I'd now like to hand the conference over to Jolie Hodson, CEO. Please go ahead.
[Non-English content] , and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today for Spark's full year results for the period ending June 30, 2026. I'm going to provide an overview of our results and the progress we've made against our strategy, and our CFO, Stewart, will then take you through our financial performance in more detail before we move to Q&A. FY 2026 was the first year of execution under SPK-30, and we're building momentum in line with strategic choices that we've made. While the economic environment remains subdued, we refocused on core connectivity, returned mobile service revenue to growth, and continued to simplify beyond the core. We strengthened the fundamentals of our business with further structural productivity improvements, improved free cash flow, and net debt returning to targeted levels following completion of the data center transaction.
Overall, we finished FY 2026 within guidance and with a stronger platform from which to deliver improved shareholder returns in the years ahead. If I turn now to slide four and an overview of the results. To clarify our reported and adjusted results, our reported results exclude the data center business, which is classified as a discontinued operation in the financial statements. FY 2026 adjusted results include the earnings of the data center business up until the point of sale, while excluding the NZD 278 million gain on sale. In FY 2025 removes the NZD 71 million gain on sale from our Connexa stake and the NZD 53 million in transformation costs. I'm now just going to speak to our adjusted numbers as these provide the best year-on-year comparison.
Adjusted revenue was stable at NZD 3.7 billion with mobile growth offset by declines in legacy voice and digital services, as well as five fewer months of data center contribution following the sales partway through the year. Adjusted EBITDA declined 2.4% to NZD 1,035 million, primarily reflecting some mix shifts in revenue with continued decline in higher margin legacy voice, which now represents only about 3.2% of our overall revenue and the part-year data center contribution. This was partially offset by mobile growth and NZD 40 million in productivity benefits. Adjusted NPAT declined marginally to NZD 225 million, reflecting the lower EBITDA result and offset by a relative improvement in tax expense. Free cash flow increased 18.5% to NZD 308 million, supported by lower cash interest and tax paid and improvements in working capital.
The board declared a final dividend of NZD 0.08 per share, bringing the total FY 2026 dividend to NZD 0.16 per share and representing a payout of 100% of free cash flow in line with guidance. Before I get into further detail on our performance, I will first provide an overview of our progress against SPK-30 during the first year. We set this strategy to refocus Spark on our core connectivity while simplifying and optimizing beyond the core, with the ultimate ambition of delivering annuity-like returns and growing dividends for shareholders over time. Slide seven shows how SPK-30 is starting to translate into results. First, we have focused resources and investment where returns are highest with mobile central to the strategy.
Active portfolio management delivered NZD 462 million in proceeds from the data center transaction, returning net debt to targeted levels while our 25% retained stake provides shareholders with the ability to participate in future value growth. This focus on maximizing the value of our portfolio continues with the strategic review of digital services. Second, we are investing to differentiate and grow. In a highly competitive telco market, we are focusing investment on the areas that matter most to our customers. Network leadership, better customer experiences, and stronger propositions that give customers more reasons to join and stay. Third, we are strengthening the fundamentals of the business. We are delivering structural productivity improvements, growing free cash flow, building employee engagement, and maintaining our strong license to operate.
This progress supports the overall premise of SPK-30, capital and resources aligned to the areas of highest return, investment behind what customers value, and stronger fundamentals to support growing shareholder returns over time. Slide eight focuses on one of the ways we have invested to further improve our network experience during the year with our satellite to mobile partnership with Starlink. Our terrestrial network reaches 99% of New Zealanders across 4G and 5G. Satellite enables us to extend that reach to the edge, into remote areas, black spots, maritime corridors, and places where traditional mobile coverage is limited or unavailable. There has been a lot of interest in satellite and its role within the telco category. For Spark, satellite plays a complementary role, while our mobile network continuing to offer capability and functionality beyond what is possible with satellite alone.
The mobile network provides the customer density, indoor performance, and throughput required for everyday use, while satellite adds an additional layer of coverage and resilience. Spectrum is the key enabler of all types of network technology with Spark holding management rights to 350 MHz of mobile spectrum, including the largest holding of the sub-1 GHz spectrum. On Slide nine, we overview our sustainability performance, which remains an important part of our license to operate. Our Scope 1 and 2 emissions are tracking 59% below our FY 2020 baseline and ahead of our FY 2030 science-based target of a 56% reduction. That is supported by our renewable energy partnership, a lower grid emissions factor, and improved energy efficiency within the business. We have also achieved our Scope 3 supplier engagement target, with 71% of spend now with suppliers that have science-based targets.
