Telstra has lowered its earnings forecasts for the next financial year, FY18, following the NBN Co's announcement on Monday that it would be delaying HFC connections by anything from six to nine months.
The company rolling out the national broadband network said residents and businesses who were allotted HFC as the means of connecting to the NBN would not be able to submit requests for connection from 11 December onwards, until technical issues that were affecting speed were resolved.
Telstra said in a notice to the Australian Stock Exchange this morning that it was revising its FY18 guidance also as a result of the NBN Co's corporate plan for 2018.
There will be no change in the total dividend for FY18, with this to remain at 22 cents per share as Telstra announced during its AGM earlier this year.
{loadposition sam08}"Telstra’s FY18 guidance included an assumption that the NBN rollout would be broadly in accordance with the NBN CO Corporate Plan 2017. NBN Co subsequently issued its Corporate Plan 2018 on 31 August," the announcement said.
"This change reduced the number of brownfields Ready For Service (RFS) premises and included a reduction of 200,000 brownfield activations in FY18 relative to the previous Corporate Plan, which has a negative impact on Telstra’s expected FY18 Per Subscriber Address Amount and one-off Infrastructure Services Agreement ownership receipts."
While these changes had not materially affected Telstra's projections, the telco said the cessation of HFC connections pushed its outlook outside the guidance range.
The revised guidelines are in the table below:
"While the NBN rollout delay impacts Telstra’s outlook for FY18, it is anticipated the delay will be modestly financially positive to Telstra over the full rollout due to the effects of a natural hedge," the company announcement said. "It is noted that NBN Co remains committed to completing the rollout by 2020."