Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
Remarks by Telstra CFO, John Stanhope, at a UK investment conference have generated a storm of controversy leading Telstra's competitors to accuse it of trying to blackmail the government.
Stanhope told delegates at the Citigroup Investment Conference in London that the impact of adverse regulation on the carrier could be so great it would be forced to cut its planned dividend payment. "For our shareholders, we intend to pay 28c per share, fully franked dividend, for the next three years, including this 05/06 year, subject to the normal board considerations. What does that mean? Obviously, if we get a horrendous regulatory outcome, the board will have to reconsider that particular dividend payment, but that is our intention at this point in time."
He was later asked if he could "qualify or give some quantification of that horrendous outcome," to which he replied: "...after the [November 15, 2005] ... we had a regulatory breakout session and I explained that first order impacts of what the ACCC want for unbundled local loop is an impact on the enterprise value of $6 billion ... and the secondary impact of fly-through under the wireless business, adds another $1.5, $1.8 billion. That's a horrendous outcome and I'm sure the board would have to reconsider the intention of 28c if that sort of outcome happened."
The Competitive Carriers' Coalition (CCC) has seized on these remarks saying they reveal "the full extent of the Telstra's attempt to blackmail the Government...the Prime Minister must overrule the regulator on crucial access pricing issues or the T3 privatisation is off....Telstra knows that lowering dividends means that there will be no chance of privatisation in the Government's timetable."
CCC executive director, David Forman, said: "Telstra tries to dress up this attack on competition as providing certainty, but by now everyone can see it for what it is – a bald-faced attempt to turn back the clock. The message from competitors is equally clear – interference by the Government into the role of the regulator would undermine the integrity of the regime, and destroy certainty... It would be the ultimate absurdity if the Government felt that it could only extract itself from this conflict by dumping its own regulatory principles to make the sale possible."
David Frost
| SYDNEY– February 9, 2012. Gigamon®, the world leader in Traffic Visibility Fabric solutions, announced that it has expanded the breadth and s…
How to Make Business Discovery Work for Your Business
Business Discovery takes its cues from consumer apps. Like Google, it encourages us- ers to hunt for and explore data without worrying about or even noticing the underly- ing technology. Their entire experience is working within an intuitive interface to get real-time, self-service results with only minimal training. ...more
Try an easy-to-use set of web-enabled
tools for business-class productivity services. Office 365 provides
anywhere-access to email, important documents, contacts, and calendars
on almost any device.
Remarks by Telstra CFO, John Stanhope, at a UK investment conference have generated a storm of controversy leading Telstra's competitors to accuse it of trying to blackmail the government.
