TPG Telecom Limited (TPG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

This is Bruce Song speaking from the TPG Telecom Investor Relations team. Thank you for joining us for the presentation of our 2024 half year results. TPG Telecom acknowledges the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and the lands on which we and our communities live, work and connect. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present. The agenda for today is as follows: our CEO and Managing Director, Inaki Berroeta will present the results highlights and our business update. Our CFO, John Boniciolli, will then discuss our financial performance in more detail, and Inaki will then discuss our outlook before we turn to Q&A.

Thank you, Bruce, and welcome to everyone joining the call. Our first half results reflect solid trading and a strong cash performance. In the second half, we are increasing our focus on cost efficiency and expect to deliver important steps in our strategy. We were pleased to see continued growth in service revenue in mobile in the period as well as continued improvement in margin in fixed broadband. Mobile service revenue increased 7.2% as we continue to monetize higher consumption following our recent network investment. We are delivering great value options for customers with plans refreshers that have enabled us to continue to grow despite lower international arrivals and the impact of aggressive handset discounting by competitors. In fixed broadband, AMPU increased 6.3% as our strong growth in fixed wireless and improved our net margin offset the impact of intense competition in the NBN market. In enterprise, government and wholesale, we delivered a resilient result in a challenging market, with gross margin stable, excluding Vision Network. In June, we successfully migrated Lyca Mobile to our network as a major MVNO contract win. Our cash performance was a highlight of the half and is continuing to improve. We are sustainably growing our operating EBITDA. Working capital is moving in our favor and CapEx is moving past peak levels. We expect these trends to accelerate further in the second half. We continue to expect material improvement in cash earnings over the medium term as these trends accelerate, enabling us to reduce bank borrowings and interest costs. However, while inflation impacts appear to have peaked, the cost environment remains challenging. This month, we made the tough decision to remove approximately 120 roles to deliver operational efficiencies and address employee expenses. As a result of these and other initiatives, we expect overall OpEx growth to slow in the second half and into 2025. Depreciation and amortization is also slowing and has been lower than expected. In each of our three major strategic initiatives, we are making progress. We anticipate a decision from the ACCC on our proposed regional sharing agreement with Optus on 13th September. Our business simplification program is on track with several customer journeys milestones to be delivered in early 2025. Our 5-year strategic review is continuing and will confirm earlier in the month that we have reengaged in confidential nonexclusive discussions with Vocus. We are confident of achieving an EBITDA result within our guidance range of $1.95 billion to $2.025 billion, excluding material one-offs. We are tracking toward the midpoint of this range because of our solid operating momentum and moderating indirect cost growth. This is despite a slower mobile subscriber growth and the challenging market conditions in NBN and enterprise, government and wholesale. As note, in April, when we announced the original sharing agreement with Optus, we have lowered our guidance for cash CapEx for the year from $1.05 billion to $1.02 billion. My next slide shows our key financial metrics. Gross margin continues to grow faster than service revenue, increasing 3.9% in the most recent period against total service revenue growth of 1.7%. Our sustained service revenue growth since the merger reflects the gains we have made in both mobile subscriber numbers and ARPU over the period. Gross margin growth continues to reflect direct cost efficiencies in both mobile and fixed as well as the growth of our fixed wireless offering. We are also sustaining higher levels of EBITDA with first half growth of 2.2% on the basis on which we have given guidance reflecting growth for the fifth consecutive half. Operating free cash flow is improving in line with working capital and CapEx trends. Earnings per share adjusted for noncash customer amortization and material one-offs was $0.048. This was down from the prior period, but consistent with our guidance for increased depreciation, amortization and interest expenses this financial year. Return on invested capital is down slightly in the period, reflecting the annualization of higher asset base, but expect this key metric to start improving as earnings grow and we pass the peak of investment cycle. Maintenance of our half yearly dividend at $0.09 per share reflects the board's confidence in the medium-term outlook despite the short-term pressure on net profit. In mobile, we continue to perform strongly in a very competitive market. Mobile service revenue growth of 7.2% across the group was another great result, reflecting sustained higher ARPU and the subscriber growth of the previous 2 years. Since the first half of 2022, Mobile service revenue has grown 15.9%, which is ahead of the market. We have achieved this growth by focusing on a simplified range of great value, competitive plans while monetizing increased consumption following our 5G investment. Postpaid service revenue increased 5.5% with ARPU up 6.1% on the prior corresponding period despite the impact of increased competitor handset discounting. Postpaid ARPU has increased more than $5 in the past 2 years and the gap to our competitors continues to narrow. Prepaid service revenue was up 12.4% with ARPU increase of 4.8%. This was driven by planned refreshes and continued growth in our subscriber base with a particularly strong rate of growth in our digital brands, TPG, I&F, Pilc and Cogen. The main contributor to our subscriber growth in the period was the addition of 98,000 MVNO subscribers under the new Lyca contract. Revenue from that contract will accrue to the wholesale business, unlike our competitors won't be factored into our mobile service revenues or ARPU. Excluding Lyca, there was a slight decline in subscribers in the period. This was attributed to three main things. Firstly, there has been a slowdown in growth in international arrivals following the tailwinds of returning travel post the COVID lockdowns. Secondly, TPG moved first to shut down our 3G network, which led to higher churn in the period. We estimate approximately 23,000 customers have churned away from TPG as a result. Finally, increased competitor handset discounting had a distortive impact. Despite the net decline in subscribers in the half, net growth in subscribers since the end of COVID lockdown era is 539,000 or 10.8%. Looking to the second half, subscriber growth remains challenging in postpaid, but we do expect a stronger ARPU result as we cycle recent plant refreshes. In prepaid, we expect the modest subscriber growth trend to continue and to see more benefit to ARPU from recent refreshes across Vodafone and Lebara. Overall, we expect to continue to grow mobile service revenue as we monetize the strong underlying demand while providing simple grade value deals to customers. Now turning to our fixed business where we continue to deliver on our objective of growing gross margin supported by our strong fixed wireless offering. Gross margin was up 6.7% to $351 million against the first half of 2023 across our residential and small office business base of broadband and voice products. This was despite a small decline in service revenue driven by the challenging competitive dynamics in the MBM market. The result included a strong contribution to our retail margin from Vision due to the lower wholesale costs and last year's plan refreshes. Excluding Vision, fixed gross margin across our residential and small office business base of broadband and voice products was flat. Total AMPU was $27, up 6.3% on the first half of 2023. NBP was up 2.3% to $22. This reflected planned refreshes in the large TPG and INS subscriber base, offset by higher NBN wholesale costs. On net AMPU across fixed wireless and the total vision business was $52.30 up 10.9%. In fixed wireless, margins continue to improve as we roll out the 5G product and churn rates stabilize. The rate of growth in fixed wireless will, of course, slow as the base grows, but we continue to see material growth opportunity over the next couple of years without requiring incremental CapEx. While total fixed broadband subscribers were down 30,000 years under 2.1 million in the period, the rate of decline has slowed. We have experienced heightened churn created by our delayed launch of Fibre Connect and an impact of about 7,000 NBN subscribers following our shutdown of our bundled e-mail product at the end of last year. It is challenging to maintain a