Vodafone Profit Up Despite Network Scandal

VHA out of the red as earnings rise 171.6% as mobile base grows.

Profit for 2010 also leapt out of loss making territory, turning to positive growth of $73.4 million.

This a major change from this time last year when Australia’s third biggest Telco posted a loss of $119.6 million.

The strong results were “based on strong growth in postpaid customers and service revenue” said Hutchinson Telecoms Australia (HTA) on Friday. 

This compensated for heavy losses experienced in their broadband subscriber growth figures, which slumped to 142,000 new additions in the second half of 2010 compared with 539,000 for H1.

Earnings as a percentage of service revenue has risen 12.3 percentage points to 21.6%.

Late last year VHA was besieged by continuous issues with their network which affected mobile services, including call failures, slow data speeds and poor reception. 

Vodafone recently apologised to customers for the service disruptions and said they added staff into the customer care division and in coming months users will be able to contact Vodafone at any time they wish.

However, despite the strife, their customer base grew “strongly” in 2010 with 681,000 new customers joining the network – a jump of an increase of 9.9% from this time last year.

VHA now has a total customer base of 7.58 million customers.  

Its postpaid customer growth grew 11.5% (excluding wholesale customers).

And more than 3 million customers are using mobile 3G broadband via devices like USBs and pocket WiFi.

 “2010 was a good year with solid profitable growth underpinned by strong postpaid handset performance,” said Vodafone Hutchison Australia Chief Nigel Dews. 

VHA is expected to remain profitable in 2011 and is on track to achieve merger synergies with a net present value of $2 billion, says HTA. 

Recently Vodafone announced improved service network with new upgrades in the form of their new 850MHz network, including a new quad band mobile broadband modem launched last week.

HTA’s share of VHA’s pre tax earnings improved 171.6% to $475.8 million, driven by margin growth and reduction in operating costs since mergering, they said. 

“We are pleased with VHA’s performance, profitability and continued growth in service revenues in the first full year since the merger” according to Chairman of HT Canning Fok.  

VHA is a 50:50 joint venture between Hutchison Telecoms and Vodafone Group.