Responding to reports in early November, Telstra CEO Andy Penn has scotched any suggestion that the Australian telco has plans to sell its 50% stake in DTH monopoly Foxtel.
Australian telecoms operator Telstra (ASX:TLS) has no plans to sell its 50% stake in the country’s monopoly DTH pay-TV provider Foxtel.
Reports in early November had said Telstra was considering a sale, but in an interview with Business Spectator Telstra CEO Andy Penn scotched those suggestions.
Penn did say, however, that Telstra was open to “how we organise the businesses and structure them to make them as successful as possible”, without elaborating.
The CEO also said Telstra was looking to Asia for future growth, as markets there were typically growing faster. The company is in talks with the Philippines’ largest conglomerate San Miguel Corporation about setting up a mobile operator in the country.
Foxtel is Australia’s largest pay-TV operator and the only one offering delivery of services by satellite. The other half of Foxtel is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s media group News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS).
News Corp is said to have pre-emptive rights over the stake in Foxtel, which has an equity valued at A$3.6bn (US$2.53bn) by Commonwealth Bank (CBA).
Telstra was said to be looking towards a possible exit as competition from overseas players such as Netflix weighs on its business.
In October, Telstra announced its biggest management shakeup in years, appointing three new group executives to drive its growth strategy amid a changing telecoms landscape. Mergers Vocus/M2 and TPG/iiNet have been agreed ahead of the roll-out of NBN, a public-private partnership deploying a range of communications technologies to all premises.
Reporting 2015 annual results this August, Telstra said that on a guidance basis total income increased 2.3% to A$26.3bn (US$18.5bn) and EBITDA climbed 2% to A$10.8bn (US$7.6bn).
Foxtel posted 2015 revenues up 1.9% on the year to A$3.165bn (US$2.2bn) on EBITDA that fell 8.2% to A$900m (US$632m).
Even still, it said total subscriber numbers grew to 2.847 million as of June 2015 from 2.667 million a year ago, although the group appears to have changed its reporting to include figures from its half-owned streaming service Presto.