strong NBN economics and also stabilize our fixed base. MBS costs continue to increase ahead of market while new entrants are growing at low margin through cross subsidy or aggressive promotion. Nonetheless, our profitability in NBN remains strong relative to other operators. Vision subscriber numbers were again lower in the period. But these have stabilized in the past 2 months as we have delivered system improvements and began reducing prices in line with lower wholesale costs. We have now been selling the G.fast product across the vision retail base since June. Overall, we expect our strong fixed wireless offering to continue to offset the challenges in the NBN market and we expect to continue to stabilize the subscriber base, including through our strong value offering on higher speed products such as NBN100 plus and G.fast. In enterprise, government and wholesale, our performance has been resilient and in challenging market conditions. We remain focused on delivering a simple core portfolio of great value connectivity offering while also being fast to deploy and easy to do business with. Service revenue and margin in the core Enterprise and Government business were both up modestly on the first half of 2023 to $321 million and $266 million, respectively. This reflects our continued success in selling TPG fast fiber, NBN Enterprise Ethernet, Mobile Private Network and Internet of Things offerings at the same time as we phase out older technology products. Key customer wins in the period include the Lyca contract and a 10-year internet of things contract with South East Water for Australia's largest smart metering rollout. In wholesale, excluding vision network, gross margin was down slightly by $104 million, primarily reflecting exits of noncore and legacy technology products. The reduction in vision wholesale revenue and gross margin reflects our strategic reduction in wholesale pricing in January 2024, to provide a stronger value differentiation from the NBN and create a more compelling platform for retail partners. Vision wholesale margins should stabilize from here, while the Lyca MVNO win will also contribute to wholesale revenue. Overall, market conditions remain challenging in EGW segment, but TPG is holding up well and customers continue to respond positively to our approach. I now want to spend some time talking about our cost outlook. Costs have risen because of the need to invest in the business during an inflationary economic cycle. We are modernizing and rationalizing our IT systems, upgrading our mobile network to 5G while replacing Huawei equipment and uplifting our capabilities in cybersecurity and digital. Therefore, our operating costs have increased over the past 2 years and cash CapEx, excluding spectrum, has risen to more than $1 billion a year. These investments have been vital to set TPG up to compete and win for years to come, and we have still maintained our operating cost advantage against Telstra and Optus. However, I'm pleased to say that cost growth has passed its peak. Total operating costs, excluding material one-offs, were $606 million in the first half of 2024. This was up 6.7% on the first half of 2023, but the run rate was lower than the second half of 2023, and we expect a low to mid-single-digit run rate in the second half of 2024, excluding material one-offs. As I mentioned earlier, we took the difficult decision to remove 120 roles earlier this month. This will contribute about $20 million in efficiency in 2025, partially offsetting wage price increases and other factors as we look to deliver a flatter profile for employee expense growth in 2025 and a lower rate of total OpEx growth. We also expect efficiencies arising from business simplification to start to become more tangible from next year. As we prepare our budget for 2025, we are looking closely at cost efficiency opportunities across the business. In CapEx, our short-term profile is improving because of the proposed regional sharing agreement with Optus as well as the progress of our 5G rollout. The proposed regional sharing agreement means CapEx will be $30 million lower than we originally anticipated this financial year at $1.02 billion, and $50 million lower than previously expected in each of 2025 and 2026 at $950 million. We continue to expect cash CapEx to be materially lower between $700 million and $800 million per year from 2027 onwards. Again, the investment uplift of the last 2 to 3 years has been essential for TPG's future, but we are now entering a period where investment growth will slow. Combined with sustained growth in gross margin and improvements in working capital movement, these trends will release more cash to allow us to reduce debt and strengthen our financial position. Business simplification is one of the main drivers of future cash cost efficiencies and a key strategic priority for TPG. The program is running to expectations in terms of both cost and operating milestones. We continue to expect to deliver annualized cash benefits of $140 million from 2027. Roughly half of that comes from CapEx, which will contribute to us achieving the target of $700 million to $800 million per year run rate. The other half will come from EBITDA improvements, including the removal of incremental IT OpEx of $15 million to $20 million per year, plus gross margin benefits. There are three main aspects to the program: Simplifying plans and products, increasing digitalization of customer experience and modernizing IT platforms. We made progress with our objectives in the first half. We have already removed about 1,300 back book plans, and we are on track for our target to reduce the total of more than 3,700 plans by half by the end of the year. We have exited a further 8 legacy technology products in EGW, and we are on track to reduce the total of about 80 products by about 1/4 by the end of the year. We have completed the closure of legacy e-mail platforms, which we're creating operating and security risks. We are on track with our plan to remove a further 40 applications to the cloud and have now decommissioned a total of 50 IT systems. We have front-ended the larger, more complex systems. Hence, there was a relatively low number undertaken in the first half. Business simplification will enable us to go to market with a clearer customer focus, fewer brands and simpler products and plans. This will improve the care and buying experience for our customers and remove cross-selling constraints on a simpler IT stack at lower cost than maintaining the legacy. We are working towards key upgrades and rationalization of our billing and customer management system in 2026, but we will start delivering tangible benefits for customers much sooner. In the first half of 2025, we will launch several features to deliver improvements in customer experience while bolstering TPG's digital sales capability. Three examples are shown here. First, a technology-agnostic fixed broadband product selection experience, giving customers flexibility to match value to the best fit network, whether that's NBN, fixed wireless or Vision. Not only does this ensure customers can compare seamlessly between plans based on value and usage rather than the technology of delivery, it also removes barriers to adoption of TPG's on net products. Second, a new multiproduct experience, unlocking greater value for customers and improving TPG's ability to cross-sell product packages across mobile, fixed and other services. Third, a new app and digital experiences related to credit check options, ID verification, shopping card user interfaces and logging, all designed to make it easier for customers to connect with us. We are very excited to bring these improvements to the market. We are making great progress in delivering a modern national mobile network. In April, we announced our proposed regional sharing with Optus under a multi-operator core network agreement, or MOCN. This agreement builds on the success of our ongoing 5G rollout in metropolitan areas as well our existing metro tower sharing arrangements with Optus. The ACCC approval decision for the Optus Regional MOCN is scheduled for 13 September. Behind the scenes, the implementation planning is progressing well, and the MOCN is on track to be operational in early 2025. The arrangement will double our network reach to 1 million square kilometers at about 1/3 the cost of building, operating and maintaining a similar expansion. We expect gross cash cost savings over 11-year yield of between $575 million and $675 million. We also note in April that the MOCN will have an estimated impact on EBITDA in 2025 of $55 million to $65 million, offset by a cash CapEx reduction of $50 million. Complementing our original plans, we have signed a landmark deal with satellite provider Link Global and will begin direct-to-sale messaging trials in 2025. Our 5-year rollout is now about 60% complete, and we continue to lead the industry with our innovative approach to deployment and modernization. 2025 promises to be an exciting year for TPG with the prospect of the MOCN being approved. I will now hand to John to discuss the financials in more detail.

