Chorus Limited (CNU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to our half-year results announcement for FY '25. I'm Mark Aue, the CEO of Chorus. Alongside me is Andrew Davies, our Chief Operating Officer, who joined us in October, and this will be his first results presentation. I'll start today with an overview of our half 1 results and then a brief reminder on the strategy reset we undertook in 2024 and announced at the recent Investor Day on December 2. Drew will cover the financials with updates on how we're tracking against guidance, after which I'll take you through our areas of focus for the remainder of FY '25. Overall, we're pleased to be reporting a steady set of results, particularly given ongoing economic headwinds. Frankly, in this climate, steady could certainly be taken as a real positive, and that's how we see it. Revenues were slightly down 1% to $500 million from the prior year. That was largely driven by the migration of customers away from our legacy services and total fixed connections being down 35,000 lines from a year ago. You've heard from other businesses in the last week, that the economic recession has had a deep impact on consumer behavior over the last 6 months in particular. We're pleased to recognize we're resilient, but we're not 100% immune. And we've seen some ARPU degradation as a near-term outcome. We continue our focus on accelerating the retirement of copper, removing legacy costs and discretionary spend, all of which have helped deliver lower operating expenses. EBITDA was essentially flat at $346 million, and that included some of the associated exploration costs of strategic opportunities that we highlighted back in our December Investor Day. Additionally, our ongoing transition from energy-intensive copper to efficient fiber meant we used about 4% less electricity than in the half year '24. Gross CapEx was down 14% on the prior period as fiber installations reduced and we winded copper investment down. It also continues to be an area of focus in managing multiyear life cycle costs and our free cash flow. In line with our capital management policy and the guidance provided back in August, we've confirmed an unimputed interim dividend of $0.23. We've also added another 14,000 fiber connections in the half and fiber uptake now is nearing 72% of addresses passed. Data usage continues to grow with average monthly usage on fiber lifting to a record 644 gigabytes in December. Finally, we were pleased to end the half with the Commerce Commission confirming our regulatory settings on fiber through to the end of 2028. At our Investor Day in December, we talked through the details of our strategy reset, as we call it our road to 2030, and that's summarized on the slide you see. For those who missed the day, the video and accompanying presentation of the session are available on our Chorus website under the Investor Center. I'm not intending to go into detail on this today, again, as we spent 4 hours doing so back in December, but rather I'll note a few points as reminders. This is a material change, firstly. It recognizes the need for Chorus to evolve from our operating model as a legacy as a great network builder to the future as a great network operator. We see that happening over a 10-year horizon with 3 distinct phases. Horizon 1, this financial year is all about getting future fit for purpose and the changes we'll make now to ensure we're successful in the future. FY '26 is the start of our Horizon 2 out to the end of 2030, we will see the benefits of that change where they are realized. And finally, Horizon 3 from FY '30 and on is with a single-state technology that adds fiber. We have an overarching purpose that guides everything we do and the role we play in creating better futures across our country. We have a clear aspiration that has provided the clarity and the specificity of what success looks like, and that is a simplified all-fiber business with 80% uptake by 2030. That's all underpinned by 4 strategic pillars that we see as LEED and that form the clear priorities for our business. Now this has been cascaded throughout our business and is framing our focus, our prioritization, and our decision-making. What we're aiming to see, particularly over Horizon 2 is a chorus that reflects a simpler, more efficient, and more competitive business. Another important aspect of the Investor Day was the detail we provided on our exploration of several strategic opportunities. Some are new areas of focus, but all are close to our core. And there are some that become a natural opportunity for our exit from copper. Obviously, there have been very few working weeks since our Investor Day back in December. So there isn't a lot of new detail on each of these today, but I will touch on a few of these later when we discuss the outlook for the remainder of this year. If you'd like to hear more details about each of these opportunities, again, I would encourage you to watch the webcast recording back of the December Investor Day. So turning now to our strategic pillars, and we'll start with LEED, which is focused on driving fiber uptake to 80%. We added another 15,000 mass-market fiber connections in the half to lift uptake to just under 72% of addresses passed. That was despite the fiber footprint growing another 14,000 addresses to just over 1.5 million. Uptake growth is slower in the older UFB1 rollout areas, but the latter UFB2 areas continue to see good growth, and we lifted from 58% to 60% in the half. As we've noted previously, to achieve 80% uptake by 2030, we need roughly 240,000 additional connections, of which we see 130 from new builds and 110 from addresses already passed. So we have a plan. Our fiber growth has been helped for some time by copper withdrawal in our fiber areas. We've been retaining about 80% of copper broadband connections where service is being withdrawn. However, as the chart on the right shows, copper connections continue to diminish. We saw about 10,000 copper broadband connections disconnect in our fiber