Skinny Jump now reaches more than 38,000 households, and Spark Foundation continues to support more New Zealanders to participate in the digital world. Slide 10 summarizes the progress we have made against our SPK-30 ambitions in the first year. On productivity, we have delivered NZD 101 million in annualized savings at the end of FY 2026 against our FY 2030 ambition of NZD 150 million to NZD 180 million from the FY 2024 baseline. Free cash flow growth is on track, as is CapEx as a percentage of revenue, and Stewart is going to provide some more detail on that shortly. We still have more work to do to achieve our EBITDA ambition. FY 2026 adjusted EBITDA is in line with guidance and where we anticipated it to be in year one based on the current operating environment.
EBITDA growth in future years will be underpinned by our ongoing focus on mobile growth, diminishing legacy products, portfolio simplification, and further sustainable cost reduction. That will support further progress towards our ROIC ambition of 11%-13% with a reported ROIC of 13.8% in FY 2026 and adjusted ROIC of 8.4%, which was flat on FY 2025. Finally, we made strong progress on our non-financial ambitions. Customer satisfaction increased for the sixth consecutive year to 42. Employee engagement was up 11 percentage points. We maintained leadership in network coverage experience, and we are tracking ahead of our science-based target requirements. I am now going to turn to our mobile performance starting on slide 12. Overall, mobile revenue increased 4.4% to NZD 1.5 billion. That was driven by strong device growth.
Mobile service revenue returned to growth, increasing 1.1% to NZD 998 million as consumer and SME mobile service revenue increased 1.4%, supported by strong pay monthly ARPU growth and further stabilization in prepaid connections. Enterprise and Government mobile service revenue remained under pressure from competitive pricing, but the rate of ARPU decline slowed compared with the prior year and connections were broadly flat. Wholesale revenue continued to grow through Spark's owned messaging products and MVNO partnerships. To understand the drivers of this performance, it is useful to break down mobile into its component parts. I have outlined that on slide 13. In consumer and SME pay monthly, connections were broadly flat, and the small decline that we see was attributable to the 3G closure. While ARPU increased 3.6%, supported by plan and pricing changes and a stronger product innovation pipeline.
That pipeline included New Zealand's first kids plan, roaming, and satellite, and IFP acquisitions were up around 15%, supporting higher ARPU acquisition and retention. In prepaid, overall connections were down 3.6%, with the rate of decline slowing from 5.2% in FY 2025. Around a quarter of that decline was driven by the one-off impact of the 3G closure. ARPU proved resilient, holding broadly flat despite intense price competition. Importantly, our New Zealand base, which accounts for around 89% of our revenue, was up 1.1%. Skinny also grew around 2%, supported by the launch of the 52-week plans that offer greater value for customers who commit for a year. In Enterprise and Government, we saw further stabilization with connections broadly flat and the small decline that we saw attributable to low-value 3G connections.
Positively, the rate of ARPU decline also slowed from NZD 3.26 in FY 2025 to NZD 1.92 in FY 2026. We were pleased with the customer wins and re-wins achieved during the half. If I now move to overall mobile market performance and market share as outlined on slide 14. The mobile market grew an estimated 1.9% in FY 2026, compared with about 1.3% in FY 2025. Within this context, we materially improved our market share trajectory in a growing market. While our ultimate goal is to get back into share growth, we are flattening the rate of decline, moving from a 1.8 percentage point decline between FY 2024 and 2025 to a 0.5 percentage points decline between FY 2025 and FY 2026. We also saw stabilization through the year.
Our mobile service revenue share broadly flat from H1 to H2, which gives us confidence that the actions we are taking are having an impact. Overall, we maintained our number one position in mobile service revenue share. Slide 15 brings together the FY 2026 activity that is supporting this momentum and the pipeline that we are building for FY 2027. In FY 2026, we launched satellite to mobile, we refreshed roaming and long-term plans, we launched the kids plans, we introduced 5G + use cases that leverage our investment in standalone, we improved digital journeys, and increased customer satisfaction for the sixth year running. Looking ahead, our FY 2027 pipeline includes new pay monthly and device upgrade propositions, new reward and recognition initiatives, a refreshed wireless broadband lineup, a new MySpark app, and the continued rollout of new store footages across New Zealand.
