Aussie Broadband Limited

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Aussie Broadband Limited FY26 results call. All participants are in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question via the phone, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to ask a question via webcast, please enter it into the ask a question box and click submit. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Brian Ma, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning everyone and welcome to Aussie Broadband's FY26 results briefing. My name is Brian Maher and I am the Group Chief Executive Officer of Aussie Broadband. I'd like to start off today by acknowledging the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as the first Australians and for their role as the original Communities, Connectors, Scientists and Carers of the land and waters across Australia. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and to all First Nations people around the world who have nurtured and sustained their lands, cultures, languages and communities for countless generations. We honour their big knowledge systems, resilience and ongoing contributions to the wellbeing of our planet. I'm joined on the call today by Darren Rowland, our Group Chief Financial Officer who joined us in February. Today is his first results and accidents for us and you will hear from him shortly. On page three of our deck you can see today's agenda. We'll start by going through a quick overview of the year before diving into the financials and the performance of our three segments. We will then have a look at our summary and outlook for FY27 before we head into Q&A. Before we go into the results in more detail, I just wanted to touch on some of the awards that we've won which are allowing us to validate how we're tracking towards our ambition to become the self-governing people of life. Let's turn to page four of the deck here. Aussie Broadband's reputation is underpinned by the trust that our customers and partners continue to have in us. We've never taken that trust for granted and our people continue to work hard to ensure we retain it every day. This shows in the recognition we've received from third parties. Among our many award wins that you can see, Roy Morgan once again named Aussie Broadband Australia's most trusted telco. This is the fifth year in a row we've held this honour and we're looking forward to the impending announcement for 2026. and hopefully retaining that title. The first-time award for us this year was NPIRS Best Broadband Performance Award, which evaluates factors such as download and upload speeds, latency and streaming experience. Other awards included Fortinet's Australian Partner of the Year and Telco Partner of the Year and a range of others. The next section on page 5 has a snapshot of the group. As I mentioned, customer trust and service quality continue to be the bedrock of our business across the entire group. Our customers know the value of our locally based residential service and the premium experience they receive. Owning and operating our own assets like our two tier 1 voice networks, our expansive Aussie Fibre network and wholesale platforms like Carbon and Nitrogen give us that added differentiator in the market. Something that you'll hear a lot about from Darren and I today are the benefits of a diversified go-to-market approach, enhanced by our strategic transactions over FY26. This means we can place a diverse customer cohort with a range of offerings to suit different customer needs and having growth opportunities across the Australian communications landscape. And importantly, as you can see at the bottom of the page, all of this is brought to life by our dedicated team of game changers. Finally, on the right, there are three key segments that have each played a role in delivering across these areas. We still maintain a challenging mindset in the residential space, combining our growing scale with the same customer focus that has always set Aussie apart. That spirit is also thriving in our business sector. Our reputation in the segment grows every year, with our teams winning more clients and expanding our relationship with our existing customers. Same is true for wholesale, where our platforms and product accessibility and other challenger grants. On page 6, we can see the progression of revenue, gross margin, EBITDA and EBITDA margin. Since 2021, revenue has grown by a compound growth rate of 30% and EBITDA at a rate of 54%. Gross margin has steadily improved over those years, most markedly in FY23, following our investments in our fibre infrastructure. has held gross margin reasonably well, but the competitive environment is fierce, and this margin is modestly in FY26. Over recent years, however, we have seen operating leverage emerge, and despite those gross margin pressures, we increased our EBITDA margin by 1.2 percentage points in the last financial year. This is the trend we are looking to continue. On the right of the page, you can see our revenue and gross profit by segments and products. Residential continues to be the engine room of the business, with 59% of total revenue and 50% of our total gross profit. Our ambition is to continue to grow our market share in residential, while growing up in the other areas to maintain our revenue diversification.

The relatively higher GP contribution of voice is also evident here. Let's dive into an overview of FY26 quality.