area in the half, and that was down from 15,000 in the prior half. As some of the telco retailers have noted recently, we've seen those cost of living pressures come through a stronger demand for our 50-megabit entry-level fiber plan. It grew by 21,000 lines to now 68,000 in the half. While there's been some trade down from higher speeds, that's roughly 1/3 of the ads with the majority still coming from either off-net as new to fiber or win-backs. So we continue to feel validated that this entry-level plan is both helping grow fiber uptake and providing optionality given this economic climate. At the other end of the speed spectrum, we continue to see demand for multi-gigabit plans. However, as another outtake of economic pressure, we've seen fewer trade-ups in plan speeds than we have historically seen. But we would anticipate this trend normalizing over time as the economy and confidence improve. We talked at our Investor Day about the various tailwinds we see for data growth, including the ongoing demographic transition to streamed content. As it turned out, December set a new record for data use at an average of 644 gigabytes on fiber. That was up 8% from the year before. January usage has actually come in even a couple of gigabytes higher again. And we now see 17.5% of our connections that are using more than 1 terabyte, a stat that we only see continuing to increase. Most of that data used was during peak times and the chart on the left actually shows that the average daily peak traffic was 10% higher in the half year '25 versus the prior year and an emerging trend is an increase in the number of peak traffic events. To give some context, that's 10 events in the recent half compared to just over 4 in the half year '24. While Fortnite has been the main driver in the past with downloads, now live sporting events like Netflix's Boxing Match back in November are emerging as another regular contributor. These trends play to the technological strengths of fiber, low latency, high capacity, and speed. And as part of our market challenger approach, we're doing more to educate the public about these benefits versus other broadband technologies. Our infrastructure team has activity underway to offset the expected decline that we see coming in some of our legacy services. That's by growing existing revenue categories and developing new opportunities. Their portfolio achieved roughly $77 million of revenue in the half, and their target is to lift that to $180 million to $200 million annually by 2030. But note, remember, the infrastructure value stream we have didn't exist until FY '25, and it's going to take time to build momentum with some of the short-term headwinds from legacy product decline. Greenfield activity continues to be challenged with ongoing suppression of the property developer sector. However, we're at least stabilizing back around pre-COVID levels of 20,000 to 25,000 lots a year, and we remain positive and still expect this segment growth to return. We're seeing steady growth in data connectivity demand. That's across existing services such as smart locations, mobile backhaul, and edge center. We're also exploring IoT opportunities with a proof of value trial underway with a number of councils and utility providers. It's too early to say whether this will develop into a full product offering, but it's a market we think that we should be exploring. Finally, the feasibility work is underway on the Tasman Ring subsea project that we announced in December, following our memorandum of understanding with Data Grid. In our ADAPT pillar, this is about driving operational excellence. A critical part of that is our regulatory settings and having workable allowances. Before Christmas, we received the commission's final decision on our maximum allowable revenue through to the end of 2028 as well as updates for the final expenditure decisions in August, there were some positive updates to the OpEx allowance to reflect more recent regulatory filings. The commission also agreed to defer about $250 million of depreciation beyond the new regulatory period. The commission estimated the opening RAB for 2025 to be about $6 billion, of which about $5 billion is the core RAB. Based on the final CapEx allowances and depreciation settings, we estimate the core RAB will grow to about $5.4 billion by the end of 2028. Our pioneer strategy pillar is about retiring copper completely by 2030. December year-on-year, we've seen a significant 37% reduction in total copper lines. Now just 28,000 copper lines remain in service in our fiber area, and the final batch of customers will soon receive their 6-month notice of copper withdrawal. We anticipate this part of the network will be shut down by the end of FY '26. That's about 6 months earlier than originally anticipated. In non-fiber areas, we've seen a 21% reduction in copper lines since half year '24. Among this group, there were about 1,500 remote addresses on obsolete radio technology that is loss-making for us. Our customer information campaign has now seen about 30% of these addresses already migrate to alternative and better services. The benefits of copper line reduction are clear. You can see the right-hand chart showing reactive fault spending on copper. Across all 3 zones, the trend is clearly downward with about $11 million of spending in the half year '25 or roughly a 20% reduction on the prior year. Our copper footprint is also being reduced by our fiber rollout for approximately 10,000 premises. About 40% of the planned premises have already preregistered their interest in connecting. About 1,600 of the planned premises have now been passed, 500 of which have already been connected. So we're getting good uptake. We expect to complete that rollout by the end of this financial year. Again, we're aiming to connect at least 80% of these premises passed and are taking the learnings from our original UFB rollout on how we can install and connect faster to fiber. I'll now hand over to Drew to take us through some of the financials.

