Spark New Zealand Ltd Ord (NZTCF) Q2 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Kia ora koutou katoa and good morning. Thank you for joining us today as we share SPARC's half-year results for the period ending 31 December 2023. This morning I'm going to provide an overview of our results and an update on our strategy. I'm then going to hand over to Steph Knight, our CFO, to speak to our financial performance in more detail before we move to Q&A. So as was the case for most businesses, we experienced a challenging operating environment during the half, with high inflation, cost of living pressures and uncertainty resulting in lower levels of consumer and business confidence. Our core Taupo products are resilient during economic downturns, but not immune, and uncertainty did dampen demand in some parts of the public and private sectors. Despite these challenges, we continue to deliver top-line growth and made solid progress in implementing our new three-year strategy. I'm going to speak to the adjusted numbers for the purposes of providing a like-for-like comparison, which strips out the impact of the Taoko transaction and the exit of Spark Sport and FY23. So if we move to that, we delivered adjusted growth of 1.3% to $1.98 billion, driven by a standout mobile performance and momentum in data centers and high tech. When combined with strong cost control, holding operating expenses broadly flat. We adjusted EBITDA grew 3.9% to $530 million. Adjusted impact decreased 4.8% to $157 million due to higher average interest rates on debt and higher interest payments on Connect releases. We expect to see a second half improvement in line with stronger H2 EBITDA and Seth's going to talk through that a bit more shortly. Capital expenditure was higher in the first half as we accelerated investments to gain a fast start on our new strategy and as we implemente...