Hutchison Telecom Australia (HTAL) has emerged from the red, thanks to its merger with Vodafone Australia.
It posting a A$467.7 million ($421.3 million) net profit in 2009, compared with a A$163.1 million net loss in 2008, the company announced Friday.
The swing to the black was a result a A$587.3 million profit gain from its merger with Vodafone Australia in June. Without the gain, HTAL would have posted a net loss of A$119.6 million.
HTAL’s share of customer service revenue rose 28.4% to A$1.88 billion and ebitda excluding one-off merger costs rose 19.6% to A$227.8 million.
“VHA [Vodafone Hutchison Australia] is on-track to realise cost benefits outlined on announcement of the merger, which we expect to equate to A$2 billion of net present value once fully realised,” said VHA CEO Nigel Dews.
“We’ll continue to grow the business in 2010, gaining further benefit from scale,” he said.
VHA acquired 3.97 million customers on June 9 as a result of the merger.
VHA’s customer base stood at 6.9 million users at end-2009, an increase of 4.86 million for the year.
“The underlying net customer growth is 890,000 customers, which is a 432,000 increase or 94.3% increase on the net customers acquired by 3 last year,” said HTAL.
Total VHA revenue attributable to HTAL increased by 25.7% to A$2 billion.
Revenue from non-voice services increased 45.9% to A$677.3 million. Non-voice services now contribute 36.7% of ARPU, up from 31.2%.