Good morning, everyone. As Mark mentioned, this is my first set of results at Chorus, and it's great to see the consistency of the business delivering despite a challenging macroeconomic backdrop. Looking at the income statement, we've reported EBITDA pretty much flat between half year '24 and half year '25. Revenues of $500 million were down by just $3 million between the 2 periods as the decline in legacy revenues offset growth in fiber. Operating expenses were slightly more favorable in the current half as we reduced legacy costs. That helped us offset some inflation and incremental spending to explore new revenue opportunities. As we flagged previously, depreciation and amortization have been inflated by the acceleration of depreciation on our copper assets. Depreciation on copper assets was $48 million, up $3 million from the prior period. We provided the profile of that copper depreciation at our Investor Day in December, and that's included in the presentation appendix for those of you who haven't seen it. Net interest expense was up $2 million, although our weighted average interest rate on debt has reduced from $5.8 million to 5.7%. Overall, this meant we recorded a $5 million net loss for the half. As I said, total revenues were down slightly to $500 million. At a category level, fiber broadband revenues were up $20 million from half year '24 with connection numbers up 14,000 lines in the half. ARPU was down $0.37 to $55.34 in the half as we saw continued strong uptake of the entry-level plan, and we delayed fiber price changes from October to January this year. That delay was to ensure we stayed within our regulatory allowances and better aligned with the new regulatory period. And it meant we slowed recovery of roughly $10 million. Fiber premium services revenues were down $3 million. This reflected our impending shutdown of a legacy platform and the transition of the associated fiber connections to alternative services. We continue to see growth in demand for mobile access and backhaul connections. Copper connections declined by about 34,000 lines during the half. This ongoing trend means combined copper broadband and copper voice revenues were down by $19 million in half-year '25 from half-year '24. A 2.15% inflation-related price increase was applied to copper voice and broadband services in mid-December 2024. Field services revenues were flat with a decline in new property development activity, offset by more roadworks activity. Other revenues were down slightly because half year '24 included property sale revenue that we didn't repeat in the current half. We are working on opportunities in that space. Our focus on cost management saw total OpEx reduced by $2 million compared to the half year '24. Labor costs were up $4 million from the prior period, largely due to the capitalization rate reducing from 48% to 45% as fiber rollout and connection activity decreased. Employee numbers were down slightly between the 2 periods, and we began to work to simplify the organization as we transitioned to an all-fiber network. For network maintenance, the general trend remains reducing fault volumes, partly offset by inflation in service company costs. IT costs were down $3 million from half year '24, helped by our exit of legacy systems. Other network costs were down $2 million, with spending on copper network optimization weighted to the second half of fiscal year '25. The spike in electricity spot prices during the half meant electricity spending was up $1 million from half year '24 despite our consumption being down by about 4%. Consultant spend was up $3 million net as we invested to explore potential new revenue opportunities such as the Tasman Ring Network. Gross CapEx was $199 million, down $33 million from half year '24. Within gross CapEx, $94 million was for sustaining CapEx and $105 million was for growth. Sustaining CapEx is reducing due to lower spending on the copper network and network capacity in the half year '25. On the growth side, we completed 16,000 fewer fiber installations than in the half year '24, although fiber network extension spend was up $10 million for our 10,000 premises rollout. Gross CapEx was supported by $2 million of Crown funding and $22 million of customer contributions for roadworks, new property, and rural broadband activity. This slide provides our new CapEx reporting aligned to regulatory categories for the fiber-regulated asset base, RAB. The RAB CapEx categories align with our regulatory reporting categories to help make things simpler and more transparent. CapEx attributable to the fiber RAB, which excludes capital contributions, is estimated to be about $161 million. Those allocations will be finalized in the information disclosure process in May. For the non-RAB CapEx, you can see copper CapEx was $6 million, of which $2 million was third-party funded. Net debt to EBITDA lifted slightly to 4.54x with borrowings up by $105 million. This increase is consistent with the half year '24 and reflects the timing of payments through the financial year. We remain well below our S&P threshold of 5x. And about 70% of our interest rate exposure is fixed for the next 3 years. Our next refinancing activity is due in mid-2025 when the first tranche of Crown financing of $170 million comes due. We intend to be in the market in the next few months to refinance that with a retail capital bond on a like-for-like basis with the current equity debt structure of the Crown financing for rating agency purposes. We've announced an unimputed interim dividend of $0.23 to be paid in April. Full-year guidance of $0.575 unimputed remains unchanged. EBITDA guidance of $700 million to $720 million is also unchanged. We have noted that we are tracking towards the lower half of that range given the ongoing weak economy, as Mark spoke to earlier, and the current customer downtrading trends, along with the incremental costs incurred for the exploration activities such as the subsea cable, which I mentioned in the Investor Day will be in the single-digit millions for the fiscal year. Gross CapEx and sustaining CapEx guidance ranges are also unchanged. However, for sustaining CapEx, we are noting that we are tracking to the lower half of the range as we take a disciplined approach to managing our cash flows. So to summarize, overall, this is a very steady result for us considering all of the economic factors we have spoken about today.