The common thread across this activity is the same, putting more value into mobile, leading a network, and delivering a great customer experience. If I turn now to broadband and business connectivity on slide 16. Broadband connections declined 4.9% in a highly competitive price-driven market. The decline was predominantly driven by fixed-line technologies, with fiber and copper accounting for around 84% of that decline and wireless about 16%. This mitigated the impact on the broadband gross margin, and when combined with product cost management, margins increased by NZD 1 million. We have a strong pipeline of activity planned for wireless broadband in FY 2027, including a refreshed lineup to improve competitiveness and bundling with mobile.
Business connectivity revenue declined 9.9% to NZD 327 million, impacted by the divestment of Digital Island in FY 2025, the decline of legacy managed data and network products as customers migrate to modern alternatives, and the phasing of hardware sales and IoT. Pleasingly, the rate of decline in managed data and networks was half that of FY 2025. We saw some large-scale collaboration migrations completed, and IoT connections grew 5.1% to 2.5 million devices. I am now going to turn to digital services, which we have identified as an area of the business under strategic review. As such, it is useful to start with a summary of the business and the products and services included within it before moving to FY 2026 performance. Slide 18 sets out the key characteristics of the digital services business.
This division includes cloud, IT services, and smaller adjacent products, such as data and AI consulting and digital identity. Digital Services is a leading provider to New Zealand's B2B market. It has a majority recurring revenue mix, differentiated intellectual property in cloud, IT services and data and AI, and exposure to long-term positive tailwinds as businesses adopt cloud and broader digitization. It also remains uniquely positioned to support data sovereign storage in New Zealand, as well as offering access to all hyperscalers and benefiting from global partnerships with Microsoft, Infosys, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise to support efficiency and access to global innovation. This business continues to have a leading market position, significant scale, and a strong customer base. It has helped New Zealand business and government customers transition from traditional technology environments to modern cloud environments over many years.
At the same time, as outlined on slide 19, this part of the business has faced both cyclical and structural challenges. Within Spark, it has been the hardest hit by weaker business and government spending in New Zealand, and it continues to navigate structural change as cloud volumes migrate from private to public and IT services from legacy to modern alternatives. It was this context that contributed to digital services being identified as beyond the core in SPK-30, with a strategic review the next logical step to assess how we maximize shareholder value from this part of Spark in the future. An external advisor has been appointed, and that review is expected to be completed in the first half of FY 2027.
I will note that there is no certainty that the review will result in a transaction, nor as to the terms or value of any outcome, and we will provide an update at our half one results in February. On slide 20, we provide more detail on the performance of digital services during FY 2026. Overall revenue declined 3.4% to NZD 372 million, reflecting the ongoing shift from private to public cloud, some softer IT services demand, and continued migration from legacy services to modern alternatives. Within that, public cloud revenue continues to grow strongly at 20%, benefiting from long-term demand tailwinds. Private cloud revenue declined 12%, due in part to the impact of a NZD 9 million reclassification of services due to the integration of CCR. The remaining underlying decline was due to the industry-wide shift to public cloud.
IT service management revenue declined 10.3% to NZD 104 million, reflecting continued migration from legacy services to Spark's modern ServiceFlex platform and some subdued project work. We have been actively managing the cost base, with labor costs reducing faster than revenue and CapEx needs remain small and steady, reflecting the capital-light nature of a services business. Other digital services revenue was NZD 35 million, up 2.9% on FY 2025, with improvement in gross margin driven by product cost reductions. I am now going to hand over to Stewart, who is going to talk you through our detailed financial performance, capital management, and guidance.
Thank you very much, Jolie, and good morning to everyone on the call. I am going to pick up on slides 22 and 23, and I will talk to them collectively and talk through those key financial outcomes. I just did want to pick up on explaining the differences between our reported and adjusted earnings again. If I look at slide 22, the FY 2026 reported EBITDA of NZD 129.5 million, which is up 23% year-on-year, includes the NZD 278 million gain on the sale of the 75% stake in the data center business. However, it does exclude the net earnings of that business up until the date of that sale. It was classified as a discontinued operation. If you drop down, you will see a number of NZD 13 million against net earnings from discontinuing operation there. That obviously sits outside of the EBITDA number and just above NPAT.
