast by shareholders entitled to vote in voting on the resolution. There will be an opportunity for shareholders to ask questions on each of these matters. There'll also be a further opportunity to ask general questions following the resolutions. Questions that relate to personal customer matters will be directed to our investor relations team who will address these directly following the meeting. For shareholders attending via the online portal, please submit your questions on the resolutions or general business now.
For shareholders participating by phone, please press star one to queue for a question. The operator will ask you for your name and the resolution you'd like to ask a question on, and you'll be introduced at the appropriate time during the Q&A session. For shareholders attending via the online portal, once you have clicked on Get Your Voting Card and registered as a shareholder, you'll be able to vote in relation to each resolution. Please select For, Against or Abstain. You can edit your voting card at any time up to the close of voting. Remember, you can also call the helpline anytime for assistance. Once you have completed your online voting card, submit the card to cast your votes. For shareholders voting via the phone, the operator will provide instruction and guide you through the voting process at the appropriate time during the meeting.
Our first resolution relates to the company's auditor, Deloitte. The Companies Act sets out a procedure for the reappointment of auditors, and under that procedure, the auditors are automatically reappointed. Deloitte was first appointed as auditor in 2020. The motion concerns the fixing of the auditor's remuneration and seeks shareholder approval that the directors be authorized to fix the auditor's remuneration. I now propose that the directors are authorized to fix the remuneration of our auditor, Deloitte. Are there any questions concerning the motion?
There are currently no questions online or on the phone.
Thank you, Chanté. The next resolution concerns the reelection of Alison Barrass as a director of Spark. Alison is retiring in accordance with the NZX Listing Rules and offers herself for reelection. The board recommends Alison to you as an independent director of Spark and unanimously supports her reelection. I invite Alison to address you.
Good afternoon. I'm delighted to be here today to stand for reelection to the Spark board. The last five years on the board have been an immersion in digital transformation that has been incredibly rewarding to be a part of. I have certainly learned a lot from my colleagues around the board table and from the Spark team. Spark is a business that has transformed significantly. This company is not just New Zealand's largest telco, it is a multifaceted business that has been moving at lightning pace to continue to stay relevant, cutting edge, and central to the rapidly changing technology needs of New Zealanders.
Over the last five years, Spark has increasingly become a customer-led organization focused on running an agile business model that is foundational to our digital transformation and customer centricity. We have developed into a leader in health and safety management, making substantive changes to the organization's approach to the safety, health, and the mental well-being of all employees. We have set an outstanding example of how to implement significant cultural change using our Blue Heart initiative to continue to drive diversity and inclusion at all levels of the organization. The Spark of today is light years away from where this organization was 10 years ago with regard to culture, diversity, and inclusion, and I'm delighted to have been a small part of that change. I am proud to have been a part of this company's journey.
As Chair of the HRCC, we have managed a highly successful leadership transition and supported a refresh of the executive bench. We have a young, smart, diverse, and extremely talented leadership team, and we have an organizational design that is tilted toward customer and consumer needs. I'm committed to continuing to support the Spark team to deliver outstanding outcomes for the business and for shareholders, to putting the customer at the forefront of our board conversations, and to working hard to ensure that Spark is the primary tech partner that helps New Zealanders win big in a digital world. Thank you.
I now propose that Alison Barrass be elected as a Director of the company. Are there any questions concerning the motion?
We do not have any questions currently online or on the phone.
Thank you. The next resolution concerns the reelection of David Havercroft as a director of Spark. David joined the board as a non-executive director in October this year. In accordance with the NZX Listing Rules, he must retire and stand for election at this meeting. The board recommends David to you as a non-independent director of Spark and unanimously supports his reelection. More detail about David's credentials can be found in the notice of meeting. I invite David to address you.
[Non-English content]. My name's David Havercroft, and like many of us, today, I'm talking to you from my home in Auckland. From 2009- 2017, I was at Telecom New Zealand and then Spark as Chief Technology Officer and then Chief Operating Officer. Since then, I've focused on board roles. I've been on the board of Cordia, Southern Cross Cable Network, and Connect Eight. Today, I'm a member of the board of Kiwi Wealth and of Westpac New Zealand. I've spent all of my career in technology and telecommunications industry. I've held executive management positions in IBM Asia Pacific, British Telecom, and Cable & Wireless. In my years in those industries, I've seen a huge and rapid transformation trend that's been brought about by new technologies.