Thanks, Drew. If we turn now to our areas of focus for the remainder of FY '25 and as we lead into our Horizon 2 phase from FY '26, we'd say we're on a fast track to an all-fiber business. First, under the leading fiber uptake pillar, our fiber price changes came into effect on January 1. These included varied price increases across all of our plans. Some retailers have now offloaded anticipated price increases through to their customers some months ago, while others aligned them with the timing of our increase. Following consultation, we have announced that we intend to boost the speeds of 2 of our plans at the end of FY '25 at the start of June. Home Fibre Starter 50-megabit plan will lift to 100 megabits and the 300 will lift to 500 megabits. These changes will help keep fibre's superior capability clear in the market, and we expect our higher-speed plans to continue to attract heavy household data usage and early adopters, especially given the high value they place on fiber's performance and reliability. It's critical that the Commerce Commission plays its part as well in ensuring product transparency we've talked to previously. Strongly believe wireless operators could and should provide customers with an estimate of average speeds based on the local cell tower being used. By nature, the experience for an end customer will be completely different each time. And the current measures, though are across multiple towers, which masks the high variability in performance. The Commerce Commission's draft decision on broadband marketing guidelines proposed that customers can exit their contract if their experience with 70% or less of the expected average speed on a consistent basis which we would ultimately support. The final decision is expected this quarter. But to keep driving fiber uptake, we're working with retailers also on new market propositions. We have a new initiative with other local fiber companies to share national data on our inactive fiber connections. This will make it easier for retailers to match opportunities against their own customer databases. We're also developing campaigns that fit attractive market segments. Retirement villages, for example, we've spoken to previously. They're a category that we haven't focused on before, but they have potential for some retailer bundles in particular. Another underpenetrated segment we discussed at our Investor Day was lower socioeconomic groups. And we're pleased to announce that we're launching a proof of concept with service providers. This aims to bring an equitable fiber product to 1,500 low-income and digitally excluded households over the next 6 months, and we'll see how that goes. This is part of our broader company purpose, though, and we see a clear need for us as Chorus to find ways to work with our wider industry, government, and communities to close the digital divide. In our expand pillar, the opportunity I'll call out today because of its potential and likely questions is around the Tasman Ring network. As we announced in December, this could unlock a key connector role for Chorus and the burgeoning data center ecosystem. We launched the project to prospective customers at the recent Pacific Telecom Conference in January and received positive interest and feedback which gives us a platform for developing this project. The investment would be subject to prebuild commitments, meeting our return hurdles, obviously. Subject to the planning process, we'd expect the building work to be complete in the calendar year 2028. Our third pillar, Adapt, we will continue our focus on operational excellence with the internal work underway to get Chorus future fit for Horizon 2. Evolving to a simpler, more efficient, more competitive all-fiber business by default will mean some things will need to be removed, systems, processes, and