The FY 2026 adjusted result is effectively the opposite. It excludes the NZD 278 million gain on sale. This time it does include the earnings from the data center business up until the date of the sale. If you do the same drop-down, you will see that there is nothing against net earnings from discontinuing operation there in the adjusted, because that is included in EBITDA for the purpose of the adjusted earnings. Looking at the comparatives for FY 2025. FY 2025 adjusted earnings does remove the NZD 71 million gain on sale from the sale of the Connexa stake, and it also excludes the NZD 53 million of transformation costs that we took in that year. The comparison of FY 2026- 2025 adjusted earnings therefore provides the best like-for-like year-on-year performance comparison.
If I go back to reported earnings, our tax expense was marginally lower in FY 2026 as the gain on the sale itself was substantially non-taxable. Just dropping down, business as usual CapEx was flat at NZD 401 million year-on-year, and it is 10.8% of our adjusted operating revenues. Reported NPAT was up 91.9% to NZD 499 million. Just moving across to adjusted EBITDA, that declined 2.4%. This primarily, and Jolie just talked about this, it primarily reflects the decline in digital services, the decline in legacy voice, which now represents only 3.2% of our overall revenue, and we had five fewer months of data center earnings following the sale of that business partway through the year. Adjusted net profit after tax was down to only NZD 2 million as the tax expense was proportionately lower. Those are slides 22 and 23.
I am going to move on now and I am going to talk to slide 24, which is the first of two slides covering our cost reduction program and the progress that we have made on that. If I go back to our first half results when we talked to our first half results in February, FY 2026 productivity benefits were weighted to H1, and that is primarily due to the timing of labor benefits falling within H2 FY 2025 and expected OpEx increases, which were going to come through in H2 FY 2026. What I can confirm is that overall, we have ended the year with NZD 40 million in productivity benefits year-on-year. This includes NZD 35 million of sustainable product cost reductions and a net labor OpEx benefit of NZD 5 million.
When aggregated, this is in line with our narrowed target of NZD 40 million to NZD 50 million in year. Now starting with our product costs, that is the first bar chart there. Our product costs are over NZD 1.7 billion, and we saw a NZD 65 million net increase connected with product volume sold. That is primarily driven by higher sales of mobile devices and plans and partially offset by lower sales of declining legacy products. Over and above that, we then delivered NZD 35 million of sustainable product cost savings. This came through a combination of better buying terms with major suppliers and also the benefit of exiting some legacy products as well as ongoing simplification across the group.
If I go to the second chart on the right-hand side in labor and OpEx, we have called out the net benefit of the introduction of our new technology delivery model, and that net benefit is NZD 23 million. It included NZD 58 million worth of labor savings, offset by a NZD 35 million increase in other OpEx, which are the costs of our newly established global partnerships. Across OpEx, some of this net benefit was offset by general inflationary pressures. We also put additional money into market to support the brand and the growth of our mobile business during the year. We have incurred severance costs, and we have some one-off shutdown costs in relation to legacy products such as 3G. These cost increases would not be expected to occur at the same rate in future years.
I will also note that data center costs were NZD 6 million less due to the timing of the transaction. I will now go to slide 25. This really summarizes how the FY 2026 result places us relative to our FY 2027 productivity target of NZD 110 million to NZD 140 million annualized savings, which was based on our FY 2024 baseline. At the end of FY 2026, we have now delivered NZD 101 million of cumulative cost reductions. This includes NZD 46 million in labor and other OpEx and NZD 55 million in product costs. So we are confident we remain on track to meet that FY 2027 ambition, and we expect to deliver that through three main levers. The first is additional labor benefits through business simplification and the implementation of some of the organizational structure changes which we announced last month.
The second is managing other OpEx to be broadly flat year-on-year. This means that we do continue to have inflationary pressure, but we will offset that with our cost reduction program. I think similar to the savings achieved in FY 2026, we will continue to deliver further sustainable product cost savings across that NZD 1.7 billion cost base. I will move on now to our capital management framework. This is slide 26. You may remember when we talked to you a year ago, we set out a new capital management framework, and we wanted to provide a timely reminder of the objectives of that framework and what we have actually done to deliver against that during the year. The first one is the proceeds of the data center transaction have enabled us to reduce net debt to targeted levels.