Thank you, Inaki, and hello to everyone listening. I'll begin with our key financial metrics before walking through the key P&L, cash flow and balance sheet items in more detail. Inaki has already covered our trading performance, but I'd like to emphasize the strength of this result. Our continued growth in mobile service revenue and the resilience of our gross margin is pleasing in the context of overall market conditions. EBITDA was up 3.5% to $974 million on a statutory basis and up 2.2% to $979 million on a guidance basis. The difference being that our guidance basis excludes material one-off transaction costs. These were $5 million in the first half of 2024, down $12 million, due to costs associated with the unsuccessful regional sharing agreement with Telstra in the first half of 2023. OpEx growth of 4.4% to $611 million shown here also reflects that reduction in transaction costs. On a guidance basis, OpEx was up 6.7%, and I'll cover that in more detail shortly. Our statutory NPAT was $29 million, down from $48 million in the prior corresponding period, and statutory EPS was down to $0.016 from $0.026. We also measure EPS adjusted for customer base amortization and material one-offs, because this provides a truer reflection of recurring cash earnings. On this basis, EPS was $0.048, down from $0.062. These NPAT and EPS results reflect the increases in depreciation and amortization and interest expense we flagged when we presented the 2023 full year results. Turning to cash metrics, we are seeing positive trends as expected and a little faster than we anticipated due to lower handset sales volumes having a positive impact on working capital. Cash CapEx was $567 million, $103 million less than the prior corresponding period. Combined with improving working capital trends, this translated to a $340 million improvement in operating free cash flow. The Board continues to have confidence in declaring an unchanged dividend of $0.09 per share despite the short-term reduction in NPAT. Adjusted NPAT remains the basis for dividends as it excludes noncash customer base amortization and tax as well as spectrum amortization and material one-offs. It was $264 million, down 13.2%. Return on invested capital for the half was 5.6%, down from 5.8% in the prior corresponding period on a comparable basis, no longer adjusting for transformation costs from earnings. Lower ROIC was primarily due to investment growth in recent years. As investment stabilizes and operating earnings grow, we expect ROIC improvement to follow. My next slide looks at gross margin in more detail. The overall increase of 3.9% to $1,585 million was driven by strong growth in consumer mobile and consumer fix. In Consumer Mobile, service margin growth of $70 million or 8.8% to $864 million reflected efficiencies in interconnect into carrier and regulatory costs on top of our strong service revenue growth. Growth was a touch lower than in the prior corresponding period as planned refresh benefits were slightly less and noting the small decline in subscribers. Consumer Mobile margin was also slightly impacted by matching of aggressive market offers to students and by competitor handset discounting activity. The outlook remains positive for the second half as we cycle a full 6-month contribution from planned refreshes undertaken earlier in the year. We saw modest increases in total subscriber numbers and ARPU in July. In consumer fix, margin growth of $25 million or 8.6% to $315 million, reflecting continued growth from fixed wireless as well as reduced wholesale costs for Vision network. Excluding the movement in Vision margin, the other side of which hits our wholesale margin, consumer fixed margin was up 1%. This reflected the strong margin in fixed wireless offering and planned refreshes across the products and brands, offsetting the impact of loss of NBN subscribers. Growth was slower than in the prior corresponding period due to the slower growth in fixed wireless from a larger base as well as lower planned refresh benefits. We expect a full 6 months benefit from recent planned refreshes in the second half and for the subscriber base to stabilize further with more competitive offers on vision. However, those new offers mean the consumer margin uplift we saw in the first half from vision is not likely to repeat. In Enterprise and Government, service margin of $266 million reflected growth of 0.8% and compares favorably with other operators' results. The decline envisions wholesale margin to $31 million reflected the reduction in wholesale rate, which was picked up in consumer fixed margin as well as the impact of lower subscriber numbers. The reduction in our handset margin reflects the impact of the aggressive discounting of handset from competitors as well as lower customer demand. We expect handset margins to improve in the second half with the IFA launch in September are likely to drive customer demand. Lower other margin reflected lower spectrum lease income. To summarize, the intensity of discounting the handset market has impacted subscriber numbers, which does mean postpaid subscriber growth momentum has slowed. However, we expect consumer gross margin continue to be driven by recent plan refreshes in both mobile and fixed in the second half. In EGW, overall market conditions remain challenging. Although this will be partially offset in the second half by the contribution in wholesale from the Lyca MVNO contract. Now turning to OpEx. This was up 4.4% to $611 million on a statutory basis and 6.7% to $606 million on our guidance basis, excluding material one-offs. This growth rate is consistent with what we said at the 2023 full year result that we expected growth in the mid- to high single digits this year. It primarily reflects ongoing investment in people to support business simplification and IT modernization and in specific areas such as network security as well as our inflation. I'm pleased to say we expect the growth rate to slow to a low to mid-single-digit percentage in the second half and we expect to deliver a flatter OpEx growth profile in '25. Looking more closely at the drivers for the first half of 2024, employee benefits expense was up 6.8% or $34 million to $219 million. This was net of the impact of the decision to outsource and our Manila contact center to a third party, which resulted in approximately $20 million being recognized in consulting and outsourced services costs in other OpEx. The increase reflected higher salaries and head count increases. Excluding Manila, our FTA at 30 June 2024 was up about 75 people from 31 December 2023. FTA will be lower following the reduction of 120 roles this month. Hence, while salary inflation pressures remain, we expect the rate of employee expense growth to moderate from here. Technology expense was down 7% or $14 million to $186 million in the period. This reduction was largely due to the nonrecurrence of one-off charges in the prior corresponding period associated with the Telstra regional sharing agreement, combined with some nonrecurring third-party spend savings in the current period and tight expense control, partly offset by inflation in network and IT support costs. This tight expense control related to decommissioning of third-party network infrastructure. Other OpEx increases of $6 million, excluding the Manila impact in outsourcing, primarily reflected higher advertising and promotional costs. Maintaining our operating cost advantage to our competitors remains a key focus for TPG. We are working hard to ensure we deliver a flatter OpEx growth profile in 2025. This slide shows EBITDA in more detail, reflecting the trends in gross margin and operating costs already discussed. Statutory EBITDA growth of 3.5% to $974 million was higher than our guidance basis growth of 2.2% to $979 million. This is because transaction costs treated as material one-offs were higher in the first half of 2023, driven by the Telstra Regional sharing deal and the sale process for Vision network. Transaction costs incurred this half of $5 million related to the fiber strategic review and the proposed regional network sharing agreement with Optus. I'm pleased now to go into more detail about the $340 million improvement in operating free cash flow to $278 million in the period. The strong and improving growth in cash earnings reaffirms our confidence in the medium-term outlook and in our capacity to pay down debt over time. In addition to earnings growth, there were two main drivers of improvement in working capital. These contributed to a $247 million improvement in cash flow from operating activities to $961 million or 99% of EBITDA. The first was the impact of the unwind of our previous handset receivable sales practices, which peaked in 2023, meaning the negative working capital impact from that process reduced by $117 million in the period to $97 million. This will be lower again in the second half at approximately $50 million and largely complete this year with approximately $15 million left to go in 2025. We continue to work with potential counterparties on a superior solution that will enable us to fund these debtors off the balance sheet at more favorable economics. Other working capital improvements were $84 million in the period, an improvement of $97 million on the first half of 2023. This was also handset related as lower consumer demand and intense discounting from competitors meant we had lower handset sales and debtors. Handset inventories were also lower. The other components of our operating free cash flow are CapEx, excluding spectrum and lease payments. CapEx was $103 million lower to $567 million as I've already discussed, driven by moderating growth in our 5G upgrade and IT modernization spending as well as variability in the timing of supplier payments. Lease payments were $10 million higher at $116 million, reflecting inflation and the annualization impact of the new Amplitel tower leases we signed in the second half of 2023. The cash flow to equity, which is net of all uses of cash, except bank debt repayments and drawdowns and dividend payments was $163 million higher at $18 million. This reflected the strong operating result as well as a $50 million increase in net bank interest due to higher rates as forecast and the payment for spectrum secured late last year of $128 million. The gain on sale of subsidiary of $5 million shown here relates to the Manila contact center transaction. The outlook for continuing cash flow improvement is positive as working capital and CapEx trends move in our favor and headwinds from financing costs lessen. Looking at our investment in more detail, the rate of CapEx growth is moderating, which means D&A growth will also slow. Cash CapEx was $695 million in total in the half, including $128 million of spectrum payments made for the 3.7 gigahertz license acquired in November 2023. Our outlook for CapEx, excluding spectrum, is unchanged from what we said in April when we announced the regional sharing deal with Optus. We expect to incur $1.02 billion this year, approximately $950 million in each of 2025 and 2026, and between $700 million and $800 million per year thereafter. Depreciation and amortization was $741 million in the half. This was up 2.6% on $722 million in the prior corresponding period and down 1.2% on $750 million in the second half of 2023. The slightly lower than anticipated rate of growth was driven by lower fixed asset additions and asset mix. We now expect depreciation amortization for the full year to grow low to mid-single digits. The impact of rising financing costs will also moderate as the interest rate cycle stabilizes. Netback interest expense of $126 million in the half, up 26% on the first half of 2023 on closing gross bank debt of just under $4.2 billion. This primarily reflected the impact in the period of the 125 basis point increase in the cash rate over 2023. We expect second half bank interest costs to be broadly consistent with the first half. With the outlook for interest rates becoming more benign and our improving cash flow performance, the outlook for bank financing cost is expected to improve in 2025. About 38% of our bank debt is hedged at present at an all-in cost about 20 basis points below current floating rates. Lease interest costs were $64 million in the half, up $14 million in the first half of 2023 and down slightly from the second half of 2023 when there were some one-off impacts. My final slide covers our dividend. The Board has declared an interim dividend of $0.09 per share, consistent with the previous four dividends. As we have communicated previously, we will use up all our historic franking credits with this dividend, which will be franked to 87%. We expect to start generating franking credits again once historic tax losses are fully utilized. Dividends are paid by reference to adjusted NPAT, which adds back spectrum amortization, customer base amortization, material one-offs and noncash tax. The policy is to pay out at least 50% of this amount, and this dividend reflects a payout ratio of 63%. This reflects the continued confidence in the business to deliver strong and growing cash earnings despite the current reduction in statutory NPAT. I will now hand back to Inaki.