the likely reduction of some roles. Some of this will come through in the second half of this year. The regulatory clarity on fiber settings now provides us a solid foundation for the next 4 years. The missing piece of that puzzle, though, is obviously copper regulation. As the chart shows here, New Zealand is fourth when compared to European countries that are well on the way to exiting copper services. And we don't believe there's any case for keeping copper. It's clearly obsolete and other technologies can already provide a better service. We expect the draft decision on copper service deregulation in this quarter and believe the final decision should be possible by the end of this calendar year '25, if not earlier. The commission has also indicated just before Christmas that it is considering deregulation of fiber transport and voice services. The timeline for this process, though, is unknown. Our fourth pillar, Pioneer, aims to exit copper and become an all-fiber business only. We've commenced our trial of copper cable recovery. It's early days, but as an indication, we said the net proceeds of this could be $30 million to $50 million over 3 to 7 years, but that will depend on what we can recover, the cost of extraction, and the global copper prices. The trial itself will better inform our expectations and benefits though. Property optimization continues with individual sites where it makes commercial sense. But the larger opportunities we talked to are tied to copper withdrawal, so will take longer. Divestment of non-core assets, though, will be a focus, particularly in the half year 1 of FY '26. Finally, in December, we lodged the submission with the government's Infrastructure Priorities Program, the IPP, advocating for more fiber network expansion from the 87% we have today out to 95% of the New Zealand population. We believe fiber should be considered more like roading and evaluating long-term socioeconomic benefits. But as we've said before, further expansion requires government funding to make it commercially viable. So to wrap up, the first half has again, in our minds, shown that Chorus' business remains resilient despite the deep ongoing recessionary headwinds. But equally, as we've said, we're not totally immune. We need to ride this period out across the second half before we hopefully see a more favorable economic climate and the flow it has to customers and their behaviors. In response, we'll continue to manage our plans to market on a more tailored approach and equally with an ongoing focus on our cost base. Having the regulatory clarity on fiber for the next 4 years gives us an opportunity to really focus on the business with some certainty and without an industry of regulatory activity. Copper retirement, though, is a big part of that business focus, and we're starting to make progress on removing legacy costs, but there's plenty more to do. Copper policy settings really need to catch up with the market reality we all face. We've talked about the strategic opportunities we're exploring to leverage our assets and capabilities, and we aim to have more progress updates to report on the full-year result. As much as I'm sure you'd like all the details, this is an exploration phase. We're looking to drive growth and returns from these adjacencies, but they're going to take time to assess and execute. But overall, our fundamental belief in fiber's superiority is unchanged. We're focused on our new strategy and accelerating the benefits from our transition to an all-fiber business with growth, simplicity, and efficiency. And that's ultimately to achieve our aspiration as a simplified all-fiber business with 80% uptake by 2030. Let's go to questions on the phone line, please, operator.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Arie Dekker from Jarden.

