From
http://www.theage.com.au/news/busine...619058764.html
THE potential for Telstra to be hit with tougher competition rules after
this month's federal election has not dissuaded chief executive Sol Trujillo
from delivering a "prudent" upgrade to the telco's earnings forecast for
next year and beyond.
Mr Trujillo used Telstra's annual pitch to investors to declare underlying
earnings before interest and tax would increase between 4 and 6 per cent, up
from 3 to 5 per cent previously, which implies peak pre-tax earnings of
$6.13 billion for the year to June 30. That does not include a recent $100
million distribution payment derived from its 50 per cent stake in Foxtel.
During a briefing that lasted 71/2 hours and featured individual
presentations from 20 Telstra executives, Mr Trujillo raised the telco's
annual earnings growth estimate for 2010 by half a percentage point to
between 2.5 and 3 per cent.
Investors initially pushed Telstra shares up 10? - more than 2 per cent - in
reaction to the upgrade, but enthusiasm waned and the shares finished 3?
higher at $4.71 and the T3 instalment receipts were up 2? to $3.20.
With no big product launch to match the activation of the Next G mobile
network at last year's investor day, Mr Trujillo's most significant
announcement was that the first stage of the company's five-year IT
transformation had been completed, a project that he said had triggered "a
lot of scepticism".
"I won't spend time talking about that, let me just say everybody was
basically wrong, in terms of their views," he told analysts, investors,
journalists and Telstra employees.
"There seemed to be a lot of underneath rumbling that this IT program was
high-risk, high-problems, (that you) can't really identify what the savings
are, so today what we wanted to do was say, 'Look, here's another box that
we've checked (that's been) delivered on or ahead of schedule'," he said
later.