I've seen the pace of that change ever-increasing as we go on. I'm hoping to bring my understanding of that trend, my understanding of Spark New Zealand, of the market we're in and our industry to board. Although I only joined the board in October, it's been an eventful month. While our business, like so many others, has been challenged by Auckland's lockdown and COVID restrictions throughout the country, as a member of the board, I appreciate we will need to guide the company through the next phase, navigating some fairly complex choices that will keep our people, our partners, our customers safe whilst delivering for you, our shareholders. I'm very honored to have the opportunity to support Spark as it supports Kiwis to adapt and thrive for a digital world. [Non-English content] .
I now propose that David Havercroft be elected as a director of the company. Are there any questions concerning the motion?
We do not have any questions on the phone at this time.
Thank you. If you could please now submit your vote for each of the resolutions on your electronic voting form. Please select for, against, or abstain. Thank you for your participation. Voting will be open until the conclusion of the meeting, and results will be released to the NZX and ASX following the conclusion of the meeting. Before we take general questions from shareholders, we need a few short minutes to ensure we have captured all questions relating to the resolutions. I would now like to take the opportunity to address general questions raised by shareholders. As previously mentioned, any customer-related matters will be directed to the investor relations team and addressed directly following the meeting. A reminder, if you're attending by phone, please press star one to queue for a question. Please make your questions succinct and concise as possible.
It should be noted that when questions are asked relating to similar topics, one representative question will be put forward to the meeting to be addressed. Now.
Soon may the Wellerman come to bring us sugar and tea and rum. One day when the plumbing is done. Lockdown restrictions continue to tighten. A right whale bore. The captain called all hands and swore he'd take that whale in tow. Soon may the Wellerman come to bring us sugar and tea and rum. Sing and dance along with me y'all. Let's go. The majority of life on our planet is aquatic.
It looks something like this. Neither they nor the planet can stop and wait.
My ocean's deeper.
Now we turn to our general business questions. Do we have any questions?
We have a question from Neil Anderson. Spark Sport. How does its revenue stack up against its costs, as it's not clear from the annual report? What are the future prospects for increased returns to shareholders with streaming services such as this?
Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Anderson, for the question. I'll hand that question to Jolie.
Okay. Thank you, Justine. Just to stand back from the overall. If we think about the objectives of Spark Sport, it's to deliver a best-in-class fares offerings that differentiate both our core mobile and broadband offerings. It's around bringing new content and creating commercially viable business that we can grow not only through our own business but with partnerships with others. If you look at the specific question you've asked around revenues, they're included in our other operating revenues. We don't separately disclose the information around Spark Sport subscribers 'cause it is commercially sensitive around those revenues. But what I can tell you is the investments we make are consistent with what we've made in media for the last few years.
Prior to the time of having Spark Sport, we had Lightbox, which we sold to Sky as part of the general entertainment package. For Spark Sport, our media investment is similar level, and we are seeing growing subscribers through that period.
Thanks, Jolie. Do we have any other questions?
We have a question from Graham Bond. How many subscribers did Spark have for the New Zealand cricket series?
I'll be corrected if I'm wrong here, but I think we streamed about 3 million hours of cricket, and I think to about 240 Spark Sport viewers. Would that be about correct, Jolie?
That's correct. It was over 3 million hours consumed and 240,000 viewers on Spark Sport, and it continues to grow. That's the first year of a partnership over six years, and we're looking forward to the summer cricket this year as well.
Do we have any other questions?
We have a question from Coralie Van Camp. Are you still receiving complaints about fake Spark technical calls? I got another one yesterday on my landline.
Oh. It's an ongoing issue. I'll pass to Jolie. She'll have a more detailed appreciation of where we're at the moment.