Firstly, just on the subsea cable, just a few questions. Can you just talk a little bit about who the target customers are for that, your prebuild commitment levels that you would need sort of in terms of how you're looking at, at the moment? Maybe just start with those 2 and you've got a couple of others.

So as Mark said, we attended the PTC conference in January. So we met with all the large data center operators and their connectivity teams to explain the topography of our current design and thoughts on capacity planning. So since the conference, we've had follow-up meetings and feedback from some of the larger ones where they're now looking at their planning and topography design. So they haven't come back with their requests. So the ultimate build and the routes of the cable will follow where the demand is coming from. So that was the target customers. We haven't released any presales commitments. But obviously, what we would do as we go through this year, is build momentum based on the demand from the key customers.

And then I guess, just in terms of the local telco operators, where do they sit in your target customers, and what sort of feedback has there been? Or are they later down the track?

No, we met with some of those as well. So we've also shared our designs. I've gotten good feedback there. But I think we'll take under advisement from all the potential customers what their expected capacity demands would be and what routes they prefer. So they're certainly on the list, and we're working with them already.

Yes. And then I guess just 2 further ones on the subsea. So just like the earliest timing that we might expect so earliest for a go decision and also broadly speaking, the likely investment envelope for Chorus?

Yes. I think we've said it would take this calendar year to get to a point to work with all the OTT players and make sure that their specific requests on future demand that's met. So it will be through this calendar year that we'll get to go on a no-go decision. With all of the demand for subsea cables globally, you've seen announcements by Meta recently and so forth. So there's a lot of activity actually going to RFS, it's most likely towards the end of calendar year '28.

And then the low-income initiative, so 1,500 presumably is the trial. Can you just talk a little bit about the mechanism for providing that broadband under the proof of concept? And then also what the size of the opportunity is if the proof of concept works?

Yes. I can talk to that, Arie. Look, so initially targeting 1,500 as a meaningful sample base over the next 6 months. We're working with the retail service providers. We want to ensure that both the wholesale input cost and the ultimate retail costs are actually providing an opportunity for households to address 2 of the key things, which are challenges on digital equity or digital inclusion is availability and affordability. So we're looking to provide both the 50-megabit plan and the 300-megabit plan during the trial. Ultimately, there will be an eligibility criteria that will be quite tight for assessment, but that's the wrap for the moment. We'll see what we learn over the next 6 months.

And the size of the opportunity if that proof of concept works?

Yes. No, look, I mean, good question. I think, Arie, we point to our broader purpose, which is around unleashing potential through connectivity and enabling better futures for [Indiscernible]. This is for Chorus and how we see this is our opportunity to play a meaningful role across New Zealand. When you look at the statistics that would show 400,000 households potentially are digitally excluded. We're not looking at this as a plan where you're making significant commercial returns. I think we see this more as our opportunity to play a role to actually bridging that digital divide. We want to work with either other partners, both in the industry and outside it as well to actually start stepping into digital inclusion or exclusion as it is now, and that includes a pushback on the government.

And then finally, the presentation is pretty clear and things are pretty stable. So this is probably a bit of a stretch question. But just thinking about that first repayment of the Crown securities and the Crown's fiscal position, I guess, is that repayment stimulating any discussion with the Crown regarding its broader investment in Chorus?

Well, I'll speak to the repayment and then Mark, so I think we certainly are very proud to be doing the first payment back to the Crown. So I think that's a great milestone. We have a timeline set up for the retail capital bonds to be issued in June to have this first tranche. So I think that's an exciting milestone that we've accomplished with the SIP securities.