Thank you, John. In February, we gave guidance for EBITDA of $1.95 billion to $2.025 billion in 2024, excluding material one-offs. We remain confident to achieve an EBITDA result within that range, and we are tracking toward the midpoint at present. This is because of our solid operating momentum in mobile and fixed wireless and moderating indirect cost growth. This is despite a slowing mobile subscriber growth and the ongoing challenging market conditions in NBN and enterprise, government and wholesale. We note in April when we announced the regional sharing deal with Optus that we do expect to recognize noncash charges of $230 million to $250 million at the full year result if we receive approval from the ACCC. For the avoidance of doubt, these charges are united from guidance as our transaction costs, the redundancy costs from our recent role reduction and any other material one-offs. As also noted in April, we have lowered our guidance for cash CapEx for the year from $1.05 billion to $1.02 billion. To summarize, 2024 is a year of consolidation of recent growth and investment, providing a strong platform for the next phase of TPG's development as we pursue further business simplification and the benefits of an expanded network. We have been delivering strongly against our objectives, growing mobile service revenue, growing fixed margin through fixed wireless and on-net and undertaking our rollout of 5G. Market conditions remain highly competitive into the second half with consumers continuing to be impacted by cost of living pressures. In mobile, there is a strong demand growth, but Platinum subscriber growth as international arrivals is slow and aggressive promotional and discounting activity in handsets continues. The NBN market remains highly commoditized by non-telco entrants. And the EGW market is challenging with high levels of technology consolidation taking place on wholesale. Nonetheless, we are trading resiliently and have renewed emphasis on cost efficiency and accelerating improvement in cash earnings as we look to 2025. We have continued focus on return on investment through monetization of increased customer demand following the strong 5G investment cycle. Our addressable market will grow with the regional network sharing agreement, and our emphasis on digital channels is growing as we deliver our business simplification and IT modernization programs. Thank you. We will now take questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Eric Choi from Barrenjoey.

