Australia's third largest telco TPG Telecom has announced a 9% rise in its net profit after tax to $413.8 million for its full year 2017 which ended on July 31.
Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation were $890.8 million.
The company's share price rose even though it cut dividends, saying it was doing so to retain money to build its mobile network. Earnings per share were up 6% to 47.9 cents per share.
The mobile network, which would be Australia's fourth, is expected to be up and running next year. TPG bought two lots of 10MHz in the 700 MHz spectrum auction earlier this year for this purpose.
{loadposition sam08}It said mobile radio network planning, site selection and acquisition were already well underway in metropolitan areas. The implementation of some initial site clusters in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra was said to be expected to be complete by mid-2018.
TPG is also rolling out a mobile network in Singapore.
The company said that iiNet's operations had now been integrated into its structure and the results from this unit would be recognised within its corporate and consumer segments.
It projected income of between $800 million and $815 million, down from the earlier projection of $835 million. This was due to the growth of the NBN and fall in revenue for fixed line rentals.
Broadband subscribers were reported as having increased to 1.94 million at the end of July, of which iiNet's share was 979,000.
Mobile subscribers fell to 445,000 from 475,000 at the end of July 2016.