The scams are an international issue that exist across all of the telecommunications providers. We continually work both across the industry with our fraud teams and to make sure that we try and block and shift as many of these calls as we can. It's a constant. Every time we are closing down one avenue, there are more being added. It's something that we continue to focus on to make sure our customers are not experiencing these issues.
It's I mean, it is an ongoing issue, and we do our very best because we understand the concern for everyone involved. Thank you very much, Coralie, for your question. Do we have any other questions?
We have a question on the phone. I'd like to hand over to the operator.
Yes, sure. We do have a question on the phone from Hianly Chang . Hianly Chang , if you can share your question.
Yes. Can you hear me please?
Yes, we can hear you.
Hello. Can you hear me? Oh, yes.
I can hear you.
Yes. Yes. Just like last year.
I can-
Yeah. By phone annual meeting, then it's good because I can do multi-tasking, that I can listen, and I can read at the same time, and I can eat. May I ask that if this sort of phone AGM, you can extend it to other companies and then charge them a fee so that other AGM in the South Island, etc , or maybe several weeks from now, there are still some AGM going to be held in New Zealand. Is it possible to do this so that we can earn some money as well?
Thank you very much for the question.
Hello?
Hello, can you hear me, Ms. Chang? Thank you very much for the question. I'm glad to hear that you're so good at multitasking. I think it's important as well. It is a service that can be provided, so any other company that's holding an AGM can have a service just like ours, and we provide a 0800 service for that. So it is an option. If you're wanting to listen to other AGMs and have that phone service, I think it's a good idea to perhaps contact them and ask them to provide that service. It's certainly something that can be provided. Thank you for your question. Is there any other questions?
We have a question from Margaret Gordon. The plans for Spark's future are good. The experience of good service is important to retention of subscribers. I still hear tales of woe re slow answering times, voices that present difficulties for older listeners with imperfect hearing, onward referrals on phone calls that necessitate many repetitions of a problem and failures to follow up from some in-store personnel. Does Spark intend to give such problem a priority?
Thank you for the question, Ms. Gordon. What I can say is that customer service is an absolute top priority for Spark, and we hope to deliver as best we can to all our customers. We aren't perfect, and certainly it is a priority and things that we will be working on. Call center wait times, we've made some great progress on. Is there any more detail, Jolie, you could provide to that?
I would just add to your comments, Justine, in terms of the fact that we continue to focus on improving our customer experience, making sure that we have a wide range of channels for which our customers can contact us and get served swiftly and can self-serve themselves as well. We, you know, we don't want you to experience those types of issues, and we've seen good progress over the last 3-5 years. We've spent a lot of time on building capability in our people and making sure that we're bringing the tools that help support us deliver a great service to you. It is a constant focus. Customer experience is absolutely the heart of what we do as an organization, and we'll continue to focus it on in the year ahead as well.
Thank you for your question. Are there any further questions?
We have a question from Steven Hart. Will Spark hold hybrid meetings to allow participation of shareholders who cannot attend in person once physical meetings can be held again?
Thank you for the question, Mr. Hart. You probably are aware that we have held hybrid meetings. Well, the last two have been fully virtual, as you know, but prior to that, we've held hybrid meetings, I think the three years prior to that. Our intention is to, when we return, to have both physical and hybrid meetings. The reason for that is the hybrid meetings allows everybody, and our shareholders that aren't in Auckland to participate. We actually think that it's incredibly important. Yes, we will continue to do that. Thank you for the question. Are there any other questions?
We have a question from Christopher Laurie Wong. In relation to gender equality and the 40-40-20, could you please expand on what the 20 for all genders pertains to?
Oh, thank you, Mr. Laurie Wong. The 20 is for any gender. So that's male, female or anyone that looks at that identifies it as any other gender. So it's just the 40-40-20 is to have 40% men, 40% women, and then 20% sliding of any of those genders or how anyone else identifies. Are there any other questions?
We do not have any further questions online or on the phone.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Chanté. We will announce the results of the polls to the stock exchanges this afternoon. On behalf of the board, I'd like to once again thank you for joining us today, for engaging in these important matters for our business, and for your support over the year. Please do take care, and I wish you and your whānau a safe and happy year ahead.