John. My first question is just on the current Vocus negotiations. Can you just explain what the difference in asset perimeter is versus the transaction that was proposed last year? Second question, just transitioning to postpaid subs. I know you've called out competitor handset discounting in the 3G shutdown as reasons for the first half weakness. But I'm just wondering, could it also be your price increases being in January and March, whereas Telstra and Optus have shifted their to August? And so you just mentioned your mobile subs improved in July. But I'm interested specifically did postpaid subs improve in July and also in August since that's when competitors lifted their prices? And then the third question, if I could. Just on '24 EBITDA guidance, that implies a $30 million increase in the second half versus first half. And just qualitatively, maybe for John, I know you get a full period of price increases but the OpEx base also steps up in the second half as well and then the average mobile sub base could step down. So I'm just wondering, is there any other key positive or key division that's improving half-on-half so far, that's putting you on track for the midpoint?

Thank you, Eric, and first to address the -- we have, as we said, on the 5th of August reengaged in discussions at this stage. There is not really any more that we can update you on how those discussions are. So I think that in due course, based on how they go, we make all the necessary description of the perimeter at that point, but nothing to update at this stage. For the postpaid subs, I'm going to ask Kieren to address that, and then John will go to the EBITDA for the second half. Kieren?

So on the postpaid subs, picking on some of the points, I think there was 2 questions if I got it right, Eric. One, what was overall driving it down? And the timing of the plan refreshes this year compared to competitors, have an impact and does have an impact going forward. So overall, the biggest change that we've seen is really 3 drivers. So first of all, the decrease in international inflow that we've seen this year compared to previous years, and it's been covered across the market. As part of that and combined with the -- the cost of living pressure. It's well covered what we're going through in Australia. We've seen a shift, which we believe is probably temporary that moves from postpaid towards prepaid, and we're starting to see some of that market now. We set our own numbers. And third of all, in that space, what we're seeing is a lot more handset aggression flowing after that declining postpaid market. We're very careful about where we place our investments. We look at that investment as would any other investment. And we're very careful to make sure that we're seeing that makes economic sense in the year. On the impact of pricing timing, and plan changes throughout the year, what we're seeing is that plans are changing throughout the year. And we're not really seeing a dramatic change in terms of the shift in recent trading compared to those larger shifts that I just mentioned.

And thanks, Eric. I understand the math of your question on half 2 EBITDA by growth of $30 million. I'd point to a few drivers. Firstly, which you mentioned, the refresh the postpaid and prepaid mobile plans. Secondly, which you know that also with the continued focus on costs included in the recent action on employment costs. I'd also note a few other -- the recently announced front book plan refreshes on TPG and iiNet mobile. We did note some improving trends in mobile trading, especially on our digital-first brands, TPG, Kogan, Felix. Continued growth in FWA on net. There is also a seasonal link between half 1 and half 2, e.g, on outbound roaming. Wholesale MVNO revenues and the upcoming [indiscernible] launch in September, October, they are the factors that I would point to.