Yes. And the broader, Arie, it's not stimulating any specific discussion, but around that repayment. But as always, we continue to advocate for further fiber expansion. I mentioned the IPP submission we've made to the government. We fully believe in the benefits of expanding from 87% to 95%. You've seen the Deloitte report that was issued on that. There's $17 billion of economic benefit to the country from extending from 87% to 95% coverage, and that's in 10 years. So we think the merits are there for the government to do it. We just need them to play a role in that to support and make this commercially viable. Whether SIP plays a similar role beyond that, I don't know.

The next question comes from Brian Han from Morningstar.

In terms of cost management going forward against the current economic backdrop, is it all about cost reduction from copper retirement? Or are there any opportunities to reduce systems and labor costs that are not copper-related?

So let me start with, you saw our labor costs were up slightly in the first half of fiscal '25 as a result of the lower capitalization rate with lower build-on fiber and copper and some one-off costs in there. So in preparation for Org 2.0 in Horizon 2, which starts fiscal year '26, we started in December our first phase of looking at the organization and what aligns to our future fiber-only kind of company. So we identified in December about 30 roles that would be disestablished in the second half of '25. So those 30 roles are underway right now. But more importantly, we've got a second phase of where do we need to be, what capabilities do we need to have to enable and deliver of an all-fiber strategy. So that second phase is underway right now, where we're looking at the organization in total to identify what do we need to change and have that done by June this year. So we start the next fiscal year with org 2.0. So you will see more announcements from us in terms of again, it's not just a cost out or people out, it is a capability assessment and where do we need to invest or look at realignment to drive the all-fiber strategy in the future.

Yes. Maybe if I just overlay to that, too, Brian. We've talked a lot about the evolving operating model. Chorus has got an amazing legacy as a great network builder. But with the communal build finish, we need to evolve to being the great network operator. So our ability to leverage the organization structure through a design phase here that actually becomes a true enabler for delivering that strategy. So that's the capability piece that Drew is picking up on. As I said earlier, though, too, I think when you start driving a Chorus that shows up as a simpler, more efficient, more competitive operator, we should expect that processes, systems, and likely some roles actually should come out as we evolve to being that as that new operator and being more simple, more efficient.

Drew, sorry, I missed this, but what was the subsea cable OpEx amount you said that was excluded from the original guidance?

So at the Investor Day, I gave a range of single-digit millions. So in half 1 results in the consulting line, we incurred about $4 million net for all the exploration we're doing on revenue opportunities. So that's what's incurred to date. And our guidance for the year does include single-digit millions for the subsea cable as well as other revenue explorations in there.

[Operator Instructions] Your next question is from Philip Campbell from UBS.

Just a few questions from me. I was wondering, Mark, if you could talk a little bit about obviously, it is pretty tough out there in terms of the economy. Just maybe elaborate a little bit more about in terms of kind of what you're seeing in terms of retail service provider kind of end-user customer behavior? Are there kind of signs of like trading down that you're seeing? Or what are the other kind of features of the tough economy?

Yes, absolutely, Philip. Look, I'd say the trends in general have been broadly consistent, but you would have seen our Q2 connections results and they were a bit softer than what we would have hoped, to be frank. But the trends are consistent overall across the half. So we are seeing some trade down. So from the 300 mega plan into the 50, we're also, as I highlighted, not seeing the trade-ups that we would normally have seen as well, either going from 50 into a 300 or going to our gig plans, if not higher. So we're seeing less of those trends that we had in the past, but they are broadly consistent. 5G is an impact, not seeing a material change here. I think 2 degrees, again, are the ones that have a lower penetration of fixed wireless into their own broadband base. So it's natural that they are looking for those opportunities. Our churn numbers are broadly stable back from when we showed more detail in the December Investor Day. So not seeing a significant deterioration like some other companies have been. But certainly, there is some softness there. But we'd expect it to return over time as the economy and confidence normalizes.

Just one on the subsea cable. So is the decision the go or no-go, is that also contingent on Data Grid building their data center in Bluff? Or is this kind of a separate stand-alone decision?

