- Good financial performance. Reiterating full-year guidance
- Rapid expansion of unbundled customer base
- Medium-term outlook - targeting 20% EBITDA margin
Headlines
- 81% of broadband base unbundled - ahead of full-year target
- Q2 broadband ARPU grew to £24.70 (Q1'11: £23.90) - full-year guidance achieved
- Q2 broadband customer base increased by 18k - reflecting migration disruption
- H1 broadband revenue grew 24.0% to £615m (H1'10: £496m)
- H1 total revenue up 12.4% to £887m (H1'10: £789m)
- H1 EBITDA(1) up 17.5% to £121m (H1'10: £103m)
- Interim dividend 1.7 pence per share
(1) Unaudited; excludes exceptional charges and amortisation of acquisition intangibles.
All H1'10 comparators include CPW costs and 3 months Tiscali results.
Outlook
Full-year 2011
- H2 focus on completing integration, expected benefits increased to £55m exit run-rate; 85% of broadband base unbundled
- Broadband customer base expected broadly flat in H2
- Reiterating FY 2011 financial guidance
- 6-8% revenue growth
- EBITDA margin 14.5% - 15.5%
- Operating FCF margin 8.5% - 9.5%
- EPS 12.5 - 13.5p, DPS 5.4 - 5.6p
Medium-term
- Extending network footprint and our leading position to 2,700 exchanges and 93% customers unbundled
- Targeting 20% EBITDA margin through unbundling and further £40-50m efficiencies
- Driving 2% revenue CAGR through value-for-money quad-play services including YouView
Dido Harding, Chief Executive of TalkTalk commented:
"We have delivered another good half year, we are reiterating our financial guidance for the full year and we are setting targets for sustained revenue growth and a materially increased EBITDA margin over the medium term. All of this is driven by our commitment to deliver best value-for-money services for our customers.
"TalkTalk now has by far the UK's largest Next Generation Network, a base of 4.25 million broadband and voice customers, and an innovative and growing brand. It has achieved this by entrepreneurial initiative, organic growth and acquisition. Now TalkTalk is able to start fully realising the potential of this scale, for the benefit of shareholders as well as customers. Accordingly we have developed our strategy to do just this.
"At the heart of the strategy is unbundling. Our fully unbundled Next Generation Network enables us to deliver more products and better service to our customers, and is the key driver of our improving customer mix and growing ARPU. We have therefore accelerated our rate of network expansion and unbundling. 81% of our broadband customers are now on our network and we are going to add 700 new exchanges, and aim to put 93% of our customers onto our network, in line with the extended population coverage.
"We are well on track to complete our 'One Company' integration programme by the end of the year. Our integration programme is delivering higher than expected synergy benefits and we are now raising our synergies target to £55 million.
"Like all companies that have grown as quickly as TalkTalk, there are considerable opportunities to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the business. We see real opportunities to deliver an additional £40-50 million of operating efficiencies, and over the medium term to drive our EBITDA margin to 20%. Over the same time frame we will drive sustained top line growth, adding innovative and attractive new services, to become the UK's best value provider of quad-play phone, broadband, mobile and TV services."