The deal – expected to net more than $400 million in annual revenue for Ventia – will involve honing the delivery of design, construction, and maintenance of infrastructure, including lifecycle management across Australia and fixed network services for Telstra’s digital infrastructure facilities.

Additionally, Ventia will be involved in the designing and construction of asset relocation and commercial works, as well as the continuation of some services related to network design and construction.

Wideband, optical fibre, data, IP networks, and wireless plans are all included in the deal.

Ventia CEO and Managing Director, Dean Banks, said the deal would build on an already strong business relationship with the telecommunications giant.

“We are proud to have been a trusted partner to Telstra for nearly 30 years and we are excited to expand our partnership to support their strategic goals,” he said.

Existing contracts between the two companies are set to expire in December, and works under the new contract will begin in early 2025.

Ventia has been trading at $3.45.

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In its full year financial report to the market, the telco giant said NPAT (net profit after tax) had come in at $1.8 billion in the year to June 30, 2024 – this registering a 12.8% drop from the same time last year.

For the same period, EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) came in at $7.5 billion – a 4.2% fall compared to the 2023 financial year.

The company witnessed income growth in six of its seven major sectors throughout the year: Telstra Consumer, Telstra Business, Telstra International, Telstra Infra Co, Networks IT and Product, and All Other.

However, earnings in the Telstra Enterprise Australia fell by 2.2% to $4,586 million for the period, including a 0.6% fall in mobile income and 2.8% drop in Fixed-Enterprise income across DAC (data and connectivity) and NAS (network and services).

Growth in income from mobile phone services was also evident throughout the year – rising 4.3% and contributing to Telstra Consumer sector’s overall growth of 2.3% (to $10,722 million). However, growth in this sector was also offset by a fall of 1.7 per cent in Fixed – C&SB (consumer and small business) income.

CEO Vicki Brady responded positively to the results, saying they revealed a third consecutive year of underlying growth and key indicators on-target.

“Our mobiles business has continued to perform very strongly, with EBITDA growth of over $400 million,” she said.

“This growth was driven by more people choosing our network, with more than 560,000 net new handheld customers, along with ARPU growth. Mobile services revenue grew by 5.6 per cent and our mobile business underpinned our overall underlying earnings growth.

“Our infrastructure business also grew, reflecting ongoing demand for our assets. InfraCo Fixed and Amplitel EBITDA grew by around $150 million in aggregate, further strengthening our confidence in our infrastructure growth ambitions.

“Our intercity fibre network is an investment in Australia’s future growth, connectivity, and digital prosperity.”

However, she added that increased spending on the Enterprise sector had dragged earnings down.

“While most parts of our business performed strongly, Fixed Enterprise is clearly a long way from where we need it to be,” she said.

“We commenced action during the year to address challenges in our Enterprise business, and took additional action on cost overall.

“These necessary choices and decisions in Enterprise, together with our additional action on cost, mean we are confident in achieving our $350 million cost reduction ambition by the end of FY25.”

Telstra Group was trading at $3.87.

The company said in May this year it “would not be increasing prices in July” while it updated its consumer and small business prepaid mobile plans to remove an annual review linked to CPI data.

“In making these price changes, Telstra has balanced cost of living pressures it knows some of its customers are experiencing, with its need to continue to invest to manage technology evolution and continued strong customer demand on its mobile network,” the company wrote on Tuesday.

However, that situation has changed.

The company reported in the five years to July 2024, network traffic on Telstra’s network has increased by 3.5x and increases by 20% per annum. As a result, Telstra says it’s spent $1.3B on system upgrades through FY24 alone.

All in all, the company painted itself as being forced into raising costs on Tuesday. To be fair, an increase of $4 per month is an extra $50 per year – not enough to break the bank but probably not the most desirable outcome for those on the customer end of things already struggling.

To that end, the company said it will keep prices the same for some concession-facing products, including starter kits likely the purview of students and/or new arrivals into the country.

TLS last traded at $3.65. Its 1Y returns are down -14.3%.