Chorus reported first-half net profit after tax for $42 million for the six months to Dec 31, 2021, up from $27m in the previous corresponding half.
The wholesale provider said earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortisation (ebitda) were $347m for the period, up from $328m, with operating revenue of $483m, up from $478m.
Chorus raised ebitda guidance for the full year to between $665m and $685m from $640m to $660m, and full-year dividend guidance to 35 cents from 26c.
An interim dividend of 14c per share will be paid out on April 12.
The company also announced a $150m share buyback it’ll action over the next 12 months.
Chorus shares closed at $6.75 on Friday and were trading above $7.14, up 39 cents, or 5.8%, in early trading on Monday following the results.
On a call Monday with investors, chief executive JB Rousselot said it was a “very solid half year, despite some covid disruption”.
“While the lockdowns and the restricted activity increase the appeal and value of high-quality broadband, they also impact our field activity, but fibre connections grew by 47,000 to 918,000 ... and total net broadband also grew by 7000 connections,” he said.
Omicron permitting
Chief financial officer David Collins said the increased ebitda guidance was due to “strong underlying performance in the business”, though the figure had not taken the possible impact of omicron into account.
“We will manage that as time goes by.”
Capex guidance was lowered to $520m-to-$560m, a reduction of $30m, which Collins said reflected “installation spend impact related to covid”.
Chorus predicted it will hit one million fibre connections by the end of calendar year 2022 having reached the 918,000 mark as of Dec 31. Total broadband connections, which include legacy copper lines, were at 1,187,000.
Working from and staying at home thanks to the pandemic, with its ongoing social restrictions, have ensured increased data consumption nationally.
Chorus said this had directly helped drive consumers to migrate from copper to fibre and upgrades to fast 1 gigabit per second plans.
In December, the company completed an upgrade of its fibre broadband network that tripled the speed of its 100 megabits per second service up to 300Mbps at no extra cost to its retail partners.
Upgrades at customers’ homes are physically handled by contractors and sub-contractors.
Earlier in February, Chorus announced new service contracts with existing partners Downer and UCG, though a union representative remained sceptical as to whether the updated contracts would adequately address worker welfare.
