Telstra has reported a small 1% increase in revenues for FY24 to $23.5 billion but huge declines in its Enterprise business have led to reported EBITDA and net profit drops of 4.2% and 12.8% to $7.5bn and $1.8bn, respectively.

Australia's largest telco's annual financial results to the year to 30 June 2024 highlight a third consecutive year of underlying growth, and the company claimed it's seeing positive momentum across many key indicators.

Underlying EBITDA on mobile for example hit $424m, representing 9.2% growth, and Telstra said it had seen 560,000 net new handheld customers come on, along with average revenue per user growth (now $42.89). Overall, mobile services grew 5.6 per cent and the mobile business underpinned the ASX-listed telco's underlying earnings growth, chalking up a 5% lift in income to $10.7bn.

Infrastructure business was also up, with InfraCo Fixed and Amplitel EBITDA grew by about $150m in aggregate. Fixed cable and satellite business also saw EBITDA growth of nearly $120m.

The big dipper however, was fixed-line enterprise, which tanked -67% to $275 million. Fixed wholesale was also down 19.7% to $94m.

"While most parts of our business performed strongly, Fixed Enterprise is clearly a long way from where we need it to be," Telstra said in its statement. "We commenced action during the year to address challenges in our enterprise business and took additional action on cost overall."

The comment refers to the decision to slash 2800 jobs announced in May. At the time, Telstra CEO, Vicki Brady, said the huge headcount reduction was necessary for Telstra to support ever-increasing growth in data volumes on its networks and improve connectivity for customers.

Consultation on 377 of those roles began immediately, mainly from areas supporting the products and services to be exited in Enterprise. Telstra's ambition is to cut $350m in cost by end of FY25. The telco has already trimmed $122m of cost out of the business over the last two years. Overall, Telstra's underlying EBITDA was up 3.7% to $8.2bn, while EBIT was up 8.2% and net profit 7.5% to $2.1bn. In its financial report, Telstra said its T25 strategy was on track including growth ambitions in underlying EBITDA, EPS (earnings per share) and ROIC (return on investor capital).

Telstra said it invested $5bn in capex and mobile spectrum payments this year, bringing total investment to $42bn over the last 10 years. "That investment has radically transformed the connectivity Australia relies on," it stated. "This has delivered Australia's largest and most reliable mobile network, adding 240,000 sq kms of additional mobile coverage since FY21 and now reaching 99.7 per cent of the population. "We are continuing to roll out our intercity fibre network, which will be an important part of future-proofing Australia's speed and capacity needs for the next 20 years."

In terms of customer stats, Telstra said it's now providing 26 million mobile services including Internet of Things, has more than 3m fixed services households on its services, and helped 1.4m customers in vulnerable circumstances. It also reported episode Net Promoter Score (NPS) results had improved 3 points in the last 12 months.

"In FY25 we must remain focussed on lifting customer experience; continue delivering financial growth and value from our world-leading mobile network and high-quality infrastructure; continue the reset of our Enterprise business; and, keep delivering on our commitment to simplify our operations and improve our productivity," the company added. "These actions are essential to support our sustainable growth and to put us in a position to deliver for customers now and in the long run.