Optus claims return to financial momentum after November outage

Optus has claimed that its financial momentum has returned following its large-scale outage in November last year, but could face future turbulence following legal action brought on by the ACMA over its September 2022 breach.

Outlined in its financial results for the full year ending 31 March, Optus said its operating revenue, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) and earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) were stable compared to this time last year, rising by 0.1 per cent year-on-year to $8.1 billion, 0.7 per cent to $2.1 billion and 0.5 per cent to $288 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, overall mobile revenue grew by 2 per cent each, to $5.4 billion and home revenue increased by 2.1 per cent to $1.2 billion.

Interim CEO and CFO Michael Venter claimed the results “demonstrated a solid performance in a difficult environment”, which comes months after the telco experienced what it initially referred to as a “core network problem” that took out its network for millions of customers in November last year.

“Optus is working hard to rebuild the trust of customers after a challenging 18 months and these results demonstrate we are on the right track,” Venter said. 

“We’re listening to our customers and in the year ahead we’ll be continuing to prioritise what we know is important to them – a resilient network that delivers seamless connectivity, great value products and services, and simple, efficient customer service.” 

The telco added 116,000 subscribers to its mobile customer base, which included growth of 108,000 prepaid customers, partially due to “strong performance” from amaysim. Additionally, the expansion of Optus’ 5G network reached 80.5 per cent of the Australian population across more than 4,000 5G sites as of 31 March.

The telco also released its second half year results, which showed EBITDA growth of 4.8 per cent to $1.1 billion and EBIT growth of 19.8 per cent to $147 million.

The telco’s “difficult environment” could be prolonged however, as it was informed on 22 May that the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) had filed proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia in regards to the data breach it suffered in September 2022 that exposed information from over 9 million customers.

In a statement the ACMA alleged that Optus breached the Australian Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (Cth), claiming that the telco “failed to protect the confidentiality of its customers’ personal information from unauthorised interference or unauthorised access”.

As per statements from both the ACMA and Optus, either party will not be providing additional statements while the matter is before the Court.