11th Nov 2015 08:01
LONDON (Alliance News) - TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC on Wednesday said it will book a one-off cost related to the recent cyber attack on it but said trading outside of this is in line with its expectations.
TalkTalk has had a very turbulent last few weeks following its disclosure that its website was hit by a "significant and sustained" hacking attack. It initially warned all of its customers that their details may have been breached, but later cut the estimate of the number of people affected substantially.
Still, the company's share price dropped heavily, primarily due to fears about the reputation hit the company would take from the breach, given it was the third cyber attack to have hit TalkTalk users this year. Fears were also raised about the amount of compensation the company will have to pay to anyone whose bank details were accessed.
The group said the cyber attack will result in one-off costs being booked in the current financial year to the end of March 2016 of GBP30.0 million to GBP35.0 million.
Excluding the impact of the cyber attack, TalkTalk said trading is in line with its expectations for the full year. The group made a pretax loss for the half to the end of September of GBP8.0 million, swung from a pretax profit of GBP20.0 million a year earlier, as it continued to make investments across the business. Headline earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation fell to GBP90.0 million from GBP110.0 million.
The group said total revenue in the half rose to GBP912.0 million from GBP871.0 million a year earlier, with growth in revenue accelerating in the second quarter. Average revenue per user rose 6.1%, TalkTalk said, while it added a net 132,000 mobile customers, 99,000 fibre broadband customers and 25,000 TV customers in the half.
TalkTalk will pay an interim dividend of 5.29 pence per share, up from 4.60p a year earlier, and said it remains on track to meet its expectations for the year, excluding the hack impact.
"We have delivered first half results in line with our plan and revenue growth accelerated strongly through the second quarter. We have a robust plan to deliver a significant step-up in profits in the second half, underpinned by the benefits of our transformation programme coming through strongly," said Dido Harding, TalkTalk's chief executive.
By Sam Unsted; [email protected]; @SamUAtAlliance
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