So they have returned our net debt to EBITDA ratio to around 1.7 x, which is consistent with the metric for our current credit rating. Our BAU CapEx of NZD 401 million is flat on last year. Represents 10.8% of revenue, and it is marginally very close to the midpoint of that targeted CapEx to revenue ratio of 10%- 12%. In 2026, we did have strategic CapEx of NZD 66 million, but this purely represented CapEx that was committed as part of the data center transaction and wasn't itself reflected in the sale price of that business. Objective three around sustainable shareholder return. In line with guidance, the board has declared a final dividend of NZD 0.08 per share, which gives a total dividend of NZD 0.16 per share, which is 100% payout of free cash flow. This final dividend will be 50% imputed.
The board has also determined that the dividend reinvestment plan will be reinstated for this final dividend, with the shares issued at a 0% discount to those who elect to participate in the plan. Finally, reported return on invested capital was 13.8%, and that was versus 8.7% in FY 2025. Again, this was mainly due to the gain on sale of the data center business. When this is adjusted from the result, return on invested capital was 8.4%, and which was broadly similar with the FY 2025 ROIC when calculated on a similar basis. On slide 26, we have outlined our CapEx in more detail, and this really shows how this investment is aligned to support our SPK-30 strategy through network leadership and resilience, better customer experience, and of course, efficiency through tech and AI.
Again, BAU CapEx of NZD 401 million was the same as it was in FY 2025. If I start from the top, our investment in fixed network and international cables increased 40% to NZD 88 million. What was this doing? This was delivering increased capacity for fiber and transport and IP networks to meet the growth in forecasted demand for data, as well as ensuring that we are making ongoing resilience improvements, which absolutely underpin our network reliability. The second part of this is investing in our mobile network, which remains critical to our success. We spent NZD 140 million delivering increased capacity across 236 4G and 5G sites for our customers and a further 81 sites built across the country. This spend itself was actually 18% lower than FY 2025, but that was largely due to the completion of the build of our 5G standalone mobile core.
Spend on IT systems and AI increased 5% to NZD 155 million. This spend really enables us to sustain and license core business systems that underpin our operations. It also captures our investment in enabling automation and efficiency and expanding the use of AI across the business. Ultimately, this is to support our strategic objectives of better customer experiences and delivering greater productivity across Spark. Finally, there was about NZD 18 million of other CapEx, mainly made up of property and cloud investment. This was down slightly in previous years. I did talk before strategic CapEx in the year is at NZD 66 million versus previous guidance of NZD 55 million.
This was due to additional committed CapEx on the data center business being brought forward, but under the terms of the sale agreement was paid for by Spark, but then reflected in the final amount received by PEP in the wash-up of the transaction. The next slide I am going to talk to is on free cash flow. We have reported an 18.5% growth in free cash flow, and that is supporting the payment of a NZD 0.16 per share dividend. If I look through the key drivers, there is a NZD 75 million increase year on year. The key drivers are a NZD 75 million increase at lower cash paid on interest and tax, plus the release of cash from changes in working capital.
The cash paid on tax was lower as we utilized a prepaid tax asset, which will continue to provide further benefit to free cash flows that unwind in future years. Cash paid on leases did increase by NZD 37 million. This was due to a combination of more mobile sites being built and also the fact that FY 2025 included a NZD 12 million one-off benefit from moving into the new corporate office. We would expect the cash paid for leases in FY 2027 to be similar to that in FY 2026. We also have a NZD 56 million benefit from working capital changes in FY 2026. This was due to a reduction in receivables and an increase in the tight management of payables.
We did, during the period, undertake the transaction with Challenger for the sale of our IFP receivables, and so the NZD 219 million impact of the sale of IFP receivables has been completely excluded from this outcome, given it is the first year of the transaction. I will now turn to the debt slide. At the risk of repeating myself, the proceeds at 75% of the sale of the 75% of the data center business has reduced our core net debt 35% to NZD 899 million. Net debt to EBITDA ratio was turned to around 1.7 x as at June 30, 2026 based on the S&P Global Ratings methodology.
