iiNet adds 23,000 new NBN, fibre customers

Telecommunications provider iiNet added 23,000 new NBN and fibre customers in the last six months, cementing its position as the nation's largest reseller of NBN services with a 25 percent market share.

It now counts 48,000 active NBN and fibre customers, according to its most recent financial results - around five percent of its overall broadband subscriber base. It did not specify how many of the 48,000 were specifically NBN users but said it was "over 30,000".

The company now has a total of 926,000 broadband users, up from the 840,000 it counted at the end of the 2013 financial year. The growth was buoyed by the addition of 70,000 broadband users following its $60 million acquisition of Adam Internet in August last year.

Independently of the acquisition iiNet added 16,000 new broadband subscribers over the past six months - a significant increase over the 4000 it welcomed in the previous six month period.

The result was helped by an additional $2 million iiNet poured into marketing this half, to reach a total of $19 million.

iiNet today posted a 19 percent rise in net profit to $31 million for the first half of fiscal 2014, and a four percent increase in revenue to $493 million.

Along with Adam Internet, iiNet is still working through integrating the operations of two other acquisitions from 2011, in TransACT and Internode, an effort that will cost it $24.3 million in the half.

It has so far finished integrating the networks of TransACT and Internode and is a quarter of the way through the Adam Internet network.

The company has almost completed the integration of the corporate support functions of TransACT and Internode and is halfway through the same with Adam Internet, but still has over half the way to go in migrating the billing platforms of the three acquisitions. 

As a result of these activities, group operating expenses for the half rose to $132.6 million from $123 million in the previous half.

More to come...