Yes, this is totally separate, Phil. I mean we are aware of what they're working on in their data center. But for us, this is the Chorus cable. And so it will be our decision in terms of working with future customers and demand and routes and working with them on both international as where their visions are domestically, too. So it doesn't include a data center in the Data Grid.

Yes. But again, I'd just overlay to that at the PTC conference back in January, part of this is actually highlighting New Zealand and putting it on to a road map from a data center and connectivity routes perspective. In Australia, we see articles of pretty much every other day on expansion. And the MOU that we've undertaken with Data Grid is actually trying to look at the opportunities for New Zealand. New Zealand has some amazing attributes when you think about data centers themselves. And the South Island potentially opens up opportunities for lower land prices, access to renewable energies, and significantly lower ambient temperatures. And that AI training facility, I think Data Grid has some great aspirations there and the role that we can play. And again, all of these things that we talked to the government around the day around the ability to drive economic growth through stimulating additional activity.

I haven't really looked at subsea cable economics for a wee while. But my understanding is that a lot of the presales cover the initial CapEx cost. Is that right? Or if you decide to go with this thing, do you end up, of course, have to incur some CapEx upfront as well?

So the economics of subsea cables do include a lot of presales, where amounts are funded upfront that go towards CapEx. So that's the normal economics, and we follow that process. And so I think depending on the no-go decision will be a function of demand, presales, and routes, obviously. So I think it follows the same model typically, Phil.

And then just a third question was just, I suppose the DPS guidance kind of post-FY '25 is kind of for a sustainable growing dividend, at least in real terms. I suppose, obviously, in 2025, if you're looking at the guidance versus what was reported, we're looking at kind of like 2% or less EBITDA growth, which obviously wouldn't necessarily be real growth. Obviously, the dividend is stepping up a lot higher in '25, but in terms of going forward. I suppose if EBITDA is less than kind of very low single digits, is that going to have some impact on that dividend aspiration?

No. We've done our modeling out through the longer term, and it does not have any. And remember where we're going, you got the legacy copper reductions phasing out, fiber growing and our organizational design will have benefits to EBIT in the longer term. So we have no changes. And so we still affirm the guidance that we've given before.

And then just one on the retail service quality. Obviously, I saw the ComCom released the kind of draft guidelines or I think final guidelines recently. I suppose one of the things they don't seem to focus on is they've done their own testing on this is the kind of in-home speeds, so are there any issues with advertising broadband speeds? Do the retailers have to also consider the in-home speeds? Because obviously, when you're comparing the headline speeds, what you get in the home is a bit different from that. So I'd just be interested to see if there's any guidance from ComCom on that. I couldn't see it in the report, but I might have missed it.

There isn't guidance on that specifically. So I think when we looked at putting in place those LEAP strategic pillars under lead and driving to ultimately getting to 80% uptake, one of those priorities is around winning customer moments that matter. So we are keen to work with retailers and look at customer experience that a lower satisfaction. That's most often due to outdated routers, and that's the biggest speed improvement that you can get. But we have a vested interest, obviously, in ensuring that fiber customers are actually experiencing a great experience from fiber. So we'll continue to work with retailers to do that.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mark for closing remarks.

Well, thanks, everyone, for joining us. Look, I know in recent weeks and even as recent as Friday, there's been some pretty sobering announcements out in the market. And I think actually, we're seeing one of the longest and deepest recessionary periods in New Zealand. And as much as we'd all love for that to change in the short term, I think the reality is, we've got a more medium-term outlook on that, which for us, when we look at these results, we say a steady result for us, we see as talks to that resilience of fiber. We've got our strategy in place. We have the clarity and the specificity of what success looks like and a strategy that underpins that. So we will continue to focus on our plan for the second half of this year and those strategic opportunities. But there's an element of riding through this economy and where we believe that those trends and customer thematics will normalize back to the trends we've seen previously. But we remain incredibly optimistic and fully believe in the superiority of fiber as broadband technology. With that, I'll just wish you all a great day. I'm sure we will catch up again soon. Thanks very much.

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.