Super helpful, John. Just because -- maybe back to Inaki quick follow-up. I understand you can't comment much. I guess one statement you've said is you've engaged in non-exclusive discussions with Vocus. So I was just wondering if you can confirm if you're actually still talking to other parties?

I cannot confirm or deny, I just don't comment on that.

Our next question comes from Darren Leung from Macquarie.

Great. I just had 3 as well, I'm asking upfront. Just on the postpaid ARPU, it's obviously -- year-on-year, but it's largely flat half-on-half. To your point, there's obviously price increases that you did in January, but can you talk a little bit around why this has accelerated a little bit more? And maybe just a bit of context as to how are progress -- after your back book, please? That's the first one. The second one, I know it's a little bit too early to be thinking about '25. But given the number of contract wins you've had in enterprise and government, can you give us a feel for what you think the revenue step-up could look like into '25 in the enterprise business? And then just a third one on the handset discounting which you talked to. Is that something that we've obviously seen a little bit from you guys, but when I look at your handset margin for the first half, it looks like it's flat. So should we be expecting that to hit a little bit more negative into second half and maybe even '25?

Thank you, Darren. Look, I think just to go very quickly and then I may ask as well Kieren and Jonathan to answer in terms of the postpaid because of the seasonality that we're around the problem which in our case, this is an important part of ARPU. And then also because of the timing of the plans refreshes, you can expect that it's usually better to compare us that are same season. So I think that that's a bit variation that you will see. In 2025 EGW revenue, we just -- you'll have to wait until February for that. I don't know if Jonathan wants to comment on that -- not really any comments. And then -- on the handset subsidy, I'll pass that to Kieren?

So I won't be sharing more in the outlook because I think that covers it really well. What we're seeing is a lot of integration that we spoke about. I don't want to give too much of an indication of our plans with respect to how much we will be investing in that space therefore what we expect from a revenue side. What I'll say is we just look at those, like I said before, like any other investment, to be very careful as that market hits up. What I will say at the end of the year is a very different handset market at the beginning because we have the iPhone release, which is generally less discounted area, and then we go into a Christmas period, which is often a more discounted area.

Our next question comes from Tom Beadle from Jarden.

I've got 3 as well. Just firstly, on mobile pricing. Just -- I guess I'm looking at this a bit differently. And while you've obviously increased your prices at a headline level, I should note that at times you've also been offering significant discounts for new customers as long as they stay signed up to your plans from time to time, for example, $9 a month off in postpaid from time to time. So I guess I'm trying to understand the rationale of these promotions and just -- are these promotions potentially dilutive to your ARPU depending on the mix of the take-up. So I'd be interested just to understand if those type of promotions are dilutive or accretive to your postpaid ARPU? Secondly, just on Vision network. Obviously, the earnings fell quite materially, and you've lowered your wholesale pricing there. I guess I'm interested in the rationale for that. And just does that have implications for your strategic review of those assets. And was the reduction in pricing a required reset in order to potentially sell these assets? And then just a third question on D&A. That obviously came in -- it came in a bit below by expectations anyway -- I realize it grew year-on-year but fell sequentially versus the second half. So I'm interested just to understand the sequential decline versus the second half last year, especially that lease cost reduction, which I think was $82 million in the first half. Is that a reasonable base for the second half?

I'm going to ask Kieren to get the first one.

Tom, the question in terms of, as I understood it was a level of discounting in the market, and the impact for us and the impact that it has on our mobile ARPU. From an acquisition discounting point of view, it has in itself a relatively small impact on the overall ARPU because the amount of customers you're acquiring to get your overall base. But what we're seeing is there is, as mentioned before, quite a lot of promotional activity in the market, and we clearly have the signs in that market. We are very selective about when we compete and where we compete on price. But what we find is not only from the point of view of acquisition offers, but also any time we're retaining customers as well.

Yes. And I mean I would like to add on that, you were asking around where are the -- why promotions or not. I mean it is a very competitive market, and I think that you need to be looking at the different opportunities and also what our other competitors are doing. But I do think that a good way to look at the perspective of that is that in the last 2 years, we have about over 0.5 million customers. In that same time, we've grown mobile service revenues by 16%, and our ARPU is up $5. So if you look into what's the conclusion, I think that -- it's important that you look at it into the perspective of the last 2 years of activity. On Vision, I'm going to ask Jonathan to get that question.

Yes. There's 2 things, Tom. One is, obviously, we were aware in Vision of NBN's market traditionally. That's the largest [indiscernible] price Vision to be differentiated -- even more customers. Second thing is why we do that is largely based on feedback that we get from the market from RSPs. Remember, Vision, we launched a product known as G.Fast. And what was clear was RSP saw really impressive opportunity for G.Fast, but wanted it to be competitively priced to drive growth, which we made decisions on the repricing of Vision, which we took in January this year.

On your question on D&A, Firstly, I'd note that it's correct to say that D&A did come in slightly lower than the mix sort of single-digit outlook that we provided at the full year '23 result. That was due to lower fixed asset partly the result of lower investment and also to asset mix and specifically some greater useful life and anticipated on that asset mix. In relation to leases, yes, the sort of sequential growth. I do note that in second half '23, we did have some, what I call life-to-date housekeeping in the lease book. It impacted though amortization of right-of-use assets less leases but all interest expense. They were a one-off.

Our next question comes from Entcho Raykovski from Evans & Partners.

My first question is also on the postpaid subs trends. Now you showed I mean you've obviously spoken to this in great detail, but in addition to that, you showed some different trends in the half relative to Telstra and Optus, their postpaid subs grew. Was it primarily the handset subsidies that were driving this in your view? Or were there other factors? And I guess what I want to get to, does this trend impact your future pricing decisions in postpaid, particularly given that you've said that trends likely to be challenging again in the second half? So that's the first question. Second question, probably more straightforward one. Can you talk to the broad expectations you have around the subs benefits as a result of the Optus market deal? I appreciate it get to complete, but I'm sure you've got some broad expectations. If you could talk to those, would be appreciated. And then finally, on working capital movements, I suspect this one is for John. There was the $84 million benefit in the first half, do you expect this to reverse in the second half given the potential pickup in demand for new handsets?

