NBN on Monday posted a 152% increase in quarterly revenues and announced that active customers grew by 129% in the year to the end of September.
However, the company that is building out Australia’s next-generation broadband network reported a widening net loss. It lost A$595 million (€390 million) in its fiscal first quarter, compared with A$436 million in the year-ago quarter. It also reported an EBITDA loss of A$336 million and operating expenses of A$409 million.
Turnover for the period came in at A$73 million, including A$71 million in telecommunications revenue. Revenue in the same quarter a year earlier stood at A$29 million.
NBN had 610,712 active customers at the end of Q1, up from 266,984 a year earlier. The vast majority – more than 505,000 – are fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) customers.
Average revenue per user increased to A$43 (€28) from A$39 in Q1 last year.
Connecting those customers doesn’t come cheap. Capital expenditure during the quarter was A$1.06 billion.
"The figures give the company confidence that it is tracking well towards its full-year targets," NBN chief executive Bill Morrow said, in a statement.
"At the same time we have recently set the course for the completion of the rollout. Our recent corporate plan, coupled with our construction plan for the next three years, covers 85% of the country, with the remainder of the rollout on course to be completed by 2020," Morrow said.
He also talked up the company’s progress in rolling out services using hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) cables.
NBN’s corporate plan sees around 4 million premises – about a third of Australian homes and businesses – receiving high-speed broadband via HFC. The firm has announced a pilot of the technology with 300 homes and four retail service providers in Redcliffe, Queensland, and it aims to commercially launch HFC next year.
"The pilot marks pleasing progress for our HFC product. It will pave the way for the commercial release of HFC in 2016, marking the release of the final MTM (multi-technology mix) technology," Morrow said.
"It will also help put us on course to meet our target of delivering better broadband to 8 million happy homes by 2020," he added.
