Telecom New Zealand Profits drop by 21%

Telecom New Zealand has revealed a 20.9% drop in profits for the year to June 30 to US$271 million, whereas revenues also fell by 6.3% to US$3.7 billion.
The mobile customer support decreased to 2.171 million customers as of 30 June 2010, from 2.186 million customers last year, as CDMA connections became inactive.
The migration and acquisition of customers to the WCDMA based XT network sustained during Q4 FY10, adding 117,000 connections. This has resulted in 32.8% of total mobile connections now on the XT network as at 30 June 2010, compared to 25.9% as at 31 March 2010.
According to Paul Reynolds, CEO, Telecom, The Company has halted the significant earnings decline of the previous two years and achieved notable improvements in the trajectory of each of its businesses. In a year of further recessionary and regulatory impacts, it is especially pleasing to have delivered strong growth in free cash flow of $126m, or 28%, the first such growth since the regulatory shock of 2006. This shows that their transformation and turnaround programme is on track.