I'm going to give Kieren the first one, and maybe I'll talk about MOCN, and then I'll ask John to answer on the working capital movements.

So the question in terms of how our -- the shape of our half with postpaid subs compared to competitors, but there was a few different things that were going on in our world compared to competitors. First of all, we had our 3G closure already and the impact of that where that's still ahead for our 2 main competitors. There was also the -- as mentioned before, and it shouldn't be underestimated, I think, Inaki used the term, distorting impact of the level of aggression that we saw in the market. Third one was just around of our own pricing, which is a cycle compared to the cycle that others are going to so we are going on different cycles.

Yes. On the MOCN, look, I think, again, subject to ACCC approval on September 13. But as we have said, for us, it is a transformational change for our position. We see it really as unlocking a bit of a market limitation that we have on the addressable market. We do see and we have hinted that initially, our view is that we'll see benefits in terms of churn reduction. But also the fact that across our different brands, we probably have a disparity of [indiscernible] do think that we can leverage much more on convergency. This year has been good. We have seen TPG, iiNet brands growing strongly, and we think that, that will continue next year with the MOCN on the back of the increased coverage. So yes, we are quite excited about it, and we do think that is going to give us a good opportunity in '25. John?

Yes. And then on our working capital, look, we're obviously looking at our balance sheet very closely and always working to optimize the balance sheet. But what I would say is our half 2 seasonality on inventory is different normally to half 1. And certainly, we'll have periods through the second half where inventory will increase, and we'll just see how that plays out by the end of the year.

Sorry, maybe just a quick follow-up to the first question around the postpaid subs. I guess what I was getting to is how influential is that postpaid sub strengths in any future pricing decisions. Presumably, it's a fairly big factor in whether you decide whether to go again in terms of higher pricing?

Yes. We don't make those type of comments around future pricing. So I -- we just cannot answer that.

Next question comes from Kane Hannan from Goldman Sachs.

Just 3 quick ones as well. Just enterprise mobile, revenue is still growing, but the growth did slow a fair bit sort of in the half. Just any comments you can make around what you're seeing in the NBN enterprise mobile market? Secondly, NBN you're talking about the challenges of maintaining or stabilizing subscriber growth and maintaining the strong economics. So is it still the intent of TPG to stabilize that NBN base? Or are you comfortable sort of holding profitability and then exceeding EBITDA share over time? And then thirdly, just on the cost base into '25. So you're seeing a lower rate of growth than what you've seen in the second half this year. I mean is there any reason why that won't be low single-digit growth given the comments you made around the second half?

Kane, I'm going to ask Jonathan and then Kieren can talk about the NBN questions.

Thanks, Kane. Two things. One is, and you would have seen it in industry results, Enterprise Mobile was under a bit of pricing pressure, which we expect will continue. It's been a pretty aggressive market around enterprise, mystic from a pipeline perspective, but it's a strong growth opportunity for years. And we think there's obviously some real momentum that could be built subject to the regulatory approval being granted on the network expansion. In the smaller end of enterprise, there has been a lot of base cleaning, really been under a lot of pressure with respect to employee numbers. I think those trends you'll see through churn continue for the short term.

So on the NBN subscription, the question, yes, we still envision that we will be stabilizing that and they're still on plan, but I also recognize that it is as a -- the segment of the market NBN does have -- it's well unavoidable, uncompressible and ever-increasing cost year-by-year. So we are very careful about the way we manage our own on-net opportunities as well. We know they provide more options, they can provide better value that provide some good flexibility. So we look at both the combination of where we're competing in the NBN market and balancing that on-net services as well.

As Inaki have noted, we're sort of past the both on CapEx and OpEx growth. We've noted midterm low to mid-single-digit growth in OpEx in the second half and a flatter profile in '25. We are very aware about how we -- our relative advantage on cost and we want to maintain and enhance that. So I won't give any more color at the moment on '25. But I think you can see how the trend is going.

Our next question comes from Lucy Huang from UBS.

I have 3 really quick questions as well. So in terms of the MVNO subs in mobile, I thought big tick up because of the Lyca contract win. I'm just wondering how you're looking to play in that space in terms of kind of winning new customers or wholesalers in MVNOs moving forward? And is pricing going to be a big feature to kind of grow that subscriber number moving forward? And then just secondly, on the postpaid ARPU, I think you mentioned that there was some seasonality impact from roaming. Just wondering if you can quantify what that amount was to the postpaid ARPU in this half. And then just my last question is, I think you mentioned Fibre Connect last quarter was off just a slower start. Just wondering whether we've started to see a tick up in momentum in Fibre Connect take-up?

Thank you very much,. Jonathan, maybe you can answer on MVNO.

Thanks, Lucy. With respect to pricing, look, clearly no comment, and we wouldn't talk about. But maybe more on strategy. There's 2 things we see. One is clearly, in the MVNO market is a brand that give us access to proportion of the market that we wouldn't normally get and they're really attractive relationships for the development, especially as we subject to regulatory approval, expand our network. And then secondly, there's also the opportunity to work with more distributors that really look for mobile as part of their product offering into different segments of the market -- or in some of the bigger brands. So we see opportunities in both, and I think it's going to be a really exciting thing for wholesale mobile in general.

Yes. Look, in terms of the seasonal impact of roaming, I believe, is about $0.40 of the dollar, the difference between H1, H2. And then on Fibre Connect, I mean, we are seeing significant demand for ISPs across the board. Fibre Connect is becoming very popular in all the brands. And also what I can say is on Vision equally, G.Fast is now 40% of the Vision connection. So there is definitely a change in plan in the way that consumers are buying a home fixed broadband.

