Optus claims ‘recovery’ from breach with subscriber boost

Optus has claimed it has “recovered” from its breach in September last year in its FY23 results as its mobile subscriber count increased by 425,000 over the year.

The telco claimed the rise, which covers the 12 months to 31 March, this was due to a “strong” performance in prepaid, as well as growth in post-paid and connected devices.

For comparison, in the financial year prior, new mobile subscribers went up by 273,000.

Its operating revenue also saw success, increasing by 2.8 per cent over the period , to roughly $8.1 million, and grew by an even higher 3.7 per cent when excluding National Broadband Network (NBN) migration revenue.

This revenue increase is in contrast to the previous financial year, which saw a decline of 5.8 per cent, to $7.8 billion.

All of the telco’s improving financials comes despite the September data breach, which saw up to 9.8 million customers affected.

In response to the financial report for FY23, Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin said the telco’s commitment to customers, innovation and strengthening its network all helped drive the “solid” results.

“Our results reflect positively on the brand and culture of Optus. We are grateful to our customers for the loyalty and trust they have shown in us, and our team remains focused on doing the very best we can in the year ahead as we continue to innovate and deliver exceptional value and service,” she said.

There is other evidence that the impact of the breach on Optus’ bottom line is waning, with complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) about the telco’s services dropping during Q3, which was more than six months after the breach. 

In Q2, there were 6,436 complaints, which made up 36 per cent of the top 10 telco complaints. At the time, TIO Cynthia Gebert said that the quarter’s results “really [highlighted] the problems people are experiencing because of the breach.

Meanwhile, complaints about Optus spiked in the last week in Q1, but were only at 4,627 by the end of the three months to September 2022, meaning they have not reached pre-breach levels.

As for parent company Singtel, its group revenue fell for FY23 by 4.7 per cent year-on-year, or 1.7 per cent in constant currency, to S$14.6 billion. Additionally, EBITDA was also down 2.2 per cent, but up 1 per cent in constant currency, to S$3.7 billion. Net profit however increased by 14.2 per cent, or 18.7 per cent in constant currency, to S$2.2 billion.