As we have said before, we remain focused on maintaining a strong balance sheet and targeting metrics consistent with our current credit rating. You will also note that our overall borrowing costs reduced in FY 2026 on a like-for-like basis to 5.5%. That reflects the mix of debt we have drawn down versus trends in market where I know rates are generally trending up. The FY 2026 rate in this case excludes the initial loss on the sale of the IFP receivables, but to improve comparability. Of course, levels of gearing and interest cover I consider remain very healthy. Turning to the last of my slides, the one I am sure there is a lot of interest in is around our FY 2027 guidance. I will just run through this very quickly.
We are guiding to adjusted EBITDA within the range of NZD 1,010 million- NZD 1,080 million. This really reflects ongoing mobile service revenue growth and productivity benefits, and we do expect that to be partially offset by the exit of the data center business during 2026 and continued margin across the digital services business and some ongoing decline of diminishing legacy products, noting my previous comments that those are now a smaller share of our revenue. BAU CapEx is expected to be in the range of NZD 350 million- NZD 380 million. That is down on FY 2026 as we benefit from the maturing 5G rollout, lower licensing investment in core systems and really taking a disciplined approach to where we invest our capital as we simplify the business. For free cash flow, we expect this to be between NZD 300 million and NZD 350 million.
The growth there primarily driven by an improvement in EBITDA, the reduction in cash CapEx, and the ongoing unwind of our prepaid tax asset. Then finally, in line with our capital management framework, it is expected that the dividend in FY 2027 would represent 90%-100% of the free cash flow. Now, what we have also done here is we have included a target FY 2027 dividend range of NZD 0.16-NZD 0.18 per share. Really that is in the interest of providing investors with greater clarity on the expected range of the dividend based on both the range, the free cash flow guidance range, and also the fact that we have a 90%-100% range, payout ratio on that free cash flow. So on that, I will hand back to you, Jolie. Thank you.
Thanks, Stewart. So to summarize FY 2026, we delivered our result in line with guidance. We grew free cash flow. We returned net debt to targeted levels and delivered the first year of SPK-30 with tangible progress against the areas we said mattered most. We move into FY 2027 with strengthened fundamentals, a clearer strategic focus, and a strong pipeline of activity designed to build value in mobile, to lead a network, and to deliver great customer experiences. Future EBITDA growth will be supported by continued mobile momentum, further sustainable cost reduction, diminishing legacy products, and an ongoing portfolio management. Our ambition remains simple. It is better with Spark. We are determined to deliver more for our customers, our people, and our shareholders. So with that, I am going to hand now back to the moderator to facilitate the Q&A session now. Thank you.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you would like to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question today comes from Leo Pan from E&P. Please go ahead.
Hi, Jolie, Stewart. This is Leo from Evans and Partners. I think just to start with, I have got two questions here. First one on mobile enterprise and gov. You guys, I know that the rate of decline in ARPU has slowed this year. Can we expect that to further moderate in FY 2027, and kind of how is that environment looking in E&G broadly?
Okay. I will take your first question, and then we will come back to your second one. In terms of Enterprise and Government, we have seen that rate slowing. If you think back to between 2024 and 2025, we saw around a 16% reduction in service revenue that has, sorry, 16%, sorry, and that dropped to 7% this year. What I would say though is most of the Enterprise and Government contracts are three to five-year type contracts. There is a natural portfolio renewal, but our expectation, it will be similar levels of change in FY 2027.
Cool. Thank you. And just maybe broadly, how is that competitive environment looking?
From a competitive environment, we are really pleased with the customers we are winning and re-winning within that. I think we have seen a stabilization in that overall pricing competition component. So really more what you are seeing is the flow-through of some of those impacts across the portfolio. But you can see from the connections, we are broadly stable in that base and the ARPU reduction is improving as well.
Great. And if I could squeeze in just one more, please.
Sure.
In terms of the price increase you guys rolled out for consumer mobile at the end of July, w hat are you guys seeing in terms of churn and like how should we be thinking about ARPU revenue growth against maybe some lost subs?
I think from a point of view of the July price increase effectively on the bill, because obviously we do have two points where we notify the price increase and then when it comes through. We've been pleased to see
the levels of churn are sitting below what we would have anticipated within that. The price increases on average were around NZD 3 if you were to look at it per month for most of those pay monthly plans. And I think if you compare that to the investments we make in networks and the resilience and importance of mobile connectivity for our customers, I think it's a fair exchange.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Ben Crozier of Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead.