Our next question comes from Roger Samuel from Jefferies.

I'll stick to 3 questions as well. Firstly, with regards to your dividend per share, are you prepared to maintain and grow the dividend per share even though you don't have an upfront in credit. So it's less than 100% franked. Second question is on your Fixed Wireless Access, definitely a very strong growth in that part of the market. But the [indiscernible] is supporting the government to introduce a levy, the original broadband scheme levy, which may extend the Fixed Wireless Access. How likely do you think this is going to happen? And the third question is just back to postpaid. Your competitor released on Investor Day presentation yesterday, mentioning about the pressure in the Tier 2 market. How much do you think that pressure was spread to the Tier 1 market as well?

Thank you, Roger. Look, I think on dividends, I mean, it's very difficult for us to talk about future dividends, in terms of the franking credits, I'll ask John to give you a better view around the amount of tax credits that we still have left and where we see that moving forward.

Yes. I mean firstly, future dividends are a matter for the Board, and we're not here today to talk about future dividends. But on franking, as you will have seen that the interim dividend is about 87% franked. That exhausts our franking credits. And based on what I call business-as-usual profitability levels, and noting the tax losses, that the carry forward tax losses that remain, we wouldn't be expecting in a BAU environment to be generating additional franking into '26 '27 more likely '27. So that's the color I can provide.

Look, in terms of FWA, yes, we continue to grow on that product. It is one of the areas that is helping us also see the significant improvement on our fixed consumer fixed margin. In terms of whether there is going to be a levy or not and the likelihood -- fixed wireless is already heavily taxed through spectrum. So it just doesn't really make a lot of sense to do that, but you never know. I think that is whether they're going to do it or not, a fixed wireless, is very similar to mobile. So the question will be whether there is going to be an incremental tax to the already expensive spectrum payments that the industry is doing in this market, it doesn't really make a lot of sense. And then the comment on Optus, I'm going to just ask Kieren to answer that one.

Roger, the comment I said sort of what that they have seen increasing growth in competition in the Tier 2 market. There is pressure on the top as we were talking about, we've seen a slowdown of population and immigration travel in Australia, which does in the end constrain the available market in postpaid. And then what we're seeing is that combination where it's not just there's competition within what they're referring to as Tier-2, there's a movement currently in a cost-of-living environment where customers are looking to that segment as well. That's why we're very careful whether it's in the MVNO market or whether it's the brands we spoke about before that we've got a really strong offering in that space as well.

Our next question comes from Brian Han from Morningstar.

On the handset discounting in the market, when did that intensify in the first half? Did it catch you by surprise? And how much of that, John, do you think contributed to the positive working capital movement? And also, John, are there any material spectrum CapEx that we should be aware of in the second half?

So on the working capital impact -- sorry, I think the second question is on the working capital impact associated with handset?

That's right. Yes.

The fact the first thing, catches it by surprise. I mean, obviously, all the competitor moves actions by surprise because we don't know what they are going to do. So that's the reality. It is something that has been a bit different from probably what we have seen in the market in '23. That's as much as we can tell you. And then in terms of the working capital...

As noted earlier, it did have an impact on our inventory levels, both the lower customer demand. And that was probably indirectly impacted at times by the competitive intensity. And then on spectrum CapEx in half 2, we paid $128 million in half 1 for the 3.7 gigahertz based on the outcome in November, broadly $28 million in half 2 related to the millimeter wave.

Our last question comes from Nick Basile from CLSA.

A few questions from me. I think the first one, just on operating costs and the decommissioning of legacy systems. I just was trying to clarify whether you may have brought forward into the second half, any of your plans to get rid of duplicate systems? I thought based on conversations back in February that your expectation may have been only to get benefits by 2025. So just trying to clarify whether perhaps you're seeing some more positive momentum there than what you thought earlier in the year. And then a question on plan simplification. I'm just interested to kind of perhaps get Kieren's perspective on what sort of the key callouts there are? And how you think the customer is going to react to those? And then the final one, just on the overall strategy around cost focus and positioning to be the lowest cost operator, how should we think about that contributing to improved underlying EBITDA momentum over time? And particularly now with consumer spending so weak, at what point if at all, can we expect that to show up as a clear competitive advantage?

I mean on the first question, Yes, we will maintain what we said at the beginning of the year around some of the improvements around the decommission of the systems, mainly on -- we'll start seeing them in '25 and then further in '26. There is not really any change in that plan. So everything is on schedule for the decommissioning to happen, needs to be a transition and migration of customers. So this is something that is done probably toward the end of the transformation. But like we said, we will start to see some benefits in '25. In terms of plan simplification, Kieren?

So first of all, as we've spoken about, we've taken out a lot of legacy plans. We've got a lot more to take away. The reason that's important is the more plans, the more complexity we have in our systems and the more legacy, our systems are, it's basically gunk in the works. It slows us down and increase our costs, and it stops us being able to really innovate at the speed we need to. So when we talk about the simplification, it's not just about the reduction in the plans, it allows us to then build plans that flow through to a far more intuitive digital experience, it's far better for our frontline people and [indiscernible] for our customers to solve certain [indiscernible] as well. It also means that we can start to turn our plans away from what they've historically been very mobile-only centric to being far more easy to be combined with fixed as well.

Yes. And then on the low-cost operator, I think, look, the first one I'd say is we believe we benchmark well relative to our competitors on costs. Secondly, it is true that we've come out of an investment, and I think we spoke about that quite a bit today, but that's peaked. Thirdly, we've already taken action in half 2. We have given a perspective of moving from mid- to high single digits to low to mid-single digits, our OpEx cost growth and a flattish cost profile into '25. And we look at -- and we are looking at all areas of our spend, including third-party spend, and we still see opportunity there.

We have no more questions on the line. This concludes our call. You may now disconnect.