Morning, team. Just first one from me just on the DRP. Can you just give us a bit of more rationale of turning the DRP on versus, say, paying out a lower dividend? Presumably a DRP, you get a bit of share count creep and so the dividend growth going forward will be slightly lower. You sort of alluded to net debt back to target range. Why do you need a DRP on at this stage then?
Yeah, Ben, I can answer that. There's a couple of drivers there. The first one is we've had quite a lot of feedback from our retail investor base on the DRP. It has proved popular with our retail investors, so it's something we considered we wanted to switch back on. There's also the point around, whilst we're back at 1.7x , we're looking to create sustainable headroom relative to that S&P metric in that we've got a number of levers available to us. It includes the dividend payout ratio, and it also includes the DRP as well. So it does have some value there. That's the balance we are trying to strike. I would note that the DRP, as I said, had a 0% discount as well. So, it does not come at a discount this time around.
No, thank you. Maybe just on fixed wireless, I think if we go back to the strategy day, I think you are sort of targeting the fixed wireless still has more growth. I guess over the last year has slipped back. Can you just sort of give a bit more color on where those sort of losses have been? Are they just in rural to Starlink or are there urban losses as well?
I think it will be a combination. We are talking about 8,000 connections across over 200,000 base in that wireless broadband. So it will be a combination. It is a highly competitive market. I think when we talk about strategy day, we talked about the opportunity for 5G. Of course, as that rollout continues across the country and we have greater population coverage, then you have got the opportunity to add more capacity for customers to use and therefore open up more addresses. You also open up the coverage component too through that. So we still believe that wireless broadband has opportunity to grow. We are relaunching new plans in FY 2027, which will be, well, I will not say too much on the call because it is obviously open to the public, but effectively more competitive. So we think that will also help with that shift forward.
Yeah. Maybe just last one quickly on the data center business. You still have 25% of it, and there is still that earn-out to come. I think it is end of 2028. How is that business tracking? Are you still confident you can receive that earn-out, Stewart?
Yeah, there are two tranches to the earn-out, Ben. If you pick through the annual report, I think it is in note 1.4. The first of those is based on meeting some performance metrics between December 31 this year and February of next. Then the second earn-out tranche is based on hitting some metrics on December 31, 2027. So yeah, if you look across the earn-out, we are confident that the business, particularly on that first tranche, is going to deliver on the metrics that it needs to. Obviously on the second tranche, that is a little bit further away, and things can change there. But what we do know is that we have got some excellent sites, and there is plenty of demand for capacity in that business.
That's all from me. Thank you.
Thanks, Ben.
Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. We'll have your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Wade Gardiner from Craigs Investment Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi there. A few questions from me. Can we just go back to just expand on Leo's question earlier? You say that yes, the decline in Enterprise and Government ARPU it's slowed but you're expecting a similar level for this year. If we assume therefore that contracts are rolling on three to five years, does that therefore say that we're going to call it for the next three or four years we're going to continue to see that sort of 7%, call it 5%-7% decline in ARPU?
No.
As everything rebases?
No, I think, Wade, I think we've seen the majority of that. I still expect some decline in FY 2027. Equally, there's opportunity for connection growth as well within that. I don't think it continues on for another three to four years. I think you'd see the bulk of it complete by the end of FY 2027.
Okay. Thank you for the disclosure around digital services. Are you able to provide a bit of color around. You've given that disclosure at the GM level, but not at an EBITDA level. What sort of cost allocation for labor and other operating costs are we like to see?
We don't provide that down by each of the units for that. Clearly, as we go through the strategic review, if we have more to share in relation to the decisions out of the back of that, we now will provide that as part of that. I've got nothing more to say in terms of that at the moment in relation to the EBITDA strip.
Okay. Just one more from me. Just on slide 15, you talked about investment into mobile. There is a number of areas there. Is that going to have a margin impact as we go into FY 2027?
I think in terms of what we are doing there will be a combination. What we are looking to is track to retain more customers. We would see it both as churn prevention, but also as opportunities for customers to experience different offers within that. Without, again, getting into too much of the detail, overall, when we have set our guidance for FY 2027, we thought about what we will be doing and investing within that. I think these are all margin accretive in terms of how we think about the opportunities that we have got there for 2027.
Okay. That is